Question..best drivers for G400 and 3D games

nealh

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Nov 21, 1999
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I know this not a great gaming card...I have a plane G400 with 16mg ram but it will have to do for now....

need help finding the best drivers for games
 

EvilDonnyboy

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Jul 28, 2000
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The 6.10's are best for later games. but not by only beats the other 6.xx drivers by a very tiny bit). If you experience bugs in a paticular game, just go with the latest 6.50 drivers, as they prolly have the bug fixes.

If you mainly play DX6 games, try the 5.52 drivers with the TurboGL 1.30 mini drivers. Some ppl get better speed with old games such as Half-life/Counter Stike and Quake 2 with these drivers. But these drivers will definately be slower for newer DX7/8 games such as Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament. This is because the 5.xx drivers were initially designed with DX6 in mind, and DX7 came along later. The 6.xx drivers were designed from the ground up for DX7/8 games.
 

nealh

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Nov 21, 1999
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Thanks...how did you overclock your G400....

Where can I get the 6.10 drivers...
 

Hanky

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Dec 29, 2000
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You can get the older drivers at Matrox's website. They have all the older drivers available for download as well. I tried the new 6.50 drivers by the way and had a lot of problems with them when it came to TV-Out and Dual-Head. They worked better for games though than the 6.23 I use right now (NHL2001 for example worked MUCH better than with the 6.23 driver revision).

You can overclock your Matrox card with Powerstrip. I heard Matrox offers an overclocking utility as well, but I never used it. (Overclocking a G400 Max would be a bit dumb anyway.)
 

nealh

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Nov 21, 1999
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My G400 is 16mg version ...not MAx...I checked there site could not find the older drivers or o/c utility....

Do you have a link??
 

Hanky

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Dec 29, 2000
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But I have the MAX...I just wanted to explain why I never used the Tweak Utility.
 

EvilDonnyboy

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Jul 28, 2000
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Uh, you can get that max pretty high. Look how high my G400 32mb Single Head is going. 171/228 fromt the default 125/166. Ram chips are 6ns SDRAM Hyndai. It's got a Hi output 80mm fan cooling both the stock heatsink and the ram chips (no ramsinks!).
 

Hanky

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Dec 29, 2000
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Well, mounting a 80mm fan only for the video card is definitely not what I want to do, because it would be quite noisy especially because of the vibrations this fan would definitely cause. I want the system as silent as possible because it has to serve as a DVD/VCD machine as well (don't look at my Systems Rig page btw...it's a bit dated right now :) ).
I had a very short overclocking trip (using Powerstrip) with my G400 Max early 2000 or so but never intensified it.
 

EvilDonnyboy

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Jul 28, 2000
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I'm not saying that u need to put a giant 80mm on there (it's not all that loud. i put on some rubber grommets, so the only noise you can hear is the whisper of airflow).

You should be able to get that thing to 160/213 from the default 150/200. If you can, put on a small heatsink on the back of the card with thermal tape to help cool the chip without screwing with the card. If you ever need to bring it in for service, rip off the hs and tape and they'll never kno.
 

nealh

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Nov 21, 1999
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thanks alot for the advice and help...The matrox o/cer only seems to allow to increase speed by a %..is this for the core/ram together???
 

Hanky

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Dec 29, 2000
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EvilDonnyboy,

actually it went up to 230 MHz RAM clock without problems when I once tried overclocking it and I didn't even go to the maximum (just stopped at 230), because it was only for fun and I didn't want to risk anything. (Why did you say 213 MHz by the way? Strange number...)

Btw, do you have a fan on the heatsink of your graphics chip? I think the non-max version has no active cooling by default ?! As you might know, the max has a fan and it runs pretty cool with this fan, so I may not even need that backside HS you mentioned (I doubt whether that helps much anyway...).

Such a 80mm solution is absolutely a non-solution for me...I tried it before with a Geforce and it was too loud for me. ("not all that loud"-arguments don't count anyway, because it has to be as silent as possible...).

Btw, I already had to bring the card in for the service. It was quite a mysterious thing but it works again. But, I can tell you, I was happy the card was still unmodded when the screen went orange...
 

Hanky

Senior member
Dec 29, 2000
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nealh,

as I said before you can also use Powerstrip for overclocking. It's also a very good tool for other video card and screen related things and it supports most modern GPU's. I had no problems overclocking my G400 with it. (The only downside is that you have to search the o/cing feature because it's a bit hidden...)
You can get Powerstrip here.
 

Hanky

Senior member
Dec 29, 2000
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Oh, forgot that the relation of GPU frequency and memory frequency is locked...that's the reason for 213, right? Then nealh won't have more success with Powerstrip as well.