Advice please on a few problems.....

[Matty1]

All - what is the best way to tweak/check my G400 to make sure it is running at its best. I am not to bothered about the 32 bit rendering - but just want a decent fast 3D image with NO jumping/jerking.

Why do I ask? I recently installed and had a ton of problems which turned out to be the drivers. I got this fixed though.

But with Unreal Tourney (the demo) it jumps quite a bit. With Driver - it plays fine for a while then just crashes out - no error messages. Roller Coaster Tycoon - when I finish a game and try to load up a new one the old screen stays there until I alt-tab out and back in again.

There are no IRQ conflicts, windows is set to 32 bit, I have removed all other display adaptor devices and no conflicts in device manager. I am not overclocking anything (I don't know how to do it).

system is - P2 300 - 128 RAM - Win98 - G400 AGP slot (initial drivers from www.murc.ws).

[Strider]

About Driver, I was unable to get that game running at a playable level. I would get constant hard drive accessing which outright stops the game. I suspect that this is a memory management issue, since you are running with 128 megs and not experiencing problems (I only have 64 megs).
The crashing is a game bug. It is caused by one of the graphical options. I don't know which one, but if you set all graphical options to their highest settings (excluding viewing distances, those you can set wherever you want), the game should no longer crash. You can than turn them down one setting at a time until the crashes return.

Now for UT. Do you have DirectX 7 installed? Is the jerkiness associated with HD accessing? Is your G400 16 meg or 32? In UT I initialy get lots of HD accessing and thus stuttering, however, once I run through the level everything runs smooth. A Voodoo3 2000 with 16 megs of video ram (cel 400, 64 meg) has hard drive accessing through out the level which causes some minor stutters, so more video memory helps.

If you have DX7 installed, than download the latest UT patch and try the following settings:
800x600 resolution, 16 bit colour (it always defaults to your desktop setting so currently it is in 32 bit mode), medium world and character detail, and disable the HUD.
If that still doestn't help try disabling detailed textures and sound. Also check and make sure that you close any programs that might be running in windows, such as anti-virus software. The only things that should be in your windows system tray are volume, powerdesk, and possible internect connection and sound card settings.

Let me know if any of this helps, or if you need clarification on anything.

[Matty1]

Thanks Strider.

RE: Driver I tried out what you said and the game still termintaes abnormally. It is most strange it plays fine and then just exits with no error messages at all.

On a hunch I loaded up Alien V Predator juiced up the res and graphic settings and after a while it did exactly the same.

I used to have a Voodoo 2 and never had this problem. Problems only started after the G400 was installed (a 16 m one by the way).

I gave UT another bash and noticed that with the sound turned off from control panel the game seems to run a lot smoother.

1. Yes am running direct x 7
2. Matrox drivers are 4.11 (I think)
3. Sound card is a crap Yamaha OPL-SAX with really out of date drivers, I have got the very latest (which are still very out of date) after scouring the web for ages.

In my humble opinion I think I might try a new sound card I have a Creative SB 16 (at least 2 years old) that I could try out.

But also would like to try lateset drivers for G400 - where should I get these? Any ideas?

When I installed the G400 had many problems and so I have a pretty fresh installation of Win 98.

Also have already disabled everything bar - sound and monitor in sys tray.

didn't try turning down wins res to 16 bit before running games - will try that tonight. Will try and browse web to find drivers etc today at work (if I find the time). Any other ideas and I am all ears.

We'll get there in the end.

[Strider]

Is UT now at a playable level? I would be glad if we managed to eliminate at least one problem.

Besides Driver and Alien vs Predator, do you have any other games that you tried out? I would like to be able to establish if the fault is hardware or software specific.

The problem I was experiencing with Driver (it occured both on my G400 and a Voodoo3) was a crash fairly early on during gameplay, usually when being knocked around by cops.
Can you give me an idea how long it takes before it crashes?
Did Alien crash on the G400 before you turned up the options?

Now about that Voodoo 2. Did you do a Windows reinstall without the Voodoo2? The safest thing to do would be make sure all 3dfx files are gone. Go to Find and search your entire HD for *3dfx*.* If you find any such files in directories other than game directories, delete them. I would recommend doing this even if you think all those files are gone. This way you'll know for sure.

The next obvious thing to do is newer drivers. The easiest way is to go to www.g200.com (thats how I get to the forums) and in the left window is a list of files for downloading. Get Powerdesk Unistaller and PowerDesk 5.30. Unzip the unistaller in some temp directory, and unzip PD 5.3 to its own directory.
Now, right click on My Computer and select properties. Then select Device Manager.
Under Display Adapters you should find the G400. Double click it.
Select the Driver tab, and then click on Change Driver.
Select show all devices (left side near bottom), scroll to the top of the list to Standard Display Types and select Standard VGA Adaptor. You should be propted to reboot.
Once back in windows you will be in low res/low colour. Go to the directory where you unziped the Unistaller. Run the exec file and all G400 files will be removed. Reboot.
Windows will now detect the G400 as a new display. Tell it you have the disk for the drivers, and browse to the directory where you unziped the PowerDesk 5.30 file. Run the installation and make sure to select the correct card (G400 16 meg, is it a single head?). The new drivers will be installed.

Make sure you go to the Matrox Display properties and select your monitor from the list (or a generic one that best matches your monitor).

Try the games and let me know how it goes.

[Matty1]

Strider - you're a genius.

Firstly - I should make it clear that UT is playable but can jump/jerk when lots of items on screen. But it did not seem to terminate abnormally like A v P and Driver.

