Half Life - Turbo GL Problem

[Dave Carter]

Hello fellow Matrox Sufferers,
Surprise Surprise I have a problem running Half Life or Half Life - Opposing
Force with the new Turbo GL Driver 5,41,6,1 & Powerdesk 5.41.
After installing Half Life & updating the Open GL driver the game seems to
run perfectly, with quite a performance boost as well. Then after a period
of play (sometimes ten minutes sometimes a couple of hours) the game will
lock up.
The only solution is to switch the machine off & back on again. Then when
you go back in to Half Life & try & load your saved game the game will lock
up again immediately.
The only solution is to Uninstall the turboGL driver & then resume the game
using the default driver.

Any one else experiencing this problem.
The only other game that I have tested the Turbo GL driver on is Quake 3
Demo which seems to run fine although I havent played it for longer than
20-30 minutes at a time.
Its a shame because as I said the Turbo GL certainly seems to boost
Performance on Half Life at least.

My Spec
Viglen PIII450
128MB Ram
Fujitsu 17gb hd
Matrox G400 32mb dual head
Vortex 2 sound card
Win98 2nd Edition

Anyone else having similar problems.
Cheers
Dave

[Rags]

I can play for hours on end in HL without a lockup using the TGL, maybe you are experiencing a heat problem??

Rags

[Harikata]

I'm having the same problem as you are...Half Life doesn't usually last longer than about 15 mins before it locks up the same way yours does. It seems that if there's more action going on - like a big network game or when I play the BLOWUP.DEM it is more likely to crash.

Half Life would crash occasionally on me before...it's strange...it would work fine for a long time, then for no reason it would crash again. Usually by this time I would be re-installing Windows soon so that would fix it, or just re-installing the drivers. BUT this time I have experimented a bit more and it only crashes when my CPU is overclocked. I don't understand this? Well I guess I can, actually, but it worked fine before! I take it from your post, your CPU isn't overclocked?

Anyone have any ideas?

My system:
Asus P2B Motherboard
128MB PC100 RAM
Celeron 300 oc'd to 450Mhz
10GB Maxtor HD
SB 16
3Com 100mb NIC
etc...

[hear]

Harikata,

Your problem definitely sounds like heat - related, 'cause you only experience crashes when overclocking. Try leaving your box open to test if that's the reason, or add some extra cooling. It never hurts

-hear

[Dave Carter]

No mine isnt overclocked, neither is it to do with heat either because it happens when the machine is booted from cold.
This problem is now affecting other games that I have tried.
Indy & the infernal machine
Quake III
Re- volt they all lock up within about five minutes play.
This is getting really annoying, my machine is stilll under warranty so I think I will send it back although I hate to be without my computer just when I have some holiday.

[Hully]

I had the smae problems on my P2-400 & G400 32MB DH. It started with just HL locking up, and later all games started locking up. I solved the problem by aiming a full-sized fan (10" in radius or so) on my case, aimed at the CPU. Underclocking the CPU also solved the problem... Make sure your CPU is well cooled - my problems occured even though the CPU fan seemed to work properly.

[welshbloke]

I had similar problems forced AGP x1 and it all works sweet now....

------------------
PIII 450 128mb win 98 sp1 G400Max PD 5.41 Abit Be6 motherboard

[Harikata]

hear:

If I remove the TurboGL it works almost perfectly. (Albeit still with the same set of lock ups after a month of use or so...Re-installing the drivers usually fixes it)

So how come the TurboGL doesn't like my overclocked CPU? It's handling it the same way Windows NT does!

Seems to me, if it was a heat problem, it wouldn't work even without the TurboGL drivers, would it? I will try additional cooling anyway...although I'm only getting 4 fps faster with the TurboGL in the Blowup demo.

Harikata..

[merchant2112]

yep i agree force agp 1x im still haveing problems but forceing 1x agp solved many of them.

[ChickenSoup]

Harikata You do realize that the turbo GL ICD is specifically designed for the P!!! and the ATHLON. So you won't get any real performance gain with the turbo GL. Matrox says they are looking into a turbo GL for the Cel P2 and K6-2, It may be a while yet.

[Joel]

Hey ChickenSoup,

Where have you been hiding? Matrox just released a TGL version that does support the Cel, P2, and K6-2/3.

Joel

[This message has been edited by Joel (edited 19 December 1999).]

[ArP]

Half-Life Opposing Force is giving me problems with TurboGL too. It seems that if I have it installed (I use the latest PD) I'm unable to play the game itself. The damn training mission worked, not the main game. It just drops cleanly to the desktop whenever it completes the intro (sometimes before that, too)

Also, when I finally pulled the Tgl from the half-life directory, I noticed that the loading times in HL dropped significantly ...

Well, such is life ...

------------------
Octek Rhino II BX,P3/450, 64Mb PC100,G400DH 32Mb, Sb64 PCI, Belinea 17", IBM Deskstar 16Gb
Generic 36x CD, Acer CDRW and some additional crap.

[Beezer]

Hey Dave and Welshbloke:
I've been searching the forums for similar problems that I'm having and noticed the you two have/had pretty close to the same problem as me - and same system (PIII-450, 128MB, Abit BE6, Win98 SE, SB Live).
I curious though if your problems are now fixed, and if you had "CD Music" turned on. I'm pretty sure my problems are a conflict with 5.41/TGL and CD Music. That would also explain why you can play Half-Life for 10-15 minutes before it locks up because the game only requests info from the CD at certain places.
I still haven't fixed my problem, but plan to try forcing AGP to 1x before going back to the 5.13 drivers. I never experienced any problems with the 5.13 drivers, but going directly to 5.41 with TGL does indeed give me a speed improvement in OGL.

[Dave Carter]

Hi

I have now found out that the problem was the card itself, I got so pissed off with it that I sent the computer back to the manufacturer (it was under warranty) they swapped the card over & everything is now fine. It meant I was without my computer over christmas which was a pain but it was worth it in the end.
Cheers to all who replied
Dave