I believe the Geforce 6600LE and the earlier Radeon X series cards should work... I've got an X700 in a machine running Windows ME at the in-laws.

Does anyone else think this forum needs a sticky on the latest supported/stable Windows 98 GPUs?

In answer to the OP, you may find drivers but you won't find stability in games using PCI-E.
One of many threads on this subject:
Fastest AGP GeForce with Official Win98 support, GeForce 6 or 7?

ATI - up to X850XT
nVidia - up to 7900GTX and possibly some of the G80 8800 series.

Are there some reports of working GF8 when using win98? Because it didn't work for me (8800 GTS and 8600 GTS). GF 7950 GT ran fine on the same system... which was MSI P965 board and C2D E6600.

havli wrote:

Are there some reports of working GF8 when using win98? Because it didn't work for me (8800 GTS and 8600 GTS). GF 7950 GT ran fine on the same system... which was MSI P965 board and C2D E6600.

Which GTS?

G80 or G92? will definitely not work. None of the 512MB or 256MB 8800 cards have any chance of working. I really, really doubt the 8600 series will work either. They are based on the G84 and not the G80.

I was not able to get 8800 Ultra working and my main thought is because of the amount of RAM on the video card.

I have not had time to test the 8800GTS 640MB or the 8800GTS 320MB. The 320MB one has the greatest chance of working as the supposed limit is 512MB.

It was GTS 320 - the G80 based. The driver installed just fine, but after reboot BSOD. And the same behavior for 8600 GTS - which was included in the *.inf file... but probably not really supported.

cyclone3d wrote:

as the supposed limit is 512MB.

Source for this?

spiroyster wrote:

cyclone3d wrote:

as the supposed limit is 512MB.

Source for this?

Just random posts with speculation. Nothing concrete. Like I said, it is a supposed limit.

Fastest I have been able to get working in 98SE is the 7900GTX. It is a 512MB card.

cyclone3d wrote:

spiroyster wrote:

cyclone3d wrote:

as the supposed limit is 512MB.

Source for this?

Just random posts with speculation. Nothing concrete. Like I said, it is a supposed limit.

Fastest I have been able to get working in 98SE is the 7900GTX. It is a 512MB card.

VRAM is one big black box from the OS's point of view I can't see how it would have a bearing. OS has no concept of VRAM size, it's impossible to use GPU as RAM disk without another layer which communicates with API's exposed by the driver. There is no direct access so I highly doubt it's VRAM size.

The issues you came across must be incompatibilities elsewhere. Perhaps hardware/mobo related or problems with the driver and OS. My money would be on the latter as editing inf files and PCIe support, while working in some cases, can't be healthy under the hood since it's effectively retrofitting later tech to an earlier OS. Neither of which would have been designed with the other in mind 😲

cyclone3d wrote:

Fastest I have been able to get working in 98SE is the 7900GTX. It is a 512MB card.

Thanks. Do you have experience with the 6800 GT? Does it work well in 98SE?

The geforce 6 cards have official support for windows 98. You can still download the latest drivers from Nvidia. You will want to disable any power saving features in the control panel. Geforce 6 doesn't support table fog or 8 bit textures, so the graphics in some games will be a bit different than on a more period appropriate card. Windows 98 can be pretty finicky at the best of times so just be ready for that.

Just my opinion, I would opt for an FX 5500 PCI card over a PCIE card for 98. Better yet, AGP if you have the parts for another system, even if it is much slower. Any game that will run well on a 6800gt will probably run just fine in windows 2000/XP anyhow, which are a lot more stable and a lot less prone to random, unexplainable errors.

Awesome! Thanks for the fast and informative reply, much appreciated.

There are actually PCI-e versions of the 5000-series gpu's. : o They have the name of PCX in front of them, so, like, PCX 5900 - they're rare and hard to find, but with one of those, you'll have the perfect balance between compatibility and performance.

I also believe they are known under the names Geforce Quadro 1300 and 3000 as well. One is a 5000 series card with 128 mb, and the other, supposedly, 256 mb.

Doomn00b wrote:

There are actually PCI-e versions of the 5000-series gpu's. : o They have the name of PCX in front of them, so, like, PCX 5900 - they're rare and hard to find, but with one of those, you'll have the perfect balance between compatibility and performance.

I also believe they are known under the names Geforce Quadro 1300 and 3000 as well. One is a 5000 series card with 128 mb, and the other, supposedly, 256 mb.

