sad day in Matrox land (well my Matrox land)

[dZeus]

no, with AGP 2x the 3DMark2000 score won't go up, as the only test in 3DMark2000 where AGP 1x and 2x make a difference with the G400 is the 64MB AGP Texturing test (and the 32MB makes a slight difference), and this test isn't used for the final score.

[George YS]

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">Originally posted by drzaius:
seems to be fine, but usually crashes (makes crazy coloured strips, and then locks up) when i minimize windows, or try to play any kind of 3d thing (CS or 3dmark2000)
</font>

Well, it sounds exactly the same as the problems I experienced on my Abit KT7A and G450. I was told that it is a problem between G4x0 cards and the VIA 686A/B southbridge in the forums of VIAHardware. And it can be simply fixed by disbaling AGP4x in BIOS. Luckily, there is no significant difference in performance between AGP 2x and 4x on matrox's vid cards.



[This message has been edited by George YS (edited 27 June 2001).]

[Admiral]

If your Matrox video card is able to do 4xAGP. Most of the G400s don't.

Say, what would happen if the mobo is trying to run a 2x AGP card in 4x AGP mode ?

[Electric Amish]

I just got an Asus A7V133 and it has worked flawlessly with my G400 for the last month, even with 4x enabled in the BIOS and the PCI bus out of spec.

Make sure you've got the <a href="http://www.viahardware.com/download/index.shtm#4in1 TARGET=_Blank>4.32 4-in-1 drivers</a>

amish

[Electric Amish]

DOH!! Me and my l337 HTML...

4.32 4-in-1's

amish

[drzaius]

i have it running in AGPx1 right now, and i don't think i've disabled AGPx4 in the bios.

i have a MSI K7T turbo, with the latest Via drivers (4.32) they were not the first drivers (for any device) i installed but the 4.32 are the only ones i installed for the mobo.

things seem to be ok for now, had weird things happen this morning. wo't boot up properly, had to do a complete power down, to get the moniter to come on. then once i got into windows, i looked like i installed a "standard PCI graphics card" or whatever it's called, but within the display properties it knew it was a G400, it just lowered all the res. and colour, very odd. a quick reboot fix that though.

------------------
Slow people are easy to pass, it's people who drive fast that are hard.

[Wulfman]

same problem here - my g400 only runs stable with agp 1x...

any other setting & 3d activity: lockup

epox 8kta+, tb 750

mfg
wulfman

[drzaius]

yep, anything besides AGPx1 will not work. alwell atleast i still have my G400

thanks for all the help.

should i post thread in the Matrox forums and see if they know anything? or is this a Via thing?

------------------
Slow people are easy to pass, it's people who drive fast that are hard.

[treilanin]

I had problems with my G400 before in both windows 98/2000. What would happen to me is that the computer would lock with screen corruption on a consistent basis. At first I was worried that the card was dying. When I reinstalled the drivers things were fine, though I had to reinstall slightly older drivers a couple of times. I think some program that I install keeps overwriting a matrox DLL =(.

[Greebe]

Doh! He said Via!

[George YS]

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">Originally posted by Admiral:
If your Matrox video card is able to do 4xAGP. Most of the G400s don't.

Say, what would happen if the mobo is trying to run a 2x AGP card in 4x AGP mode ?</font>

Yes, but the G400 cards manufactured in later times are officially enabled to run in AGP 4x. Say, the part number of my G400 max is G4+MMDH4A32GR, the "+" sign indicates is it able to run at AGP4x.

[Admiral]

Don't think it's the "+" that marks a G400 as 4xAGP. It's the "4A".
My G400 (regular DH) has "G4+MDHA32G". It's 2x AGP.

[Wombat]

Admiral is right. It's the 4A

[George YS]

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">Originally posted by Admiral:
Don't think it's the "+" that marks a G400 as 4xAGP. It's the "4A".
My G400 (regular DH) has "G4+MDHA32G". It's 2x AGP.</font>

Thank you for ur correction, Admiral.

[harkpabst_meliantrop]

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">Originally posted by Admiral:
Say, what would happen if the mobo is trying to run a 2x AGP card in 4x AGP mode ?</font>

For what it's worth, it still should be alright.

1. Scenario: Intels i850 chipset does not support any AGP modes but 4x. I never heard of problems with G4x0 cards.

2. I have an EPox 8KTA3 myself (like one of the other posters) and I can run in AGP 2x mode without any problems -- at least if I keep the FSB and thus AGP clock where it is meant to be. However, I made the experience that the driver itself seemd to have enabled AGP 1x mode, when I tried out 140 MHz FSB.

3. At one point in time, when I was trying out different BIOS versions (more or less for fun :-) ), I had the board reporting AGP 4x mode! Quite surprising as my G400 is an 2x board only!! The hardware monitor correctly reported an AGP voltage of 1.5 V (whitch is just the level vor 4x operation). So it seems that the board really did enable AGP 4x mode (still, the board could not really make use of it) and the G400 has still been working reliable in 2D and 3D.

After some more flashing, the 4x option eventually disappeard from the BIOS setup (it really should have never been there with my card) and AGP voltage was back to 3.3 V.

--E<:|