How much impact does disabling sidebanding have?

Early AGP is such a mess, it is worse than VLB in many ways..

swaaye wrote on 2020-08-10, 21:55:

I have a FIC SD11 v1.7. It has the older chipset stepping without working Super Bypass so that's not available. I am using the […]
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feipoa wrote on 2020-08-10, 21:07:

Which Irongate board did you do your testing on? When I setup my slot A system with the AMD 750 chipset, the G400 Max forced into 1x mode and I couldn't get it in 2x mode. Graphics card advice needed for Gateway 2000 Kadoka system w/1 GHz slot A Athlon

I have a FIC SD11 v1.7. It has the older chipset stepping without working Super Bypass so that's not available. I am using the AMD AGP Miniport 4.80 driver. Powerdesk 5.52 and 6.83. The G400 defaults to AGP 2x with sidebanding with all this.

You might want to try a older/newer version of the MTSTU to try to force 2x mode.
ftp://ftp.matrox.com/pub/mga/utils/tech_sup/2002/

I also have a GeForce 2 Ultra (modified Quadro 2 Pro) working at forced 2X mode. Sidebanding can not be enabled though or it freezes in games.

Thanks for the info. I can't recall if I tried the AMD AGP miniport driver or not, but isn't that only for Win9x? Seems like I also witnessed the AGP 1x issue in W2K/XP as well. I don't recall the utility I used to adjust the AGP rate, but I do recall forcing 2x didn't work. Oddly, the G200 ran in AGP 2x mode by default; only the G400 max had issues with 2x. The next time I pull the system out, I'll play with this a little more. The AMD Radeon 8500DV that I settled on also runs in 1x mode, so I can test the miniport driver with that card as well.

appiah4 wrote on 2020-08-11, 06:19:

How much impact does disabling sidebanding have?

Early AGP is such a mess, it is worse than VLB in many ways..

There is usually just a few % boost if you can have full AGP 2x with SBA compared with 1x mode. I suppose there is probably more if you are in a situation where your card doesn't have enough RAM and it's doing AGP texturing. But in that case you're probably pushing the card beyond what it can practically handle anyway.

feipoa wrote on 2020-08-11, 09:05:

Thanks for the info. I can't recall if I tried the AMD AGP miniport driver or not, but isn't that only for Win9x? Seems like I also witnessed the AGP 1x issue in W2K/XP as well. I don't recall the utility I used to adjust the AGP rate, but I do recall forcing 2x didn't work. Oddly, the G200 ran in AGP 2x mode by default; only the G400 max had issues with 2x. The next time I pull the system out, I'll play with this a little more. The AMD Radeon 8500DV that I settled on also runs in 1x mode, so I can test the miniport driver with that card as well.

There was an AMD AGP miniport driver for Win2K.

I tried my Millennium G200 and it defaulted to 1X but was stable with forced 2X. ATI and NVidia drivers often force 1X on VIA and AMD hardware of that timeframe.

The G400 that I have is one of the revisions that supports AGP 2.0. What is the model number on the backside sticker of yours? Does it have a "4A" in it?

Where did you find the W2K AMD AGP miniport drivers? I can only find reference to them but no downloads.

My G400 appears to be the Dell version, so perhaps the parts numbers differ from the retail version.

16551-9BU-003V
D P/N 0008068R REV.A00
G4 + MMDHA32/DELL 403

I don't see a 4A anywhere.

feipoa wrote on 2020-08-11, 19:58:

Where did you find the W2K AMD AGP miniport drivers? I can only find reference to them but no downloads. […]
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Where did you find the W2K AMD AGP miniport drivers? I can only find reference to them but no downloads.

My G400 appears to be the Dell version, so perhaps the parts numbers differ from the retail version.

16551-9BU-003V
D P/N 0008068R REV.A00
G4 + MMDHA32/DELL 403

I don't see a 4A anywhere.

