Nvidia Driver for Windows 98SE

[Petr]

Surfing on Internet I have found the 82.16 drivers provided by BFG for the 7800 GS card which can be considered the real latest drivers for this OS:

http://www.bfgtech.com/7800GS_256.html

Just for completeness, this driver adds support for the following PCI IDs:

NVIDIA&DEV_0183.DeviceDesc="NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 420 with AGP8X"
NVIDIA&DEV_018C.DeviceDesc="NVIDIA Quadro NVS 50 PCI"
NVIDIA&DEV_0320.DeviceDesc="NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200"
NVIDIA&DEV_0047.DeviceDesc="NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GS"
NVIDIA&DEV_0218.DeviceDesc="NVIDIA GeForce 6800 XT"
NVIDIA&DEV_00F5.DeviceDesc="NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GS"

Petr

Edited December 2, 2006 by Petr

[awergh]

one of the instability of the 81.89 is that you cant start win.com from dos

[xtrm]

...and that the WMP hangs when it's not on the top while playing a movie, lol. I consider switching to the 77.72, is this one more stable (and gives good performance)?

[Lunac]

Do I have any details? Let's see...well, probably the most critical one is that many times when shutting down my system (running Win98SE of course), it would not shut down. I would have to force a shutdown and/or reset. Also, many times while running several of my favorite games (D3D or OpenGL) they would simply exit in mid-play, crash that is. Sometimes there would be an error message, sometimes no errors, just a quick exit to the desktop. Using drivers 3x.xx, 4x.xx, 5x.xx, 6x.xx, or 7x.xx fixes all of those issues. (Although, on my GeForce3 TI500 and GeForce4 TI4600, anything above 4x.xx would result in performance hits) I've experienced these issues on 4 different nvidia cards with these drivers. (TI500, TI4600, 6600GT, and 6800nu).

Also, like I said before, under Win98SE, they won't uninstall properly. For my Ti500/TI4600, 40.72 give the best benchmark results, while for 6600GT/6800nu compatibility-wise, anything in 7x.xx series is preferred. (Although, 7x.xx are not perfect, I didn't have as many problems as I had with 81.98's)

Edited December 2, 2006 by Lunac

[awergh]

actually i have problems with the 7x.xx and the 8x.xx series

with unreal, half life with directx3d but not with 4x.xx is there any reason for this (Geforce 4 MX 420 PCI)

[Lunac]

Yup, 7x.xx are not perfect like I said. (71.84 specifically) I've had problems with several games on my system with those. But I had to use 71.84 with my 6600GT/6800nu, since drivers with lower version numbers didn't even support those cards (4x.xx for example) and 81.98's are buggier. Also, in 3DMark2001 and GLExcess, 71.84's offer pretty good scores.

Depending on your system awergh, you should really stick to 4x.xx, 40.72 specifically. Not much is gained when upgrading (except some compatibility with newer games), but you will take a performance hit. So its higher FPS count versus more compatibility, you can't have both. Seeing that you have a MX420, you need all the FPS you can get. Stick with 4x.xx.

Edited December 2, 2006 by Lunac

[awergh]

ok i only tried 45.23 so ill try some more but rplite doesnt work properly with the 4x.xx series i dont think

[RainyShadow]

I just found this: nouveau : Open Source 3D acceleration for nVidia cards

Seems to be for Linux driver, but contains some useful info.

[xtrm]

Well, help please, I wanted to uninstall these darn 81.98 now and as somebody before said, you cannot do it in the software panel, it gives you an instant error. So how the hell do I get rid of this crap?

[Lunac]

Like I said above, you can use something like Driver Cleaner Pro. (its free). Install the application, reboot into safe-mode, run the application and select the appropriate item from the "Cleaning Section".

I can't stress this enough: be sure to make a correct selection. There are several nvidia entries, including: "nVidia WDM", "nVidia Stereo", "nForce Chipset", and plain "nVidia" (this is the one you need, graphics driver). You should consult the help file, since different releases of Driver Cleaner Pro might have selections that are named differently. Trust me, if you have a nForce based motherboard, you don't want to accidentally remove the drivers for it.

Once the Driver Cleaner Pro finishes, reboot into your OS like you would normally and install the proper drivers.

Edited December 3, 2006 by Lunac

[xtrm]

I have already used DC Pro for cleaning my nvidia files after uninstalling my old 71.xx drivers, I didn't know it also works properly when I don't uninstall them before using DC Pro. Thanks for the advice.

*edit*

very nice, I now have the 77.72 WHQL and this "on top" problem still exists - and also all my media players (usual 7.1, media player classic, etc.) screw up any videos big time now, the colors are beyond good and evil and it just looks awful. It happens with *.avi and *.mpg, *.wmv works fine as far as I can see. What the hell is wrong now? I suppose mister DC Pro just messed up a bit too much - or the driver just sucks - AGAIN. God...

*edit2*

ok, i found out that somehow the new driver set the overlay gamma at 6.00 (default is 1), that's why everything looked like crap. Still the WMP hangs when I play a video and I put a browser window or any other window above it. Did not happen with my 71.xx.

Edited December 3, 2006 by xtrm

[MDGx]

Surfing on Internet I have found the 82.16 drivers provided by BFG for the 7800 GS card which can be considered the real latest drivers for this OS:

http://www.bfgtech.com/7800GS_256.html

I have tried Forceware 82.16 and same thing happened [again]:

computer locks up if trying to reload Windows UI from native MS-DOS by running WIN.COM .

[xtrm]

Just an addition to my last post: this wmp bug still happens with my 71.xx drivers, it seems to be an issue of the card itself at win9x?! Anyway, it sucks.

[myelin]

Hello, may i ask what are the best Windows98SE drivers for TNT 2 M64 PCI 32 MB video card?

Question 2: I have observed that Windows 9x vxd drivers are much more faster then Windows98SE WDM on Windows98SE and also on Windows ME. So i was thinking that if i could download ME drivers for my card from this site ftp://download.nvidia.com/Windows/ Would they work? i mean be faster then original Windows 98SE drivers?

[glocK_94]

I believe the Detonator 5x were the fastest avaible for the TNT2. However they're quite old so if you plan to play games released later, you may need to install the latest Forceware supporting this card (7x).