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  • P3V4X Alert: Stupid VIA Busmastering Tricks

    [If you can run 3DMark 2000 and successfully complete the 64MB Texture Speed test, you probably don't want to do this.]

    I've noticed a lot of people are having compatibility issues with the G400 and the newer VIA chipsets. In the past, these issues were resolved by upgrading VIA's busmastering drivers. Well, there is apparently an error in the 4.20 busmastering setup routine that prevents a proper installation of these drivers. (Scoundrels!)

    As a result, users have noticed issues related to AGP aperture, the misreporting of video memory and texture sizes, etc. The most obvious bug, and this I noticed on my machine, was the indentification of my hard drive in Windows Device Manager as a generic Type 47 device.

    If Device Manager is reporting your hard drive as a generic device, then the newest busmastering drivers have not been installed correctly. It should ID your hard drive by name.

    To rectify this, you have to install the 4.20 busmastering manually (as opposed to using the setup program). There are several quirks, however, which will prevent them from installing properly. I have mentioned them below and provided work arounds.

    In Device Manager, extend "Hard disk controllers."
    Click on VIA Bus Master PCI IDE Controller.
    Click on the "Properties" button.
    Click on the "Driver" tab.

    The provider for the 4.20 busmastering drivers should be VIA Technologies, Inc. and not Microsoft. They should be dated 1-24-2000 and not some date from a year or two ago.

    You can manually install the updated drivers from here. After I installed the drivers and rebooted, I was prompted for a soundcard cab file for my Vortex 2 soundcard. You'll probably want to have your soundcard drivers on hand. (Windows directed me to insert the Windows 98se CD. The file was not on it, but was included in my card's driver update.)

    Click on the "Update Driver..." button and tell the wizard you want to specify the driver. Use the "Have disk" function and point it to the directory where you have the 4in1 4.20 drivers stored. They should be in a subdirectory called "WIN9X."

    You will be prompted for a file called "VIADSK.CAT." Skip it.

    IMPORTANT: After the drivers have done their thing, Windows will prompt you to restart. Just say NO. It may prompt you again. Say NO.

    When you are back to the desktop, hold down the left shift key and click on the Start Menu.

    While continuing to hold down the shift key, chose restart and, of course, restart Windows. (If the machine reboots, as opposed to Windows simply restarting, you did it wrong, and will have to do it again.)

    When "Windows is restarting..." appears on your screen, release the shift key.

    Upon entering Windows, devices will install, and you may be prompted for the soundcard file and the "VIADSK.CAT" file again. I installed the soundcard file and skipped the VIADSK.CAT file. If you have to restart, use the Start Menu/Shift key method I described above.

    When you're back in Windows, check in Device Manager to make sure your hard disk is not being identified as a "Type 47" generic drive. If your hard drive is reported by name, you're set.

    You may not want to do this is everything is working fine or reasonably fine. I have not tried this with a Matrox board. Maybe some brave soul should give it a whirl and report back.

    For some odd reason, Matrox drivers frequently have to be installed after VIA busmastering drivers are installed. I've read that these VIA drivers must be installed after the videocard's drivers have been installed. People have gotten around this paradox by installing the Matrox drivers, installing the busmastering drivers, and reinstalling the Matrox drivers immediately afterwards. Again, I have not tried this with a Matrox board.

    I'm not sure if any of this is applicable to the new Asus Athlon board or any other VIA-based board. You might want to check Device Manager, however, and see if your hard drives are being reported correctly.

    Good luck. I hope this helps.

    Paul
    paulcs@flashcom.net

    [This message has been edited by paulcs (edited 20 April 2000).]

  • #2
    holy muddled up via busmatering hard drive driver quirks batman, your right. in device manager my hd is being reported as a generic ide type 47...
    in hd drive conrollers; its reporting that via busmaster pci ide controller is installed?
    i don't get it. paul how did you work this out?

    ------------------
    Aopen HX08 full tower case, Asus P3V4X bios 1.03, P!!! FC-PGA 550e @733, 160M pc100 sdram, Matrox G400MAX bios 1.4 PDesk 5.52.015, Seagate 28.5G Ultra ATA66 7200rpm HD, Pioneer 103s DVD 6X/32X drive, SB AWE64 Gold ISA sound card, SMC pci ethernet adaptor, Castlewood Orb 2.2G media drive, Nortel 100 cable modem, Mitsubishi 1995 19in monitor, occasionally use dualhead for dvd on a Sony 80cm Wega TV, MS natural keyboard, MS Intellimouse Explorer,
    Win98SE 4.10.2222A, DX7a.

