Video BIOS Shadow", "Video RAM Cacheable", and "Video BIOS Cacheable"

[Dentaku]

Is the info about Video BIOS Shadow", "Video RAM Cacheable", and "Video BIOS Cacheable" in this article applicable to G200 owners? http://www.tweak3d.net/tweak/mcm2/
I'm not surre how my Abit BX6 is set and I haven't tried any of this yet but I just want to know it it will mess stuff up if I try.

[cjolley]

You are not likely to cause problems disabling these.
In fact, it is more likely to increase stability.
chuck

[MURCer]

Turn them off. The only option that might bring a very little extra speed is "Video RAM Cacheable". It's not the RAM on the video card that is cached but the part of the main memory that is used to transfer data to the video card. But you need at least a 200MHz memory bus to really notice a difference.

[dZeus]

I just turned them off... in my case, it was NOT a succes!

I installed win2k with the things turned on, and not every time I have a 'cold' bootup, my pc turns itself off twice, exactly when the blue bar of 'starting win2k' has reached the full size. And the third time it makes it into windows desktop, and the first 50 secdonds, it loads everything as slow as a snail......

First I didn't know what was causing the problem, so I had this odd behaviour for about 5 times I started my pc. Then I changed the settings to on again, and everything works fine again.

[dneal]

The two bios caching options definetely don't do anything except in DOS. The Video RAM Cacheable option, however, does improve speed.

I remember testing this once. I think I gained 50-100pts in 3DMark 2000 or 99 on my P3-550/G400 combo....so it's probably worth leaving on.


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ABIT BF6, Pentium III Katmai 450->645MHz, 192MB SDRAM, Toshiba 6X DVD, Quantum Fireball Plus KA, Matrox Millenium G400 DH @ 160/200, Creative SBLive, Enlight 7237 Case, 300watt PCPC TurboCool PS, and some fun with a Dremel!

[Rags]

You are incorrect. They go beyond working in dos. They do have an impact in your OS, too.

Rags



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Partnership for an idiot free America

[dZeus]

I've concluded that the G400 does not like a busmaster device in the PCI slot next to it, even in Win2k ACPI, where all devices are on the same IRQ anyway.

I put a 3c905c-tx next to it, and that resulted into the problems in my previous post. And even more: If I hibernated, and booted up again, the network-connection was gone. So I reseated the 3c905c-tx in another slot, and everything works fine again :-)

Don't know if this is a bug in the Matrox drivers, or a limitation of the 1st PCI slot.

Now the 3c905c-tx is seated in PCI-5, which physically shares an IRQ with PCI-6, which is used ny the Pinnacle Studio PCTV Pro. And Pinnacle tells me this about the PCTV:

NEVER, _NEVER_, _EVER!!!_ share an IRQ used by this card with another device...

however, in win2k, everything is working just fine ;-)

[Heiney]

That's great they have some sort of effect on the OS............but is it good or bad?

All I know about these is they use some L2 cache.....and that's bad IMO........unless you get a video performance boost. I've only seen that with Video RAM Cacheable.



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ABIT BF6, Pentium III Katmai 450->645MHz, 192MB SDRAM, Toshiba 6X DVD, Quantum Fireball Plus KA, Matrox Millenium G400 DH @ 160/200, Creative SBLive, Enlight 7237 Case, 300watt PCPC TurboCool PS, and some fun with a Dremel!

[runderwo]

>>NEVER, _NEVER_, _EVER!!!_ share an IRQ used by this card with another device...

Oh really... that's a rather broad generalization... considering it's INCORRECT...

If you have IRQ sharing problems, either
1) The device has a hardware bug
2) The mainboard has a hardware bug
3) The mainboard has a BIOS bug
4) Your OS doesn't support shared IRQ lines
5) The device has a driver bug

We can cross out 1 right away. Many people (myself included) have not had ANY trouble sharing G400 with ANY devices. I can attest that it works fine on Abit BE6/BF6/BP6/BE6-II/BX6-R2, AOpen AX6BC/Millenium, and MSI MS-6163 R1/R2 and BXMaster.

Similarly we can cross out 5 since once again people have it working in all types of configurations.

Leaving one of either 2, 3, or 4, which need to be checked on an individual system basis. You can NOT make a generalization based on a single experience. That's like saying, you went to Dierbergs and bought some milk. It was sour. Therefore ALL milk that Dierbergs sells is sour...

[runderwo]

dZeus:

I won't edit my post for my own philosophical reasons, but I will say that "you" was not directed personally, more of a collective "you".

However I will stand by my assertion that it is incorrect that G400 will not share an IRQ. It's worked flawlessly too many times to count. Yes, you may have an IRQ sharing problem, but it's not a bug in the G400 or its driver (as of yet).

My sincere apologies for coming across harshly. I had a long night and should not have posted.

[dZeus]

what are you talking about? Please re-read my post. I am not talking about the G400 _at all_ when I said "do not share blablabla"!

please read posts more carefully.... it prevents confusion like this.

And _NOW_ (in THIS post) I do advice not to use PCI-1 with the G400, for numerous reasons. You can say that it is hardware fault, etc., but it won't solve any possible problems that are likey to show up when using PCI-1

[Dentaku]

Well, I disabled Video Bios Shadow and Video Bios Cachable (Video Ram Cachable was already disabled) and it doesn't seem to have messed anything up.

[ph0rk]

Bah. It depends what device you have in PCI-1. (BTW, we should be more specific - BX boards share an IRQ between the AGP slot and PCI-1, not sure if others do)

I have a Sigma Hollywood + in PCI-1 on my Abit BP6 (hello Matrox SMP support would be nice sometime) and they share very well thank you. It wouldn't share nice with a D-Link DFE-530TX, however.

Go Figure. *shrugs*

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Cory Grimster
cory@houseofstuff.net
http://www.houseofstuff.net