glimps of next Win2k/9x drivers to come for the G400/G450

[dZeus]

you can run the PD5.81 drivers for the G450 Etv on your G400/G450 by changing the .inf file for installation a bit.

Since no official 'new' drivers have been released for the G400/G450, I will assume that these drivers (might) have some serious flaws with G400/G450. I've installed them on my G400 in Win2k and couldn't find too many problems, but be cautious (backup your important data ).

Here's how it's done:

edit the G450.inf file in the 5.81 Win2k/XP driver package for the G450Etv (or the 6.81 for Win9x/ME).

in the [Mfg.Matrox] section, add the entries for your card, extracted from the.inf file from a previous driver set. For G400 cards, I've added the following lines:

%Str04%%ENG%=IN00.ENG,PCI\VEN_102B&DEV_0525&SUBSYS _217D102B
%Str01%%ENG%=IN00.ENG,PCI\VEN_102B&DEV_0525&SUBSYS _2179102B
%Str01%%ENG%=IN00.ENG,PCI\VEN_102B&DEV_0525&SUBSYS _2159102B
%Str02%%ENG%=IN00.ENG,PCI\VEN_102B&DEV_0525&SUBSYS _19F8102B
%Str02%%ENG%=IN00.ENG,PCI\VEN_102B&DEV_0525&SUBSYS _19D8102B
%Str02%%ENG%=IN00.ENG,PCI\VEN_102B&DEV_0525&SUBSYS _0378102B
%Str02%%ENG%=IN00.ENG,PCI\VEN_102B&DEV_0525&SUBSYS _0338102B
%Str03%%ENG%=IN00.ENG,PCI\VEN_102B&DEV_0525&SUBSYS _B16F0E11


in the [Strings] section, I've added the following lines:
Str01 = "Matrox Millennium G400 DualHead"
Str02 = "Matrox Millennium G400"
Str03 = "Matrox G400"
Str04 = "Matrox Millennium G400 DualHead MAX"

as you can see I've modified the Str00 in the original package (the G400 MAX) to Str04, as it won't conflict with the G450 Etv entry that was in the file in the first place. The 'hack' would have worked if I only added all lines containing "Str01" since I've got a G400 Dualhead (non-max), but I added all G400 entries as example. You can do the same for other versions of the G450.

With this driver you get some interesting added functionality, like position/size adjustment for tv-out (was possible with almost all drivers up to 5.52, but this functionality was lost from the 5.7x drivers and onwards). I'm not sure if it will work with the G450 (can someone test it?). The maximum size settings do have a significant amount of underscan left, though that might improve with the official driver release version

You can now also use independant resolutions with a TV hooked up on the secondary output in win2k/xp (Nice!). A slider for memory allocation for each head also has been added, as found in the previous Win9x/ME drivers.

A lot of other stuff also has been changed probably, but I've only played with it for a very short time prior to writing this post. When testing q3a it did lock up after running it a few times... maybe this one of the reasons it hasn't been released yet

Give it a go when you're curious for drivers to come (soon?)...

[DGhost]

been running them on with my g400max with xp since they came out... no problems as of yet, but i don't play games much. the opengl driver does appear to be a bit better than the 5.72 one, with a bit of a performance increase (personally, i don't do benchmarks so i dunno) and increased accuracy (you acctually see the head in the wolfenstein menu screen). they changed the second monitor limits dialog much simpler now...

another interesting thing...

in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\software\matrox\powerdesk\versi on6\currentsettings there is a registry key called "DontShowDHWIizard". bad spelling aside, i wonder what it does or if it is simply an idication that powerdesk is getting more features added to it soon...

[Maggi]

Originally posted by DGhost
another interesting thing...

in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\software\matrox\powerdesk\versi on6\currentsettings there is a registry key called "DontShowDHWIizard". bad spelling aside, i wonder what it does or if it is simply an idication that powerdesk is getting more features added to it soon...

Hi DGhost,

I'm not sure, but I think it's the toggle for that introduction window after a clean drivers installation, telling you had a DualHead card and whether you wanted to enabled the 2nd head. Ticking the checkbox should set that registry entry to 0 and setting it manually back to 1, should bring back that dialog upon reboot.