AlexZ wrote on 2025-04-21, 15:23:

This is a quite major compromise. A GeForce 4 or FX is no match for 9800 GT or even better GTX 780 Ti. An XP system good only for 2003-2004 will be of very limited use.

I didn't mean 2003 to 2004 only. I meant up to about 2003 or 2004. A Pentium 4 w/ a GeForce 4 / FX would cover both the Win 9x era (1996 to 2000) and the early XP era (2001 to 2003/2004).

And yes, graphic cards from 2003/2004 can't compare performance-wise to cards that released 5 years later. But there is more than sheer performance to consider, such as compatibility with graphics technologies from different eras. Later model cards dropped certain features (16-bit dithering, paletted textures). Depending on the games one wishes to play from different eras, it might be desirable to use older hardware.

SScorpio wrote on 2025-04-21, 01:25:

vintageonthemoon wrote on 2025-04-21, 00:41:

i was using 45.23 drivers (most recommended for ti 4200), and they work fine, but early win 95 titles like "pitfall: mayan adventure", "Lomax" and "toy story" refused to work properly no matter what i do (even on the FX cards), in windowed mode, it struggles under 30fps with screen tearing, in full screen mode it performs much better but exiting back to window mode, it turns the screen black with endless music loop and forces me to restart the pc. in Lomax case the frame rates was under 30fps and gets much worse when the screen gets busy. it took me a while to figure out why it's happening, first i thought the system (board) was too new, too much ram, Direct X 8 ( i know DX 9 breaks some compatibility in win 98), sound card problems, nope. Apparently Nvidia hates palette changes and freaks out when jumping from low resolution to high resolution, and it screws up in the transition, i even deliberately lower the desktop resolution to match the game to see if there's any change, nope, the same thing. i did try different drives all the same no matter what i use.

and with the changes in the Nvidia control settings, i always change AGP to 4x because on default setting (8x) a lot of older titles will not work and even changing the resolution to 1024x768 in some games the performance takes a serious hit (which doesn't make much sense, half of them i was kinda stuck in 800x600), even with disabling V-sync (which make things much worse visually). maybe im doing something wrong but i did follow some guide line and it didn't work in my favor, the card itself was in great condition, i even changed the heatsink to much bigger one, due to being very power hungry card. it's still a great card but didn't work for me. The Radeon 9600XT didn't give me any problems at all, runs very smoothly in 1024x768, manages to run the certain games pitfall, lomax and toy story with no frame dips or crashes, going from windowed to full screen and back, very smooth performance. games like "Shogo" and "Heretic II" plays great in 1024x768 (geforce 4 ti 4200 was struggling in these settings), Using ATI Catalyst 4.2 drivers and they work great with win 98, the ATI Catalyst 6.2 drivers were very unstable under win 98 (at least for me).

about Win XP maybe i would build a nice project, but the real reason i did win 7 build, because my other old gaming pc (was once the family pc running win 10 32-bit) that became my pc after my family bought much better pc, i spent months setting it up (trying to clean as much as possible for storage space on my ssd) with many games up during COVID lockdowns, full of games, was starting to fail and i wanted a fresh windows install on a different board, different SSDs, Operating system like win 7 that's a never has problems with unlike win 10. More organized, clean, less bloat and garbage. Purely a semi-retro gaming pc with more advantage with modern features that's compatible with 32-bit. And on win 7 i can run some much older games without any patches, it took me by surprise.

That's a pretty late drivers for the 4200ti, they do give you DirectX 9. But IMO DX9 is best left to XP. Try the 30.82 drivers to see if you get better legacy support. Though your comments about needing to run AGP 4X is odd. Along with the comments about running slow in Shogo and Heretic II.

