G400 problem: 3D games freeze up!

[Chaotic Neutral]

I am new to this discussion group so I apologise if this has been covered before.

I recently bought a G400 32MB to replace my ageing Millennium II 4MB PCI and Canopus Pure3DII 12MB PCI. So far, I have been impressed by the visual quality of this new card in 2D applications.

However, I have been experiencing random lock-ups in OpenGL and Direct3D games. At some stage, Quake2 (especially the crusher and massive timedemo loops), Unreal, Half-Life and Need for Speed III simply freeze up and sound effects loop over and over. Since keys don't respond, I am forced to do a hard reset and reboot my machine.

The same problem has occurred with the G400 TechDemo.

These lock-ups have never happened with my old graphics cards so I am sure the source of the fault is with the G400. Either it is the card itself (I think unlikely) or it is a software problem.

Has anyone else experienced this? Or, more importantly, has anyone else who has experienced this been able to fix the problem???

C|N

Celeron 333 o/c to 416MHz, 128MB RAM, Asus P2B mobo @ 83MHz, 256MB AGP Graphics Aperture, SB Live! Value sound card, CTX PR711 monitor, USB Intellimouse, Kenwood TrueX 42X CD-ROM drive, Quantum Fireball ST 6.4 & 4.3GB HDs. Latest BIOS, drivers, DirectX, etc. No IRQ conflicts.

[agallag]

I'm getting this problem as well. Apparently it's getting to be a fairly common problem, and it is a driver issue (it's not bad hardware). Tech support is aware of it, and the driver guys are working on a fix. Might not be in the upcoming 5.20 drivers though. This is all based on rumour though. Some clarification from R0M or Haig would be nice.

I really hope it's fixed soon, since I've promised my g200 to my brother by next weekend. The g400 is quite useless until it's fixed.

Andrew

[Scytale]

Don't you dare calling me 'rumour', Andrew Gallagher

Actually, it's what Haig (he's on holiday now) told me in the Hardware Forum. I would point you to the thread, but it seems I'm no longer able to get to threads older than two days...!?

[agallag]

A thousand apologies, scytale. I did not mean to offend you so Thanks for confirming that they're working on it.

You can specify how many days worth to show when in the thread list. There a little drop down box, "Show Topics from last XX days", and a button marked "go". Isn't that cute?

[Russkie]

Chaotic,

have you tried running without overclocking ?

I have heard of a lot of video cards being unkind to the 83 bus speed. I am curious as I am considering upgrading my g200 to g400.

Thanks.

[bada]

I have a G400/16 Mb, and I had similar problems, even with the 5.13.020 drivers.
I am used to play Quake 3 & Q3Test and in both games the system crashes. With the older drivers Q3 works but Q2 still crashes.

Also I noticed that after some crashes some system files were corrupted, and my feeling is that the problem is due to tho poor OGL drivers ... congratulations Matrox !!

However the only solution I found to play Quake was to remove the G400, sell it back to the reseller, and replace it with my old TNT !

bye

bada


[This message has been edited by bada (edited 08-16-1999).]

[Scytale]

Andrew, I had been fiddeling with the listbox like there was no tomorrow, but yesterday was always missing. I'm still not comfortable with linear interpretation of time, but I think I got it now

Then I found that the main page has those cute sub pages too. :P So here's the thread:

http://forums.gagames.com/forums/For...ML/002734.html

[Chaotic Neutral]

Russkie,

I have tried using the G400 at the default 66MHz BUS speed (i.e. 333MHz CPU speed), and also at 75MHz. No luck on either of those - if anything, it seems more stable at 83MHz BUS speed, although that might just be my subjective observation.

Can't get Win98 to boot up at 100MHz BUS speed, unfortunately, and the C333's clock multiplier is locked at 5.0x...

C|N



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Celeron 333 o/c to 416MHz, 128MB RAM, Asus P2B mobo @ 83MHz, 256MB AGP Graphics Aperture, SB Live! Value sound card, CTX PR711 monitor, USB Intellimouse, Kenwood TrueX 42X CD-ROM drive, Quantum Fireball ST 6.4 & 4.3GB HDs. Latest BIOS, drivers, DirectX, etc. Win98. No IRQ conflicts.

[Maggi]

Hi C|N ...

depending on the actual revision your Asus mobo is built, it might have a jumper for selecting the AGP-divider !

Check out if you have such an option and if neccessary, set it to 2/3 for FSBs fro´m 100MHz and upwards.

------------------
Cheerio,
Maggi

Asus P2B-S @ 112MHz FSB - Bios 1009 final
Celeron300A @ 504Mhz
128MB 7ns SDRAM
G400 DualHead 32MB SGRAM @ 201 MHz memory clock

[agallag]

Damn multiple page crap. I think I remember reading through that thread a while back, but I never read the last couple of posts. Thanks for the link.

