Announcement

**Heiney** · 28 July 2000, 15:03

I'm running the 6.00 drivers on a Athlon Thunderbird and my P3 660. Both systems run UT version 420, and run it great....

420 and 405 are the best for G400's in my experience. STAY AWAY from 413..it's awful.

--------------------
ABIT BF6, Pentium III Katmai 450->663MHz, GW VOS32 Cooler, 128MB SDRAM, Toshiba 6X DVD, Quantum Fireball Plus LM, Matrox Millenium G400 DH @ 160/200, Creative SBLive, Enlight 7237 Case, 300watt PCPC TurboCool PS, and some fun with a Dremel!

**HedsSpaz** · 28 July 2000, 17:36

Thanks Heiney! Thats a start anyway. I'm running the 406 dll right now, it seems to be doing all right. I'll have to give the 405 dll a try here in a minute. 420 on my system absolutely sucks though. Which of course makes me a little worried if everyone else is reporting success with it. I've been hopping back an forth between drivers(oh yeah, the driver part, I'm using Win2k so the 6.00 drivers won't do me much good not that I'm not thankful though! )
Anyway, I've tried the 5.11 drivers and I get random lockups when playing anything in D3D. It sometimes happens as soon as I start the game or sometimes I can play for a half an hour completely stable. I just tried the 5.06 drivers and had one lockup that I'm not sure what it was related to.
I just installed the 5.10 drivers and I'm about to test them, so we'll see how things go.

I suspect that a large part of the problem is my crappy VIA based mobo, which short of buying a new mobo there is no way to fix, cause VIA sure as hell isn't likely to fix their drivers anytime soon. I've tried all 3(?) currently available releases of the agp driver for win2k and they all lock up d3d games as soon as they start. So I'm back to the defaults.

So, come on guys! Lets hear the tips!
Ian

[This message has been edited by HedsSpaz (edited 29 July 2000).]

**Snake-Eyes** · 28 July 2000, 18:17

Make sure you've got the detail textures feature set to false, too. That kills performance on nearly any card. (Actually, the framerate reported by the game appears to stay up, but it stutters a LOT, every time you get near a wall or other item that has a detail [close up] texture available). Another feature that is much worse than even the detail textures is the volumetric lighting. Disable that and you gain a lot of fps in return for losing fog effects in some areas.

And as far as the dll thing goes, 420 has been the best for me, followed fairly closely by the 406.

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Ace

[This message has been edited by Ace (edited 29 July 2000).]

**Jorden** · 28 July 2000, 18:37

Why not use the beta 4.06 DLL?? Or doesn't that one work with Win2k?

You can get it from Clan MU, as well as every map you need

Jord.

**HedsSpaz** · 28 July 2000, 21:56

D*MN SH*T CRAP PEICE OF SH*T DAMN GARBAGE CRAP F*$%^ING PEICE OF SHIT MOTHERBOARD!!!!

I HATE VIA!!!!
I HATE THEM WITH A PASSION!!!!

A POX PLAGUE CURSE HEX AND FIREY PAINFUL BURNING DEATH UPON THE LOT OF THEM!!!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHH HHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Peice of crap!!!

Grrrrr....

Ok... I'm calming down now... eyes focusing... breathing slowing...
...
...
...
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

I GIVE UP!!!!
I admit defeat, I am throwing in the towel, I surrender and all that even!!
UT is completely and totally unplayable under Win2000 with a Via mobo. No matter what drivers from Matrox I use it locks up scant moments after I start the ****ing game.

I am so thoroughly pissed off I can hardly stand it!

How could any one company be so ****ing incompetent?!?! It is simply beyond comprehension! Why the hell are they still in buisiness!? I can't believe that people continue to put up with the crap drivers and crap chipsets that they put out!

I have had quite enough of this. I've temporarily reinstalled Win98 so I am now dual booting.
Grrrr... As soon as I've calmed down enough(like tommorow sometime), and I've gotten things working better I'll come join you guys, which is a shame cause I'm ready to kill someone right now damnit!

Ian
Who is going to bed before he does something really stupid!

**runderwo** · 29 July 2000, 18:29

>>Who is going to bed before he does something really stupid!

Too late, you've already done that.

VIA's Win2k driver works fine, as tested in the shop.

Just because YOU have a problem that you are too technically incompetent to solve does not give you the right to:

1) Outburst on a professional forum in such an immature manner
2) Call a company "incompetent" when clearly YOU are the one lacking in skill (when's the last time you reverse-engineered a complete mainboard bus architecture and built a clone chipset based on it?)
3) Dig into a third-party company's Windows 2000 support when Windows 2000 itself is still a moving target thanks to Microsoft's market game

VIA has given us many things that you should be EXTREMELY grateful for. They have, hand-in-hand with AMD, spearheaded the power-without-the-price PC market. They have given you an ALTERNATIVE to Intel, which if hadn't been the case, you would be paying whatever prices Intel damn well wanted to charge today. They give you a CHOICE, as with the i820/i840 and Rambus crisis, there was NO OTHER CHOICE besides a VIA 694X mainboard.. and it turned out to be the ONLY CHOICE THAT MADE SENSE. And they are a modest company with religious backgrounds, who seek to further the technological horizon, and NOT simply to gain market share.

