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----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Matrox MGA Mystique/Mystique 220 GCLK/MCLK Programmer Overclocking Guide & FAQ Version 1.00 All Rights Reserved. March 14, 1998. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Compiled by Liew Khong Jye <kjliew@pop.jaring.my> From Penang, Malaysia. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- DISCLAIMER ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- This document contains technical text on how to overclock Matrox MGA Mystique/Mystique 220. Misuse of the information provided by this document may cause irrecoverable damage to the hardware. The author assumes no responsibility for the consequences using the information provided by this document. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- OVERCLOCKING GUIDE ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Welcome to the Mystique Overclocking Guide! The following text provides general overclocking guidence for Mystique/Mystique 220 owners, a discussion in key area where most MystCLK users are confused and finally some technical issues which are essential to understand for overclocking. All of the information provided are applicable to both the original Mystique with 170MHz RAMDAC (refer to as Mystique170) or newer Mystique 220 with 220MHz RAMDAC (refer to as Mystique220) unless otherwise specified. All technical reference to Mystique are based on the MGA-1064SG Databook from Matrox Graphics Inc. There is no updated databook for MGA-1164SG. Matrox Secret! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ If I hadn't written something like MystCLK, no one would have known that Matrox actually produced three different version of Mystique170 based on how fast they are factory-clocked. There are 150MHz, 165MHz and 180MHz factory-clocked version of Mystique170. The 150MHz version are perhaps the initial version of Mystique170. Who knows? Matrox may have sent the 180MHz version of Mystique170 for every press reviews. At first, I thought it was the influence of bus speed that makes a higher-clocked Mystique170, as the first person to report a 180MHz factory-clocked Mystique170 is using a system with 83MHz bus speed. Later, as more and more MystCLK users sent in their feedback, I found out that bus speed has no relation with how Mystique170 is clocked. Changing System PLL Clock Speed (/1 m n p) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ To what degree can each version be overclocked? Well, there should be some reasons why Matrox clocked some Mystique170 slower than others, perhaps something to do with the quality of production. If you're getting the slowest version of Mystique170, don't expect that you can overclocked it as much as that of the fastest version. For 150MHz Mystique170 at most you can go is 190MHz. 185-188MHz should be a fine range in general and this can be done with partial SGRAM optimization as well. I only received a few rare cases where their 150MHz Mystique170 can go at 200MHz. 165MHz version are not much better that 150MHz, but they can easily go over 190MHz and meet their limit at around 200-205MHz, also with partial SGRAM optimization. For these two version of Mystique170, reducing SGRAM Optimization won't help to clock the chip higher. So there is no way to regain the performance loss by reducing SGRAM Optimization. If you switch to full SGRAM Optimization, you must have the system PLL clock speed reduced for a clean display. Otherwise, you'll see dots, lines and corrupted font. The speed loss by reducing system PLL clock is greater than the speed gain by switching from partial to full SGRAM optimization. Hence, combining partial SGRAM optimization with a high system PLL clock speed yields the best result. And now, here comes the fastest 180MHz factory-clocked Mystique170. This version of Mystique170 are supposed to have the same production quality as Mystique220 since no Mystique220 are factory-clocked below 180MHz. Mystique220 have two different factory-clocked version, 180MHz and 198MHz. Most Mystique170 and Mystique220 come with 12ns SGRAM with maximum working clock speed at 83.33MHz (inverse of 12ns). That implies if you have your Mystique overclocked to more than 166.66MHz, you'll also have your SGRAM overclocked. The 198MHz version of Mystique220 are supposed to come with 10ns SGRAM and are the best for overclocking. All these three can be