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Driver support for Windows 95

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First post, by senrew

Posted on 
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I recently picked up a socket 7 machine with a 200mhz mmx (for reference). It's got built in Rage II but the image quality is pure crap. I've been looking for a replacement PCI video card but I seem to be stuck with analysis paralysis. Trying to keep this on the cheap end of the pack so just looking for a like for like replacement now until I can find a voodoo at a not 🤣 price. Eventually whatever I get will be replaced with a Trio64 or Virge of some kind to pair with the voodoo (assuming I don't find a banshee or something at a decent price).

I'm leaning towards just tossing a virge of some kind in there for now, but I'd like a little more oomph for early 3D windows games. I don't plan on playing anything released past mid 1998 or so.

Riva 128s are (relatively) cheap, but I'm open to tossing anything PCI in there as long as it can outdo the Rage II that's in there, has decent image quality, and is easily available. Open to quirky stuff if it's not too much of a stretch.

Bonus points if it sports a DVI jack to make life easier.

Any suggestions?

Halcyon: PC Chips M525, P100, 64MB, Millenium 1, Voodoo1, AWE64, DVD, Win95B

Reply 1 of 2, by Namrok

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I bang on this every time I see a Riva 128 mentioned alongside Windows 95. The final reference drivers don't behave well. If you have only 32 MB of ram, it doesn't calculate the texture heap size correctly, leading to unexplained stuttering as the too small size it does calculate is constantly being thrashed. Also, several of the extra options panels appear busted and refuse to open. With Windows 95, I'd recommend whatever the latest, Windows 95 specific, vendor drivers are. Because there actually still were specific vendor drivers back then. I've used both STB and Diamond branded Riva 128s with Windows 95 to, well, as much success as those early gen 3d cards offer. With some tuning they can almost get Quake 2 up to 25 FPS. Shogo wasn't bad either. But I'd consider Unreal or Half-Life strictly off limits.

Win95/DOS 7.1 - P233 MMX (@2.5 x 100 FSB), Diamond Viper V330 AGP, SB16 CT2800
Win98 - K6-2+ 500, GF2 MX, SB AWE 64 CT4500, SBLive CT4780
Win98 - Pentium III 1000, GF2 GTS, SBLive CT4760
WinXP - Athlon 64 3200+, GF 7800 GS, Audigy 2 ZS

Reply 2 of 2, by jesolo

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Also make sure you install at least OSR 2 of Windows 95. As I recall, there were some bugs if you tried running applications that supported MMX instructions on a
Windows 95 version prior to OSR 2.

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