    Aopen HX08 full tower case, Asus P3V4X bios 1.04beta, P!!! FC-PGA 550e @770, Swiftech MC370-3 peltier cooler 256M PC133 Crucial 7E SDRAM, Matrox G400MAX bios 1.4 PDesk 5.52.015, Seagate 28.5G Ultra ATA66 7200rpm HD, Pioneer 103s DVD 6X/32X drive, SB AWE64 Gold ISA sound card, SMC pci ethernet adaptor, Castlewood Orb 2.2G media drive, Nortel 100 cable modem, Mitsubishi 1995 19in monitor, occasionally use dualhead for dvd on a Sony 80cm Wega TV, MS natural keyboard, MS Intellimouse Explorer,
    Win98SE 4.10.2222A, DX7a.

    Comment


    • #3
      It's being posted on the Asus USENET group. I reproduced it on my machine and filled in some of the blanks.

      Before you do this, run 3DMark 2000. Check to see if you pass the 64 MB Texture Rendering Speed test. If it works, do not do this.

      Paul
      paulcs@flashcom.net

      Comment


      • #4
        It appears a cold boot of Windows, in conjunction with VIA's stupid drivers, are causing both the 64 MB texture error and the problems with crashes with the AGP aperture set to 256 MB. This puts Matrox users between a rock and a hard place when it comes to these drivers.

        The work around is to, once again, hold down the shift key, restart from the Start Menu, and release the shift key after getting the message, "Windows is restarting..."

        I suspect you have to do this every time.

        Again, I wonder if K7V users are having similar problems.

        Paul
        paulcs@flashcom.net

        Comment


        • #5
          i wish via & asus would resolve these issues so we don't have to F#$% around in this convoluted manner so our systems work at spec..
          arhh.
          sorry just venting, i'm prone to do this from time to time.
          cheers paul.

          ------------------
          Aopen HX08 full tower case, Asus P3V4X bios 1.03, P!!! FC-PGA 550e @733, 160M pc100 sdram, Matrox G400MAX bios 1.4 PDesk 5.52.015, Seagate 28.5G Ultra ATA66 7200rpm HD, Pioneer 103s DVD 6X/32X drive, SB AWE64 Gold ISA sound card, SMC pci ethernet adaptor, Castlewood Orb 2.2G media drive, Nortel 100 cable modem, Mitsubishi 1995 19in monitor, occasionally use dualhead for dvd on a Sony 80cm Wega TV, MS natural keyboard, MS Intellimouse Explorer,
          Win98SE 4.10.2222A, DX7a.

          Aopen HX08 full tower case, Asus P3V4X bios 1.04beta, P!!! FC-PGA 550e @770, Swiftech MC370-3 peltier cooler 256M PC133 Crucial 7E SDRAM, Matrox G400MAX bios 1.4 PDesk 5.52.015, Seagate 28.5G Ultra ATA66 7200rpm HD, Pioneer 103s DVD 6X/32X drive, SB AWE64 Gold ISA sound card, SMC pci ethernet adaptor, Castlewood Orb 2.2G media drive, Nortel 100 cable modem, Mitsubishi 1995 19in monitor, occasionally use dualhead for dvd on a Sony 80cm Wega TV, MS natural keyboard, MS Intellimouse Explorer,
          Win98SE 4.10.2222A, DX7a.

          Comment


          • #6
            This might be entirely VIA's fault. Before you install the busmastering drivers, could you run 3DMark 2000 and check to see if the 64 MB Texturing Speed test runs properly?

            If it doesn't, it'll say something to the effect of "not enough AGP memory."

