G400's... and why I'm not pro-nvidia

[paulcs]

I looked at the subject line in this thread and assumed it was editorial in nature--and I wasn't disappointed.

Look at his specs. He has (as someone once pointed out to me) two computers built into one, and he hasn't told us what kind of power supply he's running. He's running *five* hard drives and three ROM devices! He's also running the piggiest of low clocked PIII's. In addition, he has two NIC's, a SCSI card, a Soundblaster Live, and God know what else.

He refered to a PIII 450-based system as "a pretty powerful workstation." Relative to what? A year old iMac? What he has is an expensive toy, with a bunch of old parts, that requires a lot of power. I would expect that a GeForce2 would help if that's the problem. I can only imagine what would happen if he opted for a GeForce instead.

He also has mismatched RAM on an aging motherboard that was, in my experience, not particularly good at delegating hardware resources. (And if he comes back here and insists that Windows is not reporting any conflicts, I may have to just plotz.)

It's been said over and over again, this is not the appropriate place to whine and editorialize. That's what the Soapbox is for. I like the GeForce2 as much as the next guy, and I realize that people have been on edge lately, but to say this is an appropriate thread for the Matrox forum is just plain silly. Conciliatory tone or not, this post functions as flame bait, and, therefore, it is.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[This message has been edited by paulcs (edited 25 September 2000).]

[Joel]

Here's a few points to all this:

1: This is a Matrox forum.

2: What OS are you using?

3: This is a Matrox forum.

4: What drivers are you using?

5: This is a Matrox forum.

6: It's not what you said it's how you said it.

7: This is a Matrox forum.

8: What are your IRQ assignments?

9: This is a Matrox forum.

10: Of course the G400 is going to run slow if bus mastering is turned off.

11: This is a Matrox forum.

12: We already know that the GeFarce is faster if your into counting fps.

13: This is a Matrox forum.

Joel

[xortam]

Well since this is a Soap Box candidate already, let me inject this comment before we say goodbye ...
DosFreak, ph0rk. You can blame me for the "C: DOS run" joke. I was running around saying this back in '83. I should have patented it right then. Surely, no one else could have thought of it first. And ph0rk! "more posts = more brains"? I question the logic of anyone that sees a correlation between one's propensity to post and their intelligence. One may speculate on the addictive nature of such an individual though.

[pchoi]

Argh why won't this board save my password, I hate random passwords =(

In any case, I'm sorry if I put down flamebait. I usually don't contribute to a lot of forums, and when I do I usually have something I feel needs to be said. Now that one of the moderators has taken my post apart and highlighted spots where I "flamebaited", I can see where some of you would take this personally, although I don't know why, it's just hardware.

If some of you worked in IT or a field heavily related to computers you'd know. The headaches I leave at the office and they stay there. At home, I don't want to deal with these kinds of problems.

When I decided to "throw money" at the problem and not worry about it, I realized that most of you are very biased and peronsal with your G400's. Don't get me wrong, but I bought it when it first came out as well, and I've been using it ever since. My old G200 is still in my sister's computer and it does every thing fine.

However, you aren't giving me any credit for my efforts in trying to solve the problem. I put a lot of time and effort which did not resolve into a usable configuration. You assume I don't know anything and therefore I can't fix the problem. You also assume you are better than me because you believe you can fix my system. Well, I didn't make any assumptions in my post, and I would invite you to do the same in yours. I'm sorry, but I have been in the IT field for a very long time and I have seen problems that are far more important than this. To me, this problem is not worth my free time and effort just to get things running.

Now for instance, if my boss had a problem playing Q3a in his office and he ordered me to fix it ASAP, do I spend a fair amount of time researching his system, and devising a fix, or do I take the next best card out of the inventory and fix it for him so it works? That's my perspective and I am the boss and the worker here. I refuse to spend what little time I have, and isolate myself in a room struggling with a problem that can or cannot be fixed.

The moderators personal attacks at me are unwelcome and decidedly unconstructive. I may have "more dollars then cents" but I made those dollars through hardwork and the G400 was definitely more expensive when it first came out then the GF2MX. If I have so much money, then I must have had some brains somewhere to have earned it. Think about it.

