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VIA Apollo Pro 133A and G400 drivers: Experiences

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  • #1

    VIA Apollo Pro 133A and G400 drivers: Experiences

    I have an Asus P3V4X. The board's great. It's stable, it handles four DIMMs at 140FSB, 6 PCI slots, etc.

    Just one problem - the G400's TurboGL doesn't work with PowerDesk 5.52 or 5.41, and runs rather slowly when I do get it to work with 5.30. This is all under Win98SE.

    I'd like to know who has a VIA Apollo Pro 133A-based board, and what drivers they're using, as well as which games work and which don't. If you're running multiheaded, I'd like to know that, too.


    The pessimist says: "The glass is half empty."
    The optimist says: "The glass is half full."
    The engineer says: "I put half of my water in a redundant glass."
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  • #2
    Hi Icestorm, I to am interested in any information on this motherboard, because I am considering buying one.

    Also, any info on how well this board would overclock a PIII 500 would be helpful. I have never overclocked, but I would like to try.

    Thanks, Jeff

    ------------------
    Workstation Specs:
    Pentium III 500, Intel SE440BX-2, 256m Crucial CL2 PC-133, Matrox Millennium Max 32m, Hollywood DVD Decoder Card, Soundblaster Live, 3Com 3C905TX-C NIC, Western Digital 9g Expert HD, Sony 5x/32x DVD-ROM, 19" Sony 420GS, and Windows 98SE

    Server Specs:
    Dual Pentium II 333s, Intel DK440LX, 256m PC-100, Productiva G100 8m, 2 - Intel 10/100 NICs, Western Digital 18g Enterprise Ultra2 SCSI HD, Sony 24x SCSI CD-ROM, Sony 10x/4x/32x CDR, 15" Sony 15sf, and Windows 2000 Server.
    Workstation Specs:
    Pentium 4 2 GHz, ASUSTek P4T-E i850, 1024 MB PC800 RDRAM, ATi Radeon 8500 64m, Sound Blaster Audigy Gamer, 3Com 3C905TX-C NIC, Western Digital 80g ATA100 HD, Sony 16x/40x DVD-ROM, Sony CD-RW 175S/C, 19" Sony 420GS, and Windows XP Pro.

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    • #3
      There is always the option of deleting or uninstalling the viagart.vxd.This will enable the use of tgl with pd 5.52.
      Another individual with your chipset stated he installed the viagart.vxd(afteruninstalling it)in normal as opposed to turbo and then was able to use tgl with 5.52(Worth a try)
      The disadvantage of the uninstall is that it can cause a bsod when shutting down your computer.The workaround there is to reinstall them in safemode.
      This is a little tedious,however,it does work.
      Why I say to reinstall in safe mode is to make sure the g400 drivers are not present.
      This assures the installation remains intact.
      As with the g400 it's advised the viagart.vxd is loaded first.
      Hope this helps.

      Comment

      • #4
        I have the P3V4X with a G400 MAX and here's my experience:
        VIA 4.20 and Matrox 5.52 (latest): I could get AGP 4X but not without severe tearing in D3D games (UT).
        VIA 4.17 and Matrox 5.52 (latest): I could not get better than 1X AGP. Games were slower.
        VIA 4.17 and Matrox 5.41: I could not get better than 1X AGP.
        VIA 4.20 and Matrox 5.41: I can get 2X AGP and my games seem to run best with this combo so this is what I use currently.

        So, either a VIA or Matrox will hopefully come out with something to give me 4X AGP so I can feel like I got my money's worth for this card. If the box says 4X AGP, then I should get it!

        As for the P3V4X, I'm quite happy with it, considering I came from an ABIT BF6 which is a very good board. The G400 is the best 2D video card I've worked with.

        Rusty

        Comment

        • #5
          Try the Via 4.19 (3.59 viagart file), it seems to offer better stability with Matrox cards (well, with the G200 anyway). I think that some / most of that tearing in 4X (not that it matters, 4x I mean) would disappear. The performance of the driver is the same as the 4.2 (4.0 viagart), so nothing to loose. If you don't have the 4.19 or the AGP 3.59, lemme know and I'd be happy to host them with a link for folks to grab them if they like.

          ------------------
          "I wrestled with reality for 27 years and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it."
          "I wrestled with reality for 27 years and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it."

          Comment

          • #6
            This might be a stupid question but, I guess I need to know sooner than later.

            How does one know which VIA 4-1n-1 driver is currently installed on a system?

            any help appreciated

            aiwa501

            Comment

            • #7
              Hi!
              Get a FC-PGA Gigabyte 6VX7-4X: the most stable VIA 133A board I have ever seen. It has just minor issues (no voltage tweaker so far and only dipswitch FSB selector) and it is extremely fast. Overclocks well and has plenty of FSB to use (some are not documented in the manual, though). The Coppermine 500 overclocks easily to 750MHz on this mobo (I've tried a couple of pieces and all worked).
              Asus A7V, Duron 600@900, 192MB PC133@100, G200, Guillemot MUSE, etc.

