I don't know specifically about the x850 on Win98 but I do recall that the ATI 9800 drivers didn't suck on XP, sort of bodes well for ATI cards of that time. Every AMD/ATI video driver I've seen through the years since then always had some glaring problem that reaffirmed my Nvidia fanboy status.

BushLin wrote:

I don't know specifically about the x850 on Win98 but I do recall that the ATI 9800 drivers didn't suck on XP, sort of bodes well for ATI cards of that time. Every AMD/ATI video driver I've seen through the years since then always had some glaring problem that reaffirmed my Nvidia fanboy status.

Especially for early windows games I just have a lot more faith in Nvidia drivers. Maybe that is unearned though.

God Of Gaming wrote:

Games affected by lack of table fog and 8bit textures are really few, probably less than 10, out of several thousand, so hardly a serious issue, and the x850 has better image quality and AA than the FX 5900 line, also ati truform emulation. No HDMI is non issue, win98 gaming is CRT gaming

Better image quality in what way? As in AA and texture filtering, or in raw DAC output?

Thief I uses 8 bit textures for the sky, and Unreal Gold will paint decals on the walls and floor when you shoot them. The FFVII and VIII also use it, but I guess that was patched out later. You're right though, you really aren't missing much there.

The difference in table fog can be a big deal though. Carmeggedon 2, Shadow of the Empire, Turok... I think they all use table fog. Table fog emulation will get the job done, but it makes everything basically just white and opaque.

ATI Truform is cool, but it has a very minor improvement in the few games it supports. Nobody should get an ATI card just for that feature IMO.

mothergoose729 wrote:

The difference in table fog can be a big deal though. Carmeggedon 2, Shadow of the Empire, Turok... I think they all use table fog. Table fog emulation will get the job done, but it makes everything basically just white and opaque.

ATI fixed table fog eventually, but not on 98. The drivers, which fixed fog in Thief 2 are 7.11 and up, but those are only available on XP.

mothergoose729 wrote:

Better image quality in what way? As in AA and texture filtering, or in raw DAC output?

Both I guess, ATi/AMD cards have been known for a long time to have better image quality than Nvidia, even today, and also the AA that the X850 has is also better quality than Nvidia's at the time, Nvidia didn't have good quality AA till the 8000 series.

mothergoose729 wrote:

Thief I uses 8 bit textures for the sky, and Unreal Gold will paint decals on the walls and floor when you shoot them. The FFVII and VIII also use it, but I guess that was patched out later. You're right though, you really aren't missing much there.

The difference in table fog can be a big deal though. Carmeggedon 2, Shadow of the Empire, Turok... I think they all use table fog. Table fog emulation will get the job done, but it makes everything basically just white and opaque.

Yes, few games are affected but some of them are important names. Then again, Unreal Gold has the unofficial 227 patch that adds a nice d3d9 renderer, I think theres something for Thief as well, FFVII/VIII are console games so you can probably get better experience out of them by running the console versions in an emulator rather than the PC version, Turok also got some fairly recent source port or whatever for modern PCs. IDK about Carmaggedon 2 and Shadow of the Empire. I'll see. I have collected a bunch of different retro hardware, and am on my way to try out all the win9x games on all of it and see what's what for myself. But I already feel like there isnt a single graphics card that can do it all, not even the popular FX 5900, so might end up having to keep not one but two win98 PCs. If I end up doing that, no reason not to go with the X850XT for the main one, and something older and more compatible in the other, that could end up being a Matrox of some sort, maybe G400 Max or perhaps Parhelia, idk, those old matroxes seem to have an exclusive EMBM feature used in quite a few retro games, Colin McRae Rally 2.0 for example. Perhaps I can cover the table fog and palletized texture games on that too. We'll see.

God Of Gaming wrote:

Both I guess, ATi/AMD cards have been known for a long time to have better image quality than Nvidia, even today, and also the AA that the X850 has is also better quality than Nvidia's at the time, Nvidia didn't have good quality AA till the 8000 series.

