G400DH lockups..

[JK]

Hi,

First of all I would like to say that the G400 is worth all the money spent. The image quality is just stunning.. Now to the sad part:
I got my new machine last week and so far there is only one (1!) thing working properly on my machine. Unreal Tournament Demo. Although this is a good thing I have encountered the following problems:

- Quake3 Lockups after 1-5secs of playing.
- Hidden&Dangerous will not start.
- Need for Speed 4 will not start.
- Windows random lockups.
- Matrox TechDemo lockups after 1-5 secs
- PowerDesk will not load after Boot (happend only twice in 5 days)
- Windows will not start at all.. (about 20% chance).. Gives me the nice Blue Screen of Gates..

Please help me if it's possible. I am quite desperate and I would like some sleep soon...

My setup is:

AMD Athlon 500
128mb PC100
Matrox G400DH 32megs
2X IBM GXP 14G
MSI 6167 board
Diamond MX300
Windows 98, DirectX 7.0 , Office 2000
PowerDesk 5.25 with ICD Beta

I have checked that my G400 is properly installed in the AGP-slot and there are no hardware conflicts under Windows. Matrox diagnostics and DirectX diag. shows no problems.

Thanks in advance,
JK

BTW, My UT score is:
1024x768 32bit with all the eyecandy
48-49 FPS average after 3 hours of DM.
Is that ok?

[Nuno]

Now let´s see:

Use the 5.25 ICD. The beta is just that, a beta, that could give you trouble.
Did you have a previous video card? There could be some drivers left. Try using Matrox unninstaller and reinstall 5.25.
Be sure to use the correct agp drivers for your motherboard.
Try forcing AGP 1x.
G400 must have a IRQ (check if one is assigned) and it best be IRQ 9 or higher.
Disable all video caching/shadowing in the bios.
Use the latest reference drivers for the MX300. Many aureal sound cards give major trouble with G400 that are solved by using the latest drivers.

[WayneHu]

According your situation, maybe you can try forcing AGP 1x. In most situation, AGP 2x doesn't help G400(32MB) very much...

[WayneHu]

And I just attached a 486 CPU fan on the heat-sink of my G400. Now it works stably at AGP 2x mode... at 82 MHz on P3B-F. No more corrupted screen on 2D(32bpp) and hangup on 3D

All I can guess is that my G400 needs not only a heat-sink but a fan... even in normal AGP bus speed... (on my Previous MB, P2B-F). Thus I doubt the quality of Millennium G400 DH 32MB OEM version(Assembled in China) is good or not...



[This message has been edited by WayneHu (edited 10-08-1999).]

[Iskandhar Shahril]

Hi All,

This is the first time I'm using this forum and I'm from Singapore. Anyway, I really agree with JK on the G400. It really is worth my S$340 bucks I spent on it!! Visual quality was out of this world!! I used to own ATI products but after having a test run on the Matrox G400 (courtesy of a friend), all I have to say is; "IT ROCKS!!!"

But like JK, I have been running into problems too. When I play racing games like DRIVER, REVOLT & SEGA RALLY 2, my system would just suddenly hangs in the middle of the game!!! This does not happen when I played the game at work with a Voodoo Banshee card from STB. There's however no problems with games like Expendable (Obviously it was wriiten for the G400), FIFA 99, Quake II, UNREAL (Although the graphics was CRAP here!!!), MS International Football 2000 and other games. However, unlike JK, NEED FOR SPEED 4 runs just fine!!!

And WayneHu mentioned that a Fan would help. Guess what? I did attached a fan right under the G400 chip! A BIG ONE TOO!! But it still happens!!

And NUNO, I've already tried the video cache/shadowing in the BIOS, but it doesn't help!!

Don't know if the New TurboGL Drivers would help??? Anyway, my setup is:

PIII 500MHz
128MB SDRAM
2 x IBM 9.1GB HDD
AWE64 Gold Sound Card
WIN98SE
DirectX 6.1
G400 32MB DH
Gigabyte BX2000 Mobo.
Powerdesk 5.25 ICD

Hope there will be some answers to this.
-----------------------------------------
> Matrox User from Sunny Singapore <

[Scytale]

Well, did you try forcing AGP1X?

[Iskandhar Shahril]

Hi there again Scytale!

Thanks for the info. Anyway, I did what you told me to and downloaded and installed the file. Guess what???

Same thing!! REVOLT still hangs in the middle of the race!! SHIT!!! I'm really lost at what I'm going to do next!! I don't regret getting the G400, coz I still dig it's awesome DVD quality and multi-monitor support. (I use two monitors; one for Photoshop and the other for Dreamweaver)

Hope to resolve this problem soon. Thanks again Scytale for the help. It was really nice of you!

CHOW!!

[Iskandhar Shahril]

Hi there Scytale,

Thanks for the advice, but how the hell do I do that??????? I'm quite new to all these terms and ways of tweaking. Maybe you can explain the steps one by one, or, you could mail me the steps??? digitaldreams@mcafeemail.com

Once again, thanks!!!

[Scytale]

Hi Iskandhar. Download <a href="http://www.murc.ws/Utils/PD5RegHacks.zip">PD5RegHacks</a>, unzip it, click the file ForceAGP1X.reg, and reboot...

[clove]

me too..... pissing me off
REVOLT!!! hangs everytime

[JK]

Thanks for the help, Nuno and WayneHu. I haven't had any other graphics card on this machine and there is no IRQ problem, but I will try the new 5.30 drivers and disable video caching/shadowing. I also have the latest AGP and MX300 drivers.

I might go with AGP1x also, if nothing else helps..

I'll get back to you all when I have some results.

cu,

JK