Ehh sorry, last supported Card is 6xxx Series.. Mistake 😀

There are unsupported drivers (modified) for 7xxx series, but they are unstable.

the x1800, x1900 and geforce 7xxx series do not have win98 drivers 🙁

Besides, your machine would bottleneck even a geforce 4 titanium. I belive a geforce 3 Ti would be a more balanced card for your setup. Alternatively you could get an fx 5200/5500/5600 for your build if you really want dx9 support. They work fine with win98

i woudnt recommend a crippled fx model, shader 2 is really bad on them.. and a PIII 1.4Ghz can play a lot shader 2.0 Games.

Optimal would something like a NX6200 with 128bit Memory/6600GT, or a Radeon 9600XT/9800

Don't go for higher than FX-5000-series. Simply not worth it, as you would be spending too much time getting drivers installed correctly.
Post-FX-5XXX series are better left for XP and up. Go for radeon, if highend is wanted, as they have better driver-support for Win98.
Though the fastest FX-5000 series cards are pretty fast enough for P3 stuff.

I dissagree. A 6600GT scores a measly 7000-10000 pts on a PIII machine depending on motherboard chipset and cpu used (coppermine or fast tualatin). It's wasted on a pIII machine. On a 3.4GHz P4 a good 6600GT will rock a solid 18000-20000 points. A 9600XT would be more appropriate and easier to get, but a 9800xt is again wasted on such a machine. You are better off with a 128 bit fx5600.

My 9800 PRO does 20000-22000 pts on a fast p4 or A64 rig, and barly scratches 10000pts in my 1333MHz Tualeron.

What I'm trying to say there is no point in wasting time and money on a fast modern graphics card for this machine. Not to mention some newer cards (including the 6600GT) don't support 3.3v agp signaling most of the time. I seriously doubt the 7600gt will work in a PIII board in the first place (of course I could be wrong). As far as I know both cards are keyed for agp 8x motherboards only, so it won't physically fit into an older 440bx board with AGP2x. Other socket 370 / slot 1 chipsets do not support the 1.5v / 0.8v agp signalling required to run modern agp cards but the card will phisically fit in the AGP slot. In that situation you risk ruining both your motherboard and gpu.

Just stick with what works - if you play DX8.1 games get a Geforce 3 or 4 Titanium (NOT THE MX IT SUCKS) or a radeon 8500, and for DX9 games get an FX5xxx or radeon 9xxx.

The GF4 Ti is FAST - 14000pts in 3dmark 01 on an athlon64 - it can play black and white at 1920x1080 in winXP with a minimum fps of 20 and maximum of 55.

Then again, best to do whatever makes you happy! It's your build, put whatever makes you happy in it!

I have a GF 4 ti 4200 in there right now, I got this card for free and was just hoping for an upgrade.
Gonna see about buying a 6800 in January, since that appears to be the fastest card with 98 support.

I do realize that this would be overpowered for the system, but it's my machine as noted above- and I simply have a PIII fetish. Fastest possible PIII with fastest possible everything else, and Windows 98SE. That is my absurdly specific use case. I would love to pair it with one of those weird DDR PIII boards for a hilarious "Underpowered as hell CPU, overpowered literally everything else" setup.

also the 6800 has an ultra extreme model and I find that funny

I would probably use a GF2 ultra to line things up if I had one, but I don't. I tend when I have a newish system to flail around upgrading and downgrading parts until I settle on an understood sweet spot.

Seems you can't be persuaded to buy anything older than the 6800 🤐

As everyone has said the "sweet spot" for your system is nowhere near a Geforce 6800. I could maybe understand if you already had one on hand, but buying one specially for this purpose seems crazy.

In your system compared to the GF4 TI or FX series :

Pros:
Pixel shader model 3 support
DirectX 9c support

Cons:
Worse Windows 98 game compatibility
Consumes more power
Louder noise
Runs hotter

Then there's also the fact that you will need to use newer drivers. I wouldn't be surprised if you got a few less fps on a newer card due to driver bloat putting a tiny bit more strain on your CPU. But if you want to just make a really strange machine for the fun of it then I guess you aren't hurting anybody (except maybe the environment 🤣)

Games that require Shader model 3 are often deep into "XP!!!" territory anyway (i.e. Bioshock, Scell Double Agent)

Nintendawg wrote:

Seems you can't be persuaded to buy anything older than the 6800 :# […]
Show full quote

Seems you can't be persuaded to buy anything older than the 6800 🤐

As everyone has said the "sweet spot" for your system is nowhere near a Geforce 6800. I could maybe understand if you already had one on hand, but buying one specially for this purpose seems crazy.

In your system compared to the GF4 TI or FX series :

Pros:
Pixel shader model 3 support
DirectX 9c support

Cons:
Worse Windows 98 game compatibility
Consumes more power
Louder noise
Runs hotter

Then there's also the fact that you will need to use newer drivers. I wouldn't be surprised if you got a few less fps on a newer card due to driver bloat putting a tiny bit more strain on your CPU. But if you want to just make a really strange machine for the fun of it then I guess you aren't hurting anybody (except maybe the environment 🤣)

Mostly because if I'm buying something than dangit, I want the fastest thingy.
I have Voodoo 2 sli for weird old games which is nice. I dunno, maybe I won't buy anything.

