Problem with firegl3

[cire]

Hi there! We've recently upgraded our system from sgi boxes to NT boxes. We replaced our ageing indigo2s with dual 1GHz PIIIs each with 1 GB memory. Four of the machines were outfitted with fireGL3 cards and one with the gloria III card. The machines use the CUV4X-DLS dual PIII mobos from Asus. Right now we're having problems with the firegl3. First, when I run the viewperf benchmarks, the machines hang. But when I changed the system memory to a different brand, it worked fine. However I'm encountering some problems with softimage3d. The machine hangs when I try to play back a scene in shaded mode. What I do is play the scene in shaded mode and loop it. It plays fine but after some time the system just freezes. Its the same with the other machines with the fireGL3 card. With the gloriaIII, we have no problems. The same scene which hangs the firegl3 has no problems with the gloria3. I've downloaded the latest drivers from the firegl website. Also I set the videocard setting to softimage3d. Anyone out here who's got any idea how to solve this? From our experience the gloria 3 is rocksolid stable but slower than the firegl3. Maybe somebody here knows of any tweaks that will stabilize the firegl3. Thanks!

[stormtroopar]

When I first got my GL2, I got some freezes here and there. But after I turned on 'wait for vertical retrace' under Configuration, the crash went away.

I sounds like it might be issues of the VIA chipset with the GL2. There was a post a while ago that talked about a patch you can download when using with VIA chipsets. Maybe you can do a search on it.

hope this helps

[jandrew]

I've heard from a school that just purchased a bunch of FireGL2's that the cards were incompatible with their motherboards, which I believe were ASUS. They also destroyed a bunch of Promise RAID controllers putting them into CUSL's (I believe) and had to RMA them to get reflashed. What is up with ASUS lately, I thought they made respectable components! All the older ASUS stuff we have here is rock solid.

So... grab an Abit mobo and try that.

Sean

[stormtroopar]

Well, I think the VIA chipset is not quite there yet to be honest. I wish they are, but it just seems like its not quite as rock solid as intel's chipsets. It may take them a few years before getting to that point of stability, reliability, and compatibility.

From what I hear, ASUS is one of the most solid motherboard that uses that VIA chipset. But nonetheless, you still need to download patches for the VIA chipsets and thats a pain in the rear. Hopefully the future OSs will start to have more of the VIA chipsets in mind as well so we don't have to keeping patching it.

[jandrew]

The problem with the VIA chipset is that it is too flexible.. start playing with the BIOS if you don't know what you're doing and you'll never figure out what went wrong

I am REALLY disappointed in their KT266 though, even if it is a little faster than the AMD 760, it's SAD SAD SAD. Doesn't look like we're going to seem RAM speed improvements until at least the 300MHz DDR parts hit the street.

As for MP AMD boards, I'll bet you AMD is waiting to get a feel for the reaction to DDR, and only release DDR MP boards. One would expect that this kind of board would take much better advantage of the supposed memory bandwidth.

Otherwise, we've got another freakin' RAMBUS, and that's definitely NOT good. Time to do some fancy memory bus work, like the Geforce3. There's got to be space somewhere on the motherboards for the traces!

Sean