I've heard about GeForce 6 being a pill in Windows 98 too, but haven't ever personally tested it. I see consistently good things about GeForce FX, especially if they're pre-NV35 (meaning 5200/5600/5800 boards, not 5700/59x0 boards) because of their wide driver support and fact that the entire series is universal AGP cards. GeForce 3 or 4 would probably be even better in that regard, as they can go even older but have fairly new driver support as well (I know the 7x.xx drivers (XP) I run for my 5800 list the GeForce 3 in their readme as supported, but I also know there are older drives the GF3 can use that the 5800 cannot).

Voodoo3 AGP is 3.3V, at least everyone I've ever seen, so that's a no go.

If you wanted to go with Radeon, the 7000 or 8500 would probably both be good choices, and the 9000 series should all support 1.5V as well, but it's been my experience those cards do not age well (and it would appear other people have had similar experiences, see the discussion in this thread about it: Video card for Athlon XP?), so I'm hesitant to suggest them, despite their very good performance.

Thanks for your reply! I re-checked the cards - The Ati is a RV100 32mb sdram card,
while the geforce mx400 is DDR 64meg.

Funnily (if thats a word) enough, the geforce card has markings of NV-11-A1 and MX-400,
Am i missing something here or is that the pre NV-35 that you speak of?

I did read your thread. Actually, its the one that got me thinking about what card i should put in this, so thanks
for bringing it up!

Oh, sorry for the confusion on the NV30 thing:

GeForce FX is the NV30 generation of cards, and the original NV30 is the FX 5800 series. Due to various reasons, nVidia released a mid-life revision for GeForce FX called NV35 (the FX 5900), which cannot use all of the driver revisions back to the 4x.xx series that the "original" GeForce FX cards are compatible with, so you're somewhat limited in terms of supporting older drives (and they can all use up through the latest release builds - so that gives the pre-NV35 revision cards an advantage in terms of wide driver support).

The GeForce MX are all based on GeForce 2, which was NV10 series. Being an NV11 that tells me it's a GeForce 2 MX, and not a 4 MX, so it will lack LMA which is a reasonably significant performance hit. It would have a very wide range of supported drivers though, at least in terms of supporting older drives (as it's years older than GeForce FX). In general if you wanted to go with an MX, a GF4 MX (NV17/18) would be a better performer, but if you already have the GF2 it's "free" by comparison. Depending on what resolutions you want to run at, what kinds of IQ enhancements you want/need to run, and so forth, the MX may or may not be a good choice for games like Quake 3 or a little later, where a GeForce 4 Ti (or a similar performing card) would do much better.

AFAIK, all AGP 8x videocards are supporting AGP 4x (1.5 V) mode. Because there is no 4x (0.8 V) in the standard. So - AGP 8x uses 8x (0.8 V)/4x (1.5 V). And maybe 2x (1.5 V)/1x (1.5 V) (not required by AGP 3.0).
Theoretically 8X AGP slot is the same - it works with all AGP 4x videocards by default. Practically - I heard something about "AGP 3.0 only slots"...
Maybe the reason is AGP 3.0 dropouts (non-SBA commands etc). But - can't find/remember any hardware with this slot...

For highest compatibility in early 3D games it is recommended to get a GeForce FX or earlier like obobskivich already wrote. (nVidia has/had better compatibility for older games.)
If you want a (factory) passively cooled card you are limited to GeForce2 MX, GeForce4 MX and GeForce FX 5200.
GeForce2 MX should be ok for Quake 3 - you should probably try first if it's good enough for you if you already have the card.
GeForce4 MX is quite a bit faster than GeForce2 MX so that would be a good upgrade.
GeForce FX 5200 has DirectX 9 support (which you probably don't need), higher single texturing fillrate but depending on the respective models probably lower memory bandwidth.

GeForce2 GTS, GeForce3 and GeForce4 Ti normally come with fans, as do all faster FX cards.

For compatibility in DOS games see Gona's list. (I don't know if these results translate to a Win98 DOS box.)

