G400 & opengl problems

[Betsy]

I don't know if I'm being a total moron, but I just cannot get anything to work using opengl.

I'm using a G400 32mb, with a K62-350 and a TMC T15VG+ motherboard.

Nothing that uses opengl will work at all. I really can't find any way to select to use opengl in the powerdesk utility, and I've downloaded and replaced the g400icd.dll beta.

Help



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It's the sum totality of my psychic powers

[Kruzin]

-Make sure you're in 16 or 32 bit desktop. 24bit won't work.
-Turn off "extend desktop to this monitor" if using multi-monitor display. OGL won't work with multi-mons (winblows limitation)
-Remove any opengl32.dll files from your game folders. The only one of those should be in windows\system.

[This message has been edited by Kruzin (edited 09-27-1999).]

[Betsy]

Done all that but still nothing.

[Meek]

Hi.

You could tell a bit more about "not work at all". Do you get a black screen, screen freeze, or what?

You do not have to enable OpenGL in PowerDesk, if it is there it will be found.

With Super7 motherboards the "usual" reason is either trying to run in AGP2x mode, or then not having the AGP driver installed at all.

So I would re-install the AGP driver. If you have a VIA chipset on that board (which is not familiar to me), in non-turbo mode, so that it does not even try to enable AGP 2X.

M.

[lindberg]

Why don't you want to use agp2x? Shouldn't agp multiplier be as high as possible?

[Meek]

AGP2x has the reputation of not working with most Super7 boards and Matrox G*00.

I had a K6-2 300, with G200, upgraded to G400, still unstable AGP2x. Upgraded to K6-2 450, no change.

Now I get AGP2x, as I switched to Athlon-500 and a MSI-6167. There is not too much performance boost in today's games, though, so probably you won't even notice you are doing AGP1x, especially when the performance with a K6-2 is totally CPU limited.

M.

[This message has been edited by Meek (edited 09-28-1999).]

[Kruzin]

There are no games right now that fully utilize 1x AGP transfers. Only in a few benchmarks with large texture tests (3Dmark99) will you see a real difference.

Don't worry about running in 1x. It's no big thang...

[Greeble]

I have a similar problem, but I have a G200 not a G400.
GLQuake loads to a black screen then returns to a white desktop with all the icons missing, with no error message or anything... Or, it loads to a black screen then the computer freezes entirely and I have to press reset...
I have a Shuttle HOT-597 m/b (VIA MVP3 chipset) and I have installed the vgartd from the motherboard CD in normal mode. I have disabled the "Cache Rd+CPU Pipeline" in the BIOS, as recommended by the motherboard website, and disabled AGP 2X mode..
I have MGA BIOS 2.6, powerdesk 5.25, Windows 98 and DirectX 6.
Quake is set to run at 800x600x16 and my desktop is set to 16bpp. There is no opengl32.dll in my quake dir, and the DLL in the windows system dir is the one which is included with W98. I hope someone has some idea what is wrong, because I have tried everything I can and it still doesn't work... I have asked in this forum before but I guess my messages weren't specific enough, or something...

[Greeble]

Could this be anything to do with IRQ settings?
Bus Mastering?
DirectX files?
Some strange BIOS setting?
Windows files?
Registry setting?

Anything??

Is anyone actually reading this? :}

[RMW]

I have also had problems (big problems) getting my Matrox G400 (16mb oem), opengl and Quake 2 to work together under Win98.

The first thing that I have found after installing/reinstalling everything (drivers, OS's, Direct X. opengl ICD) was that some very strange, unexpected and unpredicatble results can occur.

At the end of all this I managed to get the whole shebang to work although to this day I do not know what combination of changes actually did the trick.

Firstly with respect to opengl, it does not work in 24 bit mode, opengl does not support 24 bit, therefore set your desktop colour depth to 16 bit.

I have found a very good check to see if opengl was working was to try one of the standard 3D screen savers that come with Win95/98 - controlpanel>> display>> sceensaver>> etc etc. I used the 3D text (which displays the word "opengl" by default), if this works and does not hang than you are halfway there. In my case this would cause my PC to hang.

Seconldy, check that your Direct 3D hardware acceleration is enabled for Win98 - start>> systemtools>> system information >>tools >>direct X etc etc. Also check control panel>> system>> performance (? I think) >>graphics >> and check that hardware acceleration slider is all the way up.

