You are aware the gf4mx is really a geforce 2 and doesnt support shaders

Yes, it is a greatly improved GeForce2 core and hence DirectX 7. I am not trying to run anything greater than DirectX 7 / OpenGL 1.4.

Good deal. I like Quadros. Better quality and sometimes you can even get them cheaper than Geforces, because most people don't search for them or know what the models are.

Good to know. Might have to check out the Quadro stuff sometime.

What about the Quadro4 580 XGL? Looks like the same chip clocked higher. Probably the sister to MX460. Looks a little wonky, though, and memory is a bit slower.

If you have the game. Can you please tell me how it performs on NFS-Porche2000?
I have seen a lot of cards that simply won't run this game at all or simply just have gfx issues of some sort.
FX-5XXX series of Geforces as an example.

brostenen,

Hey I even found a demo for that game. I'll try to post a few screen shots tomorrow. Any special requests for settings?

You probably need to adjust Texel Alignment (texel origin adjustment) to get things just right in Porsche and a few other games. It's a problem nVidia cards had from TNT up to GFFX and on. Starting with the GF3 chips they changed things so it fixed some problems and caused new ones, and wouldn't offer a setting to adjust it anymore. The problem shows as weird tiling in textures and glitches in text. Many games had patches released for them.

squareguy wrote:

brostenen,

Hey I even found a demo for that game. I'll try to post a few screen shots tomorrow. Any special requests for settings?

Mostly what you will notice.
The game has some menu issues on "new" cards. Were writings or text are fuzzy and blurry.
Else. The hand that changes gears when looking at the driver, just goes haywire.
Like he is dancing or something. And not driving.

This is actually one of my tests, when building a retro rig for Win98.
Can it run NFS-2k or can it not, without any issues.
If not. Then it's not a real Win98 machine in my eyes.
Performance is not as important. As long as the game are playable at 640x480x16
Then the machine is ok enough.

firage wrote:

You probably need to adjust Texel Alignment (texel origin adjustment) to get things just right in Porsche and a few other games. It's a problem nVidia cards had from TNT up to GFFX and on. Starting with the GF3 chips they changed things so it fixed some problems and caused new ones, and wouldn't offer a setting to adjust it anymore. The problem shows as weird tiling in textures and glitches in text. Many games had patches released for them.

Still.... Can it run NFS-2k? (change to Crysis when machine more powerfull)

My idea for a Quadro cooler is a thin piece of sheet metal with 3 punched holes that correspond to the three holes in the video card's PCB and a 80mm fan/screw holes. I would use 3 nylon bushings with nylon nuts, bolts and washers to fasten it above the video card. I would mount a 80mm x 15mm low-speed cooling fan with screws onto the shroud. Seems like a logical solution.

Don't laugh at my drawing skills;) EDIT: I meant to round off the corners on the shroud, oops.

EDIT: Ok, here it is with rounded corners and superimposed over simplified video card.

brostenen wrote:

firage wrote:

You probably need to adjust Texel Alignment (texel origin adjustment) to get things just right in Porsche and a few other games. It's a problem nVidia cards had from TNT up to GFFX and on. Starting with the GF3 chips they changed things so it fixed some problems and caused new ones, and wouldn't offer a setting to adjust it anymore. The problem shows as weird tiling in textures and glitches in text. Many games had patches released for them.

Still.... Can it run NFS-2k? (change to Crysis when machine more powerfull)

It's a fine yardstick; this issue is why I don't use newer graphics cards in the Win9x machine. GF4MX works fine and I don't think the Quadro does anything differently. If it's needed, and the driver version doesn't offer Texel Alignment under D3D settings, RivaTuner should take care of it with the equivalent options.

NFS: High Stakes, X-Wing Alliance, Final Fantasy VII/VIII, Falcon 4.0, No One Lives Forever, Darkstone are some other similarly problematic games.

Here are a few screenshots, I think it looked better ingame.

Nice...
Looks like my p3-500 1999 pure machine (every single arts from 99).
What about the game menu? Do the text stand out 100% clear and sharp?
Do the gearshifter hand make some sort of spastiv movements when shifting gear?

The lack of dithering is concerning. 🙁 Do Quadros not have that?

leileilol,

Well I threw a hail mary and I think I got a decent screenshot this time. The originals were ingame using builtin games screenshot and it saved them as tga's which i converted with gimp. Fortunately print screen did grab it and i pasted it into paint and saved directly as a bmp but then had to convert to png since board doesnt allow bmp's. Looks much better.

The card has DVI as well? Nice 😀

There are a ton available, but shipping is always the tricky part here in Australia.

shamino wrote:

Good deal. I like Quadros. Better quality and sometimes you can even get them cheaper than Geforces, because most people don't search for them or know what the models are.

That quality comes at a price. Quadros are optimized for precision, just like FireGL cards on the Radeon side. If there's supposed to be a pixel of a certain color in a certain place on the screen, then that's what you get, with no variation.They aren't optimized for high framerates in games. In games, precise placement and coloration of pixels is less important because the pixels are constantly being updated at high speed so it's hard to notice any particular one misbehaving especially on larger screens. Graphics professionals cannot afford to have unruly pixels on screen which is why they use professional grade cards like Quadro and FireGL even though they may use the same graphics core as a Geforce or Radeon.

philscomputerlab wrote:

The card has DVI as well? Nice 😀

I picked up a GF4MX 460 a while back and it has a DVI port on it, too.

AFAIK the difference is all in the drivers.

I remember modding some Radeon card, a 9700 maybe. You removed a resistor and BAM it was a Fire GL card 😀

You can force the GeForce driver onto a Quadro. You can likely also flash the BIOS but I haven't tried any of this yet.

On the old Quadros (the ones I use) all you have to do is use the GeForce drivers instead of the ones for say AutoCad. The newer ones are different from what little I understand. You don't even have to force the GeForce drivers on the old ones, they just load. The little bit of becnhmarking I have done suggests there is zero performance hit in games on the old ones using GeForce drivers. I usually use 45.23.

EDIT: actually a Quadro4 380 XGL (NV18GL) will beat a GeForce4 MX 440 (NV18) due to a whopping 0.2 GBps memory bandwidth increase 🤣. Miniscule I know but I'm not buying Quadros for the speed.