I have read the ATI cheated a little less when it came to texture filtering and AA, but I haven't heard anyone claim that the raw image itself is any different. I haven't noticed any image problems on my Quadro FX card anyway, at least not compared to my GTS 250 or GTX 960 running the same content. I haven't done a side by side comparison though.

God Of Gaming wrote:

Yes, few games are affected but some of them are important names. Then again, Unreal Gold has the unofficial 227 patch that adds a nice d3d9 renderer, I think theres something for Thief as well, FFVII/VIII are console games so you can probably get better experience out of them by running the console versions in an emulator rather than the PC version, Turok also got some fairly recent source port or whatever for modern PCs. IDK about Carmaggedon 2 and Shadow of the Empire. I'll see. I have collected a bunch of different retro hardware, and am on my way to try out all the win9x games on all of it and see what's what for myself. But I already feel like there isnt a single graphics card that can do it all, not even the popular FX 5900, so might end up having to keep not one but two win98 PCs. If I end up doing that, no reason not to go with the X850XT for the main one, and something older and more compatible in the other, that could end up being a Matrox of some sort, maybe G400 Max or perhaps Parhelia, idk, those old matroxes seem to have an exclusive EMBM feature used in quite a few retro games, Colin McRae Rally 2.0 for example. Perhaps I can cover the table fog and palletized texture games on that too. We'll see.

Well most early windows games can be run on modern hardware with patches and emulation. That kind of takes the fun out it 😜 . As for Unreal Gold, the most recent 227 patch doesn't have bullet decals, at least not for the main gun, and I believe the Theif I and II patches just replace the sky texture with something else. I think dg voodoo 2 and nglide can work around table fog with glide emulation, but again, that kind of defeats the purpose of a "retro" build.

nah, I'm fine with using dgvoodoo and nglide on a retro PC as long as it works fine with no missing effects or anything broken. Using a fast graphics card like the X850 in combination with dgvoodoo or nglide is the only way to play glide games at 1600x1200 + 8xAA/16xAF and to have good fps at that, voodoo5 seem to only be able to get good fps at 1024x768, and idk what the fps drop at that res would be if you force some AA on a voodoo5, I dont have one to test, but I bet it wont be pretty. My voodoo3 seems to perform rather poorly at 1024x768 in many games and appears to be better suited at 800x600.. and thats with no AA. I like using period correct hardware to be a reference to see how games are supposed to work and look and sound, and then compare against newer more powerful hardware to see what I can get away with in pursuit of performance.

BushLin wrote:

I don't know specifically about the x850 on Win98 but I do recall that the ATI 9800 drivers didn't suck on XP, sort of bodes well for ATI cards of that time. Every AMD/ATI video driver I've seen through the years since then always had some glaring problem that reaffirmed my Nvidia fanboy status.

Meh, since the Adrenaline drivers pretty much every GCN AMD/ATI card has had no trouble at all. Far better control over video processing and overclocking plus tons of performance gains across generations of supported cards. The video recording leaves a <5% fps footprint even in resolutions beyond 1080p. A few years ago (think Maxwell release), Nvidia's Shadowplay was much better than the AMD recording software. Now Shadowplay looks bad in comparison. In short, the AMD drivers are amazing and have been for years! I've found the last 4-5 Nvidia cards I've owned or tested have reminded me just how bad their software is, while it never used to be. Not to mention they dropped support for my friends 980Ti just months after he bought it for £500! 🤣

But as always, ATI cards are hot, loud, have shitty drivers etc etc ...... .. ....

Not too long ago I was playing around with Win98 on my turbocharged PIII machine. I had to downgrade the RAM to 512MB to get 98 to work, but crikey was it fast. Don't think I ever saw Win98 boot up so dang quickly!