I unearthed the official "AMD Processor Utilities and Drivers" page.
https://web.archive.org/web/20010124151300/ht … oducts/cpg/bin/

ASUS has Win2k AGP drivers for the K7M (AMD 750)
https://www.asus.com/supportonly/K7M/HelpDesk_Download/

Also references over on the Unofficial K7M Resource Page
https://web.archive.org/web/20050214165907/ht … snet.co.za/k7m/

Your G400 is an early model. For some reason the early models were not compatible with 1.5v signaling. They released a revision that is compatible and the model number has "4A" in it. Perhaps this makes some difference with AGP 1.0 but just a guess.

Thanks for the links! Looks like I didn't try the AGP miniport driver for my Irongate system after all. I pulled the system out of the closet. It currently has a Radeon 8500DV installed in Win98SE. Everest and Powerstrip were both unable to determine which AGP speed the Radeon was running at. After installing the v4.80 miniport, it shows 2x speed. So it is not clear if the system was running at 1x or 2x prior to the miniport installation. It will be interesting to see if this fixes the issue with the G400. However, it is unlikely that I'd swap out the Radeon 8500DV for the G400 because of some issues I ran into with NT4:

feipoa wrote on 2020-06-04, 21:36:

I'm experiencing an odd problem. Whether I use the AGP G400/G200 or PCI G200, GLQuake 1/2/3 all crash shortly after loading. Unreal won't work in OpenGL mode. But These games work with the G400 in Win98se. A G200 works with the Quakes even on a 486 in NT4, so I'm not sure what is going on.

I also checked W2K, and it shows the Radeon running at 1x. Installing the W2K miniport driver from the link below didn't change the AGP speed.

For easy reference, the miniport drivers for 98, ME and W2K can be found here: https://www.infania.net/misc/moboarchive/Abit … /amd/index.html
There's also the AMD Irongate driver pack. Not sure what OS these are for and if they are necessary for 98SE or W2K.

That Asus link you included also contains some W2K file for AGP filtering. Any idea what this is?

Hey guys, slightly off-topic but I figured you might be able to help me out. The OpenGL ICD present in the latest Matrox G200 driver is bugged, most notably causing issues with transparencies and I've long heard that Matrox apparently kept updating the ICD for a while and just never bothered to release new drivers containing it, but it can be found in later G400 driver releases. It's been a while since I last tried, but when I mix&matched between different driver releases, I either couldn't get the card to work with the ICD or the transparencies stayed broken. Has anybody encountered this before?

Garrett W wrote on 2020-08-12, 13:05:

Hey guys, slightly off-topic but I figured you might be able to help me out. The OpenGL ICD present in the latest Matrox G200 driver is bugged, most notably causing issues with transparencies and I've long heard that Matrox apparently kept updating the ICD for a while and just never bothered to release new drivers containing it, but it can be found in later G400 driver releases. It's been a while since I last tried, but when I mix&matched between different driver releases, I either couldn't get the card to work with the ICD or the transparencies stayed broken. Has anybody encountered this before?

Ok here's what you do with G200.

1. Install the latest G200 driver. On Win9x that is w9x_682.exe.
2. Download G400 WinXP driver package xp2k_596_04.exe. This 2006 release contains an updated G200 OpenGL ICD. It is "g200icd.dll" and is inside the GSeries.cab within that driver package. This ICD does indeed work for Win9x as well.
3. Copy that "g200icd.dll" to Windows/System and overwrite the file already there.

Transparency now works.

I swapped the Athlon over to the ASUS K7V-T motherboard to see what happens with G400, G200 and KX133. G400 TurboGL doesn't appear to work at all on it. Just some flashes and then a total lock up. But the regular OpenGL ICD with both G200 and G400 works great. Both cards run AGP2x with SBA no problem.

Swaaye, did you happen to compare the G400 at AGP 1x and 2x? In W2K, I ran a Radeon 8500DV at AGP 1x and the 3DMark2001SE score was 4211 w/1280x1024x32. When I forced the AGP to 2x using Powerstrip 3.90, the benchmark score increased to only 4241. Is this type of minimal increase typical? CPU is a slot a T-bird 800. Trying to force 2x in XP on the same system resulted in a hang-up.

feipoa wrote on 2020-08-13, 09:22:

Swaaye, did you happen to compare the G400 at AGP 1x and 2x? In W2K, I ran a Radeon 8500DV at AGP 1x and the 3DMark2001SE score was 4211 w/1280x1024x32. When I forced the AGP to 2x using Powerstrip 3.90, the benchmark score increased to only 4241. Is this type of minimal increase typical? CPU is a slot a T-bird 800. Trying to force 2x in XP on the same system resulted in a hang-up.

