Re: Best and most cost-effective graphics card for Win98SE?

Posted on 2021-01-18, 19:59

by

by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I know you mentioned that some games may not function properly with it, but honestly that's not really a problem since I don't have much games to run on 98 anyway, and the only ones i will be running will probably be homebrew ones, and when I don't feel like gaming I'll just mess about with it and …

---

Re: ESFM details

Posted on 2021-01-18, 18:31

by

by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Man, that "enhanced" Warcraft... Let's make it regular one, ok? :D I wonder if Blizzard did any QA testing on ESS cards for that game. Digital sound in AudioDrive mode is extremely muffled and distorted, but thankfully it works fine in SBPro mode. And as you can hear, ESFM Enhanced sounds like they …

---

Re: Best and most cost-effective graphics card for Win98SE?

Posted on 2021-01-18, 18:28

by

by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Best? Depends on how high you want to crank up the resolution and how much you care about backwards compatibility with older games. For gaming up to 1280x1024, excellent compatibility and a reasonable price, a GeForce4 Ti4200 is your best bet. If you want to go higher than that and also max out AA …

---

Re: ESFM details

Posted on 2021-01-18, 12:40

by

by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I think that's logical that ES688 is separated as it actually has no built in FM synthesizer and it relies on an external one. And it may vary from Yamaha chips to different clones. Good point. It also appears than the ES688 music option is a sort of "catch all" for ESS cards, at least judging by …

---

Re: Do you keep your retro rigs offline?

Posted on 2021-01-18, 12:35

by

by Joseph_Joestar

in Milliways

in Milliways

Always offline. I see no point in browsing the internet from an outdated OS running an ancient browser version.

---

Re: Athlon 64 build for 2001-2006 Windows XP gaming

Posted on 2021-01-18, 12:34

by

by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

looks great, I can't think of a 2006 game that wouldn't run on this Oblivion struggles a bit in towns dropping to around 30 FPS. Most likely bottlenecked by the CPU since it happens in lower resolutions too. It's still fairly playable though, and in dungeons the frame rate is usually in the 50-60 …

---

Re: ESFM details

Posted on 2021-01-18, 10:30

by

by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Tracks recorded and uploaded. I also added an OPL3 version for comparison purposes. Hardware used: Yamaha YMF724F-V for OPL3; ESS AudioDrive ES1868F for ESFM and ESFM Enhanced. Game versions used: Heroes of Might and Magic 2 + Price of Loyalty expansion pack + patch 2.1; WarCraft 2 + Beyond the Dark …

---

Re: Athlon 64 build for 2001-2006 Windows XP gaming

Posted on 2021-01-18, 10:17

by

by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I was also surprised how much difference the X-Fi made although I went the other way and temporally stole the card for another build. onboard sound was just flat and lifeless. It really is amazing. Truth be told, experiencing proper hardware-accelerated EAX is one of my main reasons for replaying …

---

Re: ESFM details

Posted on 2021-01-18, 06:51

by

by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I'm also interested to know other games with ESFM support for more comparisons! Some late-era DOS games which use the Miles Sound System have "ESS Technology ES688 FM Audio" as a music setup option. I know that WarCraft 2 as well as Heroes of Might and Magic 2 support this, but there are probably …

---

Re: WinXP and EAX (split from Best WinXP video card)

Posted on 2021-01-17, 16:22

by

by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Creative's ALchemy page has some info concerning EAX games on Vista and later operating systems: https://support.creative.com/kb/showarticle.aspx?sid=28967 Interestingly, there seems to be a version of ALchemy which works on Audigy cards as well.

---

Re: Athlon 64 build for 2001-2006 Windows XP gaming

Posted on 2021-01-17, 10:57

by

by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

if you search for pictures of those caps, you should see where on the cap it should say KZG. note that there's many visually similar looking series like KY and those are all good to my knowledge, it's KZG and afaik probably also KZJ that should be replaced I just took a closer look and I see a …

---

Re: Athlon 64 build for 2001-2006 Windows XP gaming

Posted on 2021-01-17, 10:29

by

by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

auron wrote on 2021-01-17, 10:06: i see a ton of what looks to be chemicon KZG capacitors here... How does one identify those capacitors? I went to the badcapps forums but I cannot view any photos there without registering. I can take a few close up shots of my board if it helps.

---

Re: How much of an issue is "early Windows XP" for a 'fastest XP build"

Posted on 2021-01-17, 10:25

by

by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

infiniteclouds wrote on 2021-01-17, 10:11: Which games have issues with VRAM over 512MB? I'm not familiar with this. I would also shoot for 1600x1200 @ 60+ FPS in any of the 4:3 era games. Red Faction has VRAM issues but fortunately there's a fix. I think a few other games had similar problems but …

---

Re: How much of an issue is "early Windows XP" for a 'fastest XP build"

Posted on 2021-01-17, 10:18

by

by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

That information is very outdated. No need to play it with barely playable frame rate on GeForce 4. Splinter Cell (2002) | Fix Guide . This is true, the frame rate can get extremely jumpy at times. Basically, it goes from 60 to 25 whenever those high resolution shadows/lighting effects kick in. …

---

Re: How much of an issue is "early Windows XP" for a 'fastest XP build"

Posted on 2021-01-17, 09:07

by

by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

The WinXP era is tricky since it spans such a long time period. On one hand, you have edge cases like the original Splinter Cell which only works correctly on GeForce 3 & 4 cards . Then there are late-era games like Bioshock which still support EAX but need a beefy GPU/CPU in order to run smoothly. …

---

Re: Athlon 64 build for 2001-2006 Windows XP gaming

Posted on 2021-01-17, 06:56

by

by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I also only used boards from Abit or DFI. Abit boards always worked great for me as well. My KT7A is still alive and kicking today, and I bought it back in 2001. And the ZM6 which I got later is in excellent condition too. Never had any stability problems and none of the capacitors on either board …

---

Re: Athlon 64 build for 2001-2006 Windows XP gaming

Posted on 2021-01-16, 08:06

by

by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Yeah, it's too bad DFI doesn't make consumer grade boards anymore. Their stuff was top notch. In hindsight, it's a bit strange reading about people who had so much trouble with nForce4 motherboards while I only experienced smooth sailing with mine. Even weirder considering that it ran an overclocked …

---

Re: Best WinXP Video Card

Posted on 2021-01-15, 21:30

by

by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

While I find this EAX discussion very interesting, maybe you guys should ask a mod to split it off into a separate thread? It's not really relevant to the topic at hand, that being graphics cards.

---

Re: Athlon 64 build for 2001-2006 Windows XP gaming

Posted on 2021-01-15, 15:30

by

by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

A couple of benchmarks: 3DMark.jpg Bench.jpg Game versions used: FarCry v1.4 benchmarked using the "HardwareOC FarCry Benchmark" at the "Ultra Detail" preset Doom 3 v1.31 benchmarked at the "Ultra Quality" preset using the built-in "timedemo demo1 usecache" console command Splinter Cell Chaos Theory …

---

Athlon64 3700+ / DFI LanParty / 9600GT / X-Fi Titanium

Posted on 2021-01-15, 15:30

by

by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

System specs Athlon 64 3700+ DFI LanParty UT Ultra-D (nForce4) 4GB Transcend DDR400 Gigabyte GeForce 9600GT (passively cooled) Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium PCIe (SB0880) Sony 3.5" floppy drive Seasonic S12 III 650W PSU Chieftec tower case Sandisk 240GB SSD (WindowsXP + SP3) Western Digital Blue 1TB …

---