Project 64 with NVidia on Win98SE

[Tommy]

So I know talking about emulators is a bit of a no-no, but what I want to know is something that's been bugging me since the mid 2000s. With certain GeForces (specifically GF4MX4000), why do the older drivers actually work better? Allow me to explain a bit further.

A favorite game of mine has always been Legend of Zelda, Ocarina of Time. I do enjoy playing this game on my computer and I still remember to this day using another older GeForce on Windows 98, I believe it was a GeForce 2 MX400 (both of these are PCI cards) and updating the drivers one day. After the update, all the grass turned completely black and textureless. There were also a few other models that became colorless along with the fairy texture being all messed up as well. Reverting back to the older driver worked just fine.

Fast forward back to now, the same thing occurs but one a different computer. I have this card in a HP Vectra VEi8 (which is not the same one I've been posting about, which was a VLi8), and I have Windows 98 installed on it. In order for my game to work correctly, I need to use Forceware version 53.04. If I use even something like 77.72 which is still relatively older, it still doesn't work properly. Since I found a Forceware version that works correctly, I don't really want to go messing around with it. It seems whatever driver this started in, it was never corrected in any of the releases up until NVidia stopped making Windows 98 drivers all together.

So my question is...is there anyone out there in the Windows 98 community that knows exactly why this happens? It's almost always implied that newer drivers are better and almost always corrects problems. That is not the case here. And so there is no confusion, I'm using Project 64 v1.6 with the default Jabo's Direct3D8 1.6 video plugin. I know there are a few alternatives out there but I've always preferred these ones because they're fast and simple to configure and use. But according to the FAQ manual, my videocard should be well beyond the minimum and above recommended video card specs.

[CamTron]

Wow! I also have a Win98SE machine with a GeForce2 MX 400 card, and I run Zelda Ocarina of Time in Project64 on that machine! (Great game, BTW  ) I've never had texture problems at all with any 3D games on my machine. (Don't know what driver version I'm using, though.) I'm not the most knowledgeable person here, but if I had to guess, I'd think it's a DirectX issue. You can try opening up dxdiag and see if you have DirectX 9.0c installed. It's the latest version for Windows 98, 2000, and XP. You can have it run tests and create a log file, and see if it detected any problems. Does the texture issue occur only with PJ64, or does it happen in other 3D games and programs?

Interestingly, I have noticed on my GeForce2 card (and may apply to other old Nvidia cards as well) that using OpenGL tends to give much smoother animations than DirectX, whereas on other machines (especially with Intel graphics) I tend to find the opposite. On games that allow me to select video backends, using the DirectX backend has a bit of screen tearing, while the OpenGL backend is silky smooth. The Glide64 plugin for Project64 gives excellent results on my machine. You might want to try that one.

[Tommy]

Glad to hear another OoT fan roams the board!

 

I do know my DirectX is up to date, but I haven't installed KernelEx and forced the June 2010 package yet, but I don't know if that would make a difference or not. I'm pretty sure it was with those two cards I had issues in Windows 98. Funny though because Windows 2000+ worked just fine with the latest drivers. So it might be a bit of DirectX issues with the driver itself. If I recall correctly, I didn't have problems with other 3D games, but I haven't done any further testing with those drivers. I may give Glide64 a try. But I guess I'm just more curious than anything as to why this happens. It's usually newer drivers that resolve problems, not create them. But of course we all know that's not always the case. But apparently something clashes with 6x.xx+ with this card and Windows 98. I really wish I could remember if this happened on XP or not, I didn't think so but then again maybe it did and I'm just not remembering correctly. All I remember is one day back in 2005 I managed to get a driver update and so many things in the emulation was all screwed up to the point the game was unplayable. It wasn't just a slight irritation, it was just downright unplayable.

[Drugwash]

You may be the unlucky owner of a not-so-compatible videocard.

 

On my 98SE machine I have a GeForce4 Ti4200 with AGP8x card manufactured by MSI. Luckily I have the original driver CD (and also got the same download from MSI back in the day). Any - and I mean ANY - generic driver version issued by nVidia would immediately disable AGP texture in my card. DirectX diagnostics shows the respective button grayed out and the feature disabled. Never tried the card under any other operating system.

 

Therefore I would assume such similar issue could happen to you or anybody else with certain videocards tweaked by manufacturer and only usable with certain driver version(s) usually available only from them.

 

(fixed small typo)

Edited April 17, 2015 by Drugwash

[Tommy]

You may be the unlucky owner of a not-so-compatible videocard.

 

On my 98SE machine I have a GeForce4 Ti4200 with AGP8x card manufactured by MSI. Luckily I have the original driver CD (and also got the same download from MSI back in the day). Any - and I mean ANY - generic driver version issued by nVidia would immediately disable AGP texture in my card. DirectX diagnostics shows the respective button grayed out and the feature disabled. Never tried the card under any other operating system.

 

Therefore I would assume such similar issue could happen to you or anybody else with certain videocards tweaked by manufacturer and only usable with certain driver version(s) usually available only from them.

 

(fixed small typo)

I'm actually glad you posted that reply. A bit off topic but in regards to what you posted, I have a GeForce 6200 AGP 8X manufactured by PNY and using the nvidia drivers, AGP acceleration is always disabled, I can never get it enabled. Should I try the drivers on the actual CD and see if that fixes anything?

[Drugwash]

By all means do! At least theoretically they should match the hardware as good as possible (for the release time).

Also make sure DirectX is correctly installed. Drivers should work with 9.0c. Better check any Readme/FAQ/etc available on CD in regard to requirements and any possible known incompatibilities/bugs.

 

For best results you may wanna completely eradicate the old video driver first using Driver Cleaner Pro v1.5 (the old non .NET version).