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Yet another way to fix G400 lock-ups

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  • Yet another way to fix G400 lock-ups

    Possibly a few of you having trouble with the G400 have already tried it (with or without success), it seems pretty obvious. But just because it's so simple, I must have overlooked it in about 6 weeks of futile trouble shooting on a vanilla G400 that used to lock-up randomly in D3D. (I moved the card in and out, shifted IRQs etc -- in short, I tried everything suggested in this forum.) I found the clue only after replacing the vanilla with a max, so the replacement may have contributed to the 'cure' as well.

    Nonetheless, my conclusion is that one should leave the manufacturer's settings alone. So, what was it? Well, I have to admit, it was nothing more than some options found under

    HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Service\Class\Displa y\000x\Settings\DirectX

    -- and I only got them right by uninstalling the PD 5.30 used with the old card and reinstalling those same drivers for the new one.

    My max runs (and it rocks when it runs) with the following:

    32BitZ: 1
    Anisotropic: 0
    AntiAlias: 0
    BumpFiltering: 0
    D3DRendering: 0
    FlipOnVBlank: 1
    PalletizedTextures: 0
    UseTripleBuffering: 1

    AGP is at 2X; BusMastering is, of course, on; WriteCombining may be on or off -- no noticeable difference.

    Of all those options, anisotropic filtering seems to be the most critical. The others, including Bump Filtering (is this the EMBM?), seem to contribute their share each -- I still have to single them out and find the one(s) that are really harmful. Anyway, the settings above are the original ones made by the Matrox drivers, so I'm inclined to believe Matrox wouldn't exclude basic 3D features or features the G400 is famous for.

    Does the setting '0' really mean the feature cannot be used? The Tech Demo does EMBM anyway, and as yet I have not seen a difference in colour, alpha, shading etc. or general image quality when these options are set to '0'.

    Still, a somewhat fishy taste remains. Could it be that, naively speaking, a setting of '1' for one or more of the options will result in so much computational load that a still underlying HW problem is made to rear it's ugly head, whereas the setting '0' just keeps it from doing so?

    I would greatly appreciate it, if someone could answer my questions. All of the above, of course, is only valid for D3D. I use OGL only to look at Win screen savers sometimes.

    As for overclocking, the same conclusion holds. Stay with the manufacturer, that is. So I began to use the Matrox Tweak Utility instead of MGATweak. My max is stable and clean up to 162/216 (108 %), but only when I use the Matrox prog. It seems to do a better job, at least when going above 300 Mhz Sclk. Presumably, that's because it handles Duty Cycle Correction more properly.

    Ah, yes, forget my specs: p2-450, Gigabyte 686BX, 384 MB PC-100, Adaptec 2940UW, Accton NIC, Aureal 1 A3D sound card, G400 max.

    One last word: I used to love AND hate this card, now I just LOVE it. For professional 2D graphics (which is my main app) there certainly is no better and faster card. And Matrox seems to be one of the very few vid card makers left that even care for 2D. As regards 3D -- well, I'm not so sure. From my personal experience I have to say it's GREAT (image quality, speed and all), but that may change with new games and I still can't get rid of some doubt concerning reliabilty -- see above. -- Then again, I only play games in my rare spare time. So, all in all, I'm convinced that with the G400 I have found the best solution for my individual needs.


    [This message has been edited by Star F. (edited 24 October 1999).]
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