VOGONS


First post, by sk3886

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Hi and I hope you're all doing well. I currently have a P5KPL-AM/PS motherboard and am looking to build a Win98 rig out of it.

I'm looking at some options for medium to high end graphics cards that will work on that motherboard and under Win98. One card I'm looking at is this: Club3D ATI RADEON X800 (https://tweakers.net/pricewatch/109661/club-3 … /specificaties/). Before getting it though, I wanted to check if that will indeed run or not. I've heard some pretty conflicting info from various sources - in some threads there are posts about struggling to get PCIe to work. On the other hand, philscomputterlab has a video about how he manages to get X850 PCIe to work successfully in Win98 (by checking the "Disable in this hardware profile" in Standard PCI Graphics Adapter properties.

I was thinking that similarly X800 should also work? If anyone has any knowledge about this, or any alternative GFX cards equivalent to or better in performance than X800, please let me know. Thanks!

Reply 1 of 10, by dominusprog

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For one thing, the driver supports Windows 2000 through Vista.

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Reply 2 of 10, by Joseph_Joestar

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sk3886 wrote on 2023-11-25, 09:56:

I was thinking that similarly X800 should also work? If anyone has any knowledge about this, or any alternative GFX cards equivalent to or better in performance than X800, please let me know. Thanks!

Should work fine with Catalyst 6.2 drivers. In one of my builds, I'm using a PCIe X800 GTO under Win98 and it runs great.

Now, installing the drivers may be a bit tricky, depending on your motherboard. I had to manually remove a "Standard Display Adapter (VGA)" from Device Manager before the Catalyst drivers would install correctly. Other than that, it's been smooth sailing.

PC#1: Pentium MMX 166 / Soyo SY-5BT / S3 Trio64V+ / Voodoo1 / YMF719 / AWE64 Gold / SC-155
PC#2: AthlonXP 2100+ / ECS K7VTA3 / Voodoo3 / Audigy2 / Vortex2
PC#3: Athlon64 3400+ / Asus K8V-MX / 5900XT / Audigy2
PC#4: i5-3570K / MSI Z77A-G43 / GTX 970 / X-Fi

Reply 4 of 10, by sk3886

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Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-11-25, 10:22:
sk3886 wrote on 2023-11-25, 09:56:

I was thinking that similarly X800 should also work? If anyone has any knowledge about this, or any alternative GFX cards equivalent to or better in performance than X800, please let me know. Thanks!

Should work fine with Catalyst 6.2 drivers. In one of my builds, I'm using a PCIe X800 GTO under Win98 and it runs great.

Now, installing the drivers may be a bit tricky, depending on your motherboard. I had to manually remove a "Standard Display Adapter (VGA)" from Device Manager before the Catalyst drivers would install correctly. Other than that, it's been smooth sailing.

Hey Joseph! Thanks as always. Is this the card you're talking about? https://www.msi.com/Graphics-Card/RX800GTOTD256E/support

It seems that on the support page there are drivers only for Win2000 and XP (as dominusprog said). Should that be a cause for concern?

I also saw your build - the motherboard is P35 chipset with LGA775. My motherboard (P5KPL-AM/PS) has P31 chipset with LGA775. So I guess Catalyst 6.2 may work in my case too..

Reply 5 of 10, by Joseph_Joestar

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sk3886 wrote on 2023-11-25, 11:17:

Hey Joseph! Thanks as always. Is this the card you're talking about? https://www.msi.com/Graphics-Card/RX800GTOTD256E/support

The model is similar, but mine is made by PowerColor. You can find a full review of my card in this Anandtech article.

It seems that on the support page there are drivers only for Win2000 and XP (as dominusprog said). Should that be a cause for concern?

I think that's because Catalyst 6.2 only has beta support for the X800 series cards under Win98. Personally, I never noticed any stability issues with those drivers, and they work great for fully maxing out Win98 games.

I also saw your build - the motherboard is P35 chipset with LGA775. My motherboard (P5KPL-AM/PS) has P31 chipset with LGA775. So I guess Catalyst 6.2 may work in my case too.

I think so. You may also want to read my mini guide for installing Win98 and chipset drivers on such motherboards. It's not exactly a straightforward process, and may require several attempts to get it right.