I still haven't had any official response to my threads, or to my email to tech support, so I'm not even sure if it's the same problem (considering mine bails in 1x as well as 2x).

I can play the Midtown Madness demo for hours without a crash though. That'll keep me busy until the fixed drivers show up

[Russkie]

Hi, C/N!

I would try the usual steps unless you already went through them: make sure you are running Liveware 2.1 ( 2.0 had a number of issues ), then try deinstalling SB Live and running without it. Check AGP divider jumper as Maggie said above, try removing USB mouse and running a PS/2 kind. Another thing to check is the PIO mode for the Kenwood drive. Mine was hogging 47% of the CPU when the IDE channel was set as AUTO and went down to 14% when I switched IDE manually to PIO 4( on Abit BH-6 ). You might even try Dr. Watson for all good that usually does. Good luck.

[Chaotic Neutral]

Hi Maggi & Russkie,

Thanks for your suggestions. I already had LiveWare 2.1 installed so that didn't seem to be the problem. Running the Q2 timedemos with the sound card uninstalled didn't make any difference to the lockups, but at least that was one possible problem eliminated!

My AGP Frequency Selection was already set at 2/3 BUS speed - I did try running it at 1/1 but it didn't seem stable, even when the BUS speed was 66MHz. Weird.

Anyway, since I don't have a PS/2 mouse, I decided to try Russkie's other suggestion of manually setting the PIO mode for my Kenwood CD-ROM drive to 4/2 instead of leaving it on auto. So far, this seems to have solved the problem - just now I managed to run three consecutive Q2 timedemo loops each of demo1 (46fps), massive1 (39fps) and crusher (27fps) in 1024x768 32-bit resolution. Maybe that is the solution! <Cheer!>

However, I am still a bit cautious about accepting this as a complete success, because the next time I boot up, the lockups could return... that had happened when I installed the 1010 (beta 6) BIOS file for my P2B mobo - the games ran fine the first time but after switching off my PC and rebooting, the random freezes came back.

But so far, you guys have been infinitely more helpful than the Matrox tech support team, who have yet to respond to my e-mail message.

Thanks again!

C|N


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Celeron 333 o/c to 416MHz, 128MB RAM (non-ECC), Asus P2B mobo @ 83MHz (BIOS: 1010 beta 6), AGP = 2/3 BUS speed, 64MB AGP Graphics Aperture, G400 SH 32MB (PD 5.13), SB Live! Value sound card (SB LiveWare 2.1), CTX PR711 monitor, USB Intellimouse, Kenwood TrueX 42X CD-ROM drive, Quantum Fireball ST 6.4 & 4.3GB HDs, PCI Network Card, Internal 56k Modem. Win98, DirectX 6.1, etc. No IRQ conflicts.

[Chaotic Neutral]

My caution paid off, although that also means I'm not too happy about it!

As I had feared, once I turned off my machine and rebooted, the lockups in 3D games appeared at random again. So this time, I went back into the P2B's BIOS and loaded up the BIOS defaults and Setup defaults. Now the games run without freezing again.

I hope that is not something I have to do every time I switch on the computer!

C|N


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Celeron 333 o/c to 416MHz, 128MB RAM (non-ECC), Asus P2B mobo @ 83MHz (BIOS: 1010 beta 6), AGP = 2/3 BUS speed, 64MB AGP Graphics Aperture, G400 SH 32MB (PD 5.13), SB Live! Value sound card (SB LiveWare 2.1), CTX PR711 monitor, USB Intellimouse, Kenwood TrueX 42X CD-ROM drive, Quantum Fireball ST 6.4 & 4.3GB HDs, PCI Network Card, Internal 56k Modem. Win98, DirectX 6.1, etc. No IRQ conflicts.

[High_D*S*]

I had this problem aswell, but if U put your desktop to 16-bit color, intead of 32-bit Everything works (ver. 5.13 drivers).

[Chaotic Neutral]

If I set the desktop to 16-bit, would that mean that all 3D games will only play in 16-bit colour as well?

So far, about the only thing that is working for me is to force AGP 1X, which I don't think is an acceptable permanent fix...

C|N


------------------
Celeron 333 o/c to 416MHz, 128MB RAM (non-ECC), Asus P2B mobo @ 83MHz (BIOS: 1010 beta 6), AGP = 2/3 BUS speed, 256MB AGP Graphics Aperture, G400 SH 32MB (PD 5.13), SB Live! Value sound card (SB LiveWare 2.1), CTX PR711 monitor, USB Intellimouse, Kenwood TrueX 42X CD-ROM drive, Quantum Fireball ST 6.4 & 4.3GB HDs, PCI Network Card, Internal 56k Modem. Win98, DirectX 6.1, etc. No IRQ conflicts.