You could just get a cheap TNT2, SS7 is ok with a lot of agp cards but some boards can get picky either because of the quality of the board or the chipset being picky. SS7 is from a time where boards didn't have the best vrms for the agp slot and some cards pulled enough power to cause some issues but most here have had good luck regardless. Geforce era agp cards like that mx440 should work without issues. 95 era drivers work just fine in 98 like how some Vista era drivers work in Win 7 ect.

Yup that MX card should be fine!

Agreed with above ^^

ss7 boards have roughly 2 main issues when it comes to AGP graphics cards (on top of the problems some cards may have on their own). Power draw problems due to poor voltage regulation implementation (not all boards were equally affected by this) and chipset problems (which is another reason why 3DFX is a popular choice for ss7 as poor AGP implementation is one of the main issues with ss7 and 3DFX uses very few of those, so you'll have fewer things that can go wrong).

For 2D only I ended up using some cheaper Vanta or M64 I had laying around (I only needed a fuss-free low power-draw card with at least 16MB RAM for higher desktop screen resolutions).

The lower-end cards also tend to produce less heat inside your case, which is an extra little bonus for any of the cool 3DFX stuff you put in there 😜

Thank you all for the quick replies. I will proceed with the MX 440.

Most cards should be fine for 2D. It's when you go into 3D that the problems are exposed.

I usually suggest an AGP 3dfx card of some sort. They work without issues.

I had a Banshee in my Super 7 worked very very well

How about a S3 Virge/GX2?

Somewhat curious myself, gonna do a SS7 build once I get hold of a suitable mobo, been planning to use a GX2 as 2D card together with a Voodoo2 then. It's definitely low power, and its compatibility should be just as great as earlier S3 cards. I'm not so sure about it's use of those problematic AGP features though, but I have some hope, since it's a very early AGP card. Anyone happen to know for sure?

Yeah, the MX440 should be just fine, and should work for DirectX and OpenGL games too.

As for the Rage XL card - AFAIK, the Rage XL was actually a fairly late die-shrink version of the 3d Rage Pro, and not often offered in cards for PCs. I'll bet that's a Sun or Mac card, and that's why it won't post. Does it say "PGX64" or "XVR-50" anywhere on the card?

Kaputnik: The Virge/GX2 basically treats the AGP slot as a fast PCI slot, so you should be fine. This is also why Voodoo3 cards tend to work well.

If you have a motherboard with the ALi Aladdin V chipset, you should also have no issues with Matrox G200/400/450/550 cards.

The ATI Rage XL will not POST on old machines.
It works in all AM2 boards I have.

I just thought you should know. We don't want to throw out a fine part like that in terms of power draw.

jade_angel wrote:

Yeah, the MX440 should be just fine, and should work for DirectX and OpenGL games too. […]
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Yeah, the MX440 should be just fine, and should work for DirectX and OpenGL games too.

As for the Rage XL card - AFAIK, the Rage XL was actually a fairly late die-shrink version of the 3d Rage Pro, and not often offered in cards for PCs. I'll bet that's a Sun or Mac card, and that's why it won't post. Does it say "PGX64" or "XVR-50" anywhere on the card?

Kaputnik: The Virge/GX2 basically treats the AGP slot as a fast PCI slot, so you should be fine. This is also why Voodoo3 cards tend to work well.

If you have a motherboard with the ALi Aladdin V chipset, you should also have no issues with Matrox G200/400/450/550 cards.

Yeah, thats what I thought too, that it hardly utilize any AGP specific features, since it's one of the earliest, if not the first AGP card. Also made those parallels to the Voodoo3 😀

Frasco wrote:

The ATI Rage XL will not POST on old machines.
It works in all AM2 boards I have.

I just thought you should know. We don't want to throw out a fine part like that in terms of power draw.

Huh, it won't POST in old machines at all? I wonder why?

The only one I have is a Sun PGX64, and it certainly won't, but that's because it doesn't have a BIOS, but rather an OpenFirmware ROM. I can make it work in more modern machines as a second card, if I really want to, but it won't initialize until X starts and loads the driver. (As for Windows, I can't say I've tried. Probably would work with some jiggery-pokery.)

Aren't most Socket AM2 boxen new enough to have UEFI instead of BIOS?

jade_angel wrote:

Huh, it won't POST in old machines at all? I wonder why?

Dunno. Even tried changing BIOS options like "Video Bios cacheable" (This saved me when I wanted
to use an ISA video card in a Pentium machine)
This can happen. The Voodoo3 people mentioned here never worked on my ex-PC CHIPS (M810).