easily overclocked over 200MHz, and their limit stay at 210-220MHz. Unlike the two slower version of Mystique170, reducing SGRAM optimization may possibly make way for an even higher system PLL clock. Using the slowest SGRAM settings (/2 1 1 3), some Mystique220 can be overclocked to 240MHz. Without that, even for partial SGRAM optimization, the best you can get is around 205MHz in general. The speed gain using such ultra-high system PLL clock speed can easily make up for the speed loss using the slowest settings for SGRAM. SGRAM Optimization (/2 a b c) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SGRAM Optimization deals with three characteristics of SGRAM, CAS Latency, RAS-to-CAS Delay and RAS Minimum Active Time. (If you don't know what RAS and CAS is, refer to some books on RAM terminology.) SGRAM optimization is the safest way to improve the performance of Mystique, since it doesn't perform overclocking but changes the way SGRAM operates to make it respond faster. However, the safest way always doesn't yield the best results. This fits into the saying, "No venture no gain!" The speed gain by SGRAM optimization is marginal compared to that by changing system PLL clock speed. A higher system PLL clock speed is actually overclocking the hardware, making it run faster but also hotter. High temperature is the No.1 enemy of all silicons. Hence you get higher performance by increasing the system PLL clock speed but also increases your risk of frying your $$$ card. Full SGRAM Optimization (/2 0 0 0) sets the SGRAM for the fastest operation. It doesn't like PLL clock speed higher than 180MHz and causes corrupted display. I only received one rare case where a Mystique170 works at 190MHz in Full SGRAM Optimization. Partial SGRAM Optimization (/2 1 0 0) has almost the speed gain of Full SGRAM Optimization. As it leaves the CAS Latency for the slower setting, it can be paired with high system PLL clock speed to yield the optimum results in most situation. RAS-to-CAS Delay generates the most speed gain and should at best be set at 0. CAS Latency comes next, but since it prevents high system PLL clock speed it should be retained at slower setting, 1, to make way for higher system PLL clock speed. RAS Minimum Active Time has the least impact on overall performance, but it's fine to set at 0. The factory default for SGRAM settings is the slowest for all three (/2 1 1 3). In most situation, system PLL clock speed should be given higher priority in obtaining the best results. SGRAM optimization is applied only if it doesn't hinder the operation of high system PLL clock speed. If you can squeeze 10MHz more out of system PLL clock speed by switching from partial to the slowest SGRAM settings, it's already more than enough to make up for the speed loss in using a slower SGRAM. But, watch out carefully for the heat problem !!! Clock Divider (/3 G M) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This is supposed to be the least understood part of MystCLK. Here lies the mysteries of "...the memory is clocked 1.5x faster than the graphic engines" and "...90MHz is better than 240MHz..?!!" Mystique is unique in its way that it has its graphics engine and framebuffer clocked at different speed. According to Mystique databook, the documented system PLL clock speed is 133MHz. The system PLL clocked is divided by 3 to produce 44MHz Graphics Clock (GCLK) to drive the graphics engine and divided by 2 to produce 66MHz Memory Clock (MCLK) to drive the SGRAM framebuffer. This is why the memory is clocked 1.5x faster than the graphics engine. This is perhaps some clever tricks used by Matrox engineers to fully exploit the high-speed characteristic of SGRAM without increasing production cost. We know that SGRAM are capable of operating speed as high as 100MHz. However, it's not easy to fabricate a silicon chip that works reliably at 100MHz. The high-speed characteristic of SGRAM is simply wasted if it has to compromise for the slower speed of the silicon chip. With a differently clocked graphics engine and framebuffer, there is no need for Matrox to upgrade their fabrication facilities to produce a 100MHz silicon chip in order to take advantage of SGRAM. And now, let's go on to why 90MHz is better than 240MHz. Such situation exists because of the clock divider option. Let's take a look on 240MHz Mystique. In normal situation, it has a graphics clock divider of 3 and a memory clock divider