I've been seduced!

[ph0rk]

rubank, dear, I reviewed the Elsa Gladiac, and saw for myself how dismal nVidia drivers can be. This was during the ~ 5.16, 5.17 leaked driver time. Win2k didn't like the Gladiac one bit. Win98 was pretty ok.

Today, I'm using a G400. I got to keep the Gladiac, BTW, but choose to let someone else use it after spending a few painful days with the thing freezing my PC left and right.

On the other hand, my old TNT1 was nothing short of a joy to use, especially under NT4.

As for ATi...well, my experiences have mirrored those of pretty much everyone else in this thread. (gives 2 thumbs down)

Of course, as someone else also mentioned, ATi + laptops = GOOD! Couldn't be happier with the 8 mb Rage LT Pro in my Inspiron 7000. Fast, stable, compatible, super-nice display quality, and especially Filtered Ratio-Metric Expansion. It's mm-mm-good!

------------------
Cory Grimster
cory@houseofstuff.net
http://www.houseofstuff.net

[paulcs]

I just read that the Radeon will be available for the Mac sometime this month, so it appears Steve Jobs has calmed down some.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[Oracle]

what actually happend with the mac radeon thing what did ati do to piss him off so much?

Oracle

------------------
P3 600e @ 700 (6*115)
128mb 100mhz sdram
abit be6-2
matrox g400 max (160/213)
voodoo 3 2000 pci (166)
soundblaster 16pci
4.3gb seagate udma 33
15.3 wd udma 66
creative modem blaster 56k ext
win 98
ie5
direct x 7.0a
pd 6.10beta
tgl 1.3
....................

[Humus]

rubank:
Yes, I know that only a few runs a Radeon yet. But the V5's is rather well spread, why aren't we hearing about problems with them?

Yes, I know we shouldn't blame nVidia only, Via is probably the one to blame. But, I think nVidia should have tried to make their GF2 safer, they knew all the problems with the original GF so why didn't they give the GF2 a broader margin.
If the AGP spec. says that you can get like 20W from it (don't have the numbers, just a guess), and nVidia makes a card which will need at least 19W, you're likely to get problems. Cheap mobos with a Via chipset may perhaps not be able to give more than 18W ...

All other other companies try to keep a broader margin, and if they can't they solve it other ways (like V5 needs HD cable power).

But, yes, I think Via should do their part too, just as much.

[rubank]

I´ve been on this forum for two years, and if anything sticks out it´s peoples problems with non-Intel chipsets. Just look at the current table of topics. But what do I know, I haven´t tried it myself.
I wrote a lengthy answer to some of you but as usual I was kicked out before I hit the submit button. So I just say: I agree with you all. You´re absolutely right.

rubank

[paulcs]

Apparently, there have been driver issues with ATI boards and the Mac as well. But that's not what made Steve Jobs explode. ATI announced the specs of the the new Macs several days before MacWorld, when Apple intended to make the announcement.

If you think Matrox is secretive, you haven't seen anything. Apple spends a lot of time and effort keeping things under wraps, and they appear to be more than willing to haul people into court for providing details about unannounced products.

My point about ATI is that their problems are serious and go well beyond driver issues. Frankly, I've found their behavior over the last couple of years to be a little nutty, and that they are experiencing a failure of leadership.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[This message has been edited by paulcs (edited 03 September 2000).]

[Rob M.]

Ok, before anyone puts off my comments as a-newbie-who-can't-install-a-videocard or someone-witha-cheapo-system, I'd like to tell you the experience I've had. I've worked in a few different stores as a computer technician, where my sole responsibility is to fix problems people are having with their computer (shitty job btw, can't wait to finish school)

Here's my experience with the different brands I've worked with, in order of popularity:

1. S3 cards: Hardware is stable (probably because it isn't pushing any limits too hard) but drivers stink. Many incompatabilities with software, but most people who just use office/lotus/encyclopedias, etc are happy.
- we sell these a lot simply because they're the cheapest we have.

2. ATI: up until the rage 128 their hardware was the best. I think I saw a grand total of less than 10 bad ati cards (one I owned). the 128 series had serious heat issues, but in general, still decent hardware. Drivers were awful across the line though, they are plagued with 2d and 3d problems. Have yet to play with a radeon.

3. 3dfx (mostly banshee): Decent drivers, but lots of overheating issues, on par with the ati 128 series in that area.