E: on this note- best drivers for a Ti 4200?

For a high end Windows 98 SE machine I would consider going with a Pentium 4. I recently built one for a video project: 10 Reasons for Pentium 4 Windows 98 DOS Retro Gaming PC

I happened to try a few cards. The toughest benchmark I ran was Quake III, and that game works fine under Windows XP anyway, but at 1600 x 1200 you can see the GF4 pulling 120 fps. The Radeon 9700 does even better with 160 fps.

This is ample of power, for a game that really doesn't need to be run on a Windows 98 SE machine.

Just for information, 1600 x 1200 is pretty much as demanding as 1920 x 1080.

If you do get a 6800 card use forceware 66.93. Anything else seems to break compatibility with one game or another. Also you need to make sure of two very critical things:

1. Your motherboard has a AGP 4X slot. i810/i815 and Via Apollo PRO 133A have that. Some later 440bx revisions might but I wouldn't bet on it. The 6800 REFUSES to work on AGP2x (system freeze, BSODs, the works).
2. Make sure you get an EARLY 6800 card w/o the PCI-E to AGP bridge, it's the only one that supports 3.3v signaling. If you get a later model and stick it into a P3 board you will fry both card and motherboard.

AGP 3.3V compatible 6800 card: - this whould work

AGP 1.5V - 0.8v ONLY 6800 card: - stay away from this one

SRQ wrote:

E: on this note- best drivers for a Ti 4200?

I find 44.03 works best with the ti4200.

My win98 gaming machine is a socket 939 Athlon 3800+ / 6800LE@Ultra or GF4 Ti 4600 (depends on what I play) / 1GB ram / Voodoo 2 SLi - Win98 Socket 939 Voodoo 2 SLi Build! (a.k.a. Glide Overkill)

I have bencharks on my thread using both a ti4200 stock and OC, as well as a 6800.

Noted and noted, thank.
Using a P4 would make sense, but for my use case I refuse. I simply have a PIII fetish as noted above. For related "not entirely rational" reasons I won't use ATi cards.
I did for a while but I found weird use-case overlaps with my ~actual desktop~ and like, I gotta just draw a line at 2001 or so or else I get silly.

I use a 6800GT with an overclocked. PIII-S system. It's actually a great card for that processor. Quite a few "newer" games (eg: Far Cry, Doom 3, NFS MW) do run noticeably faster on the 6800GT than on a 9800Pro at my usual 1600x1200. None of this matters anymore as I now play most of those games on a jackrabbit fast Win7 box. But the point remains: a quick P3 can benefit from a GF6 card at high resolutions. And they're so cheap on ebay (or were cheap last I checked, about a year ago), why not get a GF6? It's like free AA!

I wouldn't bother with a 7600GS though. Win9x support is sketchy, and GF7 AGP cards have those pesky bridge chips which do not get along with older motherboards. My 7800GS just breaks out in artifacts whenever I fire up anything 3D.

kanecvr wrote:

I dissagree. A 6600GT scores a measly 7000-10000 pts on a PIII machine depending on motherboard chipset and cpu used (coppermine or fast tualatin). It's wasted on a pIII machine. On a 3.4GHz P4 a good 6600GT will rock a solid 18000-20000 points. A 9600XT would be more appropriate and easier to get, but a 9800xt is again wasted on such a machine. You are better off with a 128 bit fx5600.

My 9800 PRO does 20000-22000 pts on a fast p4 or A64 rig, and barly scratches 10000pts in my 1333MHz Tualeron.

PIII-S can do far better than 10K. 10K is around what this machine scores with a Ti4600. With a 6800GT it can do just about 13700, and 3DMark01 isn't even very GPU intensive:

Standard Def Steve wrote:

I use a 6800GT with an overclocked. PIII-S system. It's actually a great card for that processor. Quite a few "newer" games (eg: […]
Show full quote

I use a 6800GT with an overclocked. PIII-S system. It's actually a great card for that processor. Quite a few "newer" games (eg: Far Cry, Doom 3, NFS MW) do run noticeably faster on the 6800GT than on a 9800Pro at my usual 1600x1200. None of this matters anymore as I now play most of those games on a jackrabbit fast Win7 box. But the point remains: a quick P3 can benefit from a GF6 card at high resolutions. And they're so cheap on ebay (or were cheap last I checked, about a year ago), why not get a GF6? It's like free AA!

I wouldn't bother with a 7600GS though. Win9x support is sketchy, and GF7 AGP cards have those pesky bridge chips which do not get along with older motherboards. My 7800GS just breaks out in artifacts whenever I fire up anything 3D.

kanecvr wrote:

I dissagree. A 6600GT scores a measly 7000-10000 pts on a PIII machine depending on motherboard chipset and cpu used (coppermine or fast tualatin). It's wasted on a pIII machine. On a 3.4GHz P4 a good 6600GT will rock a solid 18000-20000 points. A 9600XT would be more appropriate and easier to get, but a 9800xt is again wasted on such a machine. You are better off with a 128 bit fx5600.

