VOGONS


First post, by RetroSpector78

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Hi,

I have a Win98SE computer with an Nvidia FX5500 PCI videocard.
With a clean install of

  • windows 98 SE
  • 81.98 nvidia drivers
  • DirectX 9 installation

I cannot get 3D Mark 99 to start.

  • First time it launches but upon clicking New Benchmark it simply quits before running the first test
  • Second time it launches it shows a popup that I do not have a Direct X 6 compatible 3D card.

Also noticed that a lot of games don't want to play nice with this card (not accepting openGL / Direct3D, or simply crashing).

Is this an incompatibility between the FX5500 and windos 98 ? Or can this be fixed with video drivers / direct x versions ?

Thx.

Reply 1 of 8, by BigDaddyM

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Try older drivers

Reply 3 of 8, by RetroSpector78

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cyclone3d wrote on 2020-10-20, 15:00:

Did you install the chipset drivers for your motherboard? What are the specs of the rest of your system?

It is a pretty crappy Packard Bell system and only has PCI slots.
It uses the SIS 530 chipset. I don't think there are any specific SIS 530 chipset drivers (I did find drivers for the IGP).
Motherboard seems to be this one : http://www.uktsupport.co.uk/pb/mb/980.htm

Reply 4 of 8, by bloodem

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I would recommend trying driver version 45.23 (force install as GeForce FX5200).

2 x PLCC-68 / 4 x PGA132 / 5 x Skt 3 / 1 x Skt 4 / 9 x Skt 7 / 12 x SS7 / 1 x Skt 8 / 14 x Slot 1 / 6 x Slot A
5 x Skt 370 / 8 x Skt A / 2 x Skt 478 / 2 x Skt 754 / 3 x Skt 939 / 7 x LGA775 / 1 x LGA1155
Current PC: Ryzen 7 9800X3D
Backup: Ryzen 7 5800X3D

Reply 5 of 8, by RetroSpector78

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BigDaddyM wrote on 2020-10-20, 12:50:

Try older drivers

Thx ... 56.64 seemed to have done the trick.

3D Mark 99 ran fine with these. Getting a low score but that has probably more to do with the CPU / overall system.
Was a bit surprised to see it score lower than my voodoo banshee in the same system (in 3D Mark : 1100 for the FX5500 Vs 1600 for the Banshee)

Using the 45.23 (by manually "updating" the existing driver as the installer didn't want to run) and it ran a little faster (in 3d Mark I got 1200 now), but my LCD monitor didn't output many of the tests in 640x480 and I only saw part of the screen in 800x600.

Reply 6 of 8, by bloodem

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Judging by that score, it seems you are on a Socket 7 PC (Pentium MMX?).
The lower score with the FX 5500 is not strange at all, it's perfectly normal. You are running a 2003 card with 2004 drivers on a 1997 PC. Those drivers were designed to work with fast CPUs like Athlon 64, Pentium 4, Athlon XP.
On a system like yours, Voodoo cards will always be faster even in Direct3D titles (and when using Glide they will be MUCH faster).

2 x PLCC-68 / 4 x PGA132 / 5 x Skt 3 / 1 x Skt 4 / 9 x Skt 7 / 12 x SS7 / 1 x Skt 8 / 14 x Slot 1 / 6 x Slot A
5 x Skt 370 / 8 x Skt A / 2 x Skt 478 / 2 x Skt 754 / 3 x Skt 939 / 7 x LGA775 / 1 x LGA1155
Current PC: Ryzen 7 9800X3D
Backup: Ryzen 7 5800X3D

Reply 7 of 8, by RetroSpector78

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bloodem wrote on 2020-10-21, 07:23:

Judging by that score, it seems you are on a Socket 7 PC (Pentium MMX?).

It's an AMD K6-2 500Mhz . But I am limited to PCI. The best performing cards I have are a PCI Voodoo Banshee and Voodoo 2.

I thought that more modern PCI cards with OpenGL support would run faster than the Banshee / Voodoo 2.
But I can imagine not only the CPU and PCI is going to be the bottleneck here, but also the cards (drivers and game support).

Unfortunately I only have

  1. very slow PCI cards (matrox / s3 / rendition / ati)
  2. newer Nvidia PCI cards (that don't perform as well as the voodoo cards).

I guess the only real competition for 3DFX were the Riva cards ? (but these are not that easy to find in PCI.)

Reply 8 of 8, by bloodem

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Yeah, come to think about it, that 3DMark99 score is probably good for your combo (K6-2 500 / Voodoo Banshee).
I actually did a similar benchmark a few weeks ago, and I got ~ 3200 points with a K6-2+ 550 MHz & a Voodoo 3 3000 (I used an AGP card, but a PCI Voodoo 3 would be virtually identical). For the record, with a GeForce 2 MX/MX400 the score is ~ 4000 points.

2 x PLCC-68 / 4 x PGA132 / 5 x Skt 3 / 1 x Skt 4 / 9 x Skt 7 / 12 x SS7 / 1 x Skt 8 / 14 x Slot 1 / 6 x Slot A
5 x Skt 370 / 8 x Skt A / 2 x Skt 478 / 2 x Skt 754 / 3 x Skt 939 / 7 x LGA775 / 1 x LGA1155
Current PC: Ryzen 7 9800X3D
Backup: Ryzen 7 5800X3D