4. Nvidia: (from tnt series on) Great hardware, stable just like old ATI, i've only come across 1 or 2 bad cards. Drivers are amazing as well, just stick with the ones off www.nvidia.com . The people you hear complaining about problems are normally people who don't have their (via) setup done right, or are using leaked drivers. I havn't used detonator 3 too much yet, I've heard some bad things about them, but det2 is rock solid. The geforce 1 line had some problems in some older mobo's, but GF2 seems to be running fine almost everywhere.

The other manafacturers are special order only, and I rarely ever see them in machines. You'll notice this includes Matrox, however I'll give you my experience with them.

Matrox: I've seen 5 G400s, and a few g100&200s. The original Matrox Millenium was the best out there of its time, but things have seriously changed since. Of the 5 G400s, 4 of them were maxs, 3 of them mine. I've tested my 3 Maxs extensively. Not one works at AGP 2X, I've had to force AGP1x just to get a stable desktop on all of them. This happens with every mb, ram, cpu, and powersupply combo I've tried. The 4th max is my friend's. He bought his the same time I got my first (when they first came out). He's very happy with it, says rarely crashes, although I have personally seen it do the AGP 2x crash once myself (I've got screenshots now of this crash, I can recognize it a mile away). The 5th G400 just came into the store a couple of weeks ago, we received it from RMA. I havn't bothered to test it yet.
Notice that all these cards are agp 2x versions, I hear that the 4x ones are perfect outside of the standard VIA compatability issues. I'm very happy with the drivers on these cards, except in opengl where I'm extremely unhappy that q3radiant still doesn't work. I believe that the cards with the 04h revision silicon actually work in this program though, as some people have posted that they run it fine...

I also want to put in a few notes about motherboards while I'm talking about compatability.

If it doesn't work in a name brand BX board, I call it broken (funny how that includes the 4 G400s I've used)

VIA 133a Intel and AMD namebrand boards seem to be really good with the 4.23 4in1s. Not as fast, but pretty much just as stable as a BX at 2X...

Older VIA and ALI chipset boards are pretty incompatable, with 3dfx and older ATI cards being the only ones that work right in most cases.

AMD 751 with the latest GART is pretty compatable with everything out right now.

I havn't seen enough i810-i820s to make any observations yet, they're either too new (i815) or too yucky for us to sell.

I left off mentioning SiS because the only people who buy it are the ones who make price their #1 concern.

[Joel]

I disagree with you Rob M.

I guess you just didn't read my post earlier. Other than the occasional testing of other manufactures cards, which were returned because they sucked, I have owned nothing but Matrox cards since the Millennium I. Also the last Intel based system I ever owned was a 133MHz Pentium with a TX chipset. Everything since then has been AMD/VIA based. So you can see why I disagree with what you say. Other than not being able to run the G200 at 2x AGP I've had no problems. My G400 is OCed to MAX speeds and even on three different motherboards it always defaulted to 2x AGP. So I don't know what your problem was but I can say in all honesty that I don't think the problem was the G400s or VIA.

Joel

Oh BTW before you start telling me that I don't know what I'm talking about, I think you should know that not only am I a beta tester for Matrox but I am also a PC repair tech and have been for about 15 years now.

[This message has been edited by Joel (edited 03 September 2000).]

[paulcs]

Rob, firstly I'd like to say that I am in no way questioning your capabilities. However, your (admittedly small) sample indicates an 80% failure rate for the G400 and that's crazy. The sample, I think, is large enough to indicate something other than coincidence. Something is wrong, and it can't be Matrox's inability to produce a board that runs stably at AGP 2X.

Maybe your supplier got a bad batch, because the vast majority of the regulars on this forum, and I suspect the vast majority of G400 users, have no problems running their G400's at AGP 2X. I've tested the G400 on an an Asus P2B-F, an Asus P2B-D, an AOpen AX6BC, an Asus P3V4X, and an Abit KA7-100, and I had it running at AGP 2X without stability issues. I've forced AGP 1X when overclocking, and I didn't bother trying the PD 5.5X drivers with the Via-based boards, but I got them all up and running.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[Rob M.]

As far as my G400 experience goes, you'll notice I didn't voice any opinions (other than saying I was happy with the drivers). Bad batch? Maybe for 3 of the cards, as my first two and my friend's were from the same store within a week. The fourth however was from matrox, months later.

