Why me? 4 months G400 trouble...

[Henrique]

Hello and HELP!

I think I have tried everything that has been mentioned at MURC (as far as I know anyway), but I just can't seem to solve my problem.

System: Win98, P3-500,192MB, Abit BH6 (rev 1.0), SB Live! value (LiveWare 3.0), G400 DH 32MB (Drivers 4.x , 5.x I've tried them all...)

Problems: Yes, the hang-ups and/or pixel-lines and/or the mouse pointer turns to a box etc. Several games won't start, especially OGL. Win98 OGL Screen savers won't work (windows says invalid page error, stack dump...).

The only thing that worked so far is deselecting "Use Bus Mastering" in the Display properties. No more hang-ups, lots of games still won't work...

Things I've tried that didn't work:
1)Jerking the card into position.
2)Complete removal of Win98 and all apps/games and Re-installing w/o SB-live.
3)Shifting IRQ's
4)Moving PCI-cards around
5)Different BIOS-setups, AGP-aperture sizes etc
6)Removing and installing G400-drivers of different versions from 4.xx to 5.xx

PCI List says: VGA IRQ - IRQ5, not shared, AGP aperture - 256MB, Intel USB (71128086h) - IRQ11, Dynalink network controller (17020675h) - IRQ10, Creative Labs audio device (00021102h) - IRQ11, Creative Labs input controller (70021102h) , Matrox VGA controller (0525102Bh) - IRQ5

I'm beginning to thing that Abit BH 6 rev 1.0 and Matrox G400 is deeply incompatible...

Q1: What kind of performance loss does the No Bus Mastering render?

Q2: What could cause the games (as Q3, HL, SS2 e.g.) and Win OGL Screen Savers to crash?

Q3: Any tips, hits, solutions?

/Henrique

[paulcs]

You really should try getting your G400 off IRQ 5 and get it on 9, 10, or 11. IRQ 5 is trouble, and the G400 likes IRQ's above 8.

Is IRQ 9 empty? If so, go into your motherboard's BIOS, and change IRQ 5 to ISA. It should boot your G400 off IRQ 5 and, hopefully, on to IRQ 9.

I don't have an Abit motherboard running, but it should go something like this:

PNP and PCI Settings

PNP OS Installed: No
Slot 1 IRQ: 9
IRQ 5 use by ISA: Yes

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[jlordsen]

If the above doesn't help try forcing AGP 1x.
I encountered some of your problems (for ex. "boxed cursor" with corrupted screen) and it seems that it helps.

JLordsen

[paulcs]

But take that IRQ business seriously. We've seen a lot of problems with the G400 on IRQ 5. If you called up Matrox Tech Support, and told them your board was on IRQ 5, I suspect they'd tell you to move it.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[Henrique]

Hello again!

Thank you for the advice! I'm going to work on this right away... I've allready got the latest M/B BIOS, but I'll check the G400 (BIOS 1.5-22 s/n LAA23637 -- Good or Bad?).

My IRQ 9 is occupied by the SB 16 Emulation, but I'll try to remove my Live!-card temporarely and get my G400 into higher grounds.

Other stuff that I got in my system that I don't think matters in this case:
USB: Agfa SnapScan 1212U, HP DJ895Cxi
IDE: IBM Deskstar 22GXP, HP CD-Writer+ 8210i
PCI: ASUS ISDN adapter

/Henrique

[Henrique]

BTW: Has anyone out there measured (or having an idea about) the performance loss you get from choosing No Bus Master & AGPx1???

[Henrique]

OK so I assigned IRQ5 to ISA, and the G400 switched IRQ's with the SB 16 emulation.

This improved the situation... No lockups the first 30 secs (as before) but when I took up the system load a bit: Lock Up.

But the AGPx1 hack seems to work... Open GL runs again. No lock ups. Bus Mastering and all... Me happy!

Correct me if I'm wrong: Is the early G400 cards buggy? Has anyone had theese problems with the newer ones?

/Henrique

[Rekamlias]

I would swith the SB irq9 with the G400 at irq5.
i have a BH6 motherboard rev1.0 and the most important thing to do (after the irqs are swapped) is completely and i mean completely remove all remnants of the the G400 drivers. This includes (after using the unistaller program from Matrox) going thru your registry and delleting all refrences to "Matrox" , "MGA" and "Power desk".
please be carfull NOT to delete words like those just the ones refering to your powerdesk/matrox/mga stuff.
best of luck

rekamlias

ps all is working for me thus far (since october)

[DuRaNgO]

in your bios, set agp to 2/3, not 1/1, you may find that 2x will work again, I had the bh6 before the be6
jim

------------------
PIII-500mhz @ 620 ! with an Abit BE6 mobo
128mb pc-100
Mill G400 (YAHOO!!!) 32mb @ 167/208 with MGATweak-417mhz, (2.5, 2, 2.5), PD 5.41 & bios 1.5-22
Maxtor 14.3 gb Uata66 hdd
SB Live!
Winblows 98se & DX7
32 lbs. of fans, heatsinks and aluminum ductwork
3DMark Result 5954.69 3DMarks
Synthetic CPU 3D Speed 9325.69 CPU 3DMarks
Rasterizer Score 2791.72 3DRasterMarks
Game 1 - Race 65.07 FPS
Game 2 - First Person 54.89 FPS
Fill Rate 268.79 MTexels/s

[Jorden]

Errrm, Rekamlias, this nifty little Matrox utility called Powerdesk Uninstaller does it all for you without a problem

Jorden.

[cjolley]

My system is a lot like yours. I had a BH6 for a long time and never had any problems.
Here are my suggestions...
1, Get your G400 on a higher IRQ. Set PCI slot 1 to IRQ 12 and make sure that there is no card in the slot next to your G400. This should put it on IRQ 12 by itself.
2, Get the latest bios for the BH6 and the G400.
3, Test your memory sticks one at a time. The G400 works the hell out of your memory and will find a weak stick faster than anything.

Keep trying! You have a realy good combo there.

chuck

PS Reenable busmastering. Dissableing that is not a viable solution.


------------------
ABit BF6 w/ Celery 333@500, 128mb gh@cas2, 10gb IBM@7200, SB Live Value@3.0, noname CDRom@40x, Mitsumi CDRW@2x2x8, Acatel 1000 ADSL@1.5mb/sec, Princeton EO75@1024x768x32x85hz, USB mouse,Matrox G400 MAX!!!!




[This message has been edited by cjolley (edited 17 January 2000).]

[Scytale]

I used to have the same problems (and similar system). Forcing AGP1X was a decent workaround, but in the end I sent the card back for RMA. The new card is still working like a charm.

If you feel like reading about your problem try these threads:
http://forums.murc.ws/ubb/Forum5/HTML/005078.html
http://forums.murc.ws/ubb/Forum5/HTML/004833.html