G400 hangs in Q3Test

[Markus Eisenstoeck]

Hello!

I can't play q3test on my g400 (drv 5.25). A few minutes in teh game it locks the computer. The funny thing is that if i use the v2 in my system - no hangs no nothing - everyting works just fine. I tried everything: the beta ICD - giving the g400 a sole irq (no sharing) etc.

On the other hand UT is just cream with the g400.

I know that this "lock ups" are a known issue. I hope that matrox is really trying to address this thing in the next driver realease. What's the point of a TurboGL driver if it only "turbos" for a few minutes.

Or is it still that if you want a game to run plug&play you ought to buy a voodoo?

Markus

System Specs: p3 500@590 (and yes it also hangs on 500), abit bh6, 128 MB, Diamond Monster 3D II (V2), Adaptec AHA-2940U2W SCSI, 3COM Etherlink III ISA, Compaq Netelligent 10 T/2 PCI, SB Live!

[Ozymandis]

What is your AGP-1x or 2x?

[Markus Eisenstoeck]

Well, the Abit BH6 should be a AGP 2x board. BTW another point - the system runs Win98SE

[Speedy]

Mark, I had the same problem, only i have MSI ms-6167 and Ahlon 500, anyway, u reinstalled windows (i have win 98se) i made the agp aperture size 256, that worked for a week or so, and i dunno why it started hanging again, than i changed to AGP 2x, and everything works fine

[Markus Eisenstoeck]

Again I fiddeled around with the BIOS settings and no results. That's what I really hate, instead of playing games or doing something creative you go through those reboot sessions...

But I found out that the system locks are not q3test specific. I have a little program called ssystem (http://www1.las.es/~amil/ssystem). In my eyes its the best freeware solar system simulator. If you do not have it get it now (freeware). But this program also hangs after a few minutes. And ssystem really does nothing else then painting some texured balls in the window.
But this program also shows me that its the g400 that locks and not the computer. I can still move the mouse around and shut down with ctrl-alt-del.
SSystem does use quite large textures how ever. So this may the cause for the lock ups (AGP transfers ...).

I would be very happy if anybody could check out the program and post his/her results here.

BTW: ssystem comes with source code and you really can see that it does not do any fance stuff gl wise (something you can not be so sure with q3test).

Markus

[wump]

I had the same problems,
though i have an older board (abit lx6)
all problems disappeared when i soldered
some wires on my board to give the AGP
port more current. (<-??? send mail to lx6andvoodoo3@hotmail.com)
It seems a lot of problems arise from the fact that a lot of mobo manufacturers didn't
anticipate the powerload new videocards put on the AGP port whenever a lot of textures and whatelse is generated. Don't know about later abit models though

[Markus Eisenstoeck]

I did further testing and SSystem hangs also when textures are disabled in the program.

Again to stress this: SSystem runs ok with the Voodoo2 (Mesa drivers) and the software opengl.

I still think that this is a opengl driver problem as I do not have any problems with Direct3D games - including the high stressing Unreal Tournament Demo.

But having a G400 in my system lead me to the (false ?) assumption that I can run opengl programs...

Markus

[Markus Eisenstoeck]

Ok, I forced now to AGP 1x (via the reg hack). And q3test made it through 1 hour of gaming without any crash...

But can somebody enlighten me: Is this now a driver problem, is my board not handling agp 2x correctly or has the g400 problems with agp 2x ?

Markus

[Nuno]

It appears that certain problems happen in some system configurations, like crashes if AGP 2X is enabled. Abit boards seem to be mentioned alot, http://forums.murc.ws/ubb/Forum5/HTML/004833.html , if you have the patience to read. But other mb are implied also.
I have a Abit BX6 and never had a single probem, both with the G200 and the G400. Many other people have success with Abit and G400.
If you system is stable now, don´t worry if it´s running agp1x. There isn´t a single game that fully uses agp texturing, because it wouldn´t run on any voodoo card out there and the game developpers wouldn´t want that to happen, would they? And don´t forget that Matrox is the only one to fully implement AGP2x tranfers with DIME mode (ok, ok, also the Intel 740 did), so it´s more likely problems to happen. Other video cards don´t use to have these problems because they only use AGP 2x DMA. AND don´t forget that running at AGP 1x DIME is as fast as AGP 2x DMA, so you aren´t loosing all that much...