            Paul
            paulcs@flashcom.net

            Comment


            • #7
              Thanks for the information Paul,
              I have wondered why the VIA busmaster drivers did not install for the longest time now (I had given up). VIA drivers only enabled DMA on the drives. System still reported drives as type 47. HD-Tach would blue screen of near death every time I ran it and I think this is the reason. I just installed scsi and wanted to check performance compared to ultra66 and ended up using EZ-SCSI 5. I think that 3dmark2000 does work most of the time with 64meg textures on my system (win98se). In win2000 3dmark2000 64meg textures do not work on any machine due to some kind of 48meg limit in win2000.

              Comment


              • #8
                Well, I've tried both the 4.17 and the 4.20 busmastering drivers. Both had to be installed manually, and both gave the same error and have the same fix for the 64 MB Texturing bug: a warm boot.

                I'll check the 256 MB AGP aperture business in a few minutes. Right now, it's set to 128 MB.

                Paul
                paulcs@flashcom.net

                Comment


                • #9
                  Well, that was appalling.

                  After opening the AGP aperture to 265 MB, I got a massive performance hit. I lost 16 fps in Quake3 and just over 700 3DMarks in 3DMark 2000. The restart with the shift key down fix didn't help matters at all. The board/drivers do not appear to like this setting.

                  One of the interesting things about not using a G400 in this situation is that it eliminates the Matrox/VIA driver roulette scenario. What effect this will have on the G400 is unknown to me. The fact that on many systems, the G400 (and GeForce) require this setting to function properly, and the P3V4X and/or VIA drivers can't seem to handle may be a bad sign.

                  Paul
                  paulcs@flashcom.net

                  [This message has been edited by paulcs (edited 22 April 2000).]

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Dwright, I think I may know why HDTach keeps BSODing you. If you're running the newest version there a bug in it. If you have CD auto-insert notification check for your CDROM it'll crash. You can either disable the notification or simply download the previous version.

                    ------------------
                    ASUS P3V4X,Celeron 366@550, 2.26v, 128mb PC133 Crucial RAM, G400 DH, Maxtor 7200rpm 10GB, 4.3GB Fujistu, Creative 24x, Creative X-Gamer, NIC (DSL baby!), ISA Modem




                    [This message has been edited by Rick (edited 21 April 2000).]
                    Asus A7V133, Duron 750@847, 512mb PC133 Crucial RAM, G400 DH, Maxtor 7200rpm 40 & 15GB, Liteon 16/10/32, Samsung 12x DVD, SB-Live, D-Link NIC

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Well, after changing busmastering, AGP, and videoboard drivers several times, not to mention my AGP aperture experiment, I lost a bit of speed. I uninstalled and reinstalled my video board and AGP drivers, and I got back the speed, but I lost some stability.

                      3DMark 2000 began locking up here and there, and the "warm boot" trick stopped working. I'd also get sporatic blue screens running the Quake3 timedemo. The blue screens pointed to my soundcard, of all things. After I uninstalled and reinstalled my soundcard drivers, things began working again.

                      Paul
                      paulcs@flashcom.net

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        when I had my agp aperature set to 256 I could get the 64mb test running in 3dmark 2000, but quake3 was helluva slow, about 33 fps

                        I then changed my aperature to 64 and quake3 sped up to normal 45 fps, but the 64 mb texture test failed. weird, huh?

                        I've got 128 mb ram.
                        My IDE controller is still using the MS drivers, I'll try the VIA busmasterin later on..

                        Rob

                        [This message has been edited by Rob M. (edited 21 April 2000).]

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          I have a VA503+. HDTach gives bluescreen only if Auto-insert notification is enabled on my Plextor PX-W8432T burner (which only works properly if DMA is unchecked) I don't feel like screwing with the drivers as stuff works fine. At least it did before I hosed the win98 partitioned. It]s not really hosed I just need to reinstall win98se (tomorrow, too many beers at the moment). Drive burns fine under win2k, but I need my TV card working. !@@@#$ ATI. I average 18MB/sec on my 20 GB Seagate
                          [size=1]D3/\/7YCR4CK3R
                          Ryzen: Asrock B450M Pro4, Ryzen 5 2600, 16GB G-Skill Ripjaws V Series DDR4 PC4-25600 RAM, 1TB Seagate SATA HD, 256GB myDigital PCIEx4 M.2 SSD, Samsung LI24T350FHNXZA 24" HDMI LED monitor, Klipsch Promedia 4.2 400, Win11
                          Home: M1 Mac Mini 8GB 256GB
                          Surgery: HP Stream 200-010 Mini Desktop,Intel Celeron 2957U Processor, 6 GB RAM, ADATA 128 GB SSD, Win 10 home ver 22H2
                          Frontdesk: Beelink T4 8GB