PIII-S overclocked to 1.63GHz, FSB @ 155MHz
2GB of 2-2-2-5 DDR @ 310MHz, temporarily downgraded to 512 for 98.
GeForce 6800GT
250GB 7200rpm HDD

I wanted an overkill rig because of lack of space. An ultimate tripple boot Windows 98SE/Dos, XP and 7 was my goal. Hunted down some socket 478 and 775 industrial boards with ISA slots, but their PCI to ISA bridges are hit and miss regarding DMA. Really wanted the option to use an ISA soundcard for DOS and at the same tim have a fast machine when running Windows 7, Anovo AIMB-865 seemed to be perfect, but it had its quirks so i ditched the idea until something else can be found without paying to much.

Scraphoarder wrote:

I wanted an overkill rig because of lack of space.

This is exactly the reason, why I went with my overkill rig. Also the reason, why big ass CRTs are out of the question for me...

Hi, i agent_x007 need you for my ASROCK 4COREDUALSATA2.
Thanks Peter

I may have done the overkill thing once..... i didnt know any better at the time, and i was upgrading every chance i got, back in 2005, running win98 because i still havent aquired winxp, or i may have, i cant remember, i had an intel 650mhz slot-1 on a gigabyte GA-6VXE+ agp2x via chipset motherboard and a gainward 5900 flashed to 5900ultra speeds, ran great though, i no longer have the slot1/mobo combo, but i still got the gainward 5900 to ultra speeds videocard.

It seems the max system for Win98 is way past what I'm looking to achieve...

As I've related in another thread, I'm getting my K6-2 300mhz system running Win98se. 256mb ram, Soundblaster AWE32 (though that may change when I build my 486 system), and currently it has a 3DFX Voodoo3 2000 video card that seems to have problems (screen glitches sometimes on boot-up, lock-up when in high rez 32 bit desktop and I try to run the 3DFX tools installer, requiring power-cycling; same problem on two different motherboards/cpus).

It's difficult for me to judge what would be maximum for the period. In some areas, like the video card, I wouldn't mind a little, or a lot, of overkill.
So I'm looking for a new video card for it. I'd prefer a Voodoo card, but most seem priced out of reach.
What I want to use the system for is playing some win95/98 games (Crusader, Diablo I/II and Freespace I/II come to mind), and doing some vintage graphics work (I've a vintage version of Lightwave/Aura and Photoshop 6 or CS2, for example). Don't remember if they will run under 98, but in any event, I'm going to want a relatively powerful graphics adapter if I can't get Voodoo compatibility.
I'm currently looking at an Nvidia FX5500 on Ebay. Seems like massive overkill, which makes me chuckle. Like putting a V8 on a lawnmower. But would I have problems with compatibility with it?
Other alternatives I'm considering (all have to be PCI) are TNT2 M64 with 16mb, Diablotek ATI rage128pro 32mb, Matrox Millennium G200 32mb, Matrox G450 32mb, or an S3 Virge Power Graph with 64mb. I also was wanting a Damond Savage4 whose auction ended while I was dithering 😒 .
I'd appreciate any advice anyone cares to give on this, before I buy something I'll regret 🤣.

See I don't want to be stupid about it either. There are some 98SE games that would really benefit from being maxed out, but where is that line of maxed vs stupid to go any further. That was the initial intent of the thread. I got a super sad group of video cards from a thrift (overpaid) one was a FX5500 with POPPED and oozing caps ($5.99) but I just could not resist saving the bugger. Caps came from China while I was in the hospital and I hadn't gotten around to putting them in yet. I'm working on a K6-III+ 550, BX Slotket 1.4 Tualatin, a Duron 1.4 on baby AT, and a 3.73 P4 EE that I may or may not try to dual boot. With all of those the P4 really doesn't need to be Win98, and would certainly overkill.

Some of my games never worked properly with only the Ti4400 card so a VooDoo2 card fixed that issue and now, my Ti4400 and VooDoo2 card have no Direct3D due to glitches. Older DirectX versions work with the VooDoo2 card, but not the other card, or both.