of 2, hence producing a 80MHz GCLK (240/3) and 120MHz MCLK (240/2). On 90MHz Mystique, it has overwritten the default behaviour of Mystique by using a clock divider of 1 for both graphics clock and memory clock (/3 1 1), hence producing 90MHz GCLK (90/1) and 90MHz MCLK (90/1). Here the framebuffer and graphics engine are clocked at the same speed. Have you noticed that the 90MHz /3 1 1 Mystique is actually having its graphics engine clocked faster than the normal 240MHz Mystique but at a considerably slower speed for SGRAM? That is how some MystCLK users are getting better results using a 90MHz Mystique than a 240MHz Mystique. Here also lies a controversy of which configuration produces the best results, faster RAM or faster CPU in such a situation that you can't have both. Faster CPU are rendered useless if it wasted many clock cycles waiting for the slow RAM to respond. Slower CPU with faster RAM won't do any better either. That's why the framebuffer is only clocked 1.5x faster than the graphics engine, not 2x, 3x or 4x. In general, if you choose to use slower speed for SGRAM, the Direct3D FillRate will suffer. But the increase speed of graphics engine will give you faster accelerated GUI functions like BitBLT, TextOut, LineTo and Polygon. And /3 1 1 can always be used with Full SGRAM Optimization. The Direct3D Polygon Throughput is not affected by the speed of graphics engine. Is it an indication that Mystique or Direct3D doesn't do on-chip triangle setup? There is one exception where you may consider using clock divider of 1 for both graphics clock and memory clock. If your Mystique is equipped with some excellent components but low quality 12ns SGRAM which doesn't like overclocking much more than the factory spec 83.33MHz, using 83.33MHz for both graphics clock and memory clock is definitely faster than 166.66MHz Mystique which uses 55.55MHz GCLK and 83.33MHz MCLK. However, you can hardly find any Mystique that can live with over 80MHz of GCLK. Most Mystique have 70-75MHz maximum for GCLK. Only a few very good Mystique220 can go at 90MHz GCLK. However, most overclocking of Mystique are limited by SGRAM rather than the silicon chip. Let's take my 150MHz factory-clocked Mystique170 for example. It can go at 70MHz GCLK in /3 1 1. If I were to max out its performance, I should have the SGRAM clocked at 105MHz, using 210MHz for system PLL clock speed. Then I'll have the best from both world, fastest CPU and RAM. But my 12ns SGRAM won't allow me for 105MHz operation, unless Matrox shiped my Mystique with 9ns SGRAM. So I choose to have the fastest SGRAM but slightly slower graphics engine as I prefer to have maximum FillRate for my Tomb Raider II and MotoRacer. Clock divider option, according to the databook, is meant for power-saving mode. When Mystique is in its power conservation state, the system PLL will be programmed at 6.66MHz for both GCLK and MCLK to preserve data in framebuffer and reduce the chip's power consumption. Surprisingly, you won't find any timing problem in Mystique working with an equally-clocked framebuffer even if the chip is designed to function with a faster framebuffer. Be careful when changing the clock divider. You should lower the system PLL clock speed to 50MHz before trying to use a clock divider of 1 for graphics clock and memory clock. Then only you can start to increase the system PLL clock slowly. MystCLK processes its arguments in a linear fashion. So the order of arguments is important when changing clock divider. The correct way to change clock divider back and forth is: MYSTCLK /1 31 111 0 /3 1 1 [enter] Lower the system PLL to 50.11MHz then switch clock divider of 1 for both GCLK and MCLK. To return to the original clock divider, type: MYSTCLK /3 0 0 /1 11 125 0 [enter] Switch to original clock divider and programme the system PLL clock for 150.34MHz. If you type: MYSTCLK /1 11 125 0 /3 0 0 [enter] The sudden surge in the clock speed for just a few miliseconds is enough to crash your system or even do something nasty to your Mystique. RAMDAC Speed and PLL Clock Speed ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Some MystCLK users are confused between the PLL clock speed and RAMDAC speed. These two are totally not inter-related, they are two different things. Everyone knows that there are two types of Mystique, Mystique170 and Mystique220. The "170" and "220" are RAMDAC speed not the PLL clock speed. The documented spec for