What does the "bus mastering" option for AGP Matrox Marvel do?

[Kwad Guy]

Last night, I installed a Matrox Marvel G200 AGP video
card in a HP Kayak XW (BX- based) computer...I'm running
Windows 2000. I installed the Matrox untilites and
video capture software, but when I tried to run it,
the machine would completely lock up. Hard lock that
required a power reset to get out of...

It turns out that the problem was related to the
option "bus mastering" in the Matrox control panel.
When I unchecked that, everything worked fine.

So what exactly does the "bus mastering" option do for
the AGP video card?

Kwad

 

[bacillus]

if the videocard isn't busmastered then you cripple its performance.
you may not be able to play any ogl games!
what AGP aperture size are you using?
is AGP support presently available under DX diagnostic tool/display??

 

[Noriaki]

But AGP is a port...there is only a single device on it...how can it matter if it's a bus master or not...it's the only device...

 

[Kwad Guy]

The BIOS doesn't offer ANY options with respect to the AGP
slot (kind of funky). I can't set the aperture size, or any
other attribute. I think HP does something funky with the AGP
slot on these Kayaks...supporting the specific cards that
were offered with the machines in the BIOS or something like that.

Kwad

 

[Whitedog]

Exactly...

I don't know why it would give you an option to enable bus master on the APG card??, unless it's a stupid program and can't tell if the card is on AGP or a PCI slot (yea, they make PCI G200 cards...) lol

Prolly the latter.