This might be an unpopular opinion, but I never bothered to pair my V2 SLI setup with a Matrox card - I assume they would produce the best image quality, but personally I never found a good enough deal on them, when I was searching for a 2D card.

I’ve found that the Geforce 2 to 4 range works best for me, as far as compatibility and my personal prefrences are concerned. They are a good and powerful enough companion if you have a Pentium 2/3 based system, and would like to play anything else besides Glide based games.

I also had a Radeon 9500 for a few months, but the system was a bit more unstable, the drivers were not as rock solid under win98SE, as with nVidia hardware.

If you want to be period correct: Nvidia TNT; S3 Savage3D; Matrox G200.

Bang4buck: Nvidia Geforce 2 MX or TNT2 M64.

W98 sweet spot: Geforce 4 Ti4200.

Edit:

predator_085 wrote on 2023-03-27, 07:39:

Are the matrox cards really the best choice like some superfificial online research suggests or are there other options as well?

Imho no. Matrox cards are often recommended for having very good (for the time) image quality in 2D, but that's about it. It also picks up noise passing through the Voodoo anyway.

I had a Savage4 32MB alongside V2SLI for a long time. I think I now have a Geforce2 GTS there instead for performance reasons. For this era, GF2 (including MX) or lower will get older drivers that may be actually faster and more compatible with certain games in the late 90s. I feel GF4 is too new for this era, its more post 2001 to me. If you really want pure 2D though, I would ditch the matrox and go for a S3 Virge DX.

Thanks a lot for the replies guys. @RandomStranger Yeah the image quality was the main argument for the pro matrox fraction. At least in the internet infor I could find so far. But I need to dig deeper for more details.

Thanks for your other recommendations. The Geforce Ti 4200 is on my list for the time machine system already btw. But looking into older geforce cards like you and botond87 did is also a good point I am going to do as well.

@kolderman Thx for the info and well it depends. I have 2 different potential builds in mind. either a total period correct one or alround rig with a newer card but still fully capable of playing older games with all the distinct rendering features enabled.

For the classic system for a historical correct build a pure 2d card would be the "right" choice I guess. I have not considered the S3 yet but I am going to look into it.

You could get something like a Matrox Millennium G400 - G550 Good clean signal with performance similar to a TNT 2
That gives period correct performance although hardware was released a bit later then the the V2

Not that I would, Unless someone is going to have multiple PC's for different era's why limit yourself? Get a good D3D card like already mentioned then that same PC can cover a wider timeframe with little drawbacks

chinny22 wrote on 2023-03-27, 11:18:

You could get something like a Matrox Millennium G400 - G550 Good clean signal with performance similar to a TNT 2
That gives period correct performance although hardware was released a bit later then the the V2

Not that I would, Unless someone is going to have multiple PC's for different era's why limit yourself? Get a good D3D card like already mentioned then that same PC can cover a wider timeframe with little drawbacks

Thanks for your recommendation. Yeah the G400 and G500 series seems to be good. They were very praised rather highly in some of the old gaming mags I have read.

You got a point as well. Why limiting myelf if I can a later peroid Geforce like the already mentioned GF 4200 ti to cover a wider range.

Getting a rig from a certain time peroid is tempting of course for tech history nerd like mysel but from the pure point of view a user the time machine option with early geforce card would be the better option due the fact than it can software form different time peroids.

That seems to be the way to go.

I like my Siluro Geforce 4 Ti 4200. i knew I wanted top performance under W98 while my maintaining max retro compatibility and was not disappointed.

I made a custom printed fan holder and installed a noctua 92x14 fan on the heatsink. It’s blissful 😀

RandomStranger wrote on 2023-03-27, 08:44:

It also picks up noise passing through the Voodoo anyway.

You shouldn't be using the passthrough if you care about IQ regardless of what 2D card you have

Use an external VGA switcher

Have done some further research and concerning the price a Geforce 4200 ti or the geforce 2 gts would be the most attractive.

How about the compability for for late 90s games of both cards? Are they equals in that regard or is the older Geforce 2 better in that matter?

I personally lean towards the 4200ti at the moment because it seems to be really good card with a good reputation and it would also help me to expand my range of playble games.

I am still mostly interested in games from 97 to 99 but it would not that bad to be able to play some games from 2001 or 2002 as well..

Realistically the 4200 will be Mostly fine, but some people swear by using much earlier drivers that dont support the gf4. Hence the gf2 gts which is a great card in itself for that era. I prefer near period correct, not for correctness sake but I feel it's best for compatibility and performance, newer is not always better. For late 98 games, 2001/2002, i go all out with a fx5900u that does AA as well. Gf3/4 are good cards, but are kind of redundant between gf2 for early compatibility and FX for ultimate late98 performance.

kolderman wrote on 2023-03-29, 10:04:

Realistically the 4200 will be Mostly fine, but some people swear by using much earlier drivers that dont support the gf4.

