Gaming in win2k

[vajper]

Hi!

I just got my G400 MAX and I'm running it in Linux and Win2k. Immediately I got problem running some games under Win2k.

The problem occurs every time I try to play Unreal Tournament. After let's say 10 minutes of playing the picture freezes and horizontal and vertical lines appear on the frozen picture. More and more lines appears until I restart the computer. Sometimes it's possible to exit the game but Win2k is garbled too

The same problem sometimes occours in the game Rally Masters too...

I haven't tried the games in win98 because I don't want to reinstall My system is like following:

Dual 366 on BP6 o/c to 550 (have tried in original speed)
128Mb RAM
G400 MAX (latest drivers)
Hoontech Digital NX soundcard
IBM GXP HD
Tekram 390U2W SCSI-adapter

Please help...

[dZeus]

hmmm....
no problems whatsoever on my rig (see my webpage, on the murc news page for details).

My best guess is that the BP6 is causing the problem, since I've heard lots of people complaining about the buginess of the BIOS, but maybe the G400 drivers SMP compatibility level are causing the problems.

I would advise you to flash your G400 with the latest BIOS, and also flash your MoBo BIOS to the latest availble (even beta), and install the latest Win2k drivers (5.10)

[Sarc]

I was reading a tech page on gaming in Win2K and if I remember correctly it said that Unreal Tournament had problems with Win2K by it's nature. I personally don't play UT but still sad that it doesn't work.
Good Luck.

[dZeus]

I don't think UT has stability issues with Win2k, since it _never_ crashes on my PC.

However there is a lot of clipping in the game, but that probably also holds for Win98 and the G400?

[Vlip]

UT works more than perfectly in my rig.

So it should be something else.

I'd bet the problem might be because of the smp configuration. Why not try to remove on proc just to see if that changes anything.

Vlip

[HedsSpaz]

dZeus is right. The SMP compatability of the G400 drivers is improving, but it isn't ready for full time work yet. If you head over to the Matrox Tech Support forums you'll notice lots of thread about this problem. With the 5.06 PD SMP didn't work at all. The 10 minutes of actually working is what people have been reporting with the 5.10 drivers so far. If you want it to be completely stable you have to force Win2000 boot using only 1 CPU. I forget what exactly the command line switch for it is, I know that somewhere on MURC or the MGI forums you can find someone who has posted what it is. I think it's something like /smp 0, thats mostly just a wild geuss though.

Hope that helps
Ian

[Frankfurt]

i cant say that UT never crashes on me, normally it crashes when i alt-enter twice in one gaming session, but thats not hard to avoid doing.
about the lines on the screen, i notice that in diablo 2, i think it has something to do with AGP, i have only once experienced it in UT and i saw it happen in 98 when i was running in AGP 1x, with the VIA drivers (before version 4.02) after i installed 4.02 in that os, everything was fine again

Frankfurt
editlooking back, im realizing that i didnt really need to post this, but hey...it might help someone else edit
------------------
Here is my crappy system config:
K6-3 450, 256MB SDRAM,Tyan Trinity ATX (S1598 2mb cache on board), Matrox G400 Max
Windows 98SE/Mandrake Linux 7.0/win2k/beos 5.0 (free version)
SB 128 PCI
AOpen Lan aln-325c



[This message has been edited by Frankfurt (edited 22 June 2000).]

[Rattledagger]

Copy your normal NTx-start-line in boot.ini, and add /onecpu at the end.
You should call it something else, but leave /fastdetect. (fastdetect for win2k, not for NT4)

[dZeus]

dZeus is right. The SMP compatability of the G400 drivers is improving, but it isn't ready for full time work yet. If you head over to the Matrox Tech Support forums you'll notice lots of thread about this problem. With the 5.06 PD SMP didn't work at all. The 10 minutes of actually working is what people have been reporting with the 5.10 drivers so far. If you want it to be completely stable you have to force Win2000 boot using only 1 CPU. I forget what exactly the command line switch for it is, I know that somewhere on MURC or the MGI forums you can find someone who has posted what it is. I think it's something like /smp 0, thats mostly just a wild geuss though.

well, I am quite sure the G400 drivers are almost 100% SMP compatible since the 5.04 drivers, but they are just not quite SMP capable. As long as you run Q3A with "r_smp 0", it should not be a problem. And running Win2k with only 1 CPU enabled seems to be completely unnecessary. If your setup still crashes when in SMP mode (and not playing with "r_smp 1"), you should try to flsah your motherboard BIOS. The Abit BP6 is famous for it's SMP problems (and lots of other problems). Search around the web for a solution for this board... but my best guess is that it is almost entirely in the Motherboard's BIOS

[ph0rk]

vajper,

I've also got a BP6/G400 setup running Win2k, and I have no problems with UT at all.

With the BP6, I've found that it's important to:

a) Never, ever use ACPI
b) Never, ever, ever use the HPT366 controller
c) Never, ever, ever, ever flash with the latest BIOS until that BISO has been out for at least a month without being recalled.

The last 2 have been recalled. The current BIOS is RU. It's been working fine for me. I never touched PW or QQ, so I went right from NJ to RU.

The above points still hold true even with the RU BIOS, mind, you, even though Abit claims that ACPI will work now. Just don't go there, it's not worth the trouble.

Oh, and make sure your AGP apperature size is set to 256, and that your G400 is on IRQ 9 or higher. Forcing AGP 1x is a good idea too.

Seems like a lot of work, but that's usually necessary with any configuration to get it working just right

Happy UTing.

------------------
Visit the House of Stuff
http://www.houseofstuff.net