Mystique chip MGA-1064SG is 133MHz, 66MHz for SGRAM and 44MHz for graphics engine. There are no updated databook for MGA1164SG, so I assume they share the same spec. However, Matrox produced 3 differently factory clocked version of Mystique170, the 150Mhz, 165Mhz and 180Mhz version. All of them have 170MHz RAMDAC, which means that their RAMDAC are capable of generating 170Mhz clock for PixelPLL which drives the screen refresh rate. That's why we said that higher RAMDAC speed, produced higher refresh rate in high resolution. The system PLL is another discrete componet which's been integrated to the Mystique chip. Its generated clock range are not limited by the "170" or "220". That's why there exists 3 different version of Mystique170. Mystique220 has 2 differently factory clocked version, 180MHz and 198MHz, but both are using 220MHz RAMDAC See! No Mystique170 are clocked at 170MHz and no Mystique220 are clocked at 220MHz. The number are just for their PixelPLL capability, not the clock speed that drives the chip. In the case of Millenium, Millenium II has 220Mhz RAMDAC and 250MHz RAMDAC version. These number "220" and "250" only apply to the PixelPLL of TI TVP3026 RAMDAC. Millenium MGA-2064W and MGA-2164W are clocked by MCLK PLL of TI TVP3026 RAMDAC, and its generated clock range should never exceed 100MHz. Safe Overclocking ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ All overclocked hardware should be tested for long working hours to ensure system stability. So be it if you have your Mystique overclocked. The best way to test an overclocked Mystique is to keep the display subsystem busy all the time for at least 6 hours. If your Mystique can hold up to that without any system crash, then I would say that it's quite safe. Cooling device can be applied where neccessary to extend the working hours. There are several ways to keep the display subsystem busy during testing. 1. Watch a few movie on VCD with Mystique. 2. Run graphics benchmark continuously (also called burn-in mode). Recommended benchmark suits are WinBench and WinStone 9x. 3. If you can stand to it, do some photo-editing stuffs with Mystique. 4. Play graphics intensive or 3D accelerated games. All these four can be combined during the test period. Let say, watching a 2-hour VCD movie, having benchmark for the next 2 hours, photo-editing for the next 1 hour and finally playing games for the last hour or even more. Special notes for Mystique owners who have add-in 3D accelerators paired up with their Mystique. The Mystique 3D engine is more sensitive to system PLL clock speed than the 2D engine. The 2D engine will function properly with high system PLL clock speed, but this is not the case with 3D engine. One MystCLK users reported that without taking 3D into consideration, he was able to overclock his Mystique at 215MHz with good system stability and considerable increase in WinTune97 scores. But if he wanted to play Direct3D-accelerated MDK, the highest system PLL clock is 205MHz. Anything more than that gave flashes, garbage and corrupted textures. Since Mystique 3D engine are seldom activated if add-in 3D accelerator exists, Mystique owners with add-in 3D accelerators are tend to overclock their Mystique more than they should be. Hence I strongly recommend all Mystique owners with add-in 3D accelerators disable their 3D accelerators and have their Mystique tested thoroughly both in 2D and 3D. I don't know what will happen if you simply ignore the Mystique 3D engine and having a higher speed 2D engine than that the 3D engine can cope with. Signs of dangerous overclocking are corrupted display where you see dots, lines and garbage all over the screen. Some screen corruption are very hard to notice. You need to look at the screen very closely. And, of course system crashes. Conclusion ~~~~~~~~~~ Mystique are very overclockable. The ratio of performance improvement is equal to the ratio of overclocking, especially in the 3D part. If you're playing Direct3D-accelerated games with Mystique, you should in fact apply safe overclocking for a faster gameplay. No one can deny the fact that overclocking has become a common practice nowadays, as long as it is not being misused to cheat some unknowledgeable customers. In fact, overclocking is one way to get the most bang for the buck. That's why motherboards with 75MHz and 83MHz bus speed are selling like hot cakes compared to those "conservative