Anyway...I removed drivers using above stated utlilty and reinstalled new ones. This did not help. Then did search for 3dfx drivers - and locate about three of the little devils which I hastily removed.

Then loaded up Driver again and cranked up all the graphics to maximum and it ran beautifully for several hours last night.

So this may have fixed the problem - tonight I will load up A v P and see what happens.

One thing I did notice though that Driver after playing for an hour or so started to access the hard drive a lot causing the game to start jerking constantly. The funny thing was this was in areas of the game that I had already covered.

Any ideas on that one? - I have 128 mb RAM on board. I hesitate to defrag my hard drive (I did it a while back and it took an absolute age - couple of hours) it is 8 gig in size.

Thanks again - you may have fixed it. If you live in London I'll buy you a drink.

[Matty1]

PS - rebooting the machine fixes the hard drive accssing problem.

[dondrd]

On the defrag issue, you should defrag regularly and the more often you do the less time it will take. You should defrag before any new software installation and after large deletions. I run scan and defrag every week, sometimes more. I have 10 gb hard drive and at that rate it usually only takes 30 min. to defrag and less to scan.

[Strider]

Thanks for the compliment Matty1. Not sure about genious, more like experience (had a voodoo in the system a year ago and found some unwanted files hanging around after installing G400).

That Driver thing sounds like the original Unreal. The longer I would play, the worse it would get. My best guess is that it is ram or swap files getting filled up. This doesn't surprise me as Driver has memory management issues (unplayable with 64 megs ram). I think a reboot is about the only thing that'll clear that up.

The UT problem might be simply due to lack of raw power. G400s need a fast processor for best performance. They also don't do well on thing like QuakeII Crusher demo (LOTS of stuff on the screen). This would explain why it gets jerky when many things come up on the screen. Unless you are planning on upgrading the CPU, the only thing left is to tweak the game settings and get the latest demo version/patch.

I also agree with dondrd about defraging. Its a very good idea. If you don't have your 8 gigs partioned, it will take a long time. All I can say is let it run during the day when you're at work/school/out and about. Make sure to run disk scan and check for errors before you start defrag. Otherwise if it finds an error during defraging it will stop.

Let me know if AvP is also up and running. Some other folks are having problems with that game.

And finaly, did you mean London UK? While I am not one to pass up a free drink, this one would be a tough one since I'm on the other side of the Atlantic. But thanks for the offer and enjoy those games.

[Matty1]

London UK I'm afraid - so have a drink on me over there instead.

A v P - I am playing it quite happily on very high res and 32 bit with no problems at all now. I used to crash occasionally.

Driver - seems to be very stable if I play it with Max settings hasn't crashed for several days now.

I ran scandisk, did defrag and a registry clean up, also have loaded up cacheman (have you heard of it) - it optimises your cache for what you do most on your PC (for me it is mostly games). All seems to be quite nice on the PC now.

I would like to try tweaking the G400 card a bit to up the performance . I downloaded the MGA Tweak tool but am not sure what to do with it? Any ideas?

[CMB]

Can i get in on the act guys?
:O)
my unreal tournament jerks realy badly
i can run it in 640x480 in 16bit in non-3d sound and its ok as long as im facing a wall
then BLEUUUGHHHH fps = 4-5 something abysmal like that.
you can also tell how badly the games gonna run because when you change settings the mouse cursor judders as you move it along the screen
i have read that going back to dirext x 6.1 can fix it, but from what ive read on the forum other people say say DX7 improves games visually and besides they have it running so why cant I ? :O(
i have a G400 Marvel Win98 SE
pIII 450@475
128mg ram
BX200 Motherboard with via chipset and 4 in 1 drivers
:O)CMB

[Matty1]

I'm certainly no expert - but it really sounds like some sort of driver problem have you removed and reinstalled drivers - get the ones off the web not CD ones they are crap.

As for going back to direct x 6.1 that really sounds like a backward step. Check direct x 7 is running fine with dx diag tool - in c:\windows\system - I think. run the tests and see if they all work.

I'm pretty sure my problem with UT demo - is sound related a really crap sound card with appaling drivers. all my other problems have been resolved by taking above steps.

An is it only UT that is causing these problems?

[Strider]

Hi Matty1, glad to hear that everything is up and running.
I haven't tried the MGATweak, so I can't help out with that. I know people are reporting performance improvements from using SGRAM optimization. Are you planning on overclocking the G400?
I just overclocked my cpu (400 to 450) and got a noticable performance increase that way. I am holding off on overclocking the G400 until I can put a fan on it.

To get more information about MGATweak and SGRAM optimization settings I suggest you post a message in the hardware forum. Let me know what you find out.

Can you also let me know where you picked up cacheman? It might give that a try.

[Strider]

CMB,

Something is seriously wrong with the system. Follow the suggestions that Matty1 gave you. You need DX7 to run UT, so keep that installed.
Were there any cards in the system before the G400?
Is it only UT that runs poorly?
Let me know what drivers you are using and send a list of IRQ assignments.

[Matty1]

Strider

I got cacheman off a CD Rom (from a hardware magazine) - but I just lent it to a friend but I will check to see if it can be got from a web site when I get it back. I'll keep an eye out for your comments and let you know.

I am going to experiment with overclocking on the processor and card but want to find a good web site that goes through the basics first, I ain't that sharp on this side of things.

[Strider]

Matty1

To get stable performance out of an overclocked G400 I think you need a fan on it. Otherwise you can only clock it up very slightly (and probably no significant gains).

The cpu overclock is fairly straight forward. You just want to make sure you have good cooling in your system.

I believe that sharkyextreme has an article on overclocking. It should give you an idea of what your cpu is capable of achieving.