Graphic corruption ?

[OminoUKG]

Hi all,

I need a little advice, I think my G400 graphic card has been damaged but I'm not sure. I've been getting random system crashes and the first thing that happens is my desktop graphics become all garbled. The mouse pointer changes to what looks like a messed up sprite, then the whole scrren becomes garbled and the PC hangs. I have to keep rebooting to clear the problem.

I've had the latest drivers installed for a while with no problems but after continued crashes I changed back to an old set. The problem persists even with old drivers. I have also formated and reinstalled windows (98SE) twice, to no avail. The thing is, it doesn't crash every time I boot up and can go for days before the system crashes again. I think I might have had a power surge a little while back which may have caused the problem, not sure though?

Any advice or feedback would be really helpful.

[Six Of One]

Hello and welcome aboard.

I know it is not very helpfull but i have encountered a similiar problem after overclocking my G400. Is it possible that you have overclocked the card? Or anything else in your setup? Did you add any hardware before the first occurence of this problem? If it's a Max check if the fan is still running (i only have heard of this possibility, i am the proud owner of a vanilla G400).

BIOS side, did you set AGP 1x and Fast Write disabled? Did you force your G400 into AGP 1x mode (use MTSTU found on this site)? I know this can affect mundane 2D operations (Opera for instance crashes with AGP not forced to 1x) so give it a try.

That's it for the moment. Maybe you would like to post your IRQ, I/O settings, driver versions, more hardware specifica like mainboard used, appropiate board drivers (for VIA chipsets e.g.), soundcard, etc...

Regards

[PeTe]

Matrox garbled pic

Hmm.. i have the same problem, but my computer doesnt hang after the picture get screwed up, i can still see the desktop and if im playing etc Diablo2 i could play the game even after that, but i just exit the game and boot the computer. Im running W2k with the latest Matrox drivers and bios.

The first time i saw this was when i upgraded my processor from my old Duron 700@930 to 1.2G@13xx Thunderbird. Nothing else has changed, dont know about the fan on matrox card and yes i have o'c matrox card too... ( setting it back to normal didnt help, if i remember correctly )

Tried to get rid of the problem by setting ACPI off and putting matrox on IRQ 11. It seemed to help a bit, but now i have seen the same thing happen again, so that wasnt the fix.

Guessing i have to try tweak my BIOS and AGP 1x next, hopefully it will help a bit..

PeTe

- 1.2G@1.333 TB, Abit KT7, 256 PC133, Matrox G400MAX, 57GB HD, SB 128PCI and couple network cards, Logitech FF Wheel.

[OminoUKG]

Gave it a try!

Thanks for the advice Six of One,

I never O'C my card but I did set the AGP to x2, so I've returned
it x1 and so far it seems stable. Maybe there is an incompatability with my motherboard? Its an ABIT BE6, and I've set the appature to 256. If anything changes I'll be back in touch.

On a side note, Its nice to know there a friendly and helpful people on the Net. Thanks for the warm greeting.

Best wishes,

omino.

[dZeus]

I've read a few times that the BE6 motherboards often have a quality problem of a lot of line noise on the AGP bus... maybe that's it.

[vlaka]

I posted two photos of my marvel G200 crashing with a garbbled display, take a look and let me know if its the same sorta thing. I have to reboot to resolve/delay the problem until it happens again in 30mins.
I am using an ABIT kT7 motherboard and have never OC'd. I already had my old board RMA'd and the new/replacement still has the exact same problem.

My post is on August 9th. Check it out and let me know

Perhaps is you own an ABIT motherboard you should stay away from Matrox.

[Greebe]

Bhaaa... I have used many Abit MB's with a G200 G400Max and a G450 and they all worked fine.

[omegaRED]

I dont have any problems w/ my BE6II and G400. Graphic corruption only occures when i overclock the G400 too much without the proper cooling (which i dont have, so i dont overclock the card much).

[Maggi]

not sure, but if it runs stable at 1x and bangs out after a while in 2x, make sure that your AGP FSB ratio is set to 2:3 (if FSB is running at 100MHz)

Also, please post a complete list of system details along with a list of your IRQ assigments.

... and welcome aboard ...