Reply 20 of 22, by Doornkaat
I might be a bit late to the party but here's my two cents:
The Voodoo 3 PCI is a decent Win98 PCI video card but overhyped and prices are way out of proportion. The card's potential is hampered by the PCI interface, early 2000s Nvidia PCI cards make up for that by being faster at rendering and having larger video memory so textures don't have to be reloaded as often and the bus is less of an issue.
That's why a GeForce 2 / 4MX based card would have been my recommendation as well. You can still pair them with a Voodoo Graphics (2) if you desire to use Glide mode in earlier games instead of software rendering. Most later games support DirectX or OpenGL so Glide really isn't of importance there. (Yes, I know it looks better in some titles but if you don't already have a Voodoo 3/4/5 card or can get one for cheap I don't think the difference is worth the money.) There are some other advantages of the V3 with a K6-based system but on PCI and with later Nvidia cards they aren't that important.
Troubleshooting your system:
You got yourself a GeForce 4000 MX which is not a bad choice per se but there are different versions. Greatest differences are memory interface (32bit, 64bit, 128bit) and memory speed (133MHz, 200MHz and 166MHz).
This means the worst case for video bandwidth is only 1,1GB/s (about half that of the GeForce 256 SDR!) which would really hamper this card in 3D.
-What exact model do you have? What are the memory stats?
-Does the PCI port share interrupts with other devices?
You also mention 128MB of system memory. With the VIA MVP3 chipset there might be caching issues.
-What chipset do you have and do you use Write Back or Write Through caching?
Are you using Win98SE? Win9x can often start acting up upon installing new drivers so changing a graphics card usually warrants a new OS install.
-Did you do a fresh OS install after switching graphics cards?
Win98 also does not necessarily have integrated drivers for all your devices and they might run in compatibility mode.
-Are all proper drivers installed (including chipset and sound)? Are they the recommended version for your OS?