I'm not trying to say other people aren't testing their cards properly, I'm just stating my experience with them. And I hope you can gather from my post that I know how to install these things properly. And half the reason why I visit this board (and the official matrox forums) is to see how many others post the "garbled screen" problem. I know I'm not alone, and it certainly seems ridiculous to ask for a 4rth replacement, but the only alternative for having 3 bad video cards is me having 5 bad power supplies, or 4 bad motherboards, or 5 bad dimms... Which isn't right considering that I tested most of that hardware and found no problems without the G400..

Trust me, it drives me nuts. I solve the strangest errors at work, but when it comes to my own system I've had to suffer with this problem for over a year now.

[Rob M.]

I'm not the only one who experiences these. Of the first 5 posts of problems on the matrox general trouble shooting, 3 of them sound similar to the 2x bug, the one with the screenshot is showing exactly what happens with my cards:
http://forum.matrox.com/mgaforum/For...ML/001535.html
http://forum.matrox.com/mgaforum/For...ML/001971.html
http://forum.matrox.com/mgaforum/For...ML/001732.html

and an older one, this is a guy with 3 cards showing the problem
http://forum.matrox.com/mgaforum/For...ML/001913.html

[This message has been edited by Rob M. (edited 03 September 2000).]

[Livius]

1. When I said that many people can't install a videocard properly (and what I had in mind was installing VIA drivers, enabling USB, unistalling older video drivers, . etc. etc. etc.) I meant to offend nobody. Most people on this forum at least have a certain experience with hardware. But many people on other forums don't, so they make huge blunders and start complaining loudly before they even try to find something out about how to try to circumvent those more or less minor hardware issues that we've learned to avoid.

2. It's pretty obvious wy the Radeon does not get "bad press" on the forums: it's new, few people have it, those that have it are still in their Quake3/UT hours. Wait until ATI starts really selling the card and people start using other games and you'll see a lot of complaints.

3. It is NOT the case that the V5 has a wide user-base. The card is certainly popular, but by no means as widespread as nVidia-based videocards. (Not to mention that that external power source probably solves a few problems.)

4. I agree that ATI has problems that go well beyond driver-development. But, in my case at least, driver-issues have been the main hassle. I dislike their approach to marketing in general, however. The MAXX was a huge flop not only marketing-wise, but also hardware-wise. ATI was unwilling to accept this. S3/Diamond have at least admitted the failure of their Savage 2000 and offered to replace it with TNT2 Ultra's. ATI still markets the MAXX as an amazing solution for power-gamers.

To those that still trust ATI I recommend reading a great review of ATI Rage Fury MAXX: http://www.reactorcritical.com/revie...iew-maxx.shtml
It totally agreed with my own experience.

[Seaspray]

I am an amateur computer builder, so far I have built three systems.

The one I am using now has a VIA chipset and a G400 MAX and I have never had any of the problems I have read about on this and the Matrox tech support forum. I'm certainly not saying I am an expert and I don't know why other people have problems I'm just giving my own experiences (which is all anyone can do).

Basically, because I'm not an expert I do everything by the book - clean install of windows, install motherboard drivers, install graphics card drivers etc.

My G400 MAX ran fine at AGP 2x for a long time because I thought it only ran at AGP 2X (this is how much of a non-expert I am!). When I found out it could run at 4x I changed one setting in the mobo BIOS and now the card runs fine at 4x.

However, this doesn't seem to make any discernible difference to either appearance or performance!!

Jon

------------------
P111 667 (133x5), Tyan S1854 Trinity 400, 128Mb PC133, G400 MAX

[Joel]

That picture does look a little familiar,

<IMG SRC="http://members.home.net/gilchrist.joel/Image01.jpg" ALT="Your description" BORDER="0"></A>

But this only happened when either OCing the video card or the AGP bus that the card sat on. None of those machine prechance were doing any OCing were they? And if they were running the FSB at 100MHz was the AGP bus ratio set to 2/3?

Joel

[Rob M.]

Listen, I didn't really want to take this thread off topic, I just wanted to say that as matrox users we can't just say that "M is the only company that is perfect". I KNOW I'm the exception to the rule, but you can't just rule my experience out.
This'll be my last post on this topic. I've already tried all the known tips from reseating the video card to adjusting all the bios settings, so I hope you can just take my word that I actually received 3 bad cards.

Joel: My whole point was that these cards do this at stock speeds. If any other user had one of these cards, they'd have constant crashing after a few days of use and would be lost as to what's going on.

In fact, I'm perfectly happy running at 1x. The video card has only crashed my system once in the last few months, and the speed loss is so minor that it doesn't bother me in the least. The only thing that bugs me is that q3radiant doesn't work.