Best graphics card for 98SE?

[PurplePenny]

Greetings,

I'm new on here: nice to find a Win 98 friendly forum.

I need a new graphics card for my grand old 98 SE workhorse (first built in 98 but various upgrades since). What is the best AGP graphics card that I can put in it?

Thanks,

Penny

P.S. I've asked the samequestion in several places, e.g. my local computer shop, and the response is always the same: "Why don't you just buy a new PC?". Answer: "Because I don't want to. I've got years of software and hardware, all still going strong; my system is stable; it does what I want it to: why should I spend lots of money on a new PC when the one that I have works so well?".

Edited August 26, 2006 by PurplePenny

[wizardofwindows]

i sugest maybe checkout the geforce line from ati be sure to check compatabitity for 98se as the newest cards are dropping 98 support .and i agree why buy new if your stuff is all u need.its only in a forum of techies do u find the newest is best crap .

[oscardog]

Hi Purplepenny and welcome

Please be aware that your choice of graphics card will be affected by your motherboards agp bus speed, 1x,2x,4x etc and also by your system memory bandwidth.

Non jibberish mode, if you can give us some motherboard details we might be able to narrow the graphics cards down a bit

All the best

Edited August 26, 2006 by oscardog

[Petr]

To give you the best advice it would be necessary to know not only your motherboard (or what AGP standards it supports) but also the application or games you want to use. The price may vary from $40 to $400 I think.

In general, list of Nvidia graphics cards supported by the latest driver (ForceWare 81.98) is here: http://www.nvidia.com/object/81.98_9x_supported.html

The latest ATI driver (Catalyst 6.2) is here: https://support.ati.com/ics/support/KBAnswe...questionID=1160 and in RELEASE NOTEs you can find the list of supported types.

Petr

[oscardog]

To give you the best advice it would be necessary to know not only your motherboard (or what AGP standards it supports) but also the application or games you want to use. The price may vary from $40 to $400 I think.

In general, list of Nvidia graphics cards supported by the latest driver (ForceWare 81.98) is here: http://www.nvidia.com/object/81.98_9x_supported.html

The latest ATI driver (Catalyst 6.2) is here: https://support.ati.com/ics/support/KBAnswe...questionID=1160 and in RELEASE NOTEs you can find the list of supported types.

Petr

Aida32 http://www.majorgeeks.com/download181.html might help

[prx984]

i sugest maybe checkout the geforce line from ati be sure to check compatabitity for 98se as the newest cards are dropping 98 support .and i agree why buy new if your stuff is all u need.its only in a forum of techies do u find the newest is best crap .

the geforce line is by nVidia.

anyway, if you can, see if you can find the original radeon 7000 cards. they were pretty cheap last time i checked (20 bucks canadian) they supported agp 1, 2, and 4 x i beleive. mine ran fine at 2x.

the card even supported windows 95, so i think youll be fine in that respect. if you can just get a hold of a card like that, i think you'd be fine.

either that, or look for a used computer store and see if they have any older computer parts. you might get lucky

oh, welcome to the forums too!

[Petr]

Aida32 http://www.majorgeeks.com/download181.html might help

I'm not sure how can Aida help to choose the graphics card. Do you mean AGP support identification?

It should be noted that Aida has changed to Everest, the freeware version, Everest Home, was stopped in November 2005 (you can google for everesthome_build_0474.zip) and now exists just Everest Ultimate, trial version can be downloaded here: http://www.lavalys.com/products/download.p...d=3〈=en and the latest official beta (3.01.693) can be downloaded here: http://www.lavalys.com/forum/index.php?showforum=12

Petr

[oscardog]

Aida32 http://www.majorgeeks.com/download181.html might help

I'm not sure how can Aida help to choose the graphics card. Do you mean AGP support identification?

It should be noted that Aida has changed to Everest, the freeware version, Everest Home, was stopped in November 2005 (you can google for everesthome_build_0474.zip) and now exists just Everest Ultimate, trial version can be downloaded here: http://www.lavalys.com/products/download.p...d=3〈=en and the latest official beta (3.01.693) can be downloaded here: http://www.lavalys.com/forum/index.php?showforum=12

Petr

Yes purely for motherboard agp and memory bus identification Petr, if cards like Cygnus suggests work it will do the job and save the lady a lot of £`s

Edited August 27, 2006 by oscardog

[Petr]

Yes purely for motherboard agp and memory bus identification Petr, if cards like Cygnus suggests work it will do the job and save the lady a lot of £`s

If the system was built in 1998 and contains AGP slot, then it might be based on Intel 686LX or 686BX chipsets and yes, we use ATI Radeon 7000 based graphics cards if we need a replacement. It seems to be good choice, it has AGP 2.0 Compliant BUS - for AGP 2X (3.3V), AGP 4X (1.5V), or AGP2X/4X based systems, it supports DirectX® 7.0 (or even 8.0?) by hardware, 32 MB or 64 MB video memory, passive cooling, some cards have DVI output...