I wouldn't recommend Radeon 7000VE for your purposes, that doesn't do TnL, should be slower than Geforce2 MX400, and compatibility should be better with an nVidia card anyway.

obobskivich wrote:

GeForce FX is the NV30 generation of cards, and the original NV30 is the FX 5800 series. Due to various reasons, nVidia released a mid-life revision for GeForce FX called NV35 (the FX 5900), which cannot use all of the driver revisions back to the 4x.xx series that the "original" GeForce FX cards are compatible with, so you're somewhat limited in terms of supporting older drives (and they can all use up through the latest release builds - so that gives the pre-NV35 revision cards an advantage in terms of wide driver support).

FX 5900/Ultra can still use 45.23 though. Can you give the examples where older drivers are needed (speaking of games)?

Or another question would be, is there a niche use between GF4Ti and FX59x0 that would make it worth getting a 5800? I ask this because you seem to be a fan (no pun intended 😁) of the FX 5800, and I don't know of anyone else on here who does use it regularly.

As for OP, the ubiquitos FX5500 is also available in passive-cooled models, a quick search shows a couple from Zotac, Sparkle and MSI. The models with fan are usually still available brand new but you may have to do a little searching for the fanless ones. Other interesting find is this MSI FX5600 which has fancy heatsink (not sure how much space it takes), but it says Japan only and might be rare.

Oh you're lucky, I found this brand new Sparkle FX5500 mentioned above. There are other brands with wider heatsinks though (covers the RAM).

Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow is one game that really NEEDS a FX 😀

The top FX cards are not cheap these days. Personally I really like the GeForce4 Ti. It should be powerful enough more most games from that era and before.

PCI Geforce 5500 FX's like said above prob best choice. There really is almost no other good choice for a PCI DX8\9 9x card.
That is unless you want to deal with the horrible ati 9x drivers from this era. There are PCI versions of the radeon 8500 in the form of the 9250 a reduced version.
Its a DX8.x card.

AGP.
Like said above these are good choices for fast 9x cards with high compatibility.
Geforce FX 5700 Ultra, 5800 (not likely to find the ultra ver of this one),59xx FX cards.
The 5950,5700,5500 cannot use the earlier Forceware drivers that the 5900,5800, 5200 can so the compatibility can be lower on some machines.
Just be aware of that.

archsan wrote:

FX 5900/Ultra can still use 45.23 though. Can you give the examples where older drivers are needed (speaking of games)?

Splinter Cell (and it seems to be hardware and software related per the really long thread on the topic). 😊 I can't think of other examples off hand, but I've never tried an FX under Windows 98 - I know I've read of folks having trouble with the later drivers in 98, so my reasoning was/is to just go with hardware that has the best support-base in terms of older drivers. The 5800 isn't exactly my suggestion here though (partly because they're rare and partly because it sounds like it'd be silly overkill for this build) - more to go with a card that can use older drive builds in general, and the 5200/5600 probably can fulfill that, and are generally easy to find (and tend to be a lot cheaper than 5700-5950 cards these days)).

I'm not particularly married to GeForce FX for this build - I think GeForce 3 or newer would be a good target though; just to get LMA and pixel shader support more than anything else.

Or another question would be, is there a niche use between GF4Ti and FX59x0 that would make it worth getting a 5800? I ask this because you seem to be a fan (no pun intended 😁) of the FX 5800, and I don't know of anyone else on here who does use it regularly.

In an objective, measurement driven sense? Probably not. Tech Report speculated, and demonstrated with some benchmarks (which I can't seem to find - they're part of their original 5900 Ultra review though, so perhaps someone will have better luck searching) that the 5800U appeared to have slightly better TnL performance, but either card should have no trouble with a DX7 game. For later SM2.0 driven content, the 5900 will likely have an edge because of the extra vertex shader and reworked pixel shaders (the extra memory and memory bandwidth also probably helps to some extent), but honestly none of the cards from that era (Radeon included) will be top performers for later DirectX 9 games.

I'm also not sure a 5800 can really be part of most discussions - they aren't generally easy to just run out and buy like you can with some of the 5900 series cards. 😵

Honestly I think the best (perhaps only) reason to get a 5800 is simply because you want a 5800 (e.g. collector).

