G400 MAX - Tyan Trinity Frustrations

[EdogX]

Hello All,

I am having a hell of a time trying to get my new system together (despite lurking around here and getting some advice from EchoWars -- Thanks BTW). Here's the skinny:

Tyan Trinity 400 (BIOS rev 1.06)
G400 Max
PIII 600E (at stock speed)
256 MB PC133 RAM
Turtle Beach Montego 1 (yes a 1)
40X Cd Rom
USB Zip 250
Win98se

Following the sage advice of many here I did a base install of 98se, installed the 4.0 GART (no others), Powerdesk 5.30. G400 has it's own IRQ at 11 (shared only with the PCI steering). AGP aperature size is at 128MB (no 256 setting for this board). 4X AGP set to disabled.

Problem #1: Though generally stable Various install shield applications GPF. (the TB drivers for example). Usually the culprit is GDI though Kernel32 blows up occasionally too. The GPF when installing or uninstalling is not all the time though in the 50 - 60% range.

Problem #2: Q3A (1.17) kicks me out hard after about 15 minutes of play. Most of the time I'm back at the desktop (at a funky resolution and color setting) though sometimes it reboots the machine entirely.

I have tried a whole host of combinations in the Bios at different settings (p2c/c2p concurrecy, Fast writes, PCI Burst, you name it) all to no avail (though it does have some affect on performance -- I Gpf faster or slower).

So I ask any MURC user who has set up the G400 Max with the Trinity -- How where you configured? I am afraid I will need an excruciating level of detail (exact Bios settings, Order of install, etc ...). I love the card but if I can't get this combo stable -- one of the 2 have to go.

Note: I am stuck on 98se because my Hard disk recording interface (which will eventually go in this rig) doesn't have drivers for anything else.


Many thanks in advance,

E

[Goc]

Hi EdogX!

Well, I'm not trying to raise flames here or thrash you for buying a bad mobo (in fact I don't know if it is good or bad), but I must comment your "one of the 2 have to go" statement...
It's simple as this:
If you buy Intel processors, buy mobos with Intel chipset. There isn't a single mobo out there that is as fast or stable as the ones with Intel chipset on them.
It's all about VIA not being able (or perhaps allowed) to provide stable drivers for their chipsets in any OS...
Athlon is yet another story. AMD is (still) a company that's more open to the developers than Intel, and is not in position to practice monopol tactics with them and end users. Therefore VIA KX133 is great with Athlon processors (more stable than the AMDs own chipset!).

Darn! That wasn't so simple
Well let's put this way; if you don't setup your current rig, and you have to throw out eihyour mobo or the G400 - throw out the mobo and get one with Intel chipset on it. ABIT, ASUS, AOpen... It doesn't matter... Matrox and VIA Agp drivers hate themselves... (try seting up a G200 on a SS7 board )...

Sorry for the rant everyone... It wasn't very Matrox related... more for the GH fori...

[Wombat]

Goc: I have to disagree with you slightly. VIA's chipsets are not more stable with Athlon's than AMD's 750's.

[DRED]

I have that MB also and the only problem I had was when I tried to install Win98 with other cards than my video card (sound,NIC,ect.)in the board. If you did that I would reformat and reinstall windows with just your video card.

Overall very pleased with the board is very stable, G400 performance not as good as on my BX Abit bh6 so now run Geforce SDR and performance is good with my PIII 550E running at 733.

[EchoWars]

Glad I could be at least SOME help. I also see the Q3A problem, but very intermittently - like, once a week. And I play a lot. When I crash back to the desktop, I just start Q3A again and play some more. Exiting properly puts the desktop back the way Q3 found it. I blame the Matrox drivers, as my buddie on his BX - G400 Max system and a very clean install sees it intermittently too. BTW - 5.41 seems to be fine with the VIA 133a chipset.
Hmmmm...GPF's are another issue. Botched Windows or driver install? (happens to me all the time, not ALWAYS my fault)...Memory is another issue with the board, and probably all VIA chipsets. I know (and so does everybody else) that the memory performance of VIA's products need all the help they can get, so I crank up the timings to squeeze all the performance I can out of it. The problem with this is that it results in some pretty agressive timings, and only 'the good stuff' can hack it. I have a pile (O.K., a small pile) of supposedly great Micron and Corsair RAM that WILL NOT run on the Tyan board at much above conservative settings. I'm running fairly expensive Mushkin stuff now, and it hasn't missed a beat.
If it were me, I'd FDISK, Format, and reinstall. Swap card positions, don't load the 4-in-1, do load the stand-alone AGP GART (haven't tried the 4.02 yet, but is probably OK), and hammer on that bad-boy till you get it to do what you want it to...

