Over Clocking G400 and questions, Thanks

[Cicindela]

Well I installed a new G400Max last week and after following some of the posts here I guess I did something wrong, because everthing seems to be working fine. No problems running anything so far. The card is working at AGPx2 W/ an aperture of 64. Should I increase the aperture? Working fine at 64.
Any other settings I should check on in BIOS?
How about overclocking? Is it necessary?
And which is better to use, MGA tweak or the Matrox Tweak Utility? How much should I overclock (what's safe)? How much FSB can the Matrox take, at 89 now.
Set-up now is:
SY-6ba+IV, Rev E
P500E@667MHZ W/ Iwill Sloket II (glad I got these in mid Dec when it was not a problem)
1 dimm 128 PC133 Micron
SB live, IRQ 5
G400MAX, IRQ 11
SupraExpress 56sp, IRQ 10
Maxtor plus 7200 UDMA66
Enlight 7237 W/250w frnt & rear 80mm
Thanks for any in put. Happy Camper

[paulcs]

If your board is working fine, leave your AGP aperture where it is. If you start having problems, increase its size to 128 or 256. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

I'm not sure anyone here can tell you how much you can overclock your board. I have two G400's, a vanilla and a Max. I cannot, for the life of me, overclock the vanilla over 5% without problems. Many others have successfully overclocked their vanilla G400's to Max speeds and beyond.

I find that overclocking my processors have a much bigger effect on my Max's performance than overclocking the board itself. (And you certainly are overclocking your processor. ) If you decide to try to overclock your Max, do so in small increments. You will most likely notice problems with your display long before you get the chance to do permanent damage. If you start seeing weird lines and dots on your desktop, clock it back down.

As you know, with AGP running at 89 MHz, you are already overclocking your board. I recommend treading lightly.

Nice system, by the way. It appears you've done a good job and had a bit of luck with your components as well.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[DuRaNgO]

definately use MGATweak if you want the most out of your max, be sure to disable duty cycle before proceeding
Paul,
how do you like Flashcom? I'm getting ready to order a dsl line from Zyan and someone mentioned Flashcom to check out
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

[Cicindela]

Thanks Guys

[paulcs]

Jim, the service itself is fine, that is, once it is up and running. (I'm using Covad, not Northpoint.) However, I have found Flashcom to be, administratively, just about the worst company I have ever had to deal with.

It seems to take them weeks to get your order to the actual DSL provider. Everything, and I mean everything, seems to get stuck in one pipe or another. Once they place the order with the provider, they inevitably forget to do something: enabling your gateway, activating your POP account, enabling access to their news server, etc.

Tech support varies, both in terms of wait time and effectiveness. On the whole, I found the people on the other end of the line to be relatively knowledgable (i.e., they determine rather quickly that you have not made a newbie mistake and the problem is on their end). Unfortunately, they can't do much about your problem and must pass it on to someone else. Then you're confronted with that clogged pipe again. On the other hand, technical questions, that do not require any direct action on the ISP side, are generally handled well.

Because I moved in the Fall, I had to deal with Flashcom installations twice. As a pre-existing customer, I was suppose to have been given priority over new customers, but it still took close to a month to get me up and running, mostly because they just couldn't get the order to Covad. Once they did, they placed multiple orders with Covad, and I had three separate technician show up in one week (all with expensive DSL modems, which I didn't need).

Sure enough, the technician spent hours in my house because my gateway wasn't enabled. He finally had to leave, and it took Flashcom several days to sort the gateway mess out. When all was said and done, I somehow had four separate contracts with Flashcom.

I know of a couple of people who had similar experiences. I've never heard of an installation going without a hitch, and it never seems to have anything to do with technical matters.

Having said that, the service itself has been very good. I haven't experienced a service interuption in a very long time. Speed has been quite good, and service doesn't seem to bog down during heavy traffic times as it can with some other companies. Once everything is up and running, everything seems to run well (knock on wood).

I get the impression that Northpoint service is less reliable than Covad. I have no personal experience with Northpoint, but there seems to be a disproportionate number of outage reports and unhappy posts on USENET.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[DuRaNgO]

thanks paul,
I too am going through covad via Zyan, so the 2-3 weeks they quoted me are probably not very accurate, eh? I will have a 384k connection so it'll be worth the hassle, I guess, plus I won't be swearing at my modem when I'm fragging anymore (or atleast as much anyways )
jim