G400max and AGP 2x

[Neil]

My G400max has been running fine at AGP 2x for several months.
I am expecting to get a p3-550e chip this week which I will be overclocking.
So, to see if my G400max could handle the agp speed, I set my bios to 100mhz bus and agp 1:1 ratio. The G400max ran fine, setting itself to AGP 1x. No surprises here.

Now I set my agp back to 2:3 ratio, but the G400max is stuck at AGP 1x!!!! I am using pcilist v2.00. If I use the registry hack to force it to 2x, it runs fine at 2x.

Any ideas?? Is it back to the factory with this board?

My other thought is does powerdesk sence the speed and add registry entries somewhere?
If I check
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\Class\Display\0000\Settings\CPU]
The only entry I have is "AGPFallback" which is set to "0".

Any ideas???

[Kruzin]

Switch AGPFallBack to "1"
Having it set to "0" is what is making it run in 1x.
1 = execute AGP test on bootup
0 = fail AGP test

default is 1

[Neil]

Thanks. That did it
Back up and running fine. I thought it was something along those lines of a registry entry.

Well, I know at 2:3 I can get agp 2x out of 124 and 129mhz. Could not test 133mhz as I can't get my p3-450 to go that high. So I figured I would try agp 1:1 at 100mhz to at least find the maximum this board can do. I knew I made a good decision on getting this g400max.

Thanks again.
Neil

[mkaresh]

How did you test the card? Did you run any 3d apps?

On a Soyo +IV (BX chipset), I found that both a vanilla and a Max both went to 92mhz in 3d (higher made the system lock up a few seconds into 3dmark2000, or a few seconds into the second test of 3dmark99max) and to 100mhz in 2d (will post but W98 won't load above 150mhz fsb, not sure why, suspect RAM).

Either Matrox cards' performance is very consistent, or this is a limit to my motherboard.

Even booting at 100mhz AGP (150 fsb) I end up with 2x AGP and sideband enabled. Aperture 128MB. I could try disabling these, but I'm quite happy running at 667/133/89.

[This message has been edited by mkaresh (edited 08 February 2000).]

[Neil]

with the agp set at 100mhz, I ran 3dmark99 for a few hours, plus ran a few 3d games that push through the poly's and stress the syste (unreal, falcon4, freespace2, quake3). I didn't try forcing 2x though, but it may have worked.

With the agp set at 86mhz, the g400max is rock solid at 2x. The card even runs overclocked on this bus speed.

My current cpu won't do 133, so I can't test what my board will run at using a 89mhz agp bus.