You (and the rest of us) have a lot to be thankful for from VIA. I suggest you rescind a few of those choice phrases of yours.

**HedsSpaz** · 30 July 2000, 19:20

I suggest you rescind a few of those choice phrases of yours.

I will do nothing of the sort. Despite that fact that you apparently registered in October of 1999, you obviously have not been around this "proffesional forum" for very long, which is evident by your number of posts. You know nothing about me and apparenly little about this "proffesional forum". This is hardly what I would call a proffesional forum. It is user run, by a man who appreciates Matrox enough that he started a web site dedicated to all things Matrox. A community has evolved around this site that is completely USER oriented and is not what one normally refers to as "proffesional".

VIA's Win2k driver works fine, as tested in the shop.

I would like to point out the "in the shop" part. Mayhap they do in fact work correctly and well "in the shop", the real world however has in general told another story. Do you ever visit the Amdzone forums? Or perhaps Anandtech? Or maybe Arstechnica? Or what about VoodooExtreme? And then theres 3DGPU.com? The list goes on. Try it sometime, you'll discover a rather large number of posts by people having trouble with VIA based motherboards reporting one problem after another and desperately trying to get them working.

Having said that I will make some concessions. It was 1:30am where I am when I posted that message. I had spent 5 hours trying to get my computer to play any D3D based game for more than 5 minutes, and I was pissed to hell that I couldn't. I spoke rashly yes, but not untruely. Further more, while I appreciate the effort that VIA has port forth, their results, as I have made quite clear, are in my opinion, lacking.

I have a backup computer that uses and Asus P5A based on the Ali Aladdin V chipset. It is also running Win2000. Everything on that computer works. No strange driver problems, not buggieness of any sort, it just plain works. A friend of mine has an Athlon system with an MSI 6195 K7Pro mobo. It also, just works. Another friend has a K6-2 based system with a VIA mobo in it. I won't even begin to get into the number of problems that he has told me about. Take a look at some of the post in the General Hardware forum here on the MURC. Far and away the most reported problems have something to do with one of 2 things, either IRQ conflicts or VIA motherboards, often both.

On a seperate note:

Just because YOU have a problem that you are too technically incompetent to solve

To come onto a forum and blatantly insult someone whom you know nothing about is rather immature itself. As I have pointed out, I am hardly the only person who has had troubles with VIA based mobo. I am NOT using that to validate the fact that I spoke rather vehemently and in anger. It probably would have been better if I had waited until morning when I was calmer to post. I didn't though, and thats that.

Furthermore, I would point out your third point, in which you yourself, while not as aggressively, do the same thing that I did. While I can't quite bring myself to actually defending MS I will say that your bashing them is no better than my harsh words directed at VIA.

If you are offended by the way I expressed my self, I honestly don't give a damn. I am rather offended by the fact that you came onto this forum, having known little to nothing about it, knowing nothing about me or my technical and computer related abilites, and make a post that:
a) had nothing to do with this thread
b) did not help me in any way go about solving my problem(and this irrelevant to this thread)
and c) seemed to have no purpose other than to reprimand someone for their perceived "technical incompetence" and to make a rude and unnecessary attempt to "show me the error of my ways".

I suggest that before you continue around this forum making irrelevent and rude posts that do nothing other than reprimand people, you consider the immaturity of your own comments.

Oops, too late.
http://forums.murc.ws/ubb/Forum4/HTML/004014.html

I wouldn't recomend insulting dZeus like that. Furthermore, if you insist on insulting people, at least make sure that you read the thread first. Go back and do so and you'll discover that the statement he made about not sharing IRQ's was not a statement of his. He was quoting from what the software told him about his card. He then proceeded to say that in Win2k everything was fine.

If you continue making such immature posts of your own, you may discover that you become unwelcome here.

**Johnny Ray** · 30 July 2000, 20:03

Did I miss something? When did this become a 'professional forum?'

**HedsSpaz** · 31 July 2000, 05:35

Did I miss something? When did this become a 'professional forum?'

Those were my thoughts exactly Johnny!

**runderwo** · 31 July 2000, 14:16

Thanks for all your support.

I have no personal problem with anybody here. I do have problems with flawed logic and with snap conclusions. However, I attempt to correct flawed thinking (based on my own) outside of the actual person, since things get hot when they get personal and the point of the conversation tends to be lost.
I also do not have the audacity to think that I am correct on every count either. Instead of trying to silence me, simply refute what I say in a mature and reasonable manner (which the original poster DID do, and gained my respect for).

VIA can't be blamed for piss-poor mainboard and BIOS implementations. If you knew the engineering process, you would know that there are many variables in manufacturing, and these variables tend to go south as the manufacturer cuts costs. The best VIA mainboard we have used to date is Tyan S1598 based on MVP3. Windows 2000 has NIL problem.
G400. AGP = 2X. I'm sorry the boards "everyone" complains about aren't up to snuff, but it's no reason to dog VIA who has NO CONTROL AT ALL over third-party mainboard development.

