G400Max+K7M=CRASH (games only)

[Brued]

I just got my K7&Asus K7M not to long ago and dropped in my G400Max wich worked fine in my Epox K6-3 system. and now ANY game i try to play crashes. some times it crashes when loading the game some times it crashes after playing for a few hours. I'v try'd everthing i can think of Reinstall windows used all the latest drivers for EVERTHING. even the keyboard. played with memory timing. downclocked the G400 tried the onboard sound etc etc.
PLZ PLZ PLZ help me.
My system.
(300W PS)
Win 98
K7-500
Asus K7M rev. 1.04 (bios km1101)
128MB PC-100
G400Max (5.41.008, bios 1.5-22)
Diamond MX300 (4.06.2040)(Diamond driver won't work)
Promise Fasttrak33
Aopen ITU2 modem
Quntum KA+ 9.1
Quntum CX 6.4 *2 (raid)
Acer 40*Max CD-ROM
Acer CDR-W
plus 3 4" Sunson chase fan's


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Did WHAT! WHEN! no you gotta have the wrong guy!

[Muad'Dib]

I had the same problem, but I only have a K6-300. Ummm, you might want to try disabling busmastering. It worked for me. Are the crashes hard freezes or just back to desktop? Have other people gotten your motherboard + G400's working on their system? It could be a conflict between mobo and card? That's all I can think of. Your IRQ's aren't being shared or anything, right?

[Brued]

HMMMMM bus mastering never tried that. as far as the IRQ go's there all fine and i'd say the 9 out of 10 crashes would be just a dump back to the desktop. 1 strange thing is when i get booted out of Quake3 the screen looks like the gamma has been cranked up full. i have to restart or go into quake again to fix it.
I'll give the Bus Mastering a try and let ya know.

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Did WHAT! WHEN! no you gotta have the wrong guy!

[Kruzin]

Disabling busmastering is not a sollution. It cripples the card, nearly halfing it's performance. If you turn that off, you may as well run an old PCI card.

Given the randomness of your crashes, I would first look at heat as the culprit (the number of fans means less than the configuration of them). If that's not it, try some different RAM in the system.

Also, make sure you have the latest BIOS for your mobo and the G400 (and anything else with a flashable bios in your system). get all latest drivers for all components too.

You could also try the registry hacks from MURCs utils page, and see if forcing 1x AGP does the trick.

And give us a listing of your IRQ assignments from your device manager...

[Brued]

Ok heat souldn't be the problem in the front of the chase i have 2 4" fan stacked one on top of the other. they cover the all the card plus get the the bottom half of the cpu
the 3rd fan is a blowhole. I'll give the AGP *1 a try. while you guys go over the IRQ list.

00 System timer
01 Standard 101/102-Key or Microsoft Natural Keyboard
02 Programmable interrupt controller
03 Communications Port (COM2)
04 Communications Port (COM1)
05 Vortex AU8830 Sound Blaster Pro Emulation
06 Standard Floppy Disk Controller
08 System CMOS/real time clock
09 Vortex AU8830 Multifunction PCI Platform
09 Vortex AU8830 PCI Audio
09 VIA Tech PCI to USB Universal Host Controller
09 VIA Tech PCI to USB Universal Host Controller
09 IRQ Holder for PCI Steering
10 Promise FastTrak IDE RAID Controller (Win95-98)
10 IRQ Holder for PCI Steering
11 Matrox Millennium G400 DualHead - English
11 IRQ Holder for PCI Steering
12 Microsoft PS/2 Mouse (InteliPoint)
13 Numeric data processor
14 VIA Bus Master PCI IDE Controller
14 Primary IDE controller (dual fifo)
15 VIA Bus MAster PCI IDE Controller
15 Secondary IDE controller (dual fifo)

Thanks for the help.




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Did WHAT! WHEN! no you gotta have the wrong guy!

[Muad'Dib]

Kruzin, it IS a solution, it's just not a very good one. Trust me, with my machine, I need all the bus-mastering I can get and I ain't getting any = very angry me!!! I thought it would simply be a good place to start. BTW, it's still better than an old PCI card. Trust me..... Oh, one quick question while I'm at it. Regarding the reg hacks, when you hack to AGP 1X, it asks to put in a command line (forgot what it is, sorry), but it says at the end AGP 2X. 2X says for AGP 1X at the end. Am I just really stupid or is something wrong? Maybe a little of both?

