Stojke wrote:

I didn't know Gainward hid things under the hood 😀
GPU-Z program reports that this is an NV42 chip. Can software be fooled that easily? (installing an NV40 chip and modifying the identifier)

GPU-Z is not a paragon of accuracy IME. My favorite "gem" of all time is that it thinks my 5800 Ultra has 3 VS units and 4 TMUs... 🙄

It very well may be an NV42 though; my advice would be to either take the heatsink off and see what the die says, or find an in-depth review of the card and see what that says (usually when Gainward would "hide" something like that, it was a pretty open secret).

I did do some research, and they had NV40 and NV41, where people thought NV41 was pretty strange on this card. But now i see that GPU-Z shows NV42 on the card this guy sells.
I dont think he will take it off, I can only buy it and see.

Stojke wrote:

I did do some research, and they had NV40 and NV41, where people thought NV41 was pretty strange on this card. But now i see that GPU-Z shows NV42 on the card this guy sells.
I dont think he will take it off, I can only buy it and see.

Oh you don't own the card already, I didn't catch that part. Sorry. 😊 Personally my take on stuff like this via ebay/whatever - when in doubt: move on. You can still get full-on 6800GT AGPs pretty easily, which are pretty close to being Ultras out of the box (50MHz on the core, 100 on the RAM; if my GT is any indication the GPU should have no problems hitting Ultra, but the RAM won't quite make the jump). That said, I wouldn't generally let the nVidia bridge be a deterrent - they did a better job with driver/software support than ATi did, especially for GeForce 6. I would be surprised if it didn't work in a relatively modern AGP system.

I can't really buy from ebay, because everything i buy gets charged extra at the customs office, especially computer components. Some times even 2x the actual worth of the component.
What i have is what i find on flea markets and local auction web sites 😀
And good AGP cards for a normal price are pretty rare.

Best for Windows 98:
GeForce 4 Ti 4600/4800 or GeForce FX 5900. FX 5700, 5950, and GeForce 6 are less ideal because you can't run 45.23 drivers which tend to offer the best compatibility. Later drivers definitely cause problems in some games.

Radeons will be an experience in compatibility issues and even more driver quirks.

The PSU is 250 Watt but see here http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/d … 3514/t/19285787
So based on that, what card?

A Geforce4 Ti or FX 5600 Ultra should be fine. It's possible a 5900 Ultra could be ok too but that's probably pushing your luck.

There's always the option to get a new PSU.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?It … N82E16817371004 (nice 5v output for the money)

swaaye wrote:

A Geforce4 Ti or FX 5600 Ultra should be fine. It's possible a 5900 Ultra could be ok too but that's probably pushing your luck.

There's always the option to get a new PSU.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?It … N82E16817371004 (nice 5v output for the money)

It would need to be Dell compatible fyi

Dell really limits the upgrade paths, even their old Optiplexes can't handle a virge without frying (in my experience)

leileilol wrote:

Dell really limits the upgrade paths, even their old Optiplexes can't handle a virge without frying (in my experience)

You need an adapter harness so you can put an ATX power supply in place of the proprietary Dell one. My GX1's came with a 250W standard and it has a unique harness. There is no upgrade from Dell. The only trouble is, the harness adapters are only sporadically available, so if you see one you really have to grab it because it might be years before you see another one. Dropping in even a 450W ATX power supply allows for a much better video card than you would be able to use with the 250W OEM unit.

My current PC never fried a card (Dell Dimension 8200) it is a desktop.

I'm pretty sure the 8200 uses standard ATX PSU pinout. I've put a standard PSU into a Dimension 4500 of the same year.

It actually sounds like the stock PSU is pretty high quality so you probably can just use it with whatever video card you like.

I used to have ATI Radeon X850XT(PE) 256MB AGP DX9.0b Win98SE http://www2.ati.com/drivers/Catalyst_62_ME_re … ease_notes.html

ForceWare Release 81.98 -Last nVidia driver for for Win98 supports his rival nVidia 6800Ultra 256MB AGP DX9.0c

These 2 cards are - last supported - and definitely the best - 4WIN 98

😘

Whenever someone asks for the fastest AGP card, the Radeon HD 3850 keeps popping into my head. Might not have Win98 drivers though, so you might want to check that.

leileilol wrote:

Dell really limits the upgrade paths, even their old Optiplexes can't handle a virge without frying (in my experience)

I've upgraded the shit outta my Dell Dimension E520.