No that is correct. AGP 1x and 2x show minimal practical differences most of the time. 😀 I think the 3DMark2001 score is mostly calculated off the game tests. The differences should most obviously appear in synthetic tests that involve complex geometry or texturing that uses more memory than the card has and triggers AGP texturing.

Good article that examined AGP speeds and effects.
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/impact-agp,164.html

Out of curiosity, is Turbo GL integrated into the 5.52 Win98 driver for the G400?

Or do I need to download something extra to make it work?

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2021-11-17, 18:12:

Out of curiosity, is Turbo GL integrated into the 5.52 Win98 driver for the G400?

Or do I need to download something extra to make it work?

If I'm not mistaken it's integrated. However my machine is in storage at the moment so I wouldn't be able to confirm it.

misterjones wrote on 2021-11-18, 00:29:

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2021-11-17, 18:12:

Out of curiosity, is Turbo GL integrated into the 5.52 Win98 driver for the G400?

Or do I need to download something extra to make it work?

If I'm not mistaken it's integrated. However my machine is in storage at the moment so I wouldn't be able to confirm it.

I think I found out why drivers after v584 were slower in OGL, Matrox dropped the proper OGL ICD driver and instead they implemented a Direct3D wrapper internally into their driver. This is a theory based on the performance hit & the ICD driver being missing in the 'information' tab of the Matrox drivers in v596. I actually realised this years ago but forgot to post anything about it.

PS - it has been a long time since I've played with a g400 - I'm running XP and started out running the latest v596 driver, I've then tried to drop down to a lower version number for faster performance but something really strange happens when running any OGL game, the screen just flickers between a gray screen and the game constantly, have you experienced this when downgrading drivers? Very odd, not sure how to fix it. Maybe I'll try driver cleaner.

swaaye wrote on 2020-08-10, 17:19:

I am playing around with a AMD750 Slot A setup at the moment and busted out the G400 Max. It's stable at AGP2x on there which is nice. I tried the TurboGL with Sin, Quake 2 and Quake 3. It runs quite well and looks good. I couldn't figure out how to enable Vsync though. Games were configured for Vsync but it was still disabled. Even forcing OpenGL Vsync with the Matrox Technical Support Utility did nothing. The full OpenGL ICD in some of the final driver releases does respond to this though.

I noticed something interesting while trying to enable Vsync. The MTSU says the GL ICD is using block transfers by default, but to even have the option of Vsync you must switch it to page flipping. So that gives me the impression that Matrox was avoiding Vsync support in order to maximize their GL performance.

interesting! vsync is not available on G550 too...though some games seem to be using vsync but mostly everything lacks vsync that is very bad on scrolling in e.g. gunman and all the retro-remakes of old cracktros do not work correct on win2k or above. (they don't work on Win9x).

G550 is still using G400.ICD as sown in the driver....so does G450 support turbogl? which might be a better option? to my tests the G550 runs e.g. unreal much better than g450 due to the second texture unit.

Latest G450 OS/2 driver works with G550. G450 and G550 work both accelerated in amithlon. I bought a bunch of G450/550 matrox cards so I am able to test. The matrox tweaking tool never worked for me, don't know if this does anything or perhaps I am using it wrong. matrox seems to have vsync fixed in the parhelia series, my P650 and Parhelia 512 both work in vsync.

No VSYNC in OpenGL for G400 icd which means G400/450/550

http://www.murc.ws/archive/index.php/t-50909.html
"...My guess is that Matrox G400 drivers never supported the WGL_EXT_swap_control extension but I could not get answer from Matrox Tech Support...."

dr.zeissler wrote on 2023-09-15, 17:30:

G550 is still using G400.ICD as sown in the driver

Don't assume compatibility just because of the filename.

there is no other opengl.icd in that driver package...so G400/450/550 share the same opengl driver.