PC#1: Pentium MMX 166 / Soyo SY-5BT / S3 Trio64V+ / Voodoo1 / YMF719 / AWE64 Gold / SC-155
PC#2: AthlonXP 2100+ / ECS K7VTA3 / Voodoo3 / Audigy2 / Vortex2
PC#3: Athlon64 3400+ / Asus K8V-MX / 5900XT / Audigy2
PC#4: i5-3570K / MSI Z77A-G43 / GTX 970 / X-Fi

Reply 6 of 10, by sk3886

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Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-11-25, 11:49:
The model is similar, but mine is made by PowerColor. You can find a full review of my card in this Anandtech article. […]
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sk3886 wrote on 2023-11-25, 11:17:

Hey Joseph! Thanks as always. Is this the card you're talking about? https://www.msi.com/Graphics-Card/RX800GTOTD256E/support

The model is similar, but mine is made by PowerColor. You can find a full review of my card in this Anandtech article.

It seems that on the support page there are drivers only for Win2000 and XP (as dominusprog said). Should that be a cause for concern?

I think that's because Catalyst 6.2 only has beta support for the X800 series cards under Win98. Personally, I never noticed any stability issues with those drivers, and they work great for fully maxing out Win98 games.

I also saw your build - the motherboard is P35 chipset with LGA775. My motherboard (P5KPL-AM/PS) has P31 chipset with LGA775. So I guess Catalyst 6.2 may work in my case too.

I think so. You may also want to read my mini guide for installing Win98 and chipset drivers on such motherboards. It's not exactly a straightforward process, and may require several attempts to get it right.

Thanks so much man. I'll follow your guide. Just one thing though - instead of Audigy 2 ZS, I'm considering this sound card: https://www.ebay.com/itm/175844593732. Is this okay? I think this one also supports EAX and all.

Reply 7 of 10, by schmatzler

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I have an X850XT PE Edition which works well on an Asrock 775Dual VSTA board with PCI Express, so the X800 should work fine, too.

"Windows 98's natural state is locked up"

Reply 8 of 10, by Joseph_Joestar

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sk3886 wrote on 2023-11-25, 13:26:

Thanks so much man. I'll follow your guide. Just one thing though - instead of Audigy 2 ZS, I'm considering this sound card: https://www.ebay.com/itm/175844593732. Is this okay? I think this one also supports EAX and all.

That CT4810 is a Sound Blaster 128 PCI also known as Ensoniq Audio PCI. It's a fairly basic Win9x sound card with crappy software EAX and subpar DOS support. In particular, its FM synth emulation sounds awful.

If you want to experience EAX in its full hardware accelerated glory under Win98, I recommend either a SBLive or an Audigy card.

PC#1: Pentium MMX 166 / Soyo SY-5BT / S3 Trio64V+ / Voodoo1 / YMF719 / AWE64 Gold / SC-155
PC#2: AthlonXP 2100+ / ECS K7VTA3 / Voodoo3 / Audigy2 / Vortex2
PC#3: Athlon64 3400+ / Asus K8V-MX / 5900XT / Audigy2
PC#4: i5-3570K / MSI Z77A-G43 / GTX 970 / X-Fi

Reply 9 of 10, by dominusprog

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sk3886 wrote on 2023-11-25, 11:09:
dominusprog wrote on 2023-11-25, 10:18:

For one thing, the driver supports Windows 2000 through Vista.

Yet I've seen video of X850 working just fine in Win98 SE. For example, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abYeIixYrbk. Is it possible that X850 works but X800 won't, due to some driver issue or the other?

I don't know about YouTube, and if it is possible. But to my knowledge, there's no official driver for Win98.

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A-Trend ATC-1020 V1.1 ❇ Cyrix 6x86 150+ @ 120MHz ❇ 32MiB EDO RAM (8MiBx4) ❇ A-Trend S3 Trio64V2 2MiB
Aztech Pro16 II-3D PnP ❇ 8.4GiB Quantum Fireball ❇ Win95 OSR2 Plus!

Reply 10 of 10, by Duffman

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Yes, The X800 will work in windows 98 with the Catalyst 6.2 drivers.

Couldn't get crossfire working though.

MB: ASRock B550 Steel Legend
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