Announcement

**Stil** · 12 June 2000, 07:18

Instead of whining about it on the MURC forums have you considered sending Matrox a _DETAILED_ bug report naming your exact motherboard make/model, chipset revison, chipset driver version, and powerdesk version?

I'm sure if Matrox receives enough bug reports they'll fix the drivers.

**Stringy** · 12 June 2000, 07:25

I'm sure they are working on it, and you know that Matrox isn't the only product to have trouble with the VIA133a chipset, though it seems they have some pretty fatal flaws...

I'll take it off your hands for you, give ya $50 plus shipping...
Why did you "Upgrade" to a VIA133a anyways??

Craig

**antagonistix** · 12 June 2000, 07:42

Stil - this is a well known proble, I dont need to send Matrox a bug report - they are WELL AWARE of this issue - hundreds of people suffer like me.
I just want Matrox to know that alot of people are not going to put up with this, Ive already seen messages on this board with others jumping off this bandwagon for similar reasons.

Stringy - Im in th UK - you sure you wanna cough up the shipping ? hahahah
I upgraded to VIA, so I could overclock my 600 - it worked (i got 690 and will get a coppermine soon) but unfortunately the overall speed due has dropped in my games cos of this driver problem - D3D seems ok, but OGL is like a snail - may as well have an S3 Virge.

3 weeks and counting.....

**Gurm** · 12 June 2000, 07:52

Antagonistix:

You could have easily read these fori and realized that VIA boards suck doggy doo doo with Matrox cards (and nVidia cards, and S3 cards, and ATI cards...)

So quit whining. You can overclock with a BX board and it wouldn't suck so badly now would it?

- Gurm

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

**antagonistix** · 12 June 2000, 08:02

Gurm:

I dont agree with you mate - I know if Matrox modified the drivers, VIA mobos would work fine with the G400 - as D3D already does work well.
And if the 5.30PD Drivers worked, then why the hell cant they modify the 5.52 drivers to stop us selling our cards ? Its all about TurboGL really - thats the biggest disappointment as it only works with the 5.30 drivers which then have rubbish D3D performance, so you see Matrox can easily resolve this Im sure - they just cant be bothered it seems to me.

I dont want to have to downgrade image quality and buy a GeForce2 - but Im at the end of my tethers - if I can moan here where can I moan ?

**Electric Amish** · 12 June 2000, 08:07

Ok, my G400 works fine with Q3 on my Athlon 700 @ 805 and Abit KA7 motherboard. Here's what I did, thanks to someone else on this board...

I don't know what kindof performance I'm getting, but I can play Q3 at 1024x768 single player just fine.

Uninstall ALL the matrox drivers.

Install the new VIA 4.22 4-in-1 drivers. Install the new VIA 4.03 AGP drivers.

Install the 5.41 Matrox drivers. Find the g400icd.dll and copy it to another folder.

Uninstall the 5.41 drivers.

Install the 5.52 Matrox Drivers and replace the g400icd.dll with the one you saved from the 5.41 drivers.

Now it should work.

amish

**antagonistix** · 12 June 2000, 08:10

Amish,

Thanks mate - Im going to try this tonight and I'll tell you if it works.

Did TurboGL work with this combination of drivers ?

thanks
D

**Gurm** · 12 June 2000, 08:13

I dont agree with you mate - I know if Matrox modified the drivers, VIA mobos would work fine with the G400 - as D3D already does work well.

How do you know that? nVidia hasn't managed to make VIA work well with their cards, and they have a 2-year headstart!

>And if the 5.30PD Drivers worked, then why the hell cant they modify the 5.52 drivers to stop us selling our cards ? Its all about TurboGL really - thats the biggest disappointment as it only works with the 5.30 drivers which then have rubbish D3D performance, so you see Matrox can easily resolve this Im sure - they just cant be bothered it seems to me.[/quote]

Ok two thoughts:

1. 5.52 isn't designed to use the TurboGL, since its performance is on par or better than TurboGL.

2. 5.52 is more optimized. Have you considered for a moment that when pushed harder, the VIA fails more often? It's my opinion that this is the case.

3. They can't "fix" 5.52 without removing the optimizations. 5.30 worked fairly well, no real graphical glitches, great quality, few crashes. But it was slow. So they sped it up, and in the process VIA chipsets stopped working. *shrug* I say it's VIA's fault. AGAIN.

I dont want to have to downgrade image quality and buy a GeForce2 - but Im at the end of my tethers - if I can moan here where can I moan ?

Look, we understand the frustration. But go ahead, get a GeForce2. You will discover that it doesn't work any better on the VIA chipsets. At least Matrox isn't as bad as ATI - ATI shipped a completely different set of drivers for the VIA chipsets, which completely replace the VIA GART... and still crash. And they're 30% slower.

I still don't understand why you switched to VIA when your BX was working so well...

- Gurm

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

**Electric Amish** · 12 June 2000, 08:15

No. No turgogl.

Sorry. I'm sure that performance isn't the greatest, but it works.

Also, remember to unzip the VIA drivers to a folder on the root drive (I used c:\temp). Otherwise, I got install errors.

amish

[This message has been edited by Electric Amish (edited 12 June 2000).]

**antagonistix** · 12 June 2000, 08:22

Hi Gurm

-->"1. 5.52 isn't designed to use the TurboGL, since its performance is on par or better than TurboGL."

I see a huge difference (35%) between TurboGL1.3 and 5.52PD in Quake 3
(5.52PD drivers work with the 4.17 VIA drivers.)

I still think Matrox could improve their drivers, to help us VIA owners
BUT

I do agree with you that I shouldnt have upgraded to this VIA board. Im regretting it now. You got me on that one.

Im gonna try the trick Amish has suggested in swapping files to get the best of both worlds when I get home tonight, and if that works I'll be a happy Bunny.

D

**Stringy** · 12 June 2000, 08:27

I was gonna suggest E.A.'s method as I read it here but I never tried it, so didn't wanna tell ya to do something I really didn't know how to do ;o)

But yea, not sure I'd wanna add shipping on to that G400 either... but sounds like you should have it solved, atleast partially with E.A's hack solution...

Craig

**antagonistix** · 12 June 2000, 08:33

"But yea, not sure I'd wanna add shipping on to that G400 either... but sounds like you should have it solved, atleast partially with E.A's hack solution..."

Hey - do you think we can sell matrox this HACK solution ?
I could use SMS installer to creat a package and make an install of this Hacked PD Driver.

hahahahahaha

anyway - im gonna try it tonight and then let ya all know .

L8ers & Thanks
D

**APV** · 12 June 2000, 08:48

I kind of agree with Antagonistix, you can't simply put all the blame on VIA and get away with it. With the new AGP driver from VIA, most of my mates who uses Geforce have no more problems. I do agree with Grum about the doggy doo doo but in this way, Matrox has pretty decent products but their driver support is doggy doo doo. on the other hand, it is much better than the G200 days. I have the G400 max but am thinking of upgrading to a geforce for 2D image quality no longer cut it anymore. Wake up or phase out, matrox.

**The PIT** · 12 June 2000, 11:18

I agree with Gurm if you read the fori plus other fori you would realise that via have problems with other manufacturers cards as well.
If you don't want glitches or don't have the know how how to get things working you should stick with the old very well debugged Bx chipset.

Announcement

Im selling the G400 UNLESS Matrox produce new drivers

Im selling the G400 UNLESS Matrox produce new drivers

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment