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Research on AM3+ board and chipsets: Resume


ragnargd

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What is best W9x graphics card? I tested long ago Geforce 7600 and afaik driver was only unofficial and unstable, same PCI-E device driver, so i have to use G6600 or G6800 for AGP, i think that PCI would be big bottleneck even for this old card.

 I did some research, there are lots of great boards with AMD 970, but they had only 2x PCI slot and this could be problem. PCI old GPU + PCI NIC + PIC soundcard require 3 PCI slots, so it means board where is NIC or Soundcard directly supported by Win98SE is needed. Is there such one? Is there Realtek ALC887 Win98Se compatible driver?

Edited by ruthan
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22 hours ago, ruthan said:

What is best W9x graphics card? I tested long ago Geforce 7600 and afaik driver was only unofficial and unstable, same PCI-E device driver, so i have to use G6600 or G6800 for AGP, i think that PCI would be big bottleneck even for this old card.

 I did some research, there are lots of great boards with AMD 970, but they had only 2x PCI slot and this could be problem. PCI old GPU + PCI NIC + PIC soundcard require 3 PCI slots, so it means board where is NIC or Soundcard directly supported by Win98SE is needed. Is there such one? Is there Realtek ALC887 Win98Se compatible driver?

Best fully working graphics card is the 7950GT. PCI-E version works fine. 256MB version + NVidia 82.69 driver + rloew's NVidia Shutdown patch (free) should work without any other modifications. If you want to use a 512MB version of the card you will need rloew's NVidia size patch (not free) as well. The 7950GX2 works but only one card is initialized by the driver so it behaves like a 7950GT.

Currently there is no working HD Audio driver of any kind for Windows 9x. We are working on trying to fix this but no success as of yet.

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You will have a hard time finding a situation where i oppose LoneCrusaders respected opinion (cheers! ;), but this is one:

The GeForce 7900 GTX is at least 10% faster than a 7950 GT.

The 7950 GT is the second fastest card, and being newer than the 7900 GTX (the same G71 GPU, just clocked down, and better equipment of the card), it is more power efficient (i have i.e. a passively cooled version, as TDP is ~120W for the 7900 GTX vs. ~95W for the 7950 GT).

I have both cards, and can confirm all of this by practical experiments.

But also have a view at the respected Anand Tech:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2080/8

Your major problem will be, that:

- You will find no 7900 GTX for AGP (so the 7950 GT is the fastest card for AGP on W9x)

- You will have a hard time finding a 7900 GTX with LESS than 512MB (none known to me), so it reqires the $$$-patch by RLoew (the 7950 GT with 256MB for AGP is still very rare, but you CAN find it)

Fun-fact: The 7950GX2 is supposed to be as fast as the 7900GX2, because the latter is not running with full speed because of temp/power-reasons, and thereby the 7950GX2, speed considered being equal, being much superior for secondary reasons (i.e. only using one power-connector vs. two for the 7900GX2, less noise, less heat, less throttling, you name it). This is of no importance for W9x-users, of course, because no SLI with GeForce on W9x... :(

Edited by ragnargd
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16 hours ago, ragnargd said:

You will have a hard time finding a situation where i oppose LoneCrusaders respected opinion (cheers! ;), but this is one:

The GeForce 7900 GTX is at least 10% faster than a 7950 GT.

The 7950 GT is the second fastest card, and being newer than the 7900 GTX (the same G71 GPU, just clocked down, and better equipment of the card), it is more power efficient (i have i.e. a passively cooled version, as TDP is ~120W for the 7900 GTX vs. ~95W for the 7950 GT).

I have both cards, and can confirm all of this by practical experiments.

But also have a view at the respected Anand Tech:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2080/8

Your major problem will be, that:

- You will find no 7900 GTX for AGP (so the 7950 GT is the fastest card for AGP on W9x)

- You will have a hard time finding a 7900 GTX with LESS than 512MB (none known to me), so it reqires the $$$-patch by RLoew (the 7950 GT with 256MB for AGP is still very rare, but you CAN find it)

Fun-fact: The 7950GX2 is supposed to be as fast as the 7900GX2, because the latter is not running with full speed because of temp/power-reasons, and thereby the 7950GX2, speed considered being equal, being much superior for secondary reasons (i.e. only using one power-connector vs. two for the 7900GX2, less noise, less heat, less throttling, you name it). This is of no importance for W9x-users, of course, because no SLI with GeForce on W9x... :(

Ok fine then, so the 7950GT is the highest numbered model fully working under Windows 9x. :P

I don't have a 7900GTX to compare. I do have a 7800GTX somewhere...

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Thanks for replies.

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The 7950 GT is the second fastest card, and being newer than the 7900 GTX (the same G71 GPU, just clocked down, and better equipment of the card), it is more power efficient (i have i.e. a passively cooled version, as TDP is ~120W for the 7900 GTX vs. ~95W for the 7950 GT).

Could you link exact model, im suprised that there is passive version of card with 95W TDP.

In unofficial driver for PCI-E cards really stable with Win98SE? I mean on similar level as AGP cards? What about installation could be OS installed with PCI-E GPU inside, or installation is possible only with PCI / AGP card and card need to be switched later?

So if PCI-E GPU is working, 2 PCI slots are enough.

I was thinking about 2 cards and necessity of change monitor outputs for boot different system - solution could be some DVI or cheap HDMI switch (even cheap ones have output autodetection and autoswitching) + DVI-HDMI cables.

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@ruthan: Look for the MSI NX7950GT-VT2D512 or NX7950GT-VT2D512EZ-HD. For my taste, they still get too hot, even with air-flow in the case, but YMMV.

Thanks, i have Geforce 6600 passive, but i have to install fan too - Noctua one - around 500 RPM its quite silent.

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7900 GTX is the fastest GPU for 98SE, period, here's a world record of 3DMark2001 SE under 98SE (not mine ofc, I wish :) ): https://d1ebmxcfh8bf9c.cloudfront.net/u12714/image_id_1645614.jpeg

PCI-E cards work fine under 98SE, I've successfully installed VBEMP (a generic drivers for 98SE for all cards, similar to the Basic Adapter on Windows 8/8.1/10) on a GeForce GT 220, Radeon HD5670, and Intel HD Graphics 4000 on my laptop under 98SE. So with official drivers 82.69, the 7xxx will work flawlessly. And don't tell me they are not official, NVIDIA made the DLLs! The only unofficial part is the mixing of different versions of the files, and INF modification to add all Device IDs. It's a pet peeve of mine.

7950GT is the best AGP card, period, having the same performance as the 7800GTX 512MB. And is probably the best bet if you don't want to use a PCI-E motherboard.

Edited by MrMateczko
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Based on what I'm reading here about video cards, I just bought these off e-bay:

BFG Tech GeForce 7950GT DirectX 9 256MB PCI Express x16 ($30)

BFG Tech GeForce 7900GS DirectX 9 256MB PCI Express x16 ($28)

Will use one or the other on an Asrock 4-Core DUAL-VSTA motherboard (Via 880 chipset) and a Core2 CPU (one of these ->E8400, E8500, E7500 or  E7600).   Running Win-98, naturally.
 

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Will use one or the other on an Asrock 4-Core DUAL-VSTA motherboard (Via 880 chipset) and a Core2 CPU (one of these ->E8400, E8500, E7500 or  E7600).   Running Win-98, naturally.

 I had this board and i have failed to make Geforce 7600 PCI-E running with unfoccial drivers, there is some graphics compatibility list for this board and its pretty short.. Maybe other PCI-E GPU work, but you need to be lucky or i did something wrong.

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In addition to the PCI size issue with 512MB nVidia Cards that my Patch resolves. There are two other issues that may affect smaller cards with some Motherboards.
A Resource mapping problem can cause a crash during Boot. The other causes the Mouse to nearly freeze and may cause a Disk Error BSOD.

@ruthan  I would need to know specifically what happened when you tried to use the 7600.

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