I have come into possesion of a Matrox G400 card. At first I thought that it is G400 MAX but after Googling awhile I'm not so sure anymore. The thing is the PCB and memory chips look the same as the MAX but the one I have doesn't have any fan nor fan connector. Do anyone of you know what version of the card it is?
Looks like 6 ns SGRAM memory chips from Samsung = 166MHz. The MAX has 5 ns = 200 MHz.
The backside of the card says Mdha32g/rt2? I think that this is a normal G400, clocked with 125MHz core and 166MHz memory frequency, but using a PCB from a G400 MAX. Install the card, and start the Tool "Everest Home Edition", to see the real clock frequencys.
That's what I was afraid of. Too bad, the PCB layout confused me. I don't posses a computer that I can try it on yet but that's only a matter of time. Thanks for your input!
I would to make an update on this topic as I have finally a PC that can be used for testing purposes.
1. The chip itself is G400+. What does that mean I don't know, maybe some revision that doesn't produce as much heat as the original? I have checked the card properties via Matrox tools and it seems that it is ordinary G400.
2. When trying to install official drivers the card doesn't get automatically recognized. I have to manually select "Matrox Millenium G400 Dualhead" driver through device manager to get it work.
3. The card itself looks almost as new but gives me nothing but problems. When benchmarking through 3DMark 99 and 2000, after the test when trying to make a Printscreen of the results the computer hangs with black screen. It happens right as I press the Alt key (to make Alt+PrtScr key combo).
4. I have figured that I could try to reflash the card bios just to be sure but when trying to use the official app the card doesn't get recognized again.
Any ideas what to do? So far I'm sticking to my Voodoo 3 2000 as it works perfectly without a hitch. But I would like to make the card work just to enjoy the great image quality and 32bit colors.
That's late revision with fixed AGP 4x issues. It's easy to identify by the removed TV-out soldering points on PCB.
Early revisions never used them:
I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.
Can you elaborate on these AGP 4x issues?
It does not work.
I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.
So the original revision had problems but this one doesn't. Cool, good to know. Still, I would like to somehow get it working. Any idea why it doesn't get recognized by the driver setup utility?
On which board?
I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.
Maybe it is Flex3D edition which was originally supplied with RT2000 editing system.
https://www.matrox.com/video/en/support/rt200 … oads/utilities/
Try driver from bottom of this page. It should be a bit different.
This is the G400 from the Matrox RT2000.
EDIT:
wrote:Maybe it is Flex3D edition which was originally supplied with RT2000 editing system.
https://www.matrox.com/video/en/support/rt200 … oads/utilities/
Try driver from bottom of this page. It should be a bit different.
Exactly this.
The driver correctly recognized the card but the problems associated with it persist. Random freezes and blue screens, balck screen when pressing Alt key in 3DMark... I have installed TNT2Pro since and everything works as it should. Will probably sell the G400.
It also could be HW issue. Or missing solder.
I'm happy to say that this story has a happy ending. I have managed to get the card working by installing newer chipset drivers. Everything works fine now, the OS is stable. So if you ever have Tyan S1854 motherboard and want to use Matrox G400 on in be sure to install these drivers, specifically VIA 4 in 1 drivers version 443. May be useful for somebody someday.
I would like to make an another update to this thread. I have been playing with the card yesterday and discovered some interesting things. First, the memory chips are 5ns SGRAM just like G400 MAX (Samsung KM4132G112-5 in my case), so I tought that I could try to overclock them to 200 MHz to see what result I can get. It has suprised me that the memory is clocked at 200 MHz from factory! At least according to Everest and MGATweak.
In MGATweak the default setting were:
System Clock: 200 MHz
GPU Clock: 100 MHz (divided by 2)
Memory Clock: 200 MHz (divided by 1)
WARP Clock: 100 MHz (divided by 2)
I have OCed the card to:
System Clock: 300 MHz
GPU Clock: 150 MHz (divided by 1.5)
Memory Clock: 200 MHz (divided by 1)
WARP Clock: 150 MHz (divided by 1.5)
The card worked fine and gave me nice results in 3DMark. The passive cooling wasn't even that hot - I could hold my finger on the heatsink. I wonder if I can overclock it to MAX's specs but I don't want to risk it without attaching a fan. There is a fan connector missing on the board but I assume it could be soldered easily. The problem is there are some other components missing with it to, namely two resistors and one capacitor. Unfortunately I don't know their values. Anyone can help with that?
You can see the G400 MAX here.
If the overclocking works I could try to flash the BIOS from Flex 3D to MAX to make the changes permament.