"a rather large number of posts" with a specific problem does NOT gauge the severity of the problem. For all we know, there are simply more people using the combination in question, which undoubtedly will cause more problems since the vast majority of end-users haven't the slightest clue how to set up a system (and worse, most think they know more than they actually do as well). This creates apparent bad publicity for some application of components which, with a few changes, would otherwise work fine.

I speak from experience when I say that there are hardly any problems that can't be solved with a little ingenuity (or a little social engineering with the manufacturer). It's simply not valid business strategy for an OEM to put bad products out on market. It has to work at least for *SOMEBODY* for them to stay in business... and it's the somebodys who it DOESN'T work for who make the most noise.

VIA vs Microsoft holds no water really. VIA makes a good product which is saddled by cost-cutting in implementation. Microsoft on the other hand, doesn't care about a good product, only market share. They are two companies who really morally and fundamentally have nothing in common, and I can't see a valid comparison being made.

I sincerely apologize if I offended anyone for any reason. I do feel quite "rund" (and embarrassed) looking back at my words. Obviously I had simply read a single post and responded to it without reading background.

As well, I was up late and had a bad night. I suppose I allowed my tension to take control of my words momentarily, which I feel quite bad for. dZeus, this goes to you as well, though I haven't read the other thread yet.

I'll go back to lurking, I suppose. It probably suits me better.

**dZeus** · 31 July 2000, 16:49

jesus, this runderwo person is really starting to annoy me... (and I am not alone with this I see ;-)

oh, and

rund from runderwo means dumbass in Dutch:
maybe it's conincidence, but I don't think so

(you can flame? I can flame! :-)

[This message has been edited by dZeus (edited 31 July 2000).]

**ahartman** · 31 July 2000, 18:16

Did I miss a full moon over the last couple of days?!? Why is everyone b!tching at each other?

I swear - within the last week, everyone has lost their minds.

Calm down, everyone and let's see if we can help Spaz fix his computer...

I don't use W2k so I'm no help here except to say that my Via board has worked nearly flawlessly since I got it last September (Win98SE).

Andy

------------------
PIII 550@605
IWill Motherboard VD133
VIA Chipset
256MB PC133 CAS2 Crucial
G400 DH 32MB (5.41 Drivers)
DirectX 7.0
SB Live! Value
8x DVD (Toshiba)
6x4x24 CDRW (Sony)
Intel Pro/100+ NIC
3Com CMX Cable Modem
Optiquest V95 19"
HP 812C Color Ink Jet
Microtek flatbed scanner
Intellimouse Explorer
Surround Sound w/two subwoofers
AND WAY TOO MANY GAMES!!!

**dZeus** · 1 August 2000, 03:37

HedsSpaz: UT performance was fine on my celly 366 back when the 4.05 + beta d3d.dll was used, but now with the 4.20 version it is very poor...

however, I've overclocked to 550MHz now (it won't run at 366 any more :-), and I've turned down a lot of the settings.. now it runs fluent at 800x600x16.

Back with the 4.05 + beta I could run at 1024x768x32 in Windows 98, and my Celly was only at 366MHz back then.... Win2k is really bad for your performance! (SP1 is said to give a performance increase)

But you are having crash-problems now? Maybe you can disable 'AGPTextures' in UT, if the AGP is causing the crashing.

**HedsSpaz** · 1 August 2000, 06:38

Calm down, everyone and let's see if we can help Spaz fix his computer...

Here here! I like that idea!

Just as a side note, there is a reason that "Spaz" is in my nick. And in case your wondering about the Heds part as well, HEDS is often an abbreviation for HelpDesk. I used to work on the HelpDesk at my college, and if any of you out there have ever worked on a helpdesk then you know that it can cause you spaz out quite easily and regularly.

Anyway, back to the problem at hand. For the time being we can all take the blame and just refrain from sticking it anywhere. There are admittedly many factors here that must be considered.

What I have concluded from my testing, is that this problem is driver related. It had occured to me at one point that it might be heat related, but there are too many things that don't quite add up for that to be a real possibility. For example, Diablo 2 did the same thing that UT and WoT did when in D3D. It ran for about 5 minutes and then hard locked my computer. When I switched to 2D DirectDraw everything worked fine. Played for several hours without a problem.

Also, when I installed the Win2000 AGP driver from VIA, UT locked my computer before it even finished loading. So, something in the combination of Win2000, VIA drivers, EPoX motherboard, G400, G400 drivers, and my other assorted hardware & drivers, SBLive, Zoom PCI mdm, there is something that isn't right.

The same can also be said for Win98. I think what I may do is reinstall Win98 with the "/j i" switch( I think thats the switch anyway, to force disable ACPI).

Well, at any rate, I'm sure I'll figure something out sooner or later. Any suggestions would be well appreciated though!

Ian

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