[EdogX]

Thanks for the replies ...

Goc - At the point I bought the the stuff Intel chipsets were not an attractive option. i820 performance (well we don't need to go there ...) and to get the most out of the 600e I'd have to crank the bus to speeds I am not comfortable running my Prosumer digital audio card at. (Thinking about it now, if I got a BX with a 1/2 divider I could get around this -- but at the time it seemed the 133A chipset was the way to go.)
The system was bought with an eye toward a moderate overclock (100 MHz 600e at 133) w/o too much tax on the other system components..

EchoWars - I'll give it one more shot. The funny thing is that I tried to get more conservative in the memory settings (concurrency, IOQ Level) and the system became more unstable than with more aggressive ones. I'll go up from Fdisk tonight. I'll also try the system with my old STB Velocity 4400 to see if the VIA side of things are really the problem and not the G400 per se.

Sorry about the book
-- I'll let you know how it goes.

Thanks Again,

E

[smb]

Try using the aureal drivers instead of the TB drivers. I had a similar problem the TB Quadzilla, nad the only way to resolv it was to install the aureal drivers.

[Damien Green]

I agree that in principal a bad motherboard can make the difference between a good and a bad system. However, I have had Tyan motherboards in the past, and have always found them to be good. I have had problems with Via drivers - most noticably with the recent Abit KA7 - however, in the past few weeks Via have seemed to have woken up a little - with the beta AGP system dll - my system is every bit as stable as it was with the AMD 750 chipset - yes there are a few niggling problems - but that's the price you pay for adopting new technolgies early on - I have a double barrel problem - what with running a very new motherboard and operating syste, (Win 2K.

I also see the Quake 3 problem - and as far as I can see it may be a problem with the G400 drivers or maybe even Quake 3 itself.

Technology changes all the time, the PC is such an open end system that it can be difficult at times to ensure that every bit of software works with every hardware/software configuration. It's annoying when things don't work properally - and I think that all those of us can do with problems is to wait - with fingers crossed to see if any new Bios/driver updates start to solve problems. I have seen time and time again how as the technology gots older how it get more stable.

There is a price to pay for being at the top - something emphasised by the various reviews in magazines of the latest systems - there are often issues with most of these machines in one way or another.

If everyone had a trouble free life, there would be no place for hardware/software support forums - unfortunately this is not the case so we all have to grin and bear it to some extent.

[EdogX]

Update -- Well things are half working. Tried tweaking more BIOS settings. AGP driving to Auto, Memory set at 8 and 1 WS delay on read/write and I can actually play Q3A!!! (Well a 50 frag Skirmish but this is progress). Half-Life on the other hand is not so good. Will try the new BIOS and GART and see what that nets me.

Actually -- The montego is a Dell OEM I ripped out of my other box (different driver set). Maybe I'll actually pop for a new aurreal card (I bought a SBLive but swapped it back into the old box -- not wanting to deal with its silliness added to the mix.)

Real test happens tonight though. Installing JBuilder 3.5 Foundation. If the combo can't support my Java IDE something has to change.

Thanks for the support and more to report later.

[doelf]

I've had the same problems with the AOpen AK72 and Epox 7KXA. Have a look at this setup guide, it worked fine for me: http://www.au-ja.de/review-g400s-eng.html

[EdogX]

Ok. Things are working a bit better now. EchoWars - Thanx for the memory tip. I clocked my memory down to 100Mhz (even though it is PC133) and half life actually will run pretty reliably now. Time to break the piggy bank and order the Mushkin memory. The question now is: Is VIA's implimentation of running the DRAM seperate than the Host Clock the problem or is this board just THAT sensitive to memory...

I'll let everyone know what I find out...

[EchoWars]

Good question...I think it may be a bit of both. I *think* the Tyan enables, by default, memory interleaving (someone correct me if I'm wrong, but interleaving would explain the excellent memory transfer numbers I get), and this seems to be a problem with some brands. I have now built about 20 systems using the Tyan board (soon to be switching to the Asus P3V4X, as the AGP issues seem to be resolved with the latest VIA GART, and I like hardware monitoring), and every time a customer has insisted on installing his own *bargan memory*, I have had to back the timings off to gain reasonable stability. Not to mention the good Micron memory that won't work. Get memory recommended by Mushkin to work with Athlon boards.

Seems to me that you shouldn't have to run the memory at 100MHz...'ought to be able to fudge the timings at 133MHz enough to get it reliable. Experiment a little, ya got nothing to lose...