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            ok paul this is what i got in 3dmark200

                            the first test was with 64m agp aperture size

                            Your 3DMark2000 results in detail
                            Your 3DMark2000 Score is 3068 3D Marks.
                            Your PC Configuration
                            CPU Intel Pentium III 733 Mhz
                            3D Accelerator Matrox Millennium G400 DualHead Max - English
                            Chipset Matrox G400 MAX
                            Resolution 1024*768
                            Z-Buffer Depth 16-bit
                            Frame Buffer Triple
                            Refresh Rate V Sync.Off
                            CPU Optimization Intel(R) Pentium(R) III
                            Here are your detailed test results:
                            Test Results
                            3DMark Result 3068 3D marks
                            CPU Speed 213 CPU 3D marks
                            Game 1 - Helicopter - Low Detail 63.7 FPS
                            Game 1 - Helicopter - Medium Detail 42.9 FPS
                            Game 1 - Helicopter - High Detail 18.6 FPS
                            Game 2 - Adventure - Low Detail 60.0 FPS
                            Game 2 - Adventure - Medium Detail 43.4 FPS
                            Game 2 - Adventure - High Detail 27.1 FPS
                            Fill Rate (Single-Texturing) 270.0 MTexels/s
                            Fill Rate (Multi-Texturing) 268.3 MTexels/s
                            High Polygon Count (1 Light) 2245 KTriangles/s
                            High Polygon Count (4 Lights) 2061 KTriangles/s
                            High Polygon Count (8 Lights) 1877 KTriangles/s
                            8MB Texture Rendering Speed 220.4 FPS
                            16MB Texture Rendering Speed 212.2 FPS
                            32MB Texture Rendering Speed 156.5 FPS
                            64MB Texture Rendering Speed Not enough AGP memory
                            Bump Mapping (Emboss, 3-pass) 98.1 FPS
                            Bump Mapping (Emboss, 2-pass) 125.4 FPS
                            Bump Mapping (Emboss, 1-pass) 219.6 FPS
                            Bump Mapping (Environment) 91.0 FPS
                            the second test was with 128m agp aperture
                            size


                            Your 3DMark2000 results in detail
                            Your 3DMark2000 Score is 3064 3D Marks.
                            Your PC Configuration
                            CPU Intel Pentium III 733 Mhz
                            3D Accelerator Matrox Millennium G400 DualHead Max - English
                            Chipset Matrox G400 MAX
                            Resolution 1024*768
                            Z-Buffer Depth 16-bit
                            Frame Buffer Triple
                            Refresh Rate V Sync.Off
                            CPU Optimization Intel(R) Pentium(R) III
                            Here are your detailed test results:
                            Test Results
                            3DMark Result 3064 3D marks
                            CPU Speed 213 CPU 3D marks
                            Game 1 - Helicopter - Low Detail 63.5 FPS
                            Game 1 - Helicopter - Medium Detail 42.5 FPS
                            Game 1 - Helicopter - High Detail 18.6 FPS
                            Game 2 - Adventure - Low Detail 60.0 FPS
                            Game 2 - Adventure - Medium Detail 43.5 FPS
                            Game 2 - Adventure - High Detail 27.2 FPS
                            Fill Rate (Single-Texturing) 270.1 MTexels/s
                            Fill Rate (Multi-Texturing) 268.5 MTexels/s
                            High Polygon Count (1 Light) 2262 KTriangles/s
                            High Polygon Count (4 Lights) 2075 KTriangles/s
                            High Polygon Count (8 Lights) 1895 KTriangles/s
                            8MB Texture Rendering Speed 218.5 FPS
                            16MB Texture Rendering Speed 211.0 FPS
                            32MB Texture Rendering Speed 159.2 FPS
                            64MB Texture Rendering Speed 78.9 FPS
                            Bump Mapping (Emboss, 3-pass) 96.8 FPS
                            Bump Mapping (Emboss, 2-pass) 119.5 FPS
                            Bump Mapping (Emboss, 1-pass) 219.0 FPS
                            Bump Mapping (Environment) 90.3 FPS
                            the third test was with 256m agp aperture
                            size