Petr

[prx984]

the 7000 even supports DX9 if im not mistaken. i had that card installed on my desktop until not too long ago and 9 worked fine. it was the sapphire radeon 7000 with 64mb. i payed 50 bucks for it 3 years ago, so im sure you can get it dirt cheap.

[Petr]

the 7000 even supports DX9 if im not mistaken.

http://www.ati.com/products/radeon7000/radeon7000/index.html

states: "Supports DirectX® 7.0, DirectX® 8.0 and OpenGL®"

http://www.sapphiretech.com/us/products/pr...iew.php?gpid=78

http://www.sapphiretech.com/us/productfiles/matrix-vga-1.xls

states DirectX 7.0.

http://www.club-3d.nl/productshow_vga.php?...32DTVD&l=en

states - DirectX® 7.0 pixel-pipelines

http://www.asus.com/products3.aspx?l1=2&am...e=Radeon%207000

states Microsoft DirectX 7.0 and OpenGL support

http://www.fic.cz/product_doc-92D6699CD34B...5E003D45CF.html

states DirectX 8.0, OpenGL

So it is not 100% sure.

You can always use DirectX 9.0c software.

Petr

[prx984]

the card does work with 9, it ran fine on my machine. im pretty sure itll work, i remember running red faction's setup thingy and it said direct x 9.0 (up to date)

maybe they just didnt bother updating the above information? the card is getting kinda old.

either way, its a good card for 20 - 40 bucks. it should revive your machine, and hey, maybe itll be faster?

[PurplePenny]

Hi all,

Thanks for all the replies: you've given me a lot to be going on with.

The mobo is a gigabyte GA-5AA with an AMD K6-2 450 and 768MB memory. The current graphics card is a 3dfx Voodoo Banshee which won't run DirectX 9 and because the company no longer exists there isn't an updated driver for it.

This all came about because I'm trying to run a game that I bought recently on one of those re-release labels. It won't work because (according to their support) my card is obsolete and won't run Dx9 ... even though the game itself originally ran on Directx 6. Support suggested getting an Nvidia Geforce 6200 which is AGP 8x; my current card is 4x. I'm told that there is little difference in performance from running an 8x card on a 4x slot... but I suspect that my AGP slot isn't even 4x. [edit: just dug out the mobo manual: it's 2x.]

The card that I have works well for most stuff that I do, though the system does get a little slow when I'm doing something graphics intensive like photo editing.

Thanks again for the welcomes and the replies,

Penny

P.S. The mobo is BabyAT so I've only ever been able to upgrade it once then BabyAt died a death.

Edited August 27, 2006 by PurplePenny

[Petr]

The mobo is a gigabyte GA-5AA with an AMD K6-2 450 and 768MB memory. The current graphics card is a 3dfx Voodoo Banshee which won't run DirectX 9 and because the company no longer exists there isn't an updated driver for it.

This all came about because I'm trying to run a game that I bought recently on one of those re-release labels. It won't work because (according to their support) my card is obsolete and won't run Dx9 ... even though the game itself originally ran on Directx 6. Support suggested getting an Nvidia Geforce 6200 which is AGP 8x; my current card is 4x. I'm told that there is little difference in performance from running an 8x card on a 4x slot... but I suspect that my AGP slot isn't even 4x. [edit: just dug out the mobo manual: it's 2x.]

The card that I have works well for most stuff that I do, though the system does get a little slow when I'm doing something graphics intensive like photo editing.

So you need a graphics card that supports AGP 2x. The above mentioned Radeon 7000 has hardware support for DirectX 7.0, maybe (not sure) 8.0. I will test what will show Everest later today.

Petr

[Petr]

So also Radeon 9250 (hardware support for DirectX 8.1) seems to be AGP 2x (3.3V) compatible: http://www.sapphiretech.com/en/productfiles/59brochure.pdf

According to http://www.playtool.com/pages/agpcompat/agp.html also Radeon 9500, 9700 (not 9550) and Nvidia FX5200/5500/5600/5700/5800/5900/5950 (hardware DirectX 9) and MX400/420/440/440-8/4000 should be compatible but it has to be verified.

Petr