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G400MAX killer
Wondering if anyone has experienced or heard anything similar to my story, which is as follows.
I have a Tyan Trinity 100AT (S1590) super 7 board running a K6-2 400. It's now currently my secondary machine but it was my main computer for a long time. About three years ago I had saved up enough money to replace my Matrox Mystique PCI with a G400MAX that I had been drooling over for months. Ordered the G400, installed it, played some bundled Expendable and everything seemed good. About a month later my system seemed to be locked up with the monitor in sleep so I hit the reset button. I got nothing. Further investigation revealed my brand new G400 was dead. I got an RMA from Matrox and sent it in. No big deal, this kind of thing happens. I got the replacement card, put it in and was happy again. About three weeks later the same thing happened. This time again I had a dead card. I got another RMA and shipped the card off but I was starting to wonder what was going on. I got the third card back, put it in and within a week it too was dead. So dead no amount of BIOS recovery flash would help. The system would power up and give the "no video" BIOS beep code. Tried the dead cards in other systems with the same result. By this time I didn't know what to do, thankfully the place I bought it from was very helpful and agreed to swap me a card of my choice. I chose a Leadtek TNT2 Ultra and never had a single problem with it. To date the following cards have spent extended amounts of time this board without incident:
Matrox Mystique PCI
Matrox Productiva G100
Matrox Mystique G200
Leadtek TNT2 Ultra
Cardex S3 Virge PCI
ATI Rage Fury Pro
ATI Radeon 64DDR VIVO (Locks up in 3D modes)
To date this is the only major problem I've ever had with this system that I have no been able to figure out. The G400s were all different, sporting different serial numbers and the last one even had a different style of heatsink on the RAMDAC. This brings me to my dilemma. I currently have a G550 in my main system, an Athlon 1GHz. No complaints other than it leaves a bit to be desired in terms of framerates. I would like to put my Radeon in the Athlon so I can enjoy high fps, frequent locks and the raging bug factory ATI calls "drivers." I would then like to put my G550 in the K6-2 system and use it as my "work" system. I'm rather afraid that if I do that though I will start killing off G550s. It is under warranty but if at all possible I'd like to avoid having to send yet another card back to Matrox. I E-mailed Tyan about the problem but never heard anything back. If anyone has any idea at all what could be going on here please drop a response. I did a forum search before posting and found a lot of people with compatibility problems but nothing about cards actually dieing repeatedly. Thanks ahead of time and I apologize for being so long winded.
I have a Tyan Trinity 100AT (S1590) super 7 board running a K6-2 400. It's now currently my secondary machine but it was my main computer for a long time. About three years ago I had saved up enough money to replace my Matrox Mystique PCI with a G400MAX that I had been drooling over for months. Ordered the G400, installed it, played some bundled Expendable and everything seemed good. About a month later my system seemed to be locked up with the monitor in sleep so I hit the reset button. I got nothing. Further investigation revealed my brand new G400 was dead. I got an RMA from Matrox and sent it in. No big deal, this kind of thing happens. I got the replacement card, put it in and was happy again. About three weeks later the same thing happened. This time again I had a dead card. I got another RMA and shipped the card off but I was starting to wonder what was going on. I got the third card back, put it in and within a week it too was dead. So dead no amount of BIOS recovery flash would help. The system would power up and give the "no video" BIOS beep code. Tried the dead cards in other systems with the same result. By this time I didn't know what to do, thankfully the place I bought it from was very helpful and agreed to swap me a card of my choice. I chose a Leadtek TNT2 Ultra and never had a single problem with it. To date the following cards have spent extended amounts of time this board without incident:
Matrox Mystique PCI
Matrox Productiva G100
Matrox Mystique G200
Leadtek TNT2 Ultra
Cardex S3 Virge PCI
ATI Rage Fury Pro
ATI Radeon 64DDR VIVO (Locks up in 3D modes)
To date this is the only major problem I've ever had with this system that I have no been able to figure out. The G400s were all different, sporting different serial numbers and the last one even had a different style of heatsink on the RAMDAC. This brings me to my dilemma. I currently have a G550 in my main system, an Athlon 1GHz. No complaints other than it leaves a bit to be desired in terms of framerates. I would like to put my Radeon in the Athlon so I can enjoy high fps, frequent locks and the raging bug factory ATI calls "drivers." I would then like to put my G550 in the K6-2 system and use it as my "work" system. I'm rather afraid that if I do that though I will start killing off G550s. It is under warranty but if at all possible I'd like to avoid having to send yet another card back to Matrox. I E-mailed Tyan about the problem but never heard anything back. If anyone has any idea at all what could be going on here please drop a response. I did a forum search before posting and found a lot of people with compatibility problems but nothing about cards actually dieing repeatedly. Thanks ahead of time and I apologize for being so long winded.
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