As for OP, the ubiquitos FX5500 is also available in passive-cooled models, a quick search shows a couple from Zotac, Sparkle and MSI. The models with fan are usually still available brand new but you may have to do a little searching for the fanless ones. Other interesting find is this MSI FX5600 which has fancy heatsink (not sure how much space it takes), but it says Japan only and might be rare.

I've never even seen/heard-of that 5600 before your post - I'm guessing you're probably right about it being rare (or at least outside of Japan), if not out there in total unobtanium land like the Chaintech FX81.

Oh you're lucky, I found this brand new Sparkle FX5500 mentioned above. There are other brands with wider heatsinks though (covers the RAM).

It shouldn't need sinks on the RAM - I don't remember my 5200 having such sinks, and it gives you the option of placing whatever aftermarket-stuff you want without fear of damaging the card in removing ramsinks. That's actually not a bad find either - brand new, and says it's a 128-bit card. Would be a good performer over a GeForce 2 MX.

AlphaWing wrote:

PCI Geforce 5500 FX's like said above prob best choice. There really is almost no other good choice for a PCI DX8\9 9x card.
That is unless you want to deal with the horrible ati 9x drivers from this era. There are PCI versions of the radeon 8500 in the form of the 9250 a reduced version.
Its a DX8.x card.

Something your post made me think about: another option for a PCI card, depending on what can be found, would be the PCI version of the Quadro FX 600. It's based on the FX 5200 Ultra (I honestly don't recall if there's a PCI 5200 Ultra).

The other thing is that 5200 and 5500 perform poorly. They are really slow. A GeForce4 Ti would be a better choice than such cards.

The FX5500 produces a slideshow in Splinter Cell. I don't think the FX5700 would be much better.

Splinter effin Cell... I knew it would come up 😜. But that thing would need a GF3/4Ti anyway for proper shadow buffer and spotlights. Or an Xbox for that matter. Yeah, FX was supposed to be my DX5~8 only card, but then along came SCPT. Gotta love Ubisoft.

Nevermind the ramsinks, it's just that some passive FX5500 cards (e.g. MSI) have more of a cooling surface that's all. I don't know how hot it typically operates though,

Also @Phil, OP stated heaviest 3D use would be Q3A and wanted fanless, so I thought it doesn't go any better than FX5500/5600.

archsan wrote:

Splinter effin Cell... I knew it would come up 😜. But that thing would need a GF3/4Ti anyway for proper shadow buffer and spotlights. Or an Xbox for that matter. Yeah, FX was supposed to be my DX5~8 only card, but then along came SCPT. Gotta love Ubisoft.

When I tested the game for Mau1wurf1977's thread, the 5800 Ultra (with 71.89 drivers) displayed the shadows correctly the bulk of the time from what I saw (and remember); the 5900XT had issues with most of them (flickering, not drawing, etc). I'm not sure, however, if the 5800's level of performance is really needed for that game - but that's kind of the FX 5800/5900's quirkiness: they're overkill for basically all DX6/7/8 but DX9 usually crushes them (if I remember right nVidia promised "300 fps in Quake 3" with the FX 5900, but then you get into something like Half-Life 2 and it's running at 800x600 low settings and still drags at some parts 😘 🙄). I also can't think of any other games, off handedly, that the 5800 has been able to do something the 5900 cannot, not that the system that hosts them ever really deals with "demanding" games (Quake 3 is probably more of a load than at least half the games it runs, and I'm perfectly happy with that - means I can just leave 8x AA on) 🤣.

Oh it needs to be passive, didn't realise 😊

Apparently ex-3dfx engineers are responsible for the FX. Can't remember where I read this.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Apparently ex-3dfx engineers are responsible for the FX. Can't remember where I read this.

I've read that, but also read it isn't/wasn't entirely a "3dfx" thing - supposedly there's video of an nVidia presentation where their CEO introduces the FX and talks about all of the various companies/technologies/etc people that came together under the nVidia banner and contributed to the GeForce FX.