Matrox G400 and VIA chipsets: solutions

[Gurm]

Ahartman (and to an extent Joel):

This is a gentler post than usual.

It's NOT pilot error. I can make a VIA board work, but I have no desire to put myself through that. The 133a is a better chipset than any of the SS7 chipsets were but it's a long way from BX quality.

I've never said you CAN'T make a VIA board work, just that it was such a pain to do so and that in SOME configurations it was just never going to happen without crippling the system.

The majority of people can't make a G400 work on a VIA board in AGP 2x, the majority of people can't make a G400 and an SBLive coexist on a VIA board, and the majority of people can't get anything approaching BX throughput off the hard drive on their VIA board.

Note I said the majority.

- Gurm

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Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

[Joel]

And the majority of ppl out there with computers don't know what the hell they are doing either.

As long as there is a competitor to Intel that is what I will buy, even if I do have to put a little effort into getting it to work at it's best. I don't want to see Intel do to us consumers what Microsoft has done and is doing. IMO (and that is all yours is too) the main reason that VIA has to have the patches it has is not due to the poor quaility of the hardware but due to an OS that has been designed to work better with Intel than over third party hardware. Why hell we all know that Intel and MS have been sleeping together for quite a while now. Haven't you ever heard of them referred to as 'Wintel'. And if it wasn't for that competition you would probably be paying four times the price for Intel stuff and there never would have been the Celeron and you would probably only have the choice of a PII. No reason for them to go futher if there is no competition.

Joel

BTW: I have an EPoX EP-MVP3G VIA based SS7 system with the G400 and a SBLive! and my system runs good and stable. I'm also using the latest of all drivers and testing Matrox beta video drivers to boot.

[ahartman]

I'm not a power user by any stretch of the imagination. I get my computer stable to the point it does what I need it to do. I don't get sucked into things like AGP2x as it doesn't do anything other than allow you to say "I'm running 2X".

For basic day-to-day things, Via is more than adequate. The MAJORITY of people want to play a couple games, surf the web, and do e-mail.

The majority of people are NOT like you, Gurm who likes to push the boundries of your system.

The only problem I've had that was Via related was the shutdown problem, which with a little reading, was fixed in a couple of days.

I'll never understand why people can't accept the idea that competition is good for consumers - it gives us a choice and gives providers incentive to improve.

If you like W2k, great - stick with it. If you like Intel, buy that as your chipset/processor. Don't bash others' choices because they don't match your preferences.

[JCDisaray]

Alright, I had a Epox 6VBA which has the VIA Apollo Pro Plus/133 chipset. The only problem I saw with the VIA and G400 combo was the drivers. As the newer and newer drivers came out, they seemed to get worse and worse with support for OpenGL games. Yes, for me primarily Quake3 and Half Life. I went to the Matrox Forum, and I asked and asked for solutions and got only the same damn answers every time....check aperture, make sure you have all the drivers for the VIA chipset, drop back to 5.30 or 5.41, your configuration and installation must not be right, 250W isn't enough to support the G400, etc... First off, I'd formatted some 4 or 5 times to get everything right according to them. Secondly, I didn't want to drop the 5.52 drivers because they gave such great performance in D3D games, but I was missing out on Quake3 and Half Life with my friends.
Btw, TurboGL never worked for me at all with any combination of drivers.

So what was my solution....I said to hell with it all and got myself the Asus P3B-F based on the 440Bx chipset and a 300W PowerSupply. Guess what? NO PROBLEMS except for the first time I played Quake3 my cursor left trails. I am able to play Quake with the 5.52 drivers and TurboGL 1.30 and boy is it freaking awesome. No more VIA for me unless perhaps I get an Athlon. I haven't seen too many Athlon users have too many problems with the VIA chipset. We'll see.

Hey, can anyone do those Winamp Visuals fullscreen with some sort of 32bit color mode? For some reason I can get 16bit and 24bit but not 32bit....my RivaTNT does it fine. Oh well the only problem that carried over...but I'm pretty happy now.

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Why me???

[CrazyBee]

I am all ABOUT competition to intel.. however.. I will never use something that takes more time and effort over something that has a much higher success rate. I don't have time for that.

I know people who have gotten VIA chipset mobo's to work flawlessly, however, that is a very *FEW* people, indeed. Plus, I myself have owned VIA mobos and i got tired of the feeling of oncoming doom that i had becuase I had no idea if it wotk as well tomorrow as it did today.

Or, what if I decided to upgrade my sound card?
or, video card?
add another HD controller card?
install an internal ZIP drive?

Would it work as well after that change as it did before? No.. No.. No..

All I am asking for are DECENT drivers.. I'm not even asking for o/cing capability or stability.. or anything out of the ordinary.. Just want to be able to buy a VIA or other non-intel mobo, put in a sound card, video card (doesnt even haev to be AGP!), etc.. do nothing special and have it run from the get-go like my BX board does..

NOT GONNA HAPPEN..

I'm sorry for the negativity but I have just had too much of my time wasted and too much frustration created by a VIA chipset..

I havenever had any problems with myseup.. aside form the IRQ thing, which, was remedied in like 10 minutes of swapping the placements of cards around and some BIOS settings changes.

I recieved my first comp in 1982, wa sit? It was a Tandy 2000 SX.. I loved that thing.. I had never any problems upgrading that, or any other comp from then until now.. EXCEPT for VIA mobos.. thats pathetic that VIA cant even match the stability of an 80186 (yes, an 80186, not a 8088) 7.47MHz processor based system with rudimentary (at best) upgrades and driver support of what was available back then..



