Radeon 9500 3D problems in 98SE

[kingofthespill]

I recently got a OEM ATI Radeon 9500 card on eBay, and it works fine as a 2D card. I was gambling that the card was compatible with my ASRock Conroe865GV motherboard which uses a AGI slot.

I am having no luck getting DirectX 3D going in 98SE, but it works just fine in XP. If I use AquaMark3 or DXdiag in 3D test mode the applications quickly exit after the screen briefly goes black and returns to the desktop. I did a clean 98se installation on a blank hard drive, so no other cards were ever present. I have uninstalled and reinstalled the drivers and tried both the dx9.0c runtime and sdk versions.

Any suggestions, like driver changes? I am using the catalyst 6.2 drivers for 98SE from amd. (6-2_wme_dd_cp_30314.exe)

Edited December 30, 2010 by kingofthespill

[LoneCrusader]

I recently got a OEM ATI Radeon 9500 card on eBay, and it works fine as a 2D card. I was gambling that the card was compatible with my ASRock Conroe865GV motherboard which uses a AGI slot.

I had never heard of an "AGI" slot before. Some Googling resulted in these pages:

AGI slot?

What is AGI?

ASRock A.G.I.8X

From what I read there, it seems that AGI began as some kind of proprietary slot to "tack on" a graphics card slot to motherboards with integrated graphics.

The only advice I can give is to be absolutely certain you have disabled everything related to the integrated graphics chip in the BIOS...

My guess is that while Windows 2K/XP may not "see" any difference between AGP and AGI, DOS/WIN9X does "see" a difference. Does the motherboard have Windows 98 drivers for all of its components?

[kingofthespill]

I recently got a OEM ATI Radeon 9500 card on eBay, and it works fine as a 2D card. I was gambling that the card was compatible with my ASRock Conroe865GV motherboard which uses a AGI slot.

I had never heard of an "AGI" slot before. Some Googling resulted in these pages:

AGI slot?

What is AGI?

ASRock A.G.I.8X

From what I read there, it seems that AGI began as some kind of proprietary slot to "tack on" a graphics card slot to motherboards with integrated graphics.

The only advice I can give is to be absolutely certain you have disabled everything related to the integrated graphics chip in the BIOS...

My guess is that while Windows 2K/XP may not "see" any difference between AGP and AGI, DOS/WIN9X does "see" a difference. Does the motherboard have Windows 98 drivers for all of its components?

Right, I am aware that it is a kind of partially-compatible AGP slot effectively. I did use the ASRock INF files, and verified 98SE works with a Geforce2 card (3D dx9 that is to say). I guess I will chalk this up to incompatibility, as the ATI card is not specifically supported by ASRock.

I just got another card tonight which would not even boot in that system, a ATI Radeon 9600 pro. Afterwards I tested it in a Dell 8200, 98SE system with 4xAGP slot. It had no problems with the drivers and worked fine as a 2d card, but had the same problem with 3D dx9 tests. That system works with the same Geforce2 card in a 3D dx9 test, even though it lacks manufacturer INF files (no 98 support back then).

I probably will stick to Nvidia 6xxx from now on as they are easy to find.

[Rjecina]

Right, I am aware that it is a kind of partially-compatible AGP slot effectively. I did use the ASRock INF files, and verified 98SE works with a Geforce2 card (3D dx9 that is to say). I guess I will chalk this up to incompatibility, as the ATI card is not specifically supported by ASRock.

I just got another card tonight which would not even boot in that system, a ATI Radeon 9600 pro. Afterwards I tested it in a Dell 8200, 98SE system with 4xAGP slot. It had no problems with the drivers and worked fine as a 2d card, but had the same problem with 3D dx9 tests. That system works with the same Geforce2 card in a 3D dx9 test, even though it lacks manufacturer INF files (no 98 support back then).

I probably will stick to Nvidia 6xxx from now on as they are easy to find.

ASRock Conroe865GV AGI slot officialy supports ONLY this cards:

ASUS A9250/128M, ELSA FALCOX 920FX , GECUBE Radeon 9250/128M, MSI RX 9200 SE-T128, PowerColor Radeon 9200SE, PowerColor RADEON 9250/128M and ASUS A9800XT. Only last is having Radeon 9800XT, all other cards are using Radeon 9200 or Radeon 9250.

Officialy AGI slot DO NOT SUPPORT ATi 9600/9550 series and Matrox cards !!!

Albatron AGP6600GT, ASUS N6200, ASUS N6200GE/TD/128M, ASUS N6600LE/TD/256M, ASUS V9999 Ultra/2DT (Nvidia 6800 with 256 MB), Gigabyte GV-N66128DP (Nvidia 6600), Leadtek WinFast A400TDH (6800), Leadtek WinFast A6600 GT TDH.

All Nvidia cards on this list are from 6x00 series. To that list ASRock has added card XFX 7800GS which is Nvidia 7800 GS !?!?

[kingofthespill]

I bet several 1.5V cards might work (not on that list ) under XP , though not 98. My Leadtek WinFast A400TDH (6800) actually had some artifacts in 98, so I am settling for 6200 which is fine.

[submix8c]

Compatibility. Do some digging on AGP 1x/2x/4x/8x slots. And, yep, voltage requirements are different.