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Best Graphics Card With Win98SE Drivers?


Dave-H

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That picture for the $350 one is simply an outright lie. I can't say for certain, but the red board and layout screams ATI to me. If you bought that one, the card that would arrive in the mail would look totally different than the picture they show. I think you should try another clone.

Cyker, I'm kinda shocked Borderlands plays acceptably (or at all) on a 7950, but NWN2 and Freespace 2 shouldn't play any differently on the other cards you named.

Edit - Removed an unimportant tangent I flew off on about Borderlands. Sorry, but I love that game.

Queue

I don't mind tangents! :D

(The 'board mods might tho... :unsure: )

But yeah, my system runs Borderlands at 1024x768 with most everything on except the more intensive things like depth of field and the shadow thingy (Dynamic occlusion or something like that).

It actually runs better than both NWN2 and FreeSpace 2 IMHO!! :blink:

NWN2 is particularly bad, but I think this is mostly down to Bioware's obsession with writing stuff in Visual Basic :lol:

The game 'pauses' every time a new texture or animation frame occurs and practically dies during any kind of battle!

With FreeSpace 2, if you turn everything on and use all the latest MediaVPs it becomes very GPU intensive, and the sheer scale and detail of the ships would make my old 6600GT choke during large space battles. The X850 was better, but because it's only SM2 it would have lost things like normal mapping. :(

One good thing about going to the 7800GS is I might be able to play MechWarrior 3 on it instead of using the 9200SE or my Voodoo2's because it's just too fast and causes all sorts of weird bugginess! :lol:

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Well, I got a reply back from the seller and you won't be surprised to hear that the card isn't actually available at all!

:no:

Anyway, I'm now chasing another one.

:)

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Well, NWN2 isn't a high-performance engine, so I'm not really surprised. But that's why I doubt it'll run much better / worse by changing the card (obviously enough gain/loss of power should make SOME difference, but the bottlenecks in the engine are likely in software/design, not hardware).

Freespace 2 goes out of its way to implement any modern graphics features without necessarily caring about efficiency; it's more like a neat learning experiment for the folks behind the project. I own the game, and enjoyed it, but wasn't particularly interested in what came about from the source code being released.

Borderlands IS built on a high-performance engine, so the better hardware you throw at it, the better it performs. It's also a very efficient engine; an nVidia GTS 250 (a $100-$125 card) is all that's necessary (for the video card) to be able to run at max settings in the 1920x1080 resolution range. It does have high requirements though, due to polygon counts, texture resolution, etc. so there is a minimum on the hardware for it to play reasonably; I was just surprised a 7950 meets that minimum. It's a shame you don't have ambient occlusion on; in my opinion, that's the single awesomest thing graphically in Borderlands and one of the defining effects of the game. It keeps objects from looking like they're made of plastic and just artificially placed on top of eachother; for example, if there's a large boulder embedded in the ground, it puts a darkened shading around the base of it and on the surface it's embedded in. In addition to that, Borderlands implements it in a weird ''slow'' style, where it fades in/out which means it causes effects like tire tracks behind moving vehicles (or behind the wheel of the Claptraps).

Queue

Edited by Queue
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Well I just won an XFX GE 7950GT card on eBay (I hope I wasn't bidding against you Cyker!)

£70 including shipping, which isn't at all bad.

It is used, although supposedly in perfect working order.

Let's hope it hasn't been used constantly for 1000s of hours by someone already!

Once again I'm away for a few days next week, so it will be Thursday before I can try it out, assuming it's been delivered by then!

It's only coming from elsewhere in England so it should be pretty quick.

:)

Edited by Dave-H
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Hey guys,

How about the XFX 7900GS AGP 256MB DDR3? Is it worth using in 98SE? There's one available but I was told that hardware acceleration would be disabled in Win98. Does that sound right, and if so is that also the case for the other 7x series cards such as BFG 7800GS, etc? I currently use an Asus V9999/TD/256 (6800GT 256Mb DDR3) card in a dual boot 98SE/XP rig based on a P4C800-e. Is there even any point in upgrading to a GF 7 Series card on this system (when using 98SE that is)?

Thanks,

Bob

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The best nVidia supported card for Win98 is the 6800GT

However, there is an official driver made by BFG for their custom 7800GS AGP.

