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Fastest and Most compatible Win98 Graphics Card


JaKSLaP

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Hey Guys;

 

i know there is alot of topics about this subject, but i noticed non of them cover the importance of compatibility, and the RAM limit of the video card that Windows 98 Supports. 

 

So recently purchased a Geforce 7600GT 512mb AGP for my Win98 PC. and was disappointed to find out that the Unofficial NVIDIA Display Driver 82.69 does detected my card, i tried manually installing but i was getting heaps of issues after black screen, not booting, restart issues etc. The only solution is to pay $21 for a bios fix from leow, but to be honest I would rather just get a Video card that has native support for Windows98 and 100% compatible with 0 Issues. Maybe if i had a high end card like the 7900 i would purchase it. 

 

Right now i am using my onboard graphics "Intel Extreme Graphics 2" and having no isses. 

 

So can someone please recommend me a card for Windows98 that has native support and 100% compatible.

 

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Last/newest working cards for 9x without help from rloew:

 

AGP: nVidia GeForce 7950GT 256MB (if you can find them, EXTREMELY rare) or GeForce 7800GS 256MB, ATI X850 XT PE 256MB (has issues with some DOS games)

PCI-E: nVidia GeForce 7950GT 256MB, ATI X850 XT PE 256MB (has issues with some DOS games).

 

256MB and smaller cards will work without patches. The fact your card is 512MB is most likely causing the problem; only a handful of 98 machines will successfully load the driver for a 512MB card without issues. Some will, some won't, and there doesn't seem to be any logic or pattern to it. It has something to do with how the motherboard handles MMIO, but a discussion of that is way over my head.

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I'm using an NVIDIA Quadro FX1500 with 256MB of RAM. Works great! I got mine really cheap as well. If it has a super loud fan on it though, there is a BIOS update from HP for free that fixes this problem.

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Last/newest working cards for 9x without help from rloew:

 

AGP: nVidia GeForce 7950GT 256MB (if you can find them, EXTREMELY rare) or GeForce 7800GS 256MB, ATI X850 XT PE 256MB (has issues with some DOS games)

PCI-E: nVidia GeForce 7950GT 256MB, ATI X850 XT PE 256MB (has issues with some DOS games).

 

256MB and smaller cards will work without patches. The fact your card is 512MB is most likely causing the problem; only a handful of 98 machines will successfully load the driver for a 512MB card without issues. Some will, some won't, and there doesn't seem to be any logic or pattern to it. It has something to do with how the motherboard handles MMIO, but a discussion of that is way over my head.

 

Do you know of any issues with the 6000 series geforces

I really dont want to deal with patches or unofficial drivers.

So far my entire build supports Windows 98 natively. from chipset, usb to lan

 

I am more interested in something compatible with little issues. 

Edited by JaKSLaP
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Do you know of any issues with the 6000 series geforces

I really dont want to deal with patches or unofficial drivers.

So far my entire build supports Windows 98 natively. from chipset, usb to lan

 

I am more interested in something compatible with little issues.

The 6800 Ultra 256MB is the last card officially supported under 9x by nVidia. However it may or may not also suffer from the same shutdown bug as the 7xxx cards, I don't know.

Technically, the 7800GS WAS officailly supported, because BFG provided a 9x driver for it (82.16). So long as you keep the RAM under 256MB the 7xxx cards only have the shutdown bug, which is fixed by a free patch.

The ATI cards I named have drivers in the last official ATI package, although ATI only claims support up to the 9800 XT.

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Do you know of any issues with the 6000 series geforces

I really dont want to deal with patches or unofficial drivers.

So far my entire build supports Windows 98 natively. from chipset, usb to lan

 

I am more interested in something compatible with little issues.

The 6800 Ultra 256MB is the last card officially supported under 9x by nVidia. However it may or may not also suffer from the same shutdown bug as the 7xxx cards, I don't know.

Technically, the 7800GS WAS officailly supported, because BFG provided a 9x driver for it (82.16). So long as you keep the RAM under 256MB the 7xxx cards only have the shutdown bug, which is fixed by a free patch.

The ATI cards I named have drivers in the last official ATI package, although ATI only claims support up to the 9800 XT.

 

 

 

Ok thank you so much, do u know where i can find the shutdown patch from?

Edited by JaKSLaP
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Regarding the topic of the "fastest" graphics card (ie - performance in terms of, I guess, computation rate, clock speed, etc) - if someone is interested only in a video card's ability to play video / movies (1080p, various formats, etc) then do you gain anything by going from, say, an nvidia 6200 card to a 7xxx card? I can understand how the goal of these cards is higher and higher frame rates for video game scene rendering, but something I've not seen an explanation of is if any of that extra game-playing horsepower is directly applicable to ordinary movie playback (be it dvd, or blue ray, 1080p material, etc). ???

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I don't think so the only difference I can think of is the quality of the picture. By I think from graphics cards from Geforce 9000 till current, the will be no difference in HD movie play back.

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  • 5 months later...

Yes.

Windows 98 will also work with the 7950 GX2 but will only use one half of it.

My NVSIZE Patch handles the four issues that I have identified when using the 512MB Card.
The 256MB Card may be subject to up to three of those issues in some Motherboards.

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Rant only important for legacy-gamers:

All games that run with W9x have been developed with a GF 6800 with 256MB in mind, because that was just the fastest card for W9x/ME ever WHILE GAMES WERE STILL DEVELOPED FOR THAT SYSTEM.

Using a faster card with more memory therefore only makes sense, if you dual-boot with any other OS, where you depend on this card as well.

Same is true for CPU, where a fast P4 was the best you could expect as a game developer. Because when you developed with a Quad-Core and a GF 8xxx and up, you developed for and on XP.

If i'd have to build another pure W9x system, I still prefer cards from the GF 7xxx series, and use the according patched and inofficial driver, as i.e. the 7600 GT (AGP as well as PCIe) has performance close to some GF 6800 GT, but can be cooled passively, and (PCIe only) doesn't need an auxiliary power cord. For the same reason i prefer an AMD Athlon II X? or Intel Core2Duo over an Intel P4: Less power, less heat, less noise.

Still, a P4 and a GF 6800 will give no worse gaming experience on W9x. Here as with other modern equipment, an SSD will make so much more fun (given you don't work on it every day, 'cause no trim and higer degradation).

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