Finally Matrox drivers, this I haven't managed to fully resolve and I hope that some in this forum can shed some light.

What works for me is driver version 5.25, NO opengl beta ICD, and 16 bit colour. My understanding is that for drivers greater than version 5.13 have a full opengl ICD built in and the open GL beta ICD found on Matrox's website is not needed. I stumbled across this (NO openGL beta with drivers greater than version 5.13 information somewhere, and I cannot recall or find the site, so I don't how reliable it is).From my experience I could NOT get opengl to work WITH the Beta ICD and driver version 5.25. However tech support from matrox says I need this?!

Finally when reinstalling drivers make sure the previous driver set are FULLY removed (unistall using matrox utility provided, than scour hard disk and registry for any remaining wisps of matrox stuff, find - mga* g400* usually works).

If anyone can shed some light on Matrox's beta opengl ICD it would be greatly appreciated.

regards rmw


Conclusion to above (edited by rmw on 06-10-99)

Main problem of intermittant crashes, particularly with Q2 and matrox tech demo) caused by default AGP x2 with AGP x1 fallback on Asus P99B (slot 1 ZX) mb. By hard setting AGP to 1 (using reghacks zip from Matrox Users downloads has fixed the problem).

Thanx to Matrox Users Forum contributers for the info that finally solved this issue.

rmw

[This message has been edited by RMW (edited 10-06-1999).]

[Snake-Eyes]

Hi RMW. As far as I know, and my experiences seem to reinforce this, OpenGL was included with the Matrox drivers starting with 5.13. If you wish to use the beta ICD (which BTW, pre-dates the 5.21 drivers), you have to replace the G400ICD.DLL file in the Windows/System directory with the beta ICD's g400ICD.DLL file (G400ICD.DLL IS the ICD, no matter which version, BTW, at least so far). The one in the Windows/System directory belongs to the current version of the drivers you've installed (at least until you replace it, heh).

Others have reported speed boosts with each successive version of PowerDesk drivers in OpenGL (not my experience, but beside the point). Also, each successive released version supposedly added more stability/fixed more problems in the OpenGL ICD than the previous releases. So, theoretically, the 5.21 and 5.25 release ICD's should be more stable than the beta ICD, although I haven't used anything that really shows the beta to be any more unstable than the official releases.

In any case, older or not- the beta ICD appears to do everything that the official releases do (graphics-wise) on my setup, and is faster to boot. For example- Q3Test's q3demo1 gives me a 15.2 FPS average with either the 5.21 or 5.25 ICD. Installing the beta ICD over the release ICD file, then rerunning the benchmark gives me 24.7 FPS, an increase of over 9 FPS! Granted, many others see only moderate, if any, increases, but some DO get an increase with the beta.

Why Matrox would tell you it's required, I have no clue. It's not, unless you use OpenGL mainly for Q, Q2, or Q3, and/or their derivatives. Even then, it's not required, although it is desirable.

Just FYI- my system currently consists of a G400Max, standard clock rate (at the moment), P3-450 (558Mhz), 256 MB PC133 ram, SbLive! Value, WD6.4 GB hdd (soon to be replaced / augmented), Gateway 2000 Vivitron 17 monitor (also to be replaced / augmented, dual-head rulez!)- all on an Abit BE6 motherboard (using the original BIOS, at the moment).

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Ace


[This message has been edited by Ace (edited 10-01-1999).]

[Greeble]

Is there any reason why the beta ICD should be more stable than the (newer) 5.2x powerdesk versions? I remember when the beta first came out (ages ago.. Powerdesk 4) and there were many complaints about how unstable it was... But, it was a beta, so that wasn't really surprising... But the final drivers should be ok... So why do they still not work for me? I never tried the beta... But I would think the best version of the ICD would be the latest one (5.25), which I have, and which refuses to work for me...
I haven't tried them recently... But the W9x OGL screensavers have, in the past, locked up my machine entirely, just failed to start, started but went very slowly... Or actually worked ok (when I had uninstalled everything and gone back to the standard windows openGL stuff)... (Games have done similar too)

I have a G200 and not a G400, but I would hope that the recent drivers should work very well for my card, with no problems at all....