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Best Graphics Card With Win98SE Drivers?

Dave-H

By Dave-H
in Windows 9x/ME

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halohalo

halohalo

Posted
Posted

As you said something about playing recent games, an ATI card is going to be a bad choice if any of your games need (or would look better with) shader model 3.0 support. The x8xx series cards do not support SM 3.0. The x1xxx cards do support SM 3.0, but they have no drivers for Win9x/ME. I discovered this the hard way when I purchased BioShock three years ago :-(

Although Geforce 6 and 7 have shader model 3.0 support, most games using HDR only support Windows 2000 and above.

When I play Phantasy Star Universe with X850XT on Windows 2000, I can enable AA by renaming the program's name to bioshock.exe. But GeForce 7 can't use AA because the game will force antialiasing off, and only GeForce 8 and above can bypass the limitation by using nHancer.

Besides, X8xx cards support component video output up to 1080i, and 6800 cards only support S-Video out.

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Bleeder

Bleeder

Posted
Posted

Although Geforce 6 and 7 have shader model 3.0 support, most games using HDR only support Windows 2000 and above.

Yes, but the original post talked about dual-booting into XP, so at least the games could be played there.

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Dave-H

Dave-H

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Posted (edited)

@decorso

I tried removing the capture/editing card (it's a Canopus DVRex-M1 BTW) and it didn't make any difference to anything I'm afraid.

:no:

@Bleeder and halohalo

Yes, I'm not really interested in games on Windows 98.

If I play them at all (I'm not really a gamer) it would be in XP.

The reason I decided that I needed to upgrade my video card was that I downloaded a free game from the BBC site and it would only show a black screen.

Also I've used QuickTime Pro for years, and I really want to use the latest versions.

Versions after 7.1 (when they dropped Windows 2000 support and changed the way that full screen functions worked) won't work properly with my old ATI card.

Now I've tried a more recent card, it works fine.

It's just my old capture card (which I can't replace) that the hardware overlay won't work on any more.

I'm still hoping to find a card that everything works on, although I'm now worried that it doesn't actually exist!

:(

Edited by Dave-H
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Cyker

Cyker

Posted
Posted

@Dave: I have an X850PE which I Flash-hacked into an X850XT that you can try if you want; I was also trying to find a card which would work in Win98 and Win2k that was faster than my old 6600GT, but for some reason it was actually slower in the games I wanted a faster card for (NWN2, Freespace2, Prince of Persia 2008...) :(

That, and I couldn't run a lot of demoscene stuff that previously worked on the 6600GT, so I removed it.

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Dave-H

Dave-H

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@Dave: I have an X850PE which I Flash-hacked into an X850XT that you can try if you want; I was also trying to find a card which would work in Win98 and Win2k that was faster than my old 6600GT, but for some reason it was actually slower in the games I wanted a faster card for (NWN2, Freespace2, Prince of Persia 2008...) :(

That, and I couldn't run a lot of demoscene stuff that previously worked on the 6600GT, so I removed it.

That's a very kind offer Cyker.

If it's possible to try your card that would at least show whether it's worth going down that road or not, without having to buy yet another card only to find that it doesn't work.

You're in the UK as I am so it shouldn't be too difficult, and I'll cover postage and packing costs of course.

:)

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Rjecina

Rjecina

Posted
Posted

If there is enough interested people we can start sending emails to VIA demanding Windows 98 support in new VIA VN1000 chipset with integrated DirectX 10.1 graphics card which will be released this year ?!

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  • 3 weeks later...
Dave-H

Dave-H

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Hi guys, sorry for the very long delay, but everything is now sorted!

:thumbup

Thanks to Cyker, :wub: who generously donated an ATI X850 256 MB card to me, I'm now up and running with everything working fine.

I decided to try and go back to an ATI card to see if the overlay problem went away. I vaguely remember back in the mists of time reading that the capture card I have doesn't work well, if at all, with nVidia graphics card, and this does seem to be the case as the overlay works perfectly with the ATI card.

Also, the Catalyst 6.2 driver, which is the last that works on Windows 98, supports the X850, even though it's not advertised as doing so.