Specs differences:
(NV38)
Geforce PCX 5950
256MB
GPU - 475Mhz
RAM - 450Mhz

Geforce FX 5950 Ultra
256MB
GPU - 475Mhz
RAM - 475Mhz

Quadro FX 1300 - looks like it might be overclockable to around 454/377 so a bit faster than the 5900XT at stock speeds.
128MB
GPU - 350Mhz
RAM - 275Mhz
(End NV38)

(NV35)
Geforce FX 5900XT
128MB
GPU - 400Mhz
RAM - 350Mhz

Geforce FX 5900 Ultra
256MB
GPU - 450
RAM - 425

Quadro FX 3000 / 3000G (AGP)
256MB
GPU - 400
RAM - 425

Quadro FX 700
128MB - 128bit
GPU - 275Mhz
RAM - 275Mhz
(End NV35)

There are a couple geforce quadro fx 1300 cards on ebay right now for pretty cheap. Might be worth experimenting with.

mothergoose729 wrote:

There are a couple geforce quadro fx 1300 cards on ebay right now for pretty cheap. Might be worth experimenting with.

Well, I ordered the one that was $10.70 shipped. The next cheapest is $12.95 shipped.

I already have a Quadro FX 3000 but haven't really played with it.

I don't think there are any CUDA-capable GPUs supported by Win98SE. Your best bet would be a GeForce 7900 with the unoffical 82.69 driver (not really stable, at least it works).

Using a GeForce 6 series card with 77.72 driver (interestingly, nVidia even supported NT 4.0 up to this point) might help with some potential issues. Some recommends using 5 series cards because of their better DirectX 8 support than later generations.

I don't have any successful experience with ATi cards so I can't help you with choosing which ATi card to use.

cyclone3d wrote:

Specs differences: (NV38) Geforce PCX 5950 256MB GPU - 475Mhz RAM - 450Mhz […]
Show full quote

Specs differences:
(NV38)
Geforce PCX 5950
256MB
GPU - 475Mhz
RAM - 450Mhz

Geforce FX 5950 Ultra
256MB
GPU - 475Mhz
RAM - 475Mhz

Quadro FX 1300 - looks like it might be overclockable to around 454/377 so a bit faster than the 5900XT at stock speeds.
128MB
GPU - 350Mhz
RAM - 275Mhz
(End NV38)

(NV35)
Geforce FX 5900XT
128MB
GPU - 400Mhz
RAM - 350Mhz

Geforce FX 5900 Ultra
Quadro FX 3000 / 3000G (AGP)
256MB
GPU - 400
RAM - 425

Quadro FX 700
128MB - 128bit
GPU - 275Mhz
RAM - 275Mhz
(End NV35)

Cheers for the info there, mate. 😀 But, I just realized I probably did a bad buy...! I've got either one or THREE Quadro 1300's on their way to me now - but I had no idea how BAD the specs were!! >_< It really doesn't hold much of a candle to the AGP brethren, or the PCX 5950 or Quadro 3000... Gonna' have to do some experimentation on these little babies, when they come around. Hmm... might be possible to transplant components from the higher-specced AGP cards, now that I think about it...

cyclone3d wrote:

mothergoose729 wrote:

There are a couple geforce quadro fx 1300 cards on ebay right now for pretty cheap. Might be worth experimenting with.

Well, I ordered the one that was $10.70 shipped. The next cheapest is $12.95 shipped.

I already have a Quadro FX 3000 but haven't really played with it.

Could you by chance upload some pictures of your Quadro FX 3000? It's notoriously hard to find any reasonable pictures of this card, including the various model numbers and such, which would allow one to actually find one.

cyclone3d wrote:

... Geforce FX 5900 Ultra Quadro FX 3000 / 3000G (AGP) 256MB GPU - 400 RAM - 425 […]
Show full quote

...
Geforce FX 5900 Ultra
Quadro FX 3000 / 3000G (AGP)
256MB
GPU - 400
RAM - 425

Those specs are correct for the Quadro but there isn't an exact matching Geforce (also, I've heard on these forums that the Win98 drivers don't play as nice with the Quadros):

Geforce FX 5900 Ultra
128 / 256MB
GPU - 450
RAM - 425

Geforce FX 5900
128MB
GPU - 400
RAM - 425

from both https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/?gpu=NV35&sort=name and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_N … rocessing_units