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Abit BX6 Rev.1
Celeron 366A PPGA @ 566, 2.1v
192 meg RAM, CAS2
13.0 gig Maxtor 4320 HD
6.0 gig Maxtor (in removeable drive bay)
HP8110i 4x2x24
Pioneer DVD-104
SB Live! 1024
USB ZIP 100
G400 32MB DH 5ns RAM at 187/211
Two KDS 17" Trinitron monitors
YAMAHA HTR-5140 Reciever

[Damien Green]

Look, I don't want to hear about Via being a chipset that sucks ok, I know there are problems - hell I've got them myself, but I think that it would be more constructive if we pull together and exchange any information that we might find in order to solve these problems. I've just spent a small fortune on this motherboard, and I'm not prepared to go out and change it, so please lets just try and find a solution!

[This message has been edited by Damien Green (edited 28 May 2000).]

[JCDisaray]

Ok, well lets try to pull together then. First off lets list the probs that we're having:

(Win98SE)OpenGL doesn't seem to work in Quake3 and HL with the 5.52 drivers, plus turboGL doesn't work with any of the drivers I tried.

(Win98SE)At the start I was only able to use the 5.25 drivers. I updated my VIA chipset 4in1 drivers from 4.18 to 4.20 and I was able to upgrade to 5.41. I do also want to note that my Epox 6vba board with the VIA chipset is not able to achieve 256 Meg Aperture, but only up to 128 Meg. I'm not sure if this change from 128 to 256 would help any but who knows.

In Window 2000 Pro., I used the 5.03 driver and was able to play Quake3 if I disabled my Soundcard...I have a MX300 soundcard that I use the Aureal Reference drivers for...I believe they were 2049 but they sucked and that's another story. Anyway, with enabling my sound the Game froze at the menu.

However as confusing as this all is....I'm back to my Win98SE. I would like to point out again.......I'm still not able to view the Winamp Visuals in 32Bit color mode with any resolution type. Does anyone know the answer to this? I'm even running on a completely different mobo...Asus P3B-F 440BX.

[Alfie]

All this is nuts!
System is:
AMD k6-3 400mhz@450
Epox mvp3g2 mobo
128 megs pny memory
winmodem
Asound soundcard($12.00)
G400 oem(16 meg)
If anyone should have problems,this configuration should definitely be at the top of the list.
Have lived through 2 Via mobos(EFA Viking mvp3)and current Epox board.
Started with a g200,minimal problems.
Only one was when accessing certian websites screen would go nuts(workaround,disable busmastering,enable after accessing site)
Current system, TGL doesn't work in Quake II
(workaround,disable viagart.vxd)
Currently using PD 5.55,latest drivers from Via.
All options enabled in Bios(excluding video and system bios shadowing)
Why does this system and the prior system work flawlessly(almost)
Is it luck?
Why does Joel's system work?
Luck?
Or is it by studying the system at hand,knowing the hardware going in,knowing the short comings and the workarounds.
Venturing on our own to solve the problem and asking others for their advice and above all else,listening!
It's safe to say all hardware "sucks"when it doesn't work.
The challenge is getting it to work!
What the hell ever happened to civility
I got so lost in the negative,that I forgot the Strings title
Solutions!
Why did such a positive subject turn so negative.
Solutions is what this forums meant to be about,not putting down other's systems,this sucks,that sucks.
All this sucking and no milk!


[This message has been edited by Alfie (edited 29 May 2000).]

[DentyCracker]

This thread will soon be relevant to me as having used the Marvel G400 in an Athlon 600 that I set up in December again over the weekend, I've decided that I am getting a G400 (16 MB SH). I have a FIC VA 503+ 1.2A E)37 mobo which has an ATI Rage IIC PCI POS and a SBPCI64 which will in 2 weeks be replaced by the G400 SH and a SBLive! XGamer. We'll see how it goes. I was never able to get my G200 to work with Bus Mastering enabled with this mobo (well annther VA503+ anyway) but I think it was my G200 that was the problem as I have got other G200s working with that mobo

[CannyOne]

Well, I have an Epox 7KXA based Athlon system, a G400 Max and an SB Live! Value OEM (aka PCI 1024). For almost everything under Win98SE the system is stable. The strange exception is AOE2. I supose I should try the earlier drivers, as the concensus is that the 5.52s don't work that well. Note: I don't play Quake, or Half Life, so their function is not an issue.

Win2k is another story. Since I'll be having access to parts from an older system I'm interested in trying another video card. I'm convinced the drivers from Matrox are a big part of the solution. If I can verify this to any extent, I may just have to go with someone else's card. I really like my Max, but since both of my available Athlon motherboards have issues with G400s, I really have no other choice. Maybe farther down the line Matrox can "resolve" some of their issues.

[Mark F]

One thing to try with the 133A chipset and Win98/98SE is to listen to VIA and NOT install the 4in1 drivers; just use the M$ drivers and install the VIA AGP patch ONLY. OK in Device Manager my hard drive isn't listed by name, but everything works; it's faster than a similar drive on a BX. I 'only' get my G400 running 2X, oh well. And everthing is stable. Yes my BX setups are capable of faster memory transfers. When Intel comes out with an updated BX (hopefull the 815), that will be great!!! But for now VIA133A, works here.

Mark F.

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OH NO, my retractable cup holder swallowed a DVD...
and burped out a movie