The card arrived apparently dead, the motherboard wouldn't even recognise that it was there. Cyker said that he had flashed the BIOS with a later version though, which I thought may have got corrupted somehow. Unfortunately, trying to fix that without being able to see any output was not really practical! I therefore had to buy a cheap basic PCI graphics card that I could use in the machine temporarily, and it was waiting for that to be delivered which has caused most of the delay.

Once I had it, I used it to boot the machine, and re-flashed the ATI card with the BIOS files that Cyker sent me, and it all came to life!

So, all working, and very pleased indeed, thanks to Cyker!

Incidentally, I didn't have to reinstall Rudolph Loew's RAM limitation patch with the /a switch. It all seemed to work fine on Windows 98 without it.

I have at least proved that it's possible to get a 512 MB graphics card to work in Windows 98, even if it proved not to be a permanent option for me personally. I will keep the nVidia 7950 as a spare card I think, as AGP graphics cards are going to become harder and harder to get as time goes on I feel.

If I ever dispense with the capture card, or it fails, I can put the 7950 back in, as it is a better card than the X850.

Thanks everyone who has contributed to this thread, I hope its content will help others in the future, which is what this board's about of course.

Cheers, Dave.

:)

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  • 8 months later...
loblo

loblo

Posted
Posted

Resurrecting that topic as it seems it's the one in which the 7950 GT is the most discussed.

OK so I bought a second hand XFX 7950 GT 512MB on eBay for £62 last week and received it earlier today and can confirm what everyone knows already, it doesn't work properly on an unpatched Windows ME system. The best I could get, after it was successfully recognized by Windows and the unofficial nVidia drivers installed, was booting into a system at 16 colors at 640x 480 resolution with device manager listing the expected nVidia driver files and assessing the device as correctly installed and without problems. None of the nVidia helper apps and dlls were loading and I was unable to get even in 256 color mode at 800x600 despite my fiddling with a number of settings.

Time to buy that RAM patch from rloew I guess. :w00t:

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loblo

loblo

Posted
Posted

Buy it, you won't regret it!

It cured so many problems on my 98SE system.

It's worth every penny!

:yes:

I can't say I had any problems with my ME system (2GB of RAM and an XFX 7800 GS 256MB) which required it so far but this card plus the 2GB of OCZ RAM I have just bought on eBay to push the system to 4GB makes the purchase of this patch compulsory now. :thumbup

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Dave-H

Dave-H

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I can't say I had any problems with my ME system (2GB of RAM and an XFX 7800 GS 256MB) which required it so far but this card plus the 2GB of OCZ RAM I have just bought on eBay to push the system to 4GB makes the purchase of this patch compulsory now. :thumbup

Indeed it does!

:yes:

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  • 1 month later...
Rjecina

Rjecina

Posted
Posted (edited)

Sorry guys, I know that rloew patch is good but this is not marketplace :wacko:

What is possible reason of 7900GT with 256 MB owner to buy patch when it is possible to download free Windows 98 SE unofficial drivers ? :whistle:

Edited by Rjecina
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rloew

rloew

Posted
Posted

Sorry guys, I know that rloew patch is good but this is not marketplace :wacko:

What is possible reason of 7900GT with 256 MB owner to buy patch when it is possible to download free Windows 98 SE unofficial drivers ? :whistle:

Depending on your configuration, you may need both. My Patch does not support the 7900GT by itself, it is not a Driver. You still need the free drivers. My Patch solves certain memory issues that can be aggravated by using newer Graphics cards.

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dencorso

dencorso

Posted
Posted

Sorry guys, I know that rloew patch is good but this is not marketplace :wacko:

What is possible reason of 7900GT with 256 MB owner to buy patch when it is possible to download free Windows 98 SE unofficial drivers ? :whistle:

This is not a marketplace indeed, but users are free to make comments about things they buy.

And while RLoew cannot advertise his products here, he can give free support and info.

That said, I think an owner of 7900GT with 256 MB, if he/she hasn't any problems with it, does not need any patch.

It's as the saying goes: "If it's working, don't fix it!" :yes:

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