G400 Troubles - Random Freezes

[Strade]

Oki just a question... I'm really but really confuse about these IRQ ....
how can we set that in win2k??
and how can have a list of hat irq??

hehheh I will look like a kid but it's no...
:O)

[aonin]

My mobo drivers were updated long before the freezes started occurring, but just to be safe, I reinstalled the drivers. I'd already tried diff. AGP modes and AGP aperture sizes. There are no iRQ conflicts; my G400 shares an IRQ only w. an ACPI PCI Holder for PCI IRQ Steering, which I definitely know is not a conflict.

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What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books. - Sigmund Freud

[aonin]

Also, do any games or other programs really make full use of AGP4x mode? Can I disable it to alleviate some of the stress on my card and not suffer a major performance loss?

[Strade]

No Anoin I don't want to take the control of the topic...
but we have the same problem... excuse me if you think that I take it...

for your question, if you have the latest bios for your motherboard you can directly set the AGP speed there....

and it doesn't seem to have performance lost between 4x and 2x... even in 1x...

you can try it... but really think that was the motherboard the problem....

[Six Of One]

Hi guys, chance is that this old news but make sure that you not only disable AGP 4x in the BIOS but also force the G400 to AGP 1x. Then disable AGP Fast Write in the BIOS. I don't know why but only setting the BIOS or the G400 to AGP 1x does no good. Both must be set to AGP 1x. Anyhow, this fixed random lockups on my machine.

And about games and AGP 1x , 2x or 4x... it doesn't make the slightest difference. As soon as the GFX card must access RAM on your motherboard performance breaks down seriously. And i mean seriously. Even (or indeed especially) a GeForce 3 is worth shite if it has to access mobo RAM. Lack of bandwidth anyone?

Well, anyway, good luck with your problems.

[Peter Aragon]

Wow, the LargePageMinimum trick did it on my machine, no lockups since yesterday, I was a little hesitant to reply too soon.
Now I have to try it on another machine too.


Thanks Jammrock!!

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Peter Aragon
Matrox G450 DDR 16MB, Iiyama VisionMaster Pro 400, Asus CUSL2-C, Pentium III 1GHz + Golden Orb, Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 40 40GB, 256MB, SBLive Platinum 5.1, Hauppauge TV-card, Plextor 12/10/32A burner, Pioneer 16x DVD, 3COM 905C Networkcard.

[ayoub_ibrahim]

Strade, did you install the win2k AGP patch?
IF NOT, you can get it from here!

[CollegeManMan]

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">After a short while - anywhere from a few seconds to a minute to two - the computer locks up. Sometimes I will get bars across the screen, sometimes I will get flashing gibberish, sometimes the screen just freezes. </font>

Sounds like '100/133 spread spectrum modulation' is enabled in the bios. G400's don't care for that.

[dZeus]

ayoub, that was the thing Jammrock posted

[Peter Aragon]

I traded my own G450 DDR with the G450 SDRam LE of a customer of mine because he had so many random lockups. I now am suffering the same hangs and lockups as well

I think it is heat related because the hanging gets more serious after one hour, or perhaps the LE can't handle 133mhz FSB or a fast processor (1GHz) ? I will have to RMA this one if I can't find a suitable place for it.

The hangs are less frequent in win98 than in Win2K too...

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Peter Aragon
Matrox G450 DDR 16MB, Iiyama VisionMaster Pro 400, Asus CUSL2-C, Pentium III 1GHz + Golden Orb, Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 40 40GB, 256MB, SBLive Platinum 5.1, Hauppauge TV-card, Plextor 12/10/32A burner, Pioneer 16x DVD, 3COM 905C Networkcard.

[aonin]

I am becoming more concerned that my problem is heat related. PCIlist (it's here at matroxusers.com under Utils) gave me the following possible solutions:

- in your system BIOS Setup program, the AGP aperture should be enabled and set to at least 64MB; an IRQ should be assigned to the VGA card; any option referring to spread spectrum should be disabled; and video BIOS and RAM shadowing should be disabled

- if the system has been overclocked to reach 999 MHz, the AGP clock may now be too high; system memory which otherwise works without errors may be unable to cope with the heavier demands of AGP traffic when running 3D applications

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The aperture has long been set to 128mb. IRQ has been 10 since I first installed the G400. Spread spectrum was already disabled (thx anyway, CollegeManMan), as were both shadowing options.

I looked at the latter, which has varied between 995 and 999 MHz, and decided to turn bus mastering off, so that the G400 doesn't operate at the same speed as the CPU. Voila! All is fine. I ran UT for three hours straight, Deus Ex for two, and the Summoner demo for I think an hour or so without ANY crashes or lockups.

What gets me is that I've always had bus mastering on, and I had no problems with it until recently. My CPU is a vanilla TBird 1GHz. Having disabled bus mastering gives me a minor, but noticeable drop in performance. Any ideas?

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What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books. - Sigmund Freud
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Matrox G400 DH 32mb, Digital 17" Color, Athlon TBird 1GHz + Coolermaster 6H51, LuckyStar K7VAT (VIA KT-133 chipset), 384MB SDRAM, WD Caviar 30GB 5400rpm, Sony CRX-120E 4/4/24x burner, Raite RDR-108H, SMC1211 10/100 PCI network card, Win98 SE.