From my experience, this only affects the later, AGP8x models of the GeForce 4 cards, which need drivers from the 4x.xx range. Earlier, AGP4x models can use older drivers in the 2x.xx and 3x.xx range which are generally good enough. Personally, the only game which I play that didn't like 4x.xx Nvidia drivers was Need For Speed 4: High Stakes. And even that can work if you use 56.64 drivers instead.

In terms of advantages, the GeForce 4 Ti cards support EMBM while the GeForce 2 cards don't. This feature isn't used all that much in Win9x games though. Additionally, the extra power of the GeForce 4 can be useful if one is targeting higher resolutions like 1280x1024 or 1600x1200. But yeah, if AA and AF are desirable in addition to higher resolutions, then the FX cards are even better, albeit at the cost of some compatibility.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-03-29, 10:40:

From my experience, this only affects the later, AGP8x models of the GeForce 4 cards, which need drivers from the 4x.xx range. Earlier, AGP4x models can use older drivers in the 2x.xx and 3x.xx range which are generally good enough. Personally, the only game which I play that didn't like 4x.xx Nvidia drivers was Need For Speed 4: High Stakes. And even that can work if you use 56.64 drivers instead.

I find that the NFS 4 unofficial 2.1 patch from 2004/2005, which fixes most of the NFS4 issues, is a no brainer for this game (both in Win98 and WinXP). I mentioned this in the Table fog thread, but this patch actually works with all drivers drivers I tested (including Detonator 4x.xx), and what's even more surprising is that you get fully working fog with Radeon cards.

I myself usually prefer to play the vanilla game versions (especially on Win98), but there are some games like NFS4 where it doesn't make sense to do so when great patches like these exist and you're basically one click away from fixing so many game-breaking issues.

kolderman wrote on 2023-03-29, 10:04:

Realistically the 4200 will be Mostly fine, but some people swear by using much earlier drivers that dont support the gf4. Hence the gf2 gts which is a great card in itself for that era. I prefer near period correct, not for correctness sake but I feel it's best for compatibility and performance, newer is not always better. For late 98 games, 2001/2002, i go all out with a fx5900u that does AA as well. Gf3/4 are good cards, but are kind of redundant between gf2 for early compatibility and FX for ultimate late98 performance.

Thanks for the info.I have to agree that newer is not always better especially when compatibility is concerned. I wanna rather play save in that regard and hope that most games run well enough on the latest drivers. If I have too I do not mind to try find some older driver to get the games running but I would prefer to keep stuff simple.

I also agree that the GF2 Ultra is a good card for its time and today it is obtainable at a rather good price.

The Fx series was not on my radar so to speak but I will check them out of curiosity.

predator_085 wrote on 2023-03-29, 11:17:

I also agree that the GF2 Ultra is a good card for its time and today it is obtainable at a rather good price.

If you can obtain them at 'good prices', I also want three of these! Thank you! 😁

If you plan on only doing 3D gaming on the Voodoo 2, then an ATI Rage Pro Turbo would be a good 2D card to pair it with. I've done it myself, and it works pretty well! The 2D image quality is exceptional, the cards can be had inexpensively in AGP or PCI versions, and the performance in 2D games is excellent. It's also period-correct, since the AGP versions of the card came out in late 1997 and I had an 8 MB AGP version in my PII-300 back in the fall of 1998.

bloodem wrote on 2023-03-29, 11:04:

I find that the NFS 4 unofficial 2.1 patch from 2004/2005, which fixes most of the NFS4 issues, is a no brainer for this game (both in Win98 and WinXP). I mentioned this in the Table fog thread, but this patch actually works with all drivers drivers I tested (including Detonator 4x.xx), and what's even more surprising is that you get fully working fog with Radeon cards.

I actually wanted to try that patch in order to see how fog rendering looks compared to the original game, but it doesn't seem to be available anywhere on the internet anymore.

There are other, more modern patches for NFS4 of course, but that particular one seems to be unobtainium nowadays.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-03-29, 12:26:

I actually wanted to try that patch in order to see how fog rendering looks compared to the original game, but it doesn't seem to be available anywhere on the internet anymore.

There are other, more modern patches for NFS4 of course, but that particular one seems to be unobtainium nowadays.

Yeah, I've had it on a CD for two decades. 😀
I've sent it to you over a PM. Let me know if you encounter any issues with it. For me it worked very well with any video card and driver combo that I tried.

bloodem wrote on 2023-03-29, 11:27:

predator_085 wrote on 2023-03-29, 11:17:

I also agree that the GF2 Ultra is a good card for its time and today it is obtainable at a rather good price.

If you can obtain them at 'good prices', I also want three of these! Thank you! 😁

Unfortunately, that's a rather limited source not available online. But I saw some good retro electronic stuff at our local flea market but was too late this time. So I need to stick to online sources like everyone else

@MadMac_5 Thanks for your advice. The ATI Rage Pro Turbo looks quite interesting for a period-correct Vodoo 2 system.

Nothing is set in stone yet but as I now I put the vodoo 2 project on hold and I am more researching into getting the time machine solution with a more powerful rig with a GF 4200 to play the 90s games.