My 9800 PRO does 20000-22000 pts on a fast p4 or A64 rig, and barly scratches 10000pts in my 1333MHz Tualeron.

PIII-S can do far better than 10K. 10K is around what this machine scores with a Ti4600. With a 6800GT it can do just about 13700, and 3DMark01 isn't even very GPU intensive:

Dude come on - that score is WAY below what a 6800 can do. A 6800 Ultra can score as high as 24000 pts in 3dm01. My 6800LE modded to 16/6 running at a modest 350 / 650 :

The only possible motivation to use such a card on a PIII machine is the overkill factor. The CPU slows the machine down A LOT. Even a fast socket A rig is to slow for this card.

Athlon 64 3200+ running an overclocked GF4 Ti 4200:

That's a good 40% faster then a PIII-S at 1.4 GHz.

The AGP slot matters a well. A slow 4x slot w/o fast writes will severely choke the card - that goes for the GF4 Titanium as well. My best GF4 Ti score is about 15048 pts running a slightly overclocked 3800+ with a stock Chaintech GF4 Ti 4600.

I also have a stupid reason for building such an overkill win98 rig - HD gaming. Some older games will run at 1920x1080 trough registry hacking, some with patches, others will do it natively. I finished Dungeon Keeper II and Black & White (1) with hardware acceleration enabled, 2xAA and 1920x1080. Unofficial Quake 2 3.46 also works great at 1920x1080 on this setup as well. Pointless but looks great.

I did try running these games HD on a pIII machine and they occasionally stutter and freeze. This does not happen on my athlon64 - smooth as silk 😀

But this is a windows 98 machine right? Doom 3 doesn't even run on Windows 98 without a modified exe.

What 98SE games are better with a 6800?

I just don't understand why anyone would want to play mid 2000's games on windows 98 in 2015. Personally I don't consider any mid 2000's video card to be desirable outside a period correct build. For late 98 they have bad compatibility and are needlessly fast. For late XP they are too slow.

kanecvr wrote:

Dude come on - that score is WAY below what a 6800 can do. A 6800 Ultra can score as high as 24000 pts in 3dm01. My 6800LE modde […]
Show full quote

Dude come on - that score is WAY below what a 6800 can do. A 6800 Ultra can score as high as 24000 pts in 3dm01. My 6800LE modded to 16/6 running at a modest 350 / 650 :

The only possible motivation to use such a card on a PIII machine is the overkill factor. The CPU slows the machine down A LOT. Even a fast socket A rig is to slow for this card.

Athlon 64 3200+ running an overclocked GF4 Ti 4200:

That's a good 40% faster then a PIII-S at 1.4 GHz.

The AGP slot matters a well. A slow 4x slot w/o fast writes will severely choke the card - that goes for the GF4 Titanium as well. My best GF4 Ti score is about 15048 pts running a slightly overclocked 3800+ with a stock Chaintech GF4 Ti 4600.

I also have a stupid reason for building such an overkill win98 rig - HD gaming. Some older games will run at 1920x1080 trough registry hacking, some with patches, others will do it natively. I finished Dungeon Keeper II and Black & White (1) with hardware acceleration enabled, 2xAA and 1920x1080. Unofficial Quake 2 3.46 also works great at 1920x1080 on this setup as well. Pointless but looks great.

I did try running these games HD on a pIII machine and they occasionally stutter and freeze. This does not happen on my athlon64 - smooth as silk 😀

And that's why I mentioned that 3DMark01 isn't very GPU intensive.

Fire up a newer game like FarCry on a fast Tualatin at 1600x1200, and the 6800GT will massively outperform a TI4600. 3DMark01 doesn't show as much of a difference between the two cards on a PIII platform because it mostly consists of D3D7-level graphics running at a measly 1024x768.

Like I said, I stopped playing games on my PIII after discovering Win7's somewhat amazing backward compatibility. But when I did use the PIII for gaming, I even noticed a bit of a boost in speed going from a 9800Pro to the 6800GT.

kanecvr wrote:

I find 44.03 works best with the ti4200.

My win98 gaming machine is a socket 939 Athlon 3800+ / 6800LE@Ultra or GF4 Ti 4600 (depends on what I play) / 1GB ram / Voodoo 2 SLi - Win98 Socket 939 Voodoo 2 SLi Build! (a.k.a. Glide Overkill)

I have bencharks on my thread using both a ti4200 stock and OC, as well as a 6800.

Are you suggesting 44.03 also for Ti 4600? I have a new Asus Ti4600 that I want to upgrade my existing GF2 Ultra with, Do you suggest using this version again?

Semi-related question: What's the best, ~quietest~ PIII cooler I can get? I would love to get this system to be as quiet as possible.
Dorky as it is, I enjoy free-writing creatively with the monitor turned to amber at night in the dark. Quiet is good.

If we just consider going for overkill, what IS the fastest AGP card for a Windows 98 SE machine?