Definitely the idea "more posts = more brains" is crazy. "If I lurked here 1/4 of the time then you would know it's flamebait...". I'm sorry, I don't read between the lines. I come here for technical information, and hopefully I can share some techincal information as well. Whether or not it's personal is beyond me. My personal life is not in the computer, but out there with my friends.

Now let's talk some technicalities

Someone said that I have an aging motherboard with a lot of toys that draw a lot of power. That's exactly right, I am very aware of this because if I have too many things running (hardware and software) my PS won't be able to supply enough power and my computer will just hard reboot all by itself. So, what do I do? I have been looking at new motherboards, but it seems kind of silly to buy a more "refined" Slot 1 motherboard since they offer the same functionality!

I looked at Socket A, 370 motherboards but their chipsets do not have what I think of as ideal specs: Stability, cost, performance - in that order. i820 motherboards are ridiculously expensive (with the RDRAM and PC100/MTH is not good enough), i815 looks decent but is too new to prove itself yet. The several different flavors of Athlon chipsets are out of the question simply because it would require a new CPU. What would you guys suggest? I *am* in the market for a new motherboard, but I have done my research and nothing looks good.

So what I have did last week was order a Socket 370, 100FSB P3-700 and a socket converter card. It draws less power than the P3-450 and incase I get a new Socket 370 motherboard, I won't have to buy a new processor. I can also keep my existing memory! I think that kills two birds in one stone, until something better comes out on the market. Also, while speaking of power consumption: The GF2MX draws less power then then G400, but was also something I considered.

That's all, feel free to reply but please, nothing more about flamebait because I get the idea already.

[DuRaNgO]

So after blowing all that money, it was most likely your P.S. that could have cause the majority of your "short comings"?

Funny, while looking for info about my brother's tnt2 m64, I was amazed how many people are having trouble with their MX's

[Greebe]

First off you shouldn't preclude that since you were unable fix, we would be unsuccessful.

There are so many here with tremendous knowledge about computers. That even the most elite would astounded. Simply put, I know not just computers, but electrical engineering (among other things). If you have a problem with anything, don't hesitate to ask. My point being, most who come to the MURC get an answer almost immediately. Even if it's in the realm of the extreme!

but it seems kind of silly to buy a more "refined" Slot 1 motherboard since they offer the same functionality!

Doesn't additional stability gained fit in to that equation also?

Is a MB/cpu beyond what your budget will support?. (serious Q)

Even lower speed AMD Athlon cpu's perform well. My Athlon500@850 is still doing fine since last year. Many here have Celeron2 566's running above 900 with little to no trouble now. All of which are quite inexpensive.

Just a thought.

[xortam]

pchoi, Nothing wrong with deciding your time isn't worth spending when you can swap out a component and it appears to fix the problem. You can always try something else if the problem crops up again later. More of an IT approach than an engineering approach. What got you into trouble is blaming the G400 when you didn't have proof. MURCers are going to scream when you try to make recommendations based on your failed attempts when we know the capabilities of the HW. This was your most inflaming statement ...

I suggest those of you with problems on your G400 to replace it. There's no point in struggling with inherent hardware problems that there are simply no easy fixes for.

I think MURC has helped most everyone out who ever came here with problems unless they actually had a defective card, in which case Matrox will replace the product.

[orangejulius]

Jolly good post, ph0rk.

[paulcs]

If I may, I'd like to make a suggestion. Along with a new motherboard and CPU, in you can, buy a second case, a KVM switch, and another stick of RAM. Maybe split some of those components up into two systems. You can have a dedicated SCSI system and something devoted to gaming and entertainment.

One you get the new motherboard and CPU, you'll be 90% there and the KVM switch will save you the trouble and expense of buying a new monitor, keyboard, and mouse.

