busmastering kills my dual 866 PIII with VIA chipset

[Hank Kimble]

Hi:

I just setup a dual PIII 866 (not O/C) using a MSI 6321 motherboard with the 133a chipset and a G400max. I think I've installed the latest 4in1 VIA drivers. The problem is the only way I can make this system work is by turning busmastering off on my G400. In Win98 the system just freezes and in Win2K I get a BSOD with the file name g400d.dll stated twice.

Does anyone know how I can turn the Busmastering on. I think the secret is with the VIA 4in1 drivers?

Thanks,

Hank

[Hank Kimble]

Thanks for the reply:

I tried dropping the AGP rate to x1 and turning the busmastering on but still the same problem. At this point I'm running my G400Max at x4 with busmastering off. Everything is running well. Does busmastering make a difference?

Thanks,

Hank

[Maggi]

Busmastering will show you what acceleration is about, i.e. without having it enabled it's like running a sports car with locked handbrakes ...

Back to your lockups:

Maybe the G400 is using an IRQ below 9 and/or is sharing its IRQ. Both cases lead to either loss of performance and/or system instability. Post your list of IRQs and we'll find a way to help you ...

Cheers,
Maggi

[DGhost]

I have been having the same problems on my setup. Same motherboard, w/ 2 366 celerons not O/C'd. Only drivers that work are the 5.04 and 5.06 drivers in Win2k, and i have not tried any in Windows 9x. I made sure that the G400MAX is on its own IRQ (11 or 12 i believe). With Busmastering on it hardlocks every time with the 5.1x drivers, but without busmastering it might as well have acceleration disabled. I'm running that latest Via 4 in 1 drivers, w/ the latest AGP drivers installed.

Anyways, still have not been able to figure it out.

-Luke

[kjliew]

Do you have the latest BIOS of your mobo?? Actually, I am looking to buy a dual FC-PGA mobo in near future. Would love to know how this mobo works in Win2k and G400. Does it fully support ACPI in Win2k?

Currently, I have nailed down my selection to MSI-6321 and Epox EP-D3VA. The later has yet to be in the market. It's too lame that Abit is slow to come up with similiar mobos.

[DGhost]

Yeah, latest bios on that and the G400 MAX. Works fine in W2k. Just most likely a driver problem between the VIA AGP driver and the mobo, in my opinion.

-Luke

[Maggi]

I suppose you are already running PD 6 .., if not, use the uninstaller and update.

If that doesn't help you, try to force your AGP transfers to 1x for via the reg-patches ...

Some MoBos produce too much bus noise and hence might cause instabilities in AGP2x or 4x.

Cheers,
Maggi

[Hank Kimble]

Thanks for all the responses.

I think I got my problems solved (at least in 98 for I haven't installed Win2k again). I reinstalled the VIA drives and took my card out of the socket, bent the front plate and put it back in. Now since I installed the VIA drives this way before, I feel that my problem was not a driver problem but a socket problem. I'm now running my box at x4 with no problems.

Thanks,

Hank

[DGhost]

I doubt that it is a socket problem, especially as the 5.04 drivers and 5.06 drivers work fine, but the 5.1x drivers don't.

-Luke

[paulcs]

DGhost, I think you and Hank were experiencing different problems. Hank appears to have had the very common problem of getting his G400 properly aligned in the AGP slot. This is an issue with the GeForce as well, and it relates to the AGP card, the motherboard, and the case. Sometimes, one has to go, although G400 users have had some luck bending the plate on their cards and reinserting them.

You seem to be having a problem with the G400 beta driver set, as it seems the earlier drivers work fine.

Can you guys tell us about how much you like your new motherboards? A lot of us are curious about the new MSI board, as it appears to be the only VIA Apollo Pro 133A-based dual CPU motherboard that anyone has managed to get stable.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.com

[paulcs]

By the way, now that you guys have big, fast dual-CPU machines, maybe you'll want to burn them in by joining the Matroxusers' SETI team. Here's a link to the forum here at the MURC:

http://forums.murc.ws/cgi-bin/forumd...e=5&LastLogin=

If you have any questions, we'll be happy to answer them, and you'll receive a nice warm welcome.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[DGhost]

Maybe it is two seperate issues...

Personally, i love the motherboard. it replaced an Abit BP6 in my computer after the BP6 blew up - and i don't think i would ever want one again. The BP6 was really a hack job, and this one has a fairly polished feel to it, to me at least.

The only problems i had were driver issues (Windows 2000 not having VIA drivers installed causing a reinstall of Win2k). As far as little trivial things that are annoyances, the biggest one is that it has a free slot on the back of the case. They have 1 AGP, 5 PCI and 1 ISA on it, so you wind up with one free nearest the CPU. I put a card cooler in there and let it work on my processors tho, so its all good. Also, as with all via chipset based boards, the memory bus has to be tweaked a bit to result in good performance.

Most people having problems with them is because they get the engineering sample boards, but the retail board i got works great.

If you are interested in buying one, watch out for the versions:
694D : ATA-66
694D-A : ATA-66 + Promise ATA-100
694D-AR : ATA-66 + Promise ATA-100 with RAID
694D-ARI : ATA-66 + Promise ATA-100 with RAID + IEEE 1394

All in all i like the board... maybe i'll try seti on it ;P

-Luke

[Hank Kimble]

Hi - sorry for the slow response but I've been spending time with the new box.

I like my setup. It took me a while to get the system up. But it wasn't the board it's just me having to get everything right - or formating and trying again. Except for the fact that I can't run my G400 with busmastering and the fact that the board has 5 PCI slots and one special (useless - I'd rather have 6 PCI or 1 ISA) slot for a modem (communications slot?) Everything is a peach.

Thanks for the input,

Hank

[paulcs]

Hank, what's your AGP aperture set to? If it's set to 64 MB, up it to 256 and try 128 as well.

If this has been covered, my apologies.

Thanks to both Hank and DGhost for your impressions on the board. It's very tempting.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[DGhost]

Its currently set at 128mb, and the board as of yet has no 256mb option.

yeah, that slot is called a CNR (communications/networking riser) slot, which is nothing more than an AMR slot (Audio/Modem Riser). It is shared w/ PCI 5. Fairly useless. would have rather had an extra PCI slot.

-Luke