designs" ones. Recommended Overclocking for Mystique ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ TO obtain your Mystique's factory clock, have a fresh boot and run MYSTCLK without any options. MystCLK will display the factory settings of your Mystique. There will be a slight difference if you fresh boot to real DOS to run MystCLK or fresh boot into Windows 95 and run MystCLK in a DOS Box. The following factory clock is obtained with fresh boot into Windows 95 and run MystCLK in DOS Box. Factory clock Recommended settings ------------- -------------------- 150MHz 185-188MHz, partial 165MHz 195-198MHz, partial 180MHz 200-205MHz, partial 198MHz not more than 215MHz as allowed by partial SGRAM Optimization (I do not encourage the use of ultra-high system PLL clock more than 220MHz, and changing clock divider using /3 G M. That is the toy for some really advanced power users. I strongly recommend the use of partial SGRAM optimization as it not only gives great performance boost, but also prevents the use of ultra-high system PLL clock. ) MystCLK Distribution Sites ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Matrox Users Resource Center http://www.matroxusers.com/ Matrox Sphere http://matrox.dimension3d.com/ Fast Graphics http://www.fastgraphics.com/ Royce Liao's Hompage http://www.eng.uci.edu/~liaor/ ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- F.A.Q ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: Display cards can also be overclocked? A: The chip known as display/graphics controller used in the display cards is no difference from the ordinary general purpose microproccessors like 386, 486 and Pentium. It has its own clock speed to determine how fast it works. Older display cards use crystal oscillator to supply clock signal to the graphics controller. In such cases, overclocking is still possible by swapping the crystal oscillator with a higher frequency one. Modern display cards use Phase-Locked Loop (PLL) oscillator to supply the clock speed to the graphics controller. The PLL is software-programmable to various frequency hence making overclocking a much easier job using software rather than dealing with physical electrical contacts. Q: How can I overclock my Mystique/Mystique 220? A: You need a small utility called Mystique GCLK/MCLK Programmer. The primary distribution site of the utility is Matrox Users Resource Center at http://www.matroxusers.com/. MystCLK works with both the original Mystique with 170MHz RAMDAC and newer Mystique 220 with 220MHz RAMDAC. Q: How much performance improvement can I expect from overclocking? A: The performance improvement may depend on your current system. Generally, you can expect the percentage of performance improvement equal to the percentage of overclocking. On 3D part, overclocking can improve Fillrate and Intersection Throughput measured by MS D3DTest as much as 30%. In certain system, you may not notice any improvement in 2D, but 3D will always be sped up. Q: Why don't I see any improvement on xxx benchmark after overclocking? A: Overclocked Mystique will not have any impact on some benchmarks like WinBench97/98.I don't consider a 2% improvement in such benchmarks as 'improvement' as the benchmark itself may have tolerance more than 2%. However, overclocked Mystique does increase 3D WinBench scores by 15-20%. Most Direct3D Benchmarks will post encouraging results. Personally, I don't get any improvement in WinTune97 after overclocking my Mystique, but several MystCLK users reported encouraging results with WinTune97 and WinTach. Overclocked Mystique also show slight improvement in DOS VESA benchmark like VSpeed and Profile. Q: What kind of application may likely benefit from overclocking? A: From the above two questions, I would say that normal Windows 2D and DOS VESA apps will only lightly benefit from overclocking. 