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First post, by Studiostriver

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Hi to all.
I want to try PCI card on my motherboard to see how it will perform benchmark tests and DOS compability for older games from windows 95 era. So far on AGP card every benchmark ive done (on 4/5 different cards so far) on my dual boot system 98SE/XP SP3 it seems that on XP even on the same games run smoother with bit higher fps, so for sake of testing PCI slot for 98SE OS i want to ask you guys what are your experiences with this card?

I`