                            Your 3DMark2000 results in detail
                            Your 3DMark2000 Score is 2592 3D Marks.
                            Your PC Configuration
                            CPU Intel Pentium III 733 Mhz
                            3D Accelerator Matrox Millennium G400 DualHead Max - English
                            Chipset Matrox G400 MAX
                            Resolution 1024*768
                            Z-Buffer Depth 16-bit
                            Frame Buffer Triple
                            Refresh Rate V Sync.Off
                            CPU Optimization Intel(R) Pentium(R) III
                            Here are your detailed test results:
                            Test Results
                            3DMark Result 2592 3D marks
                            CPU Speed 162 CPU 3D marks
                            Game 1 - Helicopter - Low Detail 54.5 FPS
                            Game 1 - Helicopter - Medium Detail 35.7 FPS
                            Game 1 - Helicopter - High Detail 13.6 FPS
                            Game 2 - Adventure - Low Detail 54.5 FPS
                            Game 2 - Adventure - Medium Detail 36.2 FPS
                            Game 2 - Adventure - High Detail 21.5 FPS
                            Fill Rate (Single-Texturing) 269.3 MTexels/s
                            Fill Rate (Multi-Texturing) 266.7 MTexels/s
                            High Polygon Count (1 Light) 1329 KTriangles/s
                            High Polygon Count (4 Lights) 1266 KTriangles/s
                            High Polygon Count (8 Lights) 1192 KTriangles/s
                            8MB Texture Rendering Speed 217.3 FPS
                            16MB Texture Rendering Speed 207.7 FPS
                            32MB Texture Rendering Speed 144.6 FPS
                            64MB Texture Rendering Speed 78.7 FPS
                            Bump Mapping (Emboss, 3-pass) 97.4 FPS
                            Bump Mapping (Emboss, 2-pass) 123.1 FPS
                            Bump Mapping (Emboss, 1-pass) 215.8 FPS
                            Bump Mapping (Environment) 90.2 FPS
                            is this overkill? anyway the first two were flashing & ripping a bit. the last was fine but slower. 64m texture failed in the first test, all the others pasted. so what do you think? (sorry about the length)
                            cheers.


                            ------------------
                            Aopen HX08 full tower case, Asus P3V4X bios 1.03, P!!! FC-PGA 550e @733, 160M pc100 sdram, Matrox G400MAX bios 1.4 PDesk 5.52.015, Seagate 28.5G Ultra ATA66 7200rpm HD, Pioneer 103s DVD 6X/32X drive, SB AWE64 Gold ISA sound card, SMC pci ethernet adaptor, Castlewood Orb 2.2G media drive, Nortel 100 cable modem, Mitsubishi 1995 19in monitor, occasionally use dualhead for dvd on a Sony 80cm Wega TV, MS natural keyboard, MS Intellimouse Explorer,
                            Win98SE 4.10.2222A, DX7a.


                            [This message has been edited by cancer (edited 21 April 2000).]
                            Aopen HX08 full tower case, Asus P3V4X bios 1.04beta, P!!! FC-PGA 550e @770, Swiftech MC370-3 peltier cooler 256M PC133 Crucial 7E SDRAM, Matrox G400MAX bios 1.4 PDesk 5.52.015, Seagate 28.5G Ultra ATA66 7200rpm HD, Pioneer 103s DVD 6X/32X drive, SB AWE64 Gold ISA sound card, SMC pci ethernet adaptor, Castlewood Orb 2.2G media drive, Nortel 100 cable modem, Mitsubishi 1995 19in monitor, occasionally use dualhead for dvd on a Sony 80cm Wega TV, MS natural keyboard, MS Intellimouse Explorer,
                            Win98SE 4.10.2222A, DX7a.

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Going from 128 to 256 aperature seems to be affecting cpu speed. The tests that are fillrate limited remained within 1-2 fps, but all others dropped noticebly, especially the cpu and high polygon count tests.

                              Well, seems that 128 is a nice spot if you've got 128 mb of ram. If someone has 256 mb they should do a couple of benches for us to see if the same problem shows up..

                              Rob

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