3D apps which make use of Direct3D hardware acceleration will benefit most from overclocking. Currently, 3D apps which make heavy use of Direct3D hardware acceleration are 3D games. If you play Mystique-supported Direct3D games (eg. Tomb Raider II, MotoRacer...), overclocking will add more fps to the gameplay. Newer Mystique native patches (eg. Tomb Raider 1.03, Screamer 2) will not benefit from overclocking because these patches reset Mystique to factory settings upon initialization. If you see the spinning "Powered By Matrox" logo during game startup, your Mystique has been reset to factory settings. Q: Is the performance increase worths the overclocking? A: If you're playing Direct3D-accelerated games with Mystique despite its limited 3D features, then overclocking worths the speed improvement. Overclocked Mystique can achieve 30% more FillRate than ordinary clocked Mystique. And, that's a significant number. Try MotoRacer, then you'll know what I mean. For 2D performance, adding a few MP/s in WinTune97 or WinBench won't be that significant to your eyes. Q: Is overclocking dangerous? Will overclocking damage my $$$ card? A: Overclocking, by its nature, is dangerous because overclocking makes the hardware work in out-of-spec condition. No manufacturer can guarantee their products work properly if they work in such condition. Even worse, your products warranty void if you overclocked them (...if the manufacturer found the damage was caused by overclocking). When you have your hardware overclocked, I cannot guarantee you that it won't damage your hardware. But the question is when the bad effects of overclocking will show up. 1 year, 2 years, 5 years or even more. Do you think the technology can stay in the market for such a long period? IF you don't belong to hardware tweakers who know the rules for safe overclocking, avoid using MystCLK. MystCLK is never meant for novice users. Q: The chip feels much warmer after overclocked. How do you manage the heat? Do I need to put heatsink and fan on the chip for overclocking? A: It's normal that overclocking makes your chip warmer, the higher the frequency the greater the power dissipation. Personally, I don't apply any cooling means after overclocking my Mystique. My system is just the same before and after MystCLK is used. No heatsink or fan added. I only have my system tested thoroughly for long hours to ensure stability even after overclocking. If you can have your system going on for at least 6 hours with the display subsystem kept busy all the time, I can say that such overclocking is quite safe. Adding heatsink and fan is of personal concern, it's not a must for overclocking. Read on the next question for situation where heatsink and fan may be of some help. Q: Will adding heatsink and fan make the chip more overclockable? A: Undoubtedly, a cooler silicon works faster. You will be able to squeeze more 'juice' from your Mystique by adding heatsink and fan to cool it. A cooler silicon also has a longer lifespan. However, it's very dangerous as you're tempted to overclock it more and more. One of MystCLK users sticked a heatsink and fan to his Mystique220 and whipped the chip at 90MHz with /3 1 1. He was doing this when the weather was cold. As the weather got warmer, he eventually fried his Mystique220. I do not recommend using heatsink and fan to push the chip at its limit. In certain cases, without any cooling in effect, the overclocked Mystique may produce random system crashes after some long hours of use. Here, heatsink and fan can be of help to maintain system stability even after long hours. So, I suggest that testing the overclocked Mystique without any cooling device, and apply heatsink and fan where necessary. Q: I'm afraid of screwing the card. Can you tell me the safest optimum settings to overclock the card? A: Again, if you're afraid and yet don't have the courage to experiment for the optimum settings for your system, avoid using MystCLK. Different system with different application have different optimum settings. It depends on your experiment (...some trial-and-error perhaps...) to figure out the optimum settings that suits your system. I believe that Mystique is not as fragile as you think. Feel free to experiment, at your own risk of course! There is no so-called 'safest optimum settings' in all system. Q: What should I change to overclock my Mystique? PLL Clock or SGRAM Optimization? A: Experiment with both to figure out the combination which yields the best results on your system and application. Refer to "Overclocking Guide" for an indepth discussion of the two. Q: How do I restore my card factory settings? A: A press to the RESET button is the best way to restore your Mystique to factory defaults. Ctrl-Alt-Del will also reset the Mystique to factory defaults as long as you're not using some means of booting speedup like QEMM QuickBoot which bypass hardware initializaion on warm boot. If you start Windows 95, Mystique will always be reset to factory defaults by Mystique Windows 95 Powerdesk drivers. Q: Does MystCLK make permanent changes to the Mystique flash-BIOS? A: MystCLK doesn't read or write anything to the Mystique flash-BIOS. It doesn't even care for the existance of a flash-BIOS. All that MystCLK does is to read and write to a memory area called PCI Configuration Space where PCI peripherals store or map their hardware configuration details. Q: I don't seem to understand the Clock Divider stuffs. Why do you mean by '...the memory are clocked 1.5x faster than the graphics engine..'