Is Matrox G400 5.50.010 beta driver stable? Having problems...

[antdude]

Heya.

Is it worth to upgrade to the beta driver (5.50.010) from the last final version (5.41.008)? Once in awhile when I load up a game, computer seems to hard lock. This happens randomly.

For example, twice with UT, UT frozed after precaching. The music remained to play for 30 seconds and stops.

One time, Half-Life frozed while loading a level. Another time was when my OpenGL screen saver gave an Illegal Protection Fault at G400icd.dll. I was thinking all these problems were related to a video driver.

My system configuration:
Award Bios Intel Pentium II 300 Mhz (DFI P2XBL motherboard revision A -- 440BX 100 Mhz bus tower and Award BIOS, 128 MB of SDRAM (PC100), ATX Full Tower Case, 300W power supply, 2 ISA, 3 PCI, 1 AGP, 1 Shared
PCI/ISA Slot, 2 USB ports, 512K L2 cache, IBM P72 17" monitor (6556), Matrox Millenium G400 32 MB DualHead, Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live! Platinum, Toshiba DVD-ROM SD-M1212
6X/32X ATAPI/IDE CD-ROM drive, Plextor PleXWriter 4/2/20 CD-R/CD-RW PX-W4220T (SCSI), Diamond Fireport 40 PCI (SCSI-3), external USR 33600 Sportster Faxmodem (Model: 0413; Product Code: 000839-03), 6.4 GB
Quantum Fireball EIDE (6.4EX-A) hard drive, 3.1 GB Western Digital Caviar EIDE hard drive, a 2-buttons Logitech mouse, 3Com Fast EtherLink XL 10/100 Mb TX Ethernet NIC (3C905B-TX), Microsoft Windows 98 (disabled Active Desktop), RedHat Linux v5.1, two regular computer fans (CPU and normal) and 1 custom fan for 3Dfx card, and a HP DeskJet 560c printer. Running DirectX 7a and Yamaha Sondius XG SoftSynthesizer v1.0 for better MIDI in Windows 98.

Any ideas and suggestions? Thank you in advance for replies.

[paulcs]

It works pretty well on BX chipsets.

I'd recommend uninstalling the drivers, checking the registry for entries the Matrox Uninstaller didn't remove, install the standard VGA driver, and rerun the setup program in standard VGA mode.

Maybe you had a bad install.

Good luck.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[antdude]

Is it true that you should uninstall the old driver before installing the newer version? Does everyone do this or just upgrade over the existing version? I wonder if upgrading over the old version affected this problem. It shouldn't, right? I would hate to reconfigure everything after an uninstall .

Thanks.

[Maggi]

Hi Antdude,

in your case you should definitely use the uninstaller, because you're about to switch from a DX6 based driver (5.41) to a DX7 based one (5.50) ...

It might work without using the uninstaller, but it is always good to get rid of all traces from previous drivers.

[Snake-Eyes]

I can second both Paul and Maggi on this one, antdude. I just installed the latest beta over the last beta, which had been running everything (..I've tried, anyway..) perfectly well. I did get a very slight performance boost, but now Q3A hangs after playing for a few minutes, with a repeating sound loop. I have a very strong suspicion that completely removing the drivers (including any miscellaneous registry entries that the uninstaller might miss), booting using the standard VGA driver, and then reinstalling, will probably take care of the problem.

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Ace

[TTCharon]

I Agree! Totally!

To many problems are because of remains from previous drivers and/or settings.
Even though there might be a better reason for unstalling drivers when they support newer DX versions, it really doesn't matter.
YOU SHOULD DO IT ANYWAY!! and do it thoroughly (ie dir's, files, reg entries & misc. inifiles placed out of it's natural env.)

And this goes for just about anything you upgrade/replaces (Well, patches excluded!).

I'm sure that about 10% of all the bug-related postings here at this board, are because of people not following this 'rule'.

and yes ! It does take time, but in the end, it's well worth it.

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Abit BH6, PII-333@416(5x83), 128mb MCT 8ns, G400MAX, SBLIVE, AHA 2940AU, WDC 4.3, WDC 6.4, IBM GXP34 20.5, Mitsumi FX40, Yamaha 4416S, Zyxel Prestige 100IH, 3Com 905B-TX On WIN98SE, DX 7.1, PD 5.41

[antdude]

Okay, I guess I will try that. Should I go to beta or use the last final version? Ugh, I hate reconfiguring . Do I have to reinstall TurboGL drivers?


Thanks!

[derah]

Does the PDuninstal utility completely remove the 5.5* beta drivers or is it necessary to manually remove all traces?

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ASUS P3BF 440BX MB,Intel PIII 500 Mhz, 128MB RAM,Fujitsu 13 GB HD, Creative 48X CDROM, Matrox G400 Max Bios 1.5.22, IRQ10, (ver 5.41), SB Live MP3+, IRQ5(ver 4.06.711) sound card with Liveware3.0, DX7.0, Linksys 16bit ethernet card for T1

[antdude]

derah: That is what I would like to know. I assume it does?

Look at the instructions if you had older drivers than 5.x: http://www.matrox.com/mga/tech_supp/faq/0004.htm
You have to do a manual uninstall. I am sure the uninstaller program does this for you.

Am I correct, people?

[derah]

The uninstaller is a great utility but does "warn" that it may not remove all vestiges of "newer" drivers. I have found it works well for 5.20 up to 5.41. The Matrox manual uninstall instructions are very detailed but do the newest betas have any unusually named files or *shudder* any unusual registry entires?

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ASUS P3BF 440BX MB,Intel PIII 500 Mhz, 128MB RAM,Fujitsu 13 GB HD, Creative 48X CDROM, Matrox G400 Max Bios 1.5.22, IRQ10, (ver 5.41), SB Live MP3+, IRQ5(ver 4.06.711) sound card with Liveware3.0, DX7.0, Linksys 16bit ethernet card for T1

[Snake-Eyes]

I don't know if the uninstaller gets all the 5.50.xx files and registry entries or not, but I recommend using it, then double checking, just to be safe. Then try reinstalling. I'd go with the 5.50.010 drivers, but then, I'm using a P3, and for me these drivers are as fast or faster than the TurboGL most of the time.

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Ace

[antdude]

How do I uninstall TurboGL drivers or is that automatic with the uninstaller program?

Thanks.

[ParaKnowYa]

Using the uninstaller can help so I'd propose you use it if there is enough time for the updating drivers procedure.

I've released a personal driver pack for G400 cards, small and easy to use. The pack includes the latest drivers which run stable for me (K7M system). Which does not mean they run bad on other systems so try em if you like. Win9x only!

regards
PKY

[CannyOne]

I just set the display back to standard VGA and ran the uninstaller. Then I ran the setup for the new beta. I've had no problems with this installation that could be blamed on the drivers. BTW, their performance in regular OpenGL is now very much improved!

[antdude]

Okay, I uninstalled, installed the lastest beta, and reconfigured. It looks good so far. Now, my TurboGL Manager says I didn't need to update TurboGL drivers for my games. Umm, am I supposed to get rid of these since I heard OpenGL is good?

I am confused!!!!!!!!! Thanks you in advance for replies.