Upgrade woes

[Chris Blake]

I decided to upgrade from my rather old and tired K6-III 450 to a nice new 1.4 Athlon T-Bird running on and Epox 8K7A+ motherboard. I’ve kept hold of my G400Max.

Everything runs sweet in 2D but when I run any 3D game it either locks up immediately or after about a minute. Everything runs OK with busmastering disabled and I have a suspicion that everything was OK until I put the VIA UMDA busmastering IDE driver on but I haven't taken it off yet and tested it.

Do these newer chipsets still have problems with busmastering; having a PCI card next to the AGP slot and all the rest, like when the G400Max came out?

I'm running W2K SP2, DX8a, latest drivers, bios, etc.

Another weird thing is that Powerstip shows the AGP is only running at X2 (the MB does X4). My work PC, which has also a G400Max also is happily running at X4. What going on there then?

[The PIT]

Take the Via crap off becuase you don't need with 2k. Check that you've got the latest bios and take it from there.

[Chris Blake]

Nope that wasn't the problem. I have however spoken to two people who work in IT support who tell me that a G400Max will not run stable on newer, faster boards. Can anyone confirm this?

I think I might get myself a cheap GeForce 2 MX if this is the case and move my G400Max over to a server I'm building. The G550 doesn't appeal and that'll tide me over until Matrox release something I'd consider worth buying (whenever that may be).

[The PIT]

lets put it this way if that was true this place would be awash with angru g400max users. Post your full specs which card is in what slot and your irq listings so we can get out teeth into things.

[Chris Blake]

True, true. This is why I doubted it.

Anyway

Epox 8K7A+
256Mb PC2100
Maxtor Diamond Max UDMA 66 HDD
Yammaha 4416 SCSI CRW
Creative 52x CDR
SCSI Zip100 Drive

Card order:

G400Max

3Com 10/100 LAN
3Com 56K Winmodem
Blank
WinTV Go
Advansys SCSI Card
Blank

I don't have IRQ list at the mo cause I'm not at home to check it but if I remember rightly All of the above cards are on IRQ11 (plus on board sound and the USB) and ACPI is the only thing on IRQ9.

[Kruzin]

First thing to try is moving the LAN to a different slot. The first PCI slot should be left empty when using an AGP card.

[The PIT]

What shares with what by the way? AGP and one will share. What about the rest?

[Chris Blake]

I appear to have solved my problem by pulling out the G400 and sticking in a 64Mb GeForce MX400 and an 8Mb PCI card. Still got dual-displays and everything runs stable (and much quicker).

This does seem to indicate that the G400Max does indeed have a problem on the Epox 8K7A+, maybe it does on other, newer boards?

I know about the first PCI slot issue but my network card had been sitting in the very same slot on the previous mainboard (an Epox MVPG5), along with the G400Max. That system ran, trouble free, for nearly two years. It’s still sitting in that same slot next to the GeForce card.

I shall press my G400Max into service on another system that I don't use for games and wait for the day when Matrox releases a card with good features and speed for gaming, in the meantime it's nVidia for games. Don't get me wrong here, I think Matrox make top hardware (I have 3 G400Max cards) but their current cards can't do games very well or ,it seems, run stable on newer main boards.

[dZeus]

I think that if you continued to troubleshoot for a short period of time, you would have been able to use your G400MAX in your current mobo.

[Sisyfos]

G400Max running stable on an Epox 8K7A here

[Kastuvas]

I have a feeling that changing it to AGPx1 would of solved the prblem

[Wombat]

I have a feelling he just wanted an excuse for that nVidia card.

[Chris Blake]