512MB video card...?

[Jolaes]

Hello everyone,

If anyone with a similar PC ever had success running win9x, please give some hint:

K8NSC mainboard (nforce 3 250gb chipset)

2 GB RAM (already using the RAM limitation patch by RLoew)

AND

nvidia 7950 GT -AGP- video card with 512 MB RAM (I'm planning to buy it, unfortunately I cannot test it beforehand that's why I am asking around.)

Thanks a lot in advance for your help.

J.

[rloew]

That Video card appears to be problematical.

There is already a thread about it.

"Best Graphics Card With Win98se Drivers"

It is in the Main List of the Forum. The last post was August 09.

[Dave-H]

As the starter of that thread, I can vouch that I got one of those exact same cards working on my system under Windows 98SE.

You will need to use Maximus-Decim's modified driver though, that is the only one I got to work.

It does cause an error message on shut-down, but otherwise it seems to work fine, and I've got 4 GB of RAM fitted!

[Jolaes]

Okay,

thanks both of you for the replies.

I think I can live with the shutdown error problem if it works otherwise.

If it will fail completely with win9x, I still can re-sell the card.

I will post about the outcome in about two weeks' time.

Who knows, it might help others in such a decision.

These unbranded replica cards are sold for a song these days,

and are surprisingly well assembled, of fair quality components.

Definitely worth a try for me.

[Dave-H]

Okay,

thanks both of you for the replies.

I think I can live with the shutdown error problem if it works otherwise.

If it will fail completely with win9x, I still can re-sell the card.

I will post about the outcome in about two weeks' time.

Who knows, it might help others in such a decision.

These unbranded replica cards are sold for a song these days,

and are surprisingly well assembled, of fair quality components.

Definitely worth a try for me.

Well, interesting to hear you say that, as the first replica card I bought blew up physically after only running for about half an hour, as you will see from my thread!

I managed to get hold of a proper XFX 7950 card, which works fine.

I hope you don't have the same experience!

[Jolaes]

I said that because I have a replica 7600GS and a 8600GT. No probs whatsoever. So far...(6 months).

I hope as well the card wont blast off the doors either in its urgent need to testify for its makers hard-earned bad reputation

[Jolaes]

...

I got the card yesterday.

Unfortunately, I could not get it to work under win9x. Tried to disable virtually everything in BIOS (USB ports, LAN, other ports etc.), reducing AGP aperture and limiting vcache in order to free as much system arena space as possible. Also tried 512, 768 MB and 1 GB system RAM configurations without success. It seems that the nforce 3 250gb chipset implementation + 82.xx nvidia grapics card drivers cannot handle 512 MB video RAM.

(Other than that, the card works perfectly under XP, with minimal noise and average heat.)

As I dont want to switch to an Intel platform in order to use the card with Win98SE, I will re-sell the card and buy a 256 MB 7900GS.

J.

[Cyker]

I have the same mobo chipset and have been unable to get my 7950 to work in '98 either.

I was trying to find a way of limiting the RAM on the 7950 to 256 but short of de-soldering the RAM chips I haven't found a way of doing it yet

[dencorso]

Dave-H succeeded in using 512 MiB, but he uses RLoew's RAM Limitation Patch. While the patch is not for free, it's not expensive either, *and* there's a free demo for you to try.

May I suggest you try it, before giving up, Jolaes? Install it with the /M option, like Dave-H did, and let's see what happens. You may get it at RLoew's Homepage

Then again, Cyker already uses RLoew's patch and it's not enough, in his case...

But here it's one case where the fact that YMMV can work for you, perhaps.

[Jolaes]

I tried reinstalling the patch, too. Tried reducing system RAM as well.

Also tried crossing 77.xx and and 8x.xx driver files, especially nvcore.vxd. Wont work. And I have a recollection that once I worked on a computer with Intel P4 chipset (dont know exactly which) and that could handle an 512 MB Geforce 7800 - with the overlay issue described on other threads.

All in all, it comes down to the chipset and its driver, how it can manage memory for system components. This one in particular is a no-go.

Thanks for all the answers and suggestions.

J.

[Cyker]

It does seem chipset/driver specific; Dave's computer uses a server motherboard and an Intel chipset, and Intel boards tend to be the most stable/compatible.

nVidia have always played fast and loose with standards if it'd get them a bit of extra speed (I still have fond memories of my smoking TNT1 and AGP slot ) and that's probably what's tripping us up here

(Given the number of workarounds the Linux kernel enables when it detects an nForce chipset I shouldn't be too surprised! )