Matrox Px65 Series Motherboard Compatability?

[da_xanadu]

Hi everyone,

I 'm very tempted to get either one of two P-series card, but after reading some posts, am wondering if they are OK with my motherboard. Has anyone had any problem with them working with Asus P4P 800 Deluxe?

Thanks very much for any information. This is really the only factor I need to clarify before making my desicion.

da_xanadu

My System: Asus P4P 800 Deluxe; P4 2.4C (Springdale); Mushkin 1GB dual channel PC3500 memory; intergrated soundcard; Western Digital 120 GB HDD....

[K6-III]

Should work just fine, although you'll want to update the card's bios upon installation...

[da_xanadu]

Originally posted by K6-III
Should work just fine, although you'll want to update the card's bios upon installation...

Thanks for the info, K6-III. Is this your personal experience or someone elses you know/heard of.....I just wanted to be as sure as possible..

Also, why update the bios? Does that mean that the present bios has issues?

Thanks again.

[dwood]

Hey da-xanadu.

Nice rig. If mine wasn't sitting on the floor beside be, I'd have worried you ripped me off!

I'm running a P4P800 Deluxe, 2.4C, 1GB Samsung (2x512 PC3200) Dual DDR, Dual WD 100GB 7200rpm (RAID 1), with my trusty old Matrox G400-Max (OLD version with the 1.5V solder fix) , Samsung 19" and Sceptre 17" monitors.

I too am considering the P650 or 750. I don't have any personal hands-on experience with the P650/750 yet, but can't imagine any issues with the P4P800 Deluxe.

A little off-topic, but what OS are you running? I'm Win XP Pro, and I've been having an intermittant problem with a blue screen of death - STOP 0x0000007F (0x00000000, 0x00000000, 0x00000000, 0x00000000). Nothing over-clocked (yet), and it seems to happen at the weirdest times - a few times while resizing or moving windows around on the desktop.

I just finished over 24 hours of 'burn-in' RAM tests without any problems, so I think I'm probably faced with a bad driver someplace. Not looking forward to trying to track it down.

L8R,
Dave....

[K6-III]

The bios update fixes bios logo issues.

The only problem at present appears to be with the NForce2.

[da_xanadu]

Thanks everyone for the helpful sharing! I have gone ahead and ordered the card from allthingstech.com (cheapest price) and am waiting its arrival.

Dave, I haven't even started assembling my system yet. But I'll be running Windows XP as well. Hope I won;t be having any issues.....

[K6-III]

Make sure to let us know how it works out for ya.

[da_xanadu]

Sure I will.

Only problem is, now I don't know when I'll be receiving the card. Placed the order on July 9 with allthingstech.com after talking with their sales rep who assured me that the items would come in stock on July 10. After being listed as "processed" for two days, now my order status has become "back order" Wish I had gone with some more expensive vendors...

[da_xanadu]

Ok, here is an update on what's happened. I ended up canceling my order with althingstech because my order becama a back order that wouldn't happen til the end of the month. Went ahead and bought it from sharbor.com for a little higher price.

This evening I finally put all the physcial parts of my machine together and pushed the power button--Immdiately I knew something was not right. For one thing, the POST indicates no IDE drives installed even though I do have a HDD and a DVD burner. Second, my Samsung 191T shows garbled screen display with bloches of scrambled colors.

Well, with the IDE drives not being detected issue, I thought perhaps I needed to to some BIOS configuration, however, the garbled screen is preventing me from entering BIOS.

I read around a bit and realized that there maybe issues with my motherboard and went ahead and flash its BIOS to the latest v.1008. Didn't help.

Then I ran into posts that the problem could be fixed with a BIOS update to the P750 using the "setup_p103.exe" file.

The problem is, I need to first do a backup of the current Matrox P750 BIOS. Since I have no operating system installed yet, I have to make a DOS bootup disk. But it seems a flopy disk may be too small to contain all the necessary files.

Anyone have had similar experiences? What are your suggestions?

[dwood]

da_xanadu,

Sorry to hear about your difficulties.... Doesn't sound like fun......

A couple of 'thoughts'....

As far as I understand, the setup_p103.exe only addresses the garbled POST screen. I realize you need a 'good' POST screen to work on the IDE issue. Do you have another (any) video card you could use until you have that issue resolved? It may be a pain, but it might make the most sense to get the system at least booting properly, and then go to the P750.

As for your IDE problem, which IDE connectors are you using on the P4P800-Deluxe? I believe the VIA RAID IDE channels will ONLY accept hard drives, and will not accept other IDE devices (CD-ROM, DVD, burners, etc.). Also, if you're trying to use the RAID channels, you'll have to be ready for the RAID drivers during Windows setup (when you get that far).

For troubleshooting purposes, I'd try connecting the HDD only, making sure the jumper settings are correct for a 'single drive' configuration. Then, if that works, either add the CD-ROM to the other IDE channel, or go with the master/slave config and see if it still works.

To make sure you don't have any screwy BIOS settings that may be contributing to the IDE issues, you may want to do a BIOS reset. Check out page 2-20 in your manual for the battery/jumper process to clear all BIOS settings.

Hope these ramblings are of some use, and let us know how you make out...... I may still consider a P6/750 in the future, and any heads-up info will be helpful.

Dave....

[zepp]

I had this problem also on a P4C800-E Delux. You need to do a BIOS flash AND run a windows util to fix it to see your motherboard BIOS screens. The BIOS screens don't look great but they do work after the fix. The trick is to run the windows "fix" before you install windows so you can set the BIOS up then install windows.

http://forums.murc.ws/showthread.php?threadid=43077&highlight=garbled

Good luck