300 Watt Power supplies seem to be the bare minimum these days, and I think your current rig could use a big, very expensive 400/425 Watt unit.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[ph0rk]

xortam: aha! So that one's yours, eh? You should have patented it, too: if Amazon.com can get away with patenting one-click shopping, I'm sure you could patent that sig

*cough* *splutter* Can't anyone recognize sarcasm? Or was I just being too obscure? When Kruzin attacked pchoi in his earlier (now locked) thread, he made reference to pchoi's low number of posts as evidence that (s)he hadn't really tried to fix the problem. As someone who lurks more than posts, I took offense to that. I think it was a pretty silly thing to suggest, that just because a person hasn't talked to _US_ about their problems, means they haven't tried to fix it. That's kinda self-centered. There's lots of other places to discuss these kinds of problems (usenet!) and then there is talking to other people in person, too. We don't know, since _no one asked_ before yelling "troll!"

And I'm not the only person:

"I question the logic of anyone that sees a correlation between one's propensity to post and their intelligence."

Well xortam, you've just questioned our Fearless Leader (TM)'s intelligence <g>.

I don't understand why this wasn't just moved to the Soap Box - oh wait, now I do: if we moved it there like any _other_ out of place thread, then we'd have one less thing to dump on pchoi for.

I'd also think that we could remember that posting on forums/etc. are unlike other forms of communication: I sound like I'm talking right now, but it's different than that. But it's not like writing a letter, either. Many of us have been communicating this way on-line for years, and so it's quite natural: other people haven't and so it's not.

And hey, sometimes I slip up too: for example, as someone pointed out about my bio at the House of Stuff, the simple omission of a can make a joke come off as a terribly egotistical comment instead. Am I a funny guy, or is my head too fat? Depends on whether I remembered my and =P or not...

Point? It's easy to misinterpret a post. Yes we should insist that people learn the "art" if you will of communicating online, but we should also cut people a little slack, too. I'm sorry if I seem too sensitive about that, but I tried to make a joke a few weeks ago and got called a troll instead because my post was misinterpreted. It happens.

orangejulius - thanks

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

Edit: Spelling/Grammer, as usual.

[This message has been edited by ph0rk (edited 25 September 2000).]

[pchoi]

I'm glad someone noticed that my "approach was more of an IT approach than an engineering approac". That's exactly right since I come from a Computer Science discipline, not a engineering discipline. I guess our motto is "faster, better, cheaper, smaller, and if it still doesn't work outsource (or buy) it"

From reading these suggestions, I *am* going to buy another power supply and probably get a new Socket 370, i815 based motherboard. I've just about had it witht the P3-450 since it runs so slow and hot. This past weekend has been great with the MX, my system is running 2 degrees cooler and no crashes yet so far (except when I threw an infinitely looping SELECT stmt through Oracle and got a BSOD in Win2k - never happened before ).

The dual system thing is kinda out of the question because I don't have that much space in my room and the current computer is running really loud already. I don't think I could take two 747 jet engines Thanks for the suggestion though, I have thought about it!

MURC has been very helpful to me in some aspects, especially a couple years back when FF7 for PC came out and there were problems up the whazoo with the washed out colors and the 8-bit pallette. Of course, no "good" fix was found until SquareSoft finallly 'fessed up and distributed a patch. I don't disagree that a lot of people help when someone posts a problem. I certainly noticed that when I posted my recent G400 problems, but unfortunately despite everyone's best efforts (I'm sure they were!) none of them worked.

However one thing though, you guys should read some of these threads a bit more carefully and not yell "TROLL!" whenever someone says something bad about the hardware you own. Some people ARE sincere and you should try to give them the benefit of doubt. Of course there *are* trolls out there and you have to watch for them. I, in turn will learn to phrase my posts more carefully and will continue to lurk here until someone gives me a good reason to put the G400 back in When the G800 comes out, I'll definitely be watching this forum!

Have a great day

[HedsSpaz]

Hmm, I seem to be coming in to this conversation a little late, but nontheless, I want to make a comment. About 2 weeks ago I flamed someone so bad that they deleted their initial post(which resulted in the entire thread being deleted) for doing much the same thing that you started off doing pchoi. So, I will be a little more polite about it this time.

So, let me put this to you in a different light. You have a computer. You have a G400 in your computer. You have difficulties with your G400. You stumble across the MURC. You ask for help. (now, I don't know the details of this part of the tale, so I'll be even more vague here). You ask for help, yet you still can't fix the problem. So, you give up and buy a nVidia FotM based card.