              Comment

              • #8
                Ok, a few more details:

                - I'm on a Slot 1 550E, not FC-PGA.
                - I require 4 DIMM slots, which rules out the Gigabyte board. I will NOT go back to 384 or 256 MB of RAM. 512 or bust!
                - The VIA GART is stored in C:\windows\system, with the name VIAGART.VXD. You can tell the actual revision by right clicking and choosing properties. I'm very familiar with this file by now. :-)
                - I have an original run G400 MAX - AGP 2x only. AGP 4x is a non-issue for me

                I've never tried the GART in "normal" mode. I'll give that a shot, as enabling U-whatever for AGP in the BIOS gave me a signifigant boost in DX games, but TurboGL stayed as-is. Might be a GART problem.

                Where do you get the 3.59 GART? I have 4.00 from the 4.20 driver set, and 3.56 from the Asus CD. They're not listed at VIA's web site.

                New problem: SoF craps out with 5.52's ICD (the actual error occurs in the ICD). It wasn't doing it initially, and I did a delete/reinstall, but whatever it is, doing that didn't help. I'll try the 4.20 GART in non-turbo mode to see if that helps. Right now, I've fallen back to 5.30.

                The P3V4X is a SOLID board. All four of my PC133 ECC SDRAM DIMMs run fine at 133Mhz - something which cannot be said of my P3B-F (440BX can't handle full loadout over 124FSB). The problems I'm having are, what I consider to be, suboptimal AGP performance from a machine with 200+Mhz more CPU power than my previous PIII-540 or Athlon 550.

                I really want the DIMMs working again, so I'm making a concerted effort to get this AGP thing nicked once and for all.

                The pessimist says: "The glass is half empty."
                The optimist says: "The glass is half full."
                The engineer says: "I put half of my water in a redundant glass."

                Comment

                • #9
                  One other thing - overclocking the AGP slot on this board is not happening. Anything over about 80Mhz and the board beeps at you when you try to post. I was hoping I could simply put AGP back to 89Mhz with a 2/3 AGP divider at an FSB of 133, but that's no longer an option.
                  The pessimist says: "The glass is half empty."
                  The optimist says: "The glass is half full."
                  The engineer says: "I put half of my water in a redundant glass."

                  Comment

                  • #10
                    I've posted the AGP 3.59 driver at http://www.comingup.org/agp359.zip , so if you wanna check it out, feel free to grab it. It's not posted at Via cuz it's not the current release, I hang on to all my old drivers as much as possible (I've lost a few, though). I'm a SS7 user, so I don't know that it will help 133a users as much as it did me, but - _all_ the Via boards from ApolloPro / MVP3 on use the same AGP host bridge (8598), and the revision of the one for the 133a is not that much higher than on the MVP3. That's why I think that Gx00 users with any Via chipset are probably better off with the 3.59. When I tested the 4.0 with my G200, everything seemed fine. However, there was a lot more screen tearing and flickering in Quake2 and I'd get random lock-ups after a while (even when at default clock speeds). Also, I get best results installing in Turbo mode, then forcing the AGP mode I want (1X for SS7) for both stability and performance. And if you want to change the GART mode, you don't have to reinstall it - just go to the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\VxD\VIAGART and change the value "Turbo" to data "01 00" (for turbo) or "00 00" (non turbo) and reboot.

                    ------------------
                    "I wrestled with reality for 27 years and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it."
                    "I wrestled with reality for 27 years and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it."

                    Comment

                    • #11
                      Thanks. I tried Turbo/Non Turbo last night. I'm still back to AGP 4.2 Turbo, PowerDesk 5.3, and now I have to shut OFF the second display and then reboot with it off in order to get Soldier Of Fortune to run off the ICD (must be a new SoF bug).

                      TurboGL won't work unless I'm at PowerDesk 5.30 and AGP 4.2. Ugh.

                      I'll try this new AGP driver and see what happens.
                      The pessimist says: "The glass is half empty."
                      The optimist says: "The glass is half full."
                      The engineer says: "I put half of my water in a redundant glass."

                      Comment

                      • #12
                        The AGP driver from 4.2 is version 4, the one I posted (3.59) is from 4.19. Just to avoid confusion.... The driver versions do not correspond to the 4n1 setup pack version number.

                        ------------------
                        "I wrestled with reality for 27 years and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it."
                        "I wrestled with reality for 27 years and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it."

                        Comment

                        • #13
                          No Joy. I'm still stuck using 5.30 if I want to use a TurboGL, even with 4.19 (3.59).

                          Hopefully, Matrox will fix this soon.
                          The pessimist says: "The glass is half empty."
                          The optimist says: "The glass is half full."
                          The engineer says: "I put half of my water in a redundant glass."

                          Comment

                          • #14
                            You all talk about win98, what about windows 2000, how well does it work with 133a chipset, this I'd like to know, when they release 266a I may get it.

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                            • #15
                              I give up. I'm back to AGP 4.20, PD 5.30, and TGL 1.3. Nothing else works reliably.

                              I can't wait for the V5-6000. Then I can move the G400 back into the Athlon, where it's a whole lot happier with the AMD 750.

                              VIA is really pissing me off.
                              The pessimist says: "The glass is half empty."
                              The optimist says: "The glass is half full."
                              The engineer says: "I put half of my water in a redundant glass."

                              Comment

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