? Why are some people getting better performance with a 90MHz clocked chip than a 240MHz clocked chip? A: Refer to "Overclocking Guide" for an indepth discussion. Q: You said that Mystique acceleration engine is based on the award-winning MGA-2064W. Does it mean that MystCLK can also be used on Millenium and Millenium II? A: No. The Mystique acceleration engine is similiar to that of MGA-2064W doesn't neccessary means that their programming details are the same, though both of them share a great deal of similarities. The major difference between Mystique and Millenium is Mystique has integrated RAMDAC while Millenium uses external RAMDAC. You need a separate utility called Millenium GCLK/MCLK Programmer to overclock Millenium and Millenium II. Q: Are you planning to support xxx card/chip? A: If you can provide me sufficient technical information for writing such utility like the databook/datasheet, I may consider it. There is another video card overclocking utility written by Royce Liao called MCLK, currently at 0.93Beta dated somewhere in August 1997. His utility provides overclocking support for many S3, Cirrus Logic and Trident chips as well as Tseng ET6000. FastGraphics Site at http://www.fastgraphics.com/ provides some more video card overclocking guides for Rendition V2x00, Permedia2, Riva128 and others. Q: Does bus speed have any effect on the Mystique clock speed? A: No. The Mystique built-in PLL clock speed is independent from bus speed. Refer to "Overclocking Guide" for more information. Q: Why is my Mystique170 default at 150MHz, while my friend's at 180MHz? Why is my Mystique220 only clocked at 198MHz ? Can I use MystCLK to clock it at 220MHz? A: Refer to "Overclocking Guide" for more information. Q: I have a PowerVR/3Dfx. Will MystCLK make any difference in 3D performance? A: For Mystique+3Dfx, MystCLK makes no difference in 3D performance as 3Dfx is taking full control over the system when Direct3D session starts. MystCLK doesn't interfere with 3Dfx operation. For Mystique+PowerVR, there should be a theoretical speed improvement. Even though PowerVR takes full control over the system when Direct3D starts, it still uses the framebuffer of the 2D card to display to the screen and makes heavy use of DirectDraw to transfer data to the 2D card. MystCLK increases the clock speed which drives the graphics engine and SGRAM framebuffer, hence improves DirectDraw transfer speed. You will notice some improvement in the Videologic VidBand Benchmark after using MystCLK. However, such improvement is hardly noticeable in any real world application like 3D games. Q: Where can I get new version of MystCLK? Is there any new version coming out? A: All future upgrades of MystCLK will be released to its primary distribution site, Matrox Users Resource Center, or FTP to its FTP server at ftp.matroxusers.com/MystCLK/ for new version of MystCLK. Several other video card dedicated sites are also hosting MystCLK download. If you're having problem getting the software, you can write to me for the software to be sent to you directly by e-mail attachment. If there is no new version coming out, then it means that I receive no user bug reports. For the meantime, an upgrade will only be released if there is bug to be fixed. However, I greatly welcome any comments and suggestion of features to be included in future releases. If you're looking for a more user-friendly interface of MystCLK, someone had written a MystCLK Windows 95 GUI Frontend which can be downloaded at Matrox Users Resource Center as well. This will help you get rid of the tedious command-line interface of MystCLK. Q: What is your first name? A: My first name is Liew, also my family name. You can call me Liew, or Khong Jye. Make all your correspondence as casual as possible. I hate to see something like "Dear Sir". I'm still young and youthful. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- End of Document.