Now heres where the silliness of this whole thing arises.

You then proceed to post a comment in the MATROX HARDWARE forum, that, when boiled down, goes something like this.

:begin sarcasm
Hi, I'm Bob. I have a G400 in my computer. It doesn't work right. I tried to fix it but I couldn't. So I bought a GeForce instead. I just thought that some of you for no apparent reason whatsoever might concievabley actually care that I did this. There is not point to this post other than to let you know that I bought a GeForce. Bye now! Have a nice day!
:end sarcasm

Now, do you see the problem here? My point is that, we(the bulk of the people who visit these forums), do NOT in any way, shape, or form, care even ONE IOTA that you bought a GeForce.

Over the past few months I have seen so many of these damn threads its ridiculous. So let me make this perfectly clear.

If you bought a GeForce then SO WHAT!!!! WE DON'T GIVE A DAMN!!!! There is absolutely no need to start a thread whose sole purpose is to inform an indifferent audience that you purchased a GeForce/Radeon/Voodoo/Trident/Cyrix/Bob/Whatever. If you did so thats great! I honestly hope that you enjoy your new peice of hardware. If it fixed your problems thats even better!! BUT WHY ON EARTH DO YOU FEEL THE NEED TO LET ME KNOW THAT YOU PURCHASED THIS PEICE OF HARDWARE?!?!?!?!

Sigh.... Ok, I'll stop ranting now. I hope that someone out there will get the picture and refrain from posting a completely pointless comment.

[High_Jumbllama]

Originally posted by pchoi:
If some of you worked in IT or a field heavily related to computers you'd know. The headaches I leave at the office and they stay there. At home, I don't want to deal with these kinds of problems.

Software Tester Here

:Shudders

I hate to even think of what troubles IT has. I have seen four people from our department tearing butt down the hall to fix something. The stress of dealing with what IT does not have time to fix because they have too much to do is bad too.

:Shudders continuously into the night.

[DosFreak]

Isn't the point of posting in a forum to inform? If the Geforce fixed his problem then I'm glad he posted here to inform other people. If My Intellimouse Optical was acting flaky (which it hasn't but other people have complained) and I bought a Logitech Optical don't you think I would go on the Intellimouse Optical forum and say "Hey! Guys after all my trouble and trying everything I could think of the Logitech Optical mouse works!". Like he said stop taking it so personal and file this threads away in your brain for another day. This is information not a personal affront.

[xortam]

The point I was making is that pchoi is making misleading statements by the comment ...

I suggest those of you with problems on your G400 to replace it. There's no point in struggling with inherent hardware problems that there are simply no easy fixes for.

(S)he has not shown that their problem was hardware versus software much less the fault of the G400 HW. Their approach was to modify the environment by swapping graphic cards and drivers and this seemed to resolve their problem. The problem could have been simply a misconfiguration which led to problematic resource sharing. We don't know what the problem was because the work wasn't done to isolate it. pchoi, my comment about IT vs. engineering (as in computer science engineering) approach was meant to convey that the IT approach was in fact non-scientific. IT and field service personnel are faced with quickly getting a system back up and running, which may only be a temporary fix. If a server aborts, IT doesn't take the time to analyze the problem so they can reconfigure the system and prevent further failures ... they simply reboot. Likewise, a field service technician will swap out an entire board or subsystem and not take the time to analyze what the failing component was out at the field. IT may get around to analyzing dumps and logs and try to determine the actual problem during scheduled PM time, but this many times doesn't happen due to conflicting priorities or lack of trained personnel. You're approach made sense for you but it doesn't qualify you to make such recommendations and accusing Matrox of designing poor HW. In fact most peoples problems have been resolved by clearing up resource conflicts and/or updating drivers/BIOS for other components in their system that were stressed by the introduction of the G400. You can't accuse an enterprise application which stresses your network and exposes weakness in the network design and implementation as having inherent problems. Likewise, you can't simply jump to the conclusion that the G400 has inherrent problems when in fact it may simply be stressing your system in a new way that exposes weaknesses elsewhere in your system.