To be fair, that CPU is underpowered even for the Matrox. I'm pretty sure the CPU is the bottleneck there. That being said, you might wanna try the GeForce2 MX200 with older drivers, as I'm not sure which one has drivers with the highest CPU overhead.

If you want to use Windows 3.1 then Riva TNT, but if you do not, then Geforce MX. It is that simple. S3 cards are very compatible, but not so fast as Nvidia cards. I usually use S3 Trio64 or Cirrus in my 486 builds, S3 Virge and Voodoo in my Pentium builds, and Nvidia and Voodoo cards in my Pentium 2/3 builds. I really do not like ATI cards at all, and Matrox card only shines in good picture quality not speed or compatibility.

alexanrs wrote:

To be fair, that CPU is underpowered even for the Matrox. I'm pretty sure the CPU is the bottleneck there. That being said, you might wanna try the GeForce2 MX200 with older drivers, as I'm not sure which one has drivers with the highest CPU overhead.

I might try it, I am not sure on what driver would be best for that though.

For me it's S3 Virge/DX or Cirrus Logic 5446, Both work perfectly for DOS 2D games on my Pentium MMX rig.
Can't say much about 3D games or Windows.

James-F wrote:

For me it's S3 Virge/DX or Cirrus Logic 5446, Both work perfectly for DOS 2D games on my Pentium MMX rig.
Can't say much about 3D games or Windows.

Yeah, I was looking for a little better 3D performance in Windows 98. DOS 3D is good.

For 3D in Windows forget the S3 cards you listed. The Trio64 is a 2D only card, and the Virge was so bad at 3D it was nicknamed "graphics decelerator"... its a great card for 2D and for S3D stuff, but Direct3D performance is very bad. For the NVidia cards there stick to Detonators... the 40.xx series of drivers should be good enough to see how it performs in average.

Thanks I will give the try the Geforce 2 MX200. If anybody wants to swap an ISA Soundblaster 16 for the other cards let me know.

Well I tried the "Driver 45.23 Detonator FX 9x" from the Vogons driver library and it makes Windows 98 lock up shortly after boot up every time. I am not sure if the card is bad or if I need a different driver.

Just tried the "Driver 43.45 Detonator XP 9x" drivers and they seem to be OK so far.

Nope! Still locks up, just took longer. Maybe it is a bad card?

You can try the TNT card, as it should be supported by the same Detonators.

alexanrs wrote:

You can try the TNT card, as it should be supported by the same Detonators.

Shouldn't I just stay with the Matrox instead of that? I was trying the other card to see if it would be give a bit of a performance increase to some of the 3D games I run in Windows 98.

I just noticed that the Geforce 2 was quite hot to the touch, hotter than I think it should be. It could be a bad card.

You could try adding a heatsink and fan to the Geforce2, or just get some air blowing over it. I have noticed that alot of Geforce 2 mx200's tend to lack any cooling and tend to run far to hot.