[Kruzin]

Brued-
Your IRQs looks fine. Main thing is that the G400 is on it's own, and above 8.

Have you tried running your drives off of the mobo, and testing without the FastTrack in the system? I'm not really familiar with those, but have heard they can be tricky to get running with a G400 sometimes...

And I would still try another stick of RAM if these things don't help. Faulty RAM can cause completely random crashes (well, it is Random Access Memory )


Maud'Dib-
Disabling busmastering is a last LAST resort. I would recommend swapping motherboards before disabling BM. It is a troubleshooting measure, but not much more. No BM=no sidebanding=no real AGP=expensive 66MHz PCI card. The fact that you had to do it on your (rather old) system should not indicate to others, with modern systems and proper BM support, that this is a viable fix.

And I don't know what you mean about the reg hacks. There is ForceAGP1x.reg and ForceAGP2x.reg. There should be no echo saying 1x or 2x when they are merged...it will just add (or edit) a line in the registry, and go on it's happy way...

-note- You do need to reboot after applying the hacks...

[This message has been edited by Kruzin (edited 10 December 1999).]

[lemcc]

i have the same problem
and tried just about everything

does your video playback work
my system will not load videos it does not lock up it just sits there

and do you have problems with your browser locking up

k7m,g4oo, k7 500,mx300,96megs

[Muad'Dib]

I wasn't implying it was a viable fix, but your point is well taken. The things we learn every day, eh? You would change mobo's before disabling BM? WOW


In regards to the reg hacks, my bad, I read it wrong. It says ...\forcea~2.reg when I click on force AGP 1X. I guess I just interpretted it (without really reading it) that because the 2 is there, it was forcing AGP 2X from the 1X force. I don't know if this is any more clear, but if not, I don't care. I wrote 4 essays for school this week and have finals next week. If that's not an excuse to not be able to explain things, I don't know what is !!!

[Kruzin]

forcea~2.reg ??

That ain't right.
Somehow, the long filename got truncated there (probably unziped with DOS PKUnzip or something).

My guess is that ForceAGP2x was truncated to forcea~1.reg, and ForceAGP1x was truncated to forcea~2.reg.

Unzip them again, with Winzip, or some newer util that supports long filenames...

[Brued]

Kruzin
I tried the AGP*1 and so fare it seams to be working i play'd Quake3 for about an hour and didn't have a crash. I'm not to happy about having to use APG*1 but the speed impacked seams to be minamal,3fps in q3. A friend of mine has a really good stick of PC-100 memory i'll see if he'll let me use it for testing.

Iemcc
for video play back if you mean MPG's yes i can play them. and yes i had a few browers crashes (no lockups) but nothing more then your average Microsoft softsiht i mean wear =}

On a side note dose anyone know how to find out the combinded power of the 3.3 and 5v of a power supply? I don't think mine makes the cut for AMD recomended.

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Did WHAT! WHEN! no you gotta have the wrong guy!

[Kruzin]

Yea...you won't see much of a difference from 1x to 2x. That 3fps in Q3 is probably going to be the biggest hit you see. Other games will stay the same, or loose almost no speed.

2x AGP is hype, until there is more software/games that actually use textures that exceed what the cards memory can handle. Q3 is the first game to start really pushing that limit, but as you can see, it's not breaking the limit...

[Brued]

Well thanks all for the tip's and help. when or if i find a fix that dosn't inclued turning somthing off or hacking this or that i'll be sure and post it.

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Did WHAT! WHEN! no you gotta have the wrong guy!

[Zwisch]

Hi,

maybe it's in the text but I am just so damn lazy tonight that I did not want to read it all...

Did you at least install the AGP miniport for your northbridge and the BusMaster from VIA for your southbridge? You should need a 3 in 1 service pack for the VIA chipset but since Asus only comes with the BusMastering drivers, I guess this is the minimum to install... I's also important that your USB was enabled when you isntalled windows...
I am using a K7M + G400 MAX at work and all is running just fine.
Z

[Brued]

Well i do have all the drivers for the chipset miniport,busmastering,PCI and IRQ, but.. I don't think i had USB enabled when i installed Windows. i was worry'd about IRQ when i frist set it up so i turn'd off everything i though i didn't need. I take it that AGP is still part of the USB bus or something like that.

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Did WHAT! WHEN! no you gotta have the wrong guy!