Did you have a fresh install of 98 when you tried the Nvidia cards, or did you have a Radeon in there first? 98 had odd issues with old drivers, and running a cleaner when switching brands fix many odd issues. It could also be your 4200ti has some going on with it, but it would be really weird for an FX to have similar behavior.

i will try it, you might be right, i will check with the older drivers from 30.82 and up for ti 4200 (mine is the AGP 8X version), i have another build for testing and see if theres any differences in performance. and yes im aware of DX9 in some installations. i never have it on my win 98 build (there's no reason other then pushing the system to it's limits, for using Nglide and other specific software, but it breaks compatability with some games), sometimes by accident with both sound and graphics cards i got automatic install of DX9. i use DirectX Eradicator 2.0 to removed DX9 and reinstall DX 8.1. and i did it few times it works without any issues.

about which card i install first after win 98 os install it was Nvidia card the ti 4200, with 45.23 drivers, then uninstall it, and made sure it's completey wiped from the pc (cause win 98 can be buggy at times), then install Radeon 9600xt card. the the ti 4200 card i have the brand is gainward. i did some testing with FX 5500 and 5600 ultra cards (non chinese ones), they both gave me the same problems with pitfall and toy story, the performance was a not that great, im using 56.64 drivers.

My 98/XP build is a S478 P4, GF6800 Ultra, Audigy 2 is my least used computer.

I'd say my Pure XP LGA775 build and Slot 1 dos/Win98 build are the most used.

I'm mostly into later dos games that aren't speed sensitive so even though the P3 and Nvidia GF2 MX are overkill it doesn't cause problems in 99% of my games.
Any Win9x game that struggles on this PC, eg GTA3, work fine in XP with more then enough power to run games in high resolutions.

I found the 98/XP build a bit slow for XP era games, but ran into compatibility issues for anything that needed Win98.
But that me, if most your games are working fine with your setup then that's all that's important.

I'd say combining 98/XP is fine if you only have space for one machine. But it will be a very limited XP machine. If you have the space, then separate builds for different hardware generations will always be better for game compatability. XP games seem far more tolerant to future hardware than 98 games were

chinny22 wrote on 2025-04-23, 00:19:

I found the 98/XP build a bit slow for XP era games, but ran into compatibility issues for anything that needed Win98.

GeForce 4 or FX would improve compatibility for Win 98, but with a natural performance trade off versus the 6800 Ultra.

Due to hardware issues I’ve ended up separating win 98 and having an additional win xp/7 machine means I can have a more robust xp instead of have to deal with 98/xp

Greywolf1 wrote on 2025-04-23, 14:33:

Due to hardware issues I’ve ended up separating win 98 and having an additional win xp/7 machine means I can have a more robust xp instead of have to deal with 98/xp

same here. you losing compatability either way with dual-boot, not matter how many patches with rams and graphic cards.

I used to much more, I enjoyed setting things up and having the ability to swap around. I think i only have one left, a P3-500 laptop with a mix of 98se and W2ksp4 sharing a fairly average 128mb ram laptop. I agree with above that sharing the same hardware can mean missing out a bit in the XP install, although it depends on the usage

Oddly, having said that, i have two nearly identical machines with one OS each - both Duron 800. The one with 256mb ram and a GeForce 440 card is for 98se and plays any 9x specific game with relative ease. The other has 384 mb Ram and i use that mainly for early 2000's dev tools and applications, though it manages quite a few emulators for fun too! Either of these would actually suit a dual boot!

I have a few, maybe 3, other 98se machines, none faster than the above. One is no more than a motherboard test set up with 64mb ram and an sd to ide instead of hdd, just for trying things out.

Most games that I play are either in dosbox or work (natively or via gog) fine on W7 or above. I don't actually need to use XP all that much anymore, but still maintain a small selection of Athlon, Athlon XP and late P4's for some less demanding period games, for which even budget cards like fx5200 seem ok - i mean games like Soldier of Fortune 1 and 2, Deus Ex, UT99, GTA 3/vc, various RTS games and so on.

They're separate. My 98SE/DOS PC is a Pentium II with an FX 5200 in it for better DOS compatibility, whereas my XP (actually XP Pro x64) PC is an FX-6100 with a GTX 970. Then, between them, the 2000/Mandrake 8.2 PC with an Athlon 700 and a faulty GF4 Ti. The stuff I'd want to do on 98 SE and DOS are just too different to the ones I'd want to do on XP, and there wouldn't really be a middle ground between them because on XP I mostly do later-2000s/early-mid 2010s stuff, whereas 98 SE I mostly use for DOS stuff with the occasional thing up to 2000. My Macs and Athlon PC generally then cover the range between 1999 or so and 2005 or so.