IBM ThinkPad 380D has Windows 98FE on it (upgraded from 95B), Pentium 150MHz, 48MB RAM, 1.2GB HDD, CD-ROM, and floppy drive.
HP Pavilion N3350 has Windows 98SE on it, running on a K6-2+/550M processor, DVD burner and floppy drive, 4.6GB HDD, and 64MB RAM.
My Socket 7 build has a VooDoo3 3000 PCI card, Sound Blaster 16 WaveEffects CT4170 (CQM, yuck), D-Link Fast Ethernet, 52x CD-ROM drive, LS-120 drive, K6-2/300 CPU (66MHz bus, 4.5 miltiplier), 128MB SD-RAM, Abit AB-TX5 motherboard, and 200GB HDD (32GB limit set for the OS).
My Socket 370 build has a Ti4400 AGP card, VooDoo2 acceleration card (older games don't like Post-TNT2 cards), 256MB SD-RAM, Shuttle AV18V31 board, Celeron 1.4GHz (100MHz bus, 14 multiplier), Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 Platinum, RealTek Fast Ethernet, CD burner, DVD drive (not functioning at this time), loud and noisy floppy drive, 60GB Maxtor HDD (OS), and 80GB Western Digital HDD (backups and data).
Socket 754 build has a Radeon 9600XT AGP, 512MB DDR400, Sempron 3300+ CPU, 30GB HDD, Apple CD-ROM drive, Compaq DVD Drive (barely reads any DVD I place in the drive), Sound Blaster Live! 5.1, and FIC K8M-800M board (pulled from an eMachines computer).

agent_x007 wrote:

Going newer than Core 2 Duo/Athlon 64 is WAY OVERKILL

...but what if I want to run PCPlayer Benchmarks at 1600x1200 in 32 bit color at 60+ FPS?

Hopefully I can end this thread. When it comes to vintage computing there is no such thing as overkill.

Iris030380 wrote:

Not to mention they dropped support for my friends 980Ti just months after he bought it for £500! 🤣

That is impossible since the last 431.36 Windows 10 driver for the Maxwell chips is dated 2019.7.9 so its not even 2 weeks old. 😕

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AGP-PCIe chipsets where i would draw the line between reasonable a silly. Overkill is probably post PIII, but the thing is...
A 2014 dated AsRock 775i65G rev 3.0 board with i865G chipset and a Pentium Dual Core E5800(3200MHz/800MHz Wolfdale C2D with 2 cores and 2MB L2 cache) processor is practically the same hardware and software compatibility wise as a 1999 dual Pentium !!! board with i820 chipset and 2 450MHz Pentium 3s. No, really.

Yet the C2D machine is MUCH cheaper than the dual PIII, and obviously much faster with USB2.0(fully supported by Win98 with drivers), SATA ports(128GB SSD works flawlessly in IDE compatibility mode, no drivers needed), and Windows XP/Vista/7/8.1 dual boot possibility, modern silent cooling(Asrock board has a 4 pin CPU fan header), etc. PIII needs the Rudolph Loew Win98 memory patch as much as a C2D does, 2nd core gets equally unused under Win9x, and no new tweaks are needed between the two.

So as far as only software collecting and usage is involved, if we pass the "Tualatin with ISA slots" i440 BX/Apollo Pro 133A high end yet DOS compatible oldschool mark, we might as well get a new-ish system, thats cheap, fast, very usable and modern.

Did i mention the rev 3 775i65 board with the black PCB is sexy as an Abit ST6E? 😎

I use Win98SE on my Slot A 1GHz Athlon with 256 MB RAM and in my opinion it is an overkill and I definitely wouldn't use it on anything more recent than that.

HanJammer wrote:

I use Win98SE on my Slot A 1GHz Athlon with 256 MB RAM and in my opinion it is an overkill and I definitely wouldn't use it on anything more recent than that.

Thank you. Yes I am planning on using it with Duron, Tualatin, and K6-III+ and probably not my P4 EE. The EE screams XP.