G400 poor stability on A7V socket A board - Ideas please

[SteveB]

I've just put my G400 (SH) into a shiny new ASUS A7V board configured as follows :
CPU T/Bird 900, not overclocked,
AMD approved PSU,
Micron PC133 CAS2 RAM
IRQ 11
Win98SE,
Latest VIA AGP, G400 BIOS, PD 5.52, DirectX.

It appeared to be using X2 AGP which seemed reasonable as it is a fairly early G400 (can anyone confirm that earlier ones were X2 only ?)
Everything was fine until I tried running the first graphics game (Unreal). Hung up after a few minutes. Same with almost any game.
I changed the BIOS "System Performance" settign from "Optimum" to "Normal" and now it seems stable, but AGP has gone down to only X1.
Anyone got any ideas how to get the AGP speed up ?
I'm sure I've seen other folks running the G400 at X4 *sniff*

Thanks,
-Steve

[paulcs]

I can confirm that the early G400's are AGP 2X only.

The good news is that games rarely take advantage of AGP 2X. They are nowhere near demanding enough to take advantage of AGP 4X, although, apparently, some heavy duty CAD applications do.

More good news. I know the G400/A7V combination works well. In fact, we have a Matrox beta tester here who has this combination up and running, and he's very happy with it. Others have had success as well.

VIA chipsets have a problem with the PowerDesk 5.5X drivers. This problem was fixed with Matrox's PD 6.01 beta set. I've tested them with a G400 and a KX133 chipset, and they work fine. (Make sure you uninstall the 5.5X set using Matrox's uninstaller.)

You'll want to switch that setting back to Optimal. I think you've disabled busmastering, which is far more important to performance than AGP 2X or 4X.

I notice you're board is on IRQ 11. That's good. Make sure it isn't sharing IRQ 11 with anything other than IRQ Holder for PCI steering.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[Electric Amish]

Do you have the latest VIA 4in1 drivers installed??

You can get them here:
www.viatech.com/drivers

amish

[aaroncgi]

Paul,

I just got my G400 32M DH working with my Tyan KX133 board last night. I tried installing the 6.01 drivers, but when booting up, before getting into Windows, I get a protection error warning (think that was it, don't quote me on it though. It says I need to restart my machine, press any key (which doesn't work), so I have to reset. Then windows will only load in safe mode until I uninstall the 6.01 drivers. The set that does work for me so far is what came with the card, 5.40.

All that said, should I be enabling AGP4X or leaving it disabled?

My board is also on IRQ 11, sharing with the IRQ holder for PCI steering.

Aaron

[SteveB]

Thanks to everyone that replied with such neat ideas to help.
I have tried the latest Powerdesk beta, but it's no better. Typically, games crash after about 10 minutes at AGP X2. The vid interrupt isn't shared at all, and I've also checked that I did indeed install the latest VIA AGP driver (before PD).
Leaving the BIOS setting set to "Optimum" performance, after it has crashed, I notice that it tends to automatically set itself to AGP X1 (inspected registry to check).
Bus Mastering does stay "on".
Curiously, it does seem to work stably at X2 AGP if I turn the memory speed down from 133MHz to 100MHz (although it is allegedly good CAS2 memory and seems to work very stably for computing-intensive non-graphics apps).
I've tried removing all other cards except the video card to see if anything else is "interfering", but with no improvement.
Looks like I might be stuck at X1 for now
:-(
I think perhaps the next thing to try is a different video card.....

[paulcs]

Steve, some PC 133 RAM is rated at CAS2 only at 100 MHz. At 133 MHz, you might have to use less aggressive timings. Try setting your RAM at 133 MHz to CAS3 and see if that helps.

Aaron, I'm not sure what your problem is. Possibly, there were remants of the older G400 drivers left in your system when you installed the beta set. The 6.0X drivers specifically addressed certain VIA-related incompatibilites that popped up. I tested them with the Asus P3V4X (VIA Apollo Pro 133A), the Abit KA7-100 (VIA KX-133), and they seemed to work fine. I believe I used the busmastering drivers that came with VIA's 4in1 Ver. 4.22 set (I had to install these manually, as the setup program didn't seem to work), along with VIA's 4.03 AGP driver, which I installed separately.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[Joel]

This is my setup and it is doing quite well.

Current Machine Configuration:
AMD socketA Athlon 800MHz on an Asus A7V motherboard with the VIA KT133 chipset,
128MB PC-133 SDRAM,
Matrox Millennium G400 32MB DH (AGP) drivers 6.01.015b (clocked at 150/200),
3Com EtherLink XL TPO 10Mb Ethernet Adapter (PCI) for my cable modem connection,
Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live! (PCI) version 3.0 Live!ware,
20.0GB Maxtor UDMA/66 HD (IDE),
15.0GB Maxtor UDMA/66 HD (IDE),
Toshiba SD-M1212 DVD-ROM Drive 6X/32X (IDE),
Memorex 4x2x24x CD-Rewritable Drive (IDE),
17" CTX VL700 Monitor (1024x768x32bit at 85Hz),
WindowsME (4.90, Build 3000) clean install,
DirectX 7.1 (4.07.01.3000),
VIA's 4-in-1 driver set version 4.24,

Motherboard BIOS settings:
Are all set at factor defaults at this time except for Power Management which I have disabled.

Motherboard Jumper Settings:
Set at defaults.

I use a custom Monitor setup:
640x480 = 135Hz
800x600 = 110Hz
1024x768 = 85Hz
1280x1024 = 65Hz (that's the max my monitor can handle)

Order of installation from a clean install:
1) Installed WindowsME (4.90, Build 3000) which installed DirectX 7.1 (4.01.01.3000),
2) Installed VIA's 4-in-1 Drivers Pack version 4.24,
3) Installed Matrox Video drivers (latest beta),
4) Disabled VSync

Joel

[kumse]

iv' also got a Asus A7V with an Athlon Thunderbird 750mhz o/c'ed @825mhz (7,0*110)
And i got a G400max, it works fine! BUT, it woulnd run at 2x AGP as stable as 1x AGP, my benchmark results are almost the same in 1x AGP mode as the 2x AGP mode!
i prefer the 1x mode! .. you could also try to plug your hard-drives into the UDMA/33 controller!! (there is a few problems with the ATA100 controler, its only a question about time before they get fixed' in a new BIOS)
visit the site, here's a lot of support: http://a7v.insanehardware.com/

From A G400max lover' !

*kUmSE*