Old specs when I received it:
Pentium 4 (775 Prescott)
1GB DDR2 533
250GB HD
Integrated Graphics
305W Power Supply

New specs after I went to town on it:
Core 2 Quad Q6600
4GB DDR2 800
1TB Western Digital Blue
Radeon HD 4830
500W XClio Power Supply

I had to saw off the top half of the video card mounting bracket (because of the BTX form factor on older Optiplex's / Dimensions stuff is upside down) on the Radeon 4830 to make it fit, but after I did that it fits completely snug. Normally the Dell E520 would only take single slot cards, but the heatsink on this MSI branded Radeon takes up just the right amount of room

It's expandable to 8 GB of ram, but I don't have that on hand. It works perfectly.

Before:

After:

With the top half of the bracket sawn off, the video card fits PERFECTLY. At the other end it's literally a few millimeters from some capacitors.

Hell I even replaced the stock cooler (kinda had to, the q6600 was running hot with the stock), the new beast cooler is on the right with heatpipe goodness:

It was my grandmothers machine. She didn't take real good care of it, got all kinds of viruses and stuff on it, it was running XP. She had the tower in this small part of her desk with the door shut, so there was no air flow and it would constantly get real hot. After upgrading it, I threw Windows 8 on it (only license I had available). So it went from taking ages to open a Word Document to playing relatively modern games at decent framerates. It's actually faster than her "new" computer she has now.

That poor computer now feels much better, I think.

Yeah we're definitely entering modern hardware territory now.

eFatal2ty wrote:

I used to have ATI Radeon X850XT(PE) 256MB AGP DX9.0b Win98SE http://www2.ati.com/drivers/Catalyst_62_ME_re … ease_notes.html […]
Show full quote

I used to have ATI Radeon X850XT(PE) 256MB AGP DX9.0b Win98SE http://www2.ati.com/drivers/Catalyst_62_ME_re … ease_notes.html

ForceWare Release 81.98 -Last nVidia driver for for Win98 supports his rival nVidia 6800Ultra 256MB AGP DX9.0c

These 2 cards are - last supported - and definitely the best - 4WIN 98

😘

I wouldn't suggest a Radeon for anything destined to run old games.

And 81.98 has problems too. Anything newer than 45.xx is troublesome for old games.

Here is my results with X850XT and X800XL on IPIII-S 1400Tualatin
http://www.filedropper.com/ip3
But I strongly recommend MS Win2000 or XP for 2002+ games and those cards

There are 2 big driver troubles with ATi Radeons.
Subtractive blending and fog. The fog was fixed only in Catalyst 7.11 IIRC.
Catalyst 7.12 have added the 3rd trouble - broken OGL renderer (slow and black triangles).

As far as 250W being enough - it depends on how much power each individual rail is putting out as to whether or not it could handle something like 5900 Ultra. In my P4 system with 5800 Ultra it never draws more than ~180W at the wall (using a modern, 80-plus PSU), so the DC-side draw is lower than that (probably more like 140-150W). But if the PSU only puts up 3-4A on the 5V or 12V rail it may not be able to handle something like that, even if its overall output is high enough. I don't know what the exact per-rail current demands for the NV30s are like, but I know TPU has estimated TDP for the higher-end cards around 70W.

Out of curiosity - what is 81.98 supposed to break, and what is 45.xx supposed to fix?

I saw a forum thread mention that Dell's 8200 250W is more like a typical 350W because it is actually rated to sustain 250W. However at this point these PSUs are old and I would check for bad caps. I've seen leaking caps in Dell PSUs.

Off the top of my head, beyond 45.23 and you'll have problems with NFS4 and NOLF. It actually also affects zeckensack's Glide emulator with some games. And old Unreal engine D3D gets z-fighting problems IIRC (maybe W buffer issue). There is a lot of info out there in other old forum threads too. Ive experimented with every major driver after 45.xx and it is pretty clear that for DirectX 7 era games you want 45.23 or older.

Also, starting with 50.xx, NVIDIA started to aggressively performance tweak texture filtering and so image quality is somewhat lower. Not sure how noticeable it is though. This was the big cheating era.

81.98 can't be cleanly uninstalled which is annoying. The uninstaller is broken.