G400 only runs at AGP 1x?

[Biggs]

Friends,

Sorry if this question has been asked many times before but how come both 3DMark2001 SE and Sisoft Sandra 2002 reports that my 32MB G400DH as AGP 1X only? I'm running an Asus P3B-F using the 4.72 W2K WHQL drivers.

Cheers,
Biggs

[The PIT]

To be honest apart from a slight score differance under 3dmark you won't notice the differance between agp x1, x2 or even x4 if your card supports it.
You can try forcing with the Matrox tweak utiltiy but you may end up with a unstable system. You can slos check in the bios to see if theres an option to set the agp speed.

[ALBPM]

Ya, but with the BX chipset he should be able to get 2X AGP.

Have you selected 2X AGP in your mobo BIOS?

What is the AGP Aperature set to in the BIOS??

And what are your IRQ Assignments? You could have a conflict. The Max should be on it's own IRQ and it should be on IRQ 9 or higher.

Paul

[Biggs]

Pit, erm... why would I have an unstable system if I force it through software when both my G400DH and P3B-F are designed for AGP 2X? Well, difference or no difference, I'll sleep better at night knowing my hardware are performing to their full potential.

Albpm, my mobo's BIOS doesn't have an AGP speed selection.
The graphic aperture size set to 64MB. IRQ assignments are the following,

AGP: Matrox G400DH - IRQ 11
PCI 1: Empty
PCI 2: Promise Ultra133 TX2 - IRQ 10
PCI 3: 3Com 3C905B-TX - IRQ 9
PCI 4: Turtle Beach Santa Cruz - IRQ 14
PCI 5: Empty
ISA 1: Empty
ISA 2: Empty

I see no conflicts and every device in my system use their own IRQ.

Corrections, I'm using the Win 2K 5.72 WHQL driver with the 2.1.35 BIOS. Also, Sisoft Sandra 2002 doesn't report the actual AGP 1x, 2x or 4x state but just the maximum capability, which in my case, is 2x. Could this be a driver and/or BIOS issue or maybe a 3DMark 2001 SE error?

In 3DMark2001 SE, going to SYSTEM INFO -> MOTHERBOARD INFO -> AGP CAPABILITIES,

Revision: 1.0
Rate: 1x, 2x (1x enabled)
Aperture Size: 64 MB
Sideband Addressing: supported (enabled)
Fast Write: not supported

[Kruzin]

Download the MTSTU as Pit said. It will tell you what mode you are in, and allow you to force 2x if you are in 1x.

[Heed]

Are you overclocking the CPU? One side effect of OCing can be the card defaulting to 1x. I run a P3 650@866 on a P3B-F and the card defaults to 1x. Personally, I don't care.

Remember that the drivers check on boot what speed the card can do unerringly-- forcing 2x may result in some weirdness.

[Michel]

check agp mode with mtstu util as pit and kruzin said.

As for the unstable agp2x, Pit is right. Some G400´s just can´t run at agp2.
I have never been able to get my G400MAX to run stable at agp2x (not on an ABIT BX6 board and not on an ABIT SA6R (i815)).
The whole sytem just freezes after 3 minutes when agp2x is enabled.

But as already mentioned in this thread, agp2x won´t gain you any performance compared to agp1x.

[Biggs]

Kruzin, thanks m8, I've used the MTSTU 40409 and my AGP was set to 1x. I changed it to 2x and rebooted and now it's fine.

Heed, yes I'm overclocking. The AGP speed is at 89Mhz. First, I also thought the same so I switched back to a non-overclocked, default settings at 100MHz FSB. However, it still defaulted to AGP 1x so I figured it was either the drivers or BIOS.

Michel, it's more than 3 mins and everything seems quite fine. I just completed a benchmark of 3D Mark 2001 SE and my score increased by a mind-numbing 32 points!


Cheers,
Biggs

[Wombat]

What probably happened is that the drivers tried for 2x while the AGP bus was overclocked, decided that was unstable, and made a note in the registry that it should run at 1x.

[Biggs]

Wombat, does the drivers do this "on-the-fly" and everytime there is a change in state? Like I said earlier, when I ran my system at "default" settings, it didn't switch to AGP 2x mode. Erm, shouldn't ALL G400s be stable at their default AGP 2x using a non-overclocked system? Basing from what Michel said, are there G400's that can't run AGP 2x in a non-overclocked system?

[The PIT]

One you've set it it will stay that way until you change your drivers and the keys get changed or reset. Sometimes newer drivers need another version of MTSTU to set the key correctly.

[Admiral]

does the drivers do this "on-the-fly" and everytime there is a change in state? Like I said earlier, when I ran my system at "default" settings, it didn't switch to AGP 2x mode

I belive it happens upon driver installation.
If you wouldn't have had the AGP bus overclocked when you installed the drivers, you would probably have had it set to 2x.

[xortam]

I've had varied success running my AGP 2x Max at default versus lowering it to 1x. This is on a non-o/c'ed P2B-S w/ P!!!/850 (100 MHz FSB). The stability seems to change with various driver versions. I'm currently running fine at 2x with the latest Win2K drivers. To recap what others have said ... the AGP speed is set when you install the drivers. You can modify the speed using the tweak utility, MTSTU. SiSoft Sandra does show you the current AGP transfer speed under "Mainboard Information" (at least the 2001 version).