There are modified drivers that detect the 7x and 8x series cards, and Dave-H successfully got one to work with 7950GT, so there's a good chance the 7900 will work with it.

The 79xx GT's are considerably faster than the 6's, but there aren't many games which can take full advantage of the card.

It'd be good for dual booting tho' :)

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The best nVidia supported card for Win98 is the 6800GT

However, there is an official driver made by BFG for their custom 7800GS AGP.

There are modified drivers that detect the 7x and 8x series cards, and Dave-H successfully got one to work with 7950GT, so there's a good chance the 7900 will work with it.

The 79xx GT's are considerably faster than the 6's, but there aren't many games which can take full advantage of the card.

It'd be good for dual booting tho' :)

Cyker,

Thanks for the input. So if it were you, would you just stick with the 6800GT or do you think it would make enough of a difference to be worth picking up a BFG 7800 GS, given that I'm stuck in AGPland for the foreseeable future. Also considering that I've got a 2nd P4C800-e with an X1650Pro (yeah, I know its not that great either, but does outperform the 6800 somewhat). But I don't use it much since with no drivers, its not worth putting Win98 on the machine. It would be nice to get an NVIDIA AGP card that would run in both 98SE and XP while at least matching the X1650's performance, but we can't always get what we want (sorry for the Mick Jagger pun).

Bob

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Yeah, the 7800GS should be a safe upgrade, but I don't know how much faster it will be and whether the performance boost is worth it. (If you find a cheap one tho', by all means!! ;))

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Hi guys!

:hello:

Sorry for the delay, but I finally have an update.

Installed the "new" card and everything went fine.

Windows 98 started OK, even without the patchmem /a switch, as Rudolph said it would.

The driver installed fine, and I can set all the resolutions I want.

Went OK on Windows XP too.

But (of course!) I have a few problems, one of which is on both operating systems.

:(

Sticking with Windows 98 issues here, the first problem is more puzzling than anything else.

When I boot Windows 98, the first thing I see, after the desktop screen loads, is an error message saying that my network adapter isn't working properly and I might need to reinstall it.

After Windows finishes loading, the network adapter is actually working perfectly, so what's that all about?!

Also, when I shut down Windows 98, instead of the "Windows is shutting down" splash screen, I get a DOS text message saying "Write fault error writing device AUX".

The options offered are "Abort, Retry, Ignore, and Fail".

All the options expect "Abort" just bring the message back again exactly as before.

"Abort" just goes to a flashing cursor which stays there until I forcibly re-set or switch off the system.

Anyone any idea what that's about?

What exactly is "device AUX"?!

The message doesn't come up if I re-start, only if I shut down.

The third problem, which is potentially a killer, is that the hardware overlay doesn't work on the new card with my video capture and editing card.

It has a test facility which says that the overlay works fine, and is a RIVA128 type.

Unfortunately if I use that the overlay screen produces a very high quality still frame, but that's all it will produce. If I play a video file it stays as a still frame, and only updates to another still frame if i move of resize the windows, but absolutely refuses to produce moving pictures!

This is disastrous if I can't resolve it as I use this facility all the time, and it has always worked perfectly with the old graphics card.

I will have to abandon the new card if I can't get this working.

Anyone who knows about overlays got any ideas on this?

The problem is the same on Windows XP, and I've tried different drivers and display settings on XP with absolutely no difference.

The overlay seems to be working fine with Windows Media Player, just not the software that goes with the capture card.

HELP!

:)

Edited by Dave-H
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Once more, congratulations! :thumbup

You and RLoew are probably the only two users known to have succeded with a 512 MiB card... I hope it may encourage others to try and achieve success with those cards, too.

When I boot Windows 98, the first thing I see, after the desktop screen loads, is an error message saying that my network adapter isn't working properly and I might need to reinstall it.

After Windows finishes loading, the network adapter is actually working perfectly, so what's that all about?!

This is news to me. Never heard of it. I have some faint suspicions about what can it be due to, but I'll wait for RLoew's opinion, before saying anything.

Also, when I shut down Windows 98, instead of the "Windows is shutting down" splash screen, I get a DOS text message saying "Write fault error writing device AUX".

The options offered are "Abort, Retry, Ignore, and Fail".

All the options except "Abort" just bring the message back again exactly as before.

"Abort" just goes to a flashing cursor which stays there until I forcibly re-set or switch off the system.

Anyone any idea what that's about?

What exactly is "device AUX"?!

The message doesn't come up if I re-start, only if I shut down.

That's one of the variations of the classic shut-down issue the few last nVidia drivers have. It usually can be solved by partial ot total downgrade to an earlier version. Backup. Then...

... do try the nVidia drivers 77.72. But don't remove nVidia drivers with add/remove or unistall. Do it using the great freeware Driver Cleaner Pro Version 1.5 (*NOT* Driver Cleaner .NET !!!). The Add/Remove applet or nVidia's own uninstallers don't do quite a perfect job in removing previous nVidia drivers, only Driver Cleaner Pro is able to remove them completely.

Not that you may have add the card to the inf, for it to work.

Note also that this is an extreme solution. RLoew had figured out a way to replace just some files from earlier drivers, which worked in his case. So I trust that may also be possible.

It may be of interest to note that the shutdown problem, identified in versions 81.98 and above of the NVIDIA Drivers, appears to depend upon the Graphics Card used.

I observed the problem when I installed a 6200 card. I needed to replace at least 4 files with 77.72 versions to avoid the problem.

The shutdown problem has not appeared in either of two systems where I installed a FX 5200 Graphics Card, using the 81.98 Drivers.

The third problem, which is potentially a killer, is that the hardware overlay doesn't work on the new card with my video capture and editing card. [...]

This is serious an you've shown it's not a Win 9x/ME issue. I believe alternative software may be found to work around it. However, even if this problem eventually causes you to desist of using the video card (I sure hope it won't), do use it for some more time, at least for long enough for some testing and to solve the 9x/ME issues, please.

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Once more, congratulations! :thumbup

You and RLoew are probably the only two users known to have succeded with a 512 MiB card... I hope it may encourage others to try and achieve success with those cards, too.

There is at least one other. When you posted a request to the Forum last year for experiences with 512MB cards, someone contacted me who had succeeded with a 7600.

When I boot Windows 98, the first thing I see, after the desktop screen loads, is an error message saying that my network adapter isn't working properly and I might need to reinstall it.

After Windows finishes loading, the network adapter is actually working perfectly, so what's that all about?!

This is news to me. Never heard of it. I have some faint suspicions about what can it be due to, but I'll wait for RLoew's opinion, before saying anything.

This may be related to the Low 16MB Memory issue that I added the /M Option for, but Dave-H may already be using it.

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Well, another update, but not much progress to report I'm afraid.

I am using patchmem with the /m switch already, as has been rightly said, and for the reasons stated.

I did try using the SPLIT8MB.EXE program in autoexec.bat, but it made no difference to anything.

:(

Tried uninstalling the 82.69 driver, which I did with Driver Cleaner Pro, which I already had (I think on dencorso's recommendation some time ago when I was wrestling with another problem!)

That seemed to go fine, but of course when I tried to install 77.72 to see what difference it made, it didn't know about my card.

I tried inserting the necessary information into NVAGP.INF, but I don't think I got it right, as although the driver appeared to install, it wouldn't actually work!

The ID for my card seems to be VEN_10DE&DEV_02E4&SUBSYS_22711682&REV_A2 although I think you only use the first bit up to the second ampersand.

Presumably I have to add a line for it in the [Mfg] section and [strings] section in the inf file, but I'm unsure of the actual form the entry should take.

The existing lines don't give much clue, at least not to me!

Any pointers would be most welcome.

Anyway, after giving up with that, it then took me ages to get the 82.69 driver to work again, but eventually it did.

Incidentally, I was interested to see that the start-up and shut-down error messages both went away if there was no driver loaded for the card, so it's not just the physical presence of the card that's causing them.

I then found Rudolph had posted on another thread that he'd got rid of the shut-down problem on one system by substituting some files with their 77.72 versions.

These were NVDISP.DRV, NVCORE.VXD, NVARCH16.DLL, and NVSVC.EXE.

I tried that and it didn't work, in fact the driver stopped working altogether when I substituted them.

So, I'm just back where I was.

I could bore you all even more by telling you about the issues on the Windows XP side, but this isn't the right forum!

:)

Edited by Dave-H
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