Sun PGX64 without BIOS ? XVR-50 ? No, not mine. Seems we're not talking about the same card 😵
RAGE XL has drivers for Windows XP. Your card is a deviant variation.

jade_angel wrote:

Aren't most Socket AM2 boxen new enough to have UEFI instead of BIOS?

No. They realesed those boards around 2007-2008.

You know what, crazy what we can learn here (and we are only talking about a simple card).
Are you implying PCI cards doesn't work with UEFI ?

It's more that with UEFI, it might not be necessary to have a VGA BIOS. I can't say I've tried. The UEFI on AMD boards might know how to initialize ATI chipsets in 2D mode, I recall reading something to that effect a while back.

The card I have is an oddball - it was made for SPARC workstations, not PCs. It's the same issue that comes up with cards designed for Macs. Still a Rage XL chip, but nothing to tell the PC how to talk to it until the OS loads a driver. If I stick it in a Sun with PCI, though, it works. You could replace the firmware and use it in a PC or a Mac if you wanted, but I don't have a BIOS image that'd work.

The issue with the rage XL is probably related to the PCI version required by the newer card. I got a lot of XGI Volari Z7 cards for extremely cheap thinking they might be decent for older systems 2D only applications. They won't post in older systems at all either. The oldest system it works properly in was a Celeron 800 system I had laying around. Wouldn't work in anything 486 or S7/SS7

Sorry for the late reply, I have been busy. I was able to get windows 98 installed but the system wouldn't load windows after I installed the nVidia drivers. Maybe I have bad drivers. Are there any tweaks that need to made in the BIOS to maximize the probability for this AGP card working properly?

Rhuwyn wrote:

The issue with the rage XL is probably related to the PCI version required by the newer card. I got a lot of XGI Volari Z7 cards for extremely cheap thinking they might be decent for older systems 2D only applications. They won't post in older systems at all either. The oldest system it works properly in was a Celeron 800 system I had laying around. Wouldn't work in anything 486 or S7/SS7

I back this. People tends to think that all PCI slots and implementations are the same thing and compatible, but that isn't true. And doesn't help the fact that manufacturers rarely advertise the PCI version of their products, particularly chinese crap manufacturers.

By general rule, PCI products from older revisions will work in newer implementations if there aren't voltage incompatibilites... But the inverse isn't true even with voltage compatibility. Many of the last PCI manufactured cards will not work in anything older than PCI v3.0 (because the requeriment of MSI/MSIX interrupt support), which are all them motherboards from the AthlonXP/P4 era. Only a few PCI USB2.0 controllers will work with PCI v2.1 (440BX and onwards), mostly of them being old revisions of the NEC chipset, and many times the support isn't completely reliable. Almost all them require PCI v3.0 to work correctly.

hyoenmadan wrote:

I back this. People tends to think that all PCI slots and implementations are the same thing and compatible, but that isn't true. And doesn't help the fact that manufacturers rarely advertise the PCI version of their products, particularly chinese crap manufacturers.

Present! Always thought they were retrocompatible, but how could we know about PCI versions ? Hardly you see indications on PCI Slots (3.3v as I remember). I don't think I've read some conversation about it over here - and I read a lot.

(1.x or something in the style) --> 2.1 --> 3.0. We opened a small can of worms... 🤣
The same goes for PCIe 1.0 - 1.0a and 1.1 around 2006 (and I would like somebody to prove me wrong)

To the OP: Only one time I read about AGP adjustments in BIOS.(x2 x4 x8, setting some strange address, etc...) that would make an AGP card works. I assume your BIOS lacks those options.
And you did a clean install. I running out of ideas...

No matter how problematic any particular piece of retro hardware may be to implement in any useful way, there's always some unexpected niche waiting around the corner for this particular piece of retro hardware to make itself useful in 😀

This is one reason why I've always liked the MX cards and why I never considered the TNT2 64-bit cards as trash, because they have their own niche. The trick is to find these and sometimes this requires some inventive thinking.

There are actually some more modern boards that lack AGP ports (like some s478 boards (nicely done Intel 😵 )) and I actually have some sA board made by Matsonic I think? It doesn't have an AGP port either so I always used this board for testing unknown sA CPUs 😁

Tetrium wrote:

There are actually some more modern boards that lack AGP ports (like some s478 boards (nicely done Intel 😵 )) and I actually have some sA board made by Matsonic I think? It doesn't have an AGP port either so I always used this board for testing unknown sA CPUs 😁

tsc...tsc..tsc...A pig ?
You are contradicting yourself. Stuff a MAD DOG FX5500 PCI and play Medal of Honor AA!

I don't want to start a lecture here. Happens with me all the time 🤣