Tried using 3D control center, but it won't allow me to change the current D3D device, changes between secondary and primary aren't keeping.

There should be something really wrong with my setup. If I remove 3DFX drivers, the game works just great using 4600. As soon as I install the voodoo drivers, I need to reboot every time I launch the game, otherwise it will render very very slow using Nvidia card (on first boot it works fine, second time I launch the game it lags).

Have you tried r_maskMiniDriver 1?

Thanks for your reply leileilol 😀

I've tried to set r_maskMiniDriver 1 on q3 cfg but couldn't see any improvement.
Also tried to set it to 0 or launch the game with "quake3.exe +set r_glDriver opengl32" as you pointed out on some other thread.

So this is the process I'm repeating over and over:

1/ Install W98, INF driver, NVIDIA 77.82, LAN.
2/ Install Q3A and GTA2.
3/ Try out both games using GF4600 TI, since I didn't install V2 drivers yet. Everything works great. I can open and close the games without any issues.
4/ Install 3DFX 3.02.02 driver
5/ Set GTA2 to use V2 @ 800x600
6/ Here my system will be screwed up. After a clean boot I can run Q3 many times, closing and opening it. At this point if I launch GTA2 (which uses V2) start a new game, quit, and then launch Q3, it will start at something like 1FPS, forcing me to kill it and reboot if I want to play Q3 again.

Please let me know what could I try to debug this.

You could probably try making a null DLL file for glide3x.dll in the quake3 folder. probably would spout an error before startup though

Q3's startup checks for glide3x.dll and sets r_glDriver to 3dfxvgl every time.

Placed a 0kb glide3x.dll file near Q3 exec but it didn't do anything. No error is shown so I think it isn't switching to glide renderer.
Instead it uses opengl32 (Nvidia card) but at 1FPS so I must kill the process and reboot.

weird if it's that slow. Maybe you can force it with r_glDriver nvopengl

there are alternative engines for q3, some are said to be improved versions made after release of the original source; maybe that would help?

They won't.

I would like to avoid alternative engines, as I'm trying to keep the game closest to original.
Tried with r_glDriver nvopengl but the game crashes at launch.

and disabling the voodoo in the device manager is no option for you?

What about slightly older drivers for the nvidia? Would Forceware 61.76 work?

With the 4xxx series i would try 45.23. I have nothing but luck with those.

Finally! I was able to find the source of the 1FPS problem 😀

It seems that the RAM was not 100% compatible with the board, although it passed Memtest without any complains.
I removed 2x 512MB sticks and it's working great at the moment. 1024MB is an overkill for W9x but I was planning to dual boot XP on this machine.

Really appreciate all your help, I've learned a lot this days.

Cheers!