G400 gets hot playing Quake3

[Tilsan]

Hi Guys, I just found your site, I didn't know we had our own Matrox website cool!
Sorry to get straight to the point, but I have this problem which I posted on the Matrox support forum and got the answer leave the case open! Go Figure!! Anyway here it is...

I have three machines, one has a G400Max and is running under win2k. One is a standard G400 Dual head 16meg card running under win2k and the other is the same card running under win98.
The 16 meg G400 running under win2k with the latest 5.10 drivers gets very hot after about 15 minutes of playing Quake 3 and drops back to the desktop with a washed out over bright screen. I cannot figure out what settings to change to stop this happening, I have all the latest drivers bios's and such installed on all my systems, but this one just doesn't want to play!

The G400max on the other machine does the same thing but takes a little longer to get there, I'd say because of the fan.

The machine running win98 works flawlessly!

I'm not overclocking the system or the vid cards in anyway. Apart from this heat problem and a bit of clipping and flashing problems in the graphics rendering, the game runs just fine, although a bit higher fps would be welcome.

I run my own configs for the game and have turned off all the fancy stuff to get the game running a bit faster and to increase the brightness a bit, although gamma settings have no affect under win2k. I have tried to optimise it as much as possible to get the cards to cool down, but nothing seems to work!

Any suggestions on how to get these two cards to cool down a bit under win2k?

Cheers Till

[xortam]

Why do you assume that W2K is causing heat problems? I imagine that there are hw and enclosure differences between these three PCs. Have you compared temperatures running each OS on the same PC? You probably have thermal sensors to indicate CPU and MB temperatures; experiment and record the temperatures. Look at your HD placement (not adjacent), fan specs and placement, case design, etc. Opening the case may improve or worsen your peak temperatures depending on the enclosure design. Tell us about the case/fan/hw configuration of each of these systems.

[Dave D]

Till,

I am having the same exact problem with my system. Abit bp6 with g400 max and the rrg add-on. Sends you right back to the desktop and everything is washed out. I find that if I go to display properties and back out the washed out apperance goes away but the game doesn't play. BTW this is using w98se. Guess I'll be following you around the forums

[Ali]

That sounds like the fault with one of the quake3 demos. You had to enter the game in 800X600 or else it wouldnt work. If you tried it in another res (1024 say) then it would kick you back to the desktop in 640X480 mode and all washed out.

Are you trying to run the TurboGl driver or something under Win2K?

Maybe you are using ACPI with your Win2K machines, and your mobo isnt fully compliant?

There are many more variables than just the OS or heat to worry about.

Good luck though

Ali

[Oracle]

well i my max gets hot u wanna hear my solutuin oopen case and a large 12 inch desktop fan pointed right at it keeps it nice and cool !!

Oracle

------------------
P3 600e
128mb 100mhz sdram
abit be6-2
matrox g400 max (not o/c

soundblaster 16pci
4.3gb seagate udma 33
15.3 wd udma 66
creative modem blaster 56k ext
win 98
ie5
pd 5.55
tgl 1.3
....................

[xortam]

I've gotten that washed out desktop abort from Q3A before under W98. Desktop wasn't properly restored due to abort; 1024x68x32 to 800x600x16 (same as Q3A setting). Turned out to be improperly installed PD drivers. Make sure you select VGA after rebooting after PD uninstall. Only after VGA has been installed should you reinstall PD.

[giskard]

Tilsan,

You may not have a heat issue. Those G400's can get *very* hot before you encounter any drama's. Your'e more likely to get a lockup, than a boot back to the desktop when heat is the offender.

I'd been having the same problem for quite a while. It ended up being a driver issue. I'm now using the latest beta drivers for win2k (5.10) and i have the g400icd.dll from the 5.01 drivers copied into the 'Quake III Arena' directory. Now i never get booted back to the desktop unless... you go swimming in q3dm12. yo'll get bounced back every time.

Hope this helps. Do a bit of trawling through these forums for answers to these sorts of questions. DosFreak discovered the icd thing and the other info came from dzeus here... http://dzeus.student.utwente.nl/g400/

cheers,

Giskard

[Tilsan]

xortam

I built all the systems my self, and all the cases are the same, Aopen cases, really good quality ones. I partucularly take note of where I put things so as to maximise air flow around each device! all three have nothing anywhere near the Vid card!

Dave

With win98se, I found the older drivers 541 running with the turbogl icd in the quake folder run the best and fastest, others may have diferent oppinions. I can send you my system config file to see if it works for you, I had a similar problem with win98se in the earlier days and fixed it by running my own coinfig files. They allows you to turn certain feature on and off while playing to see if it helps the games stabilty. It worked for me! If you want to have a look at it just send me a note, my email is in my profile...

Ali

Yes I am running ACPI on my Win2k machines, I do on all of them. The machine in question use to have win98se on it and it worked fine. soon as I put Win2k on it, the problem appeared, nothing else has changed.
Oh and yes I did change my system config file to suite win2k, because of the gamma problem!

Oracle

Heheh! I tried leaving the case open, but all it did was increase the time it took for the card to show the problem. This is what leads me to believe its heat which is causing it! I'm going to try and put a fan on the vid card to see if this helps and it probably will, but I shouldn't have to do this on a standard system. This says the card is not made correctly and should have had a fan on it in the first place like the Max does!

xortam

I remove all traces of old drivers and reg settings before installing new drivers every time! I had problems like that earlier on in the piece. It's problems like this that leads one to become an expert on all this computer crap!, But hey I love it just like you guys

giskard

Yes you're right, but I've only had the system lock hard once on me and that was probably from stuffing around so much.
And yes I tried putting the icd 5.1.19.0 with the version 510 drivers in the q3a directory, I don't notice much difference doing this, do you think it's much faster?

I too have the water problem on q3dm12 and also q3ctf2 it's a god damn pain in the ass,
particularly if you're kicking some serious butt when it happens! This is definately a win2k driver issue, because it happens to others on all different machines!


Ok! so from this I guess there is no simple solution. I was sorta hoping it might be a simple setting somewhere that I could change, but alas it is not.. Back to the drawing board Thanks guys for your input!

Cheers Till


[This message has been edited by Tilsan (edited 14 July 2000).]

[Dave D]

Till,

I just switched my hard drive from the ata 66 connector to the 33 connector and I was playing quake3 for 45 minutes. My board uses the highpoint controllers for the ata 66. How about yours?

Dave D

[xortam]

Tilsan, my experience (in Win98) is that its not simply a matter of cleanly uninstalling the drivers, you need to let Win98 install VGA upon bootup and then direct it to the newer drivers later. I don't know how this relates to W2K since I haven't worked with that OS in the last 18 months.

Also, perhaps you could place some thermal probes on the G400 chips to back up your heat theory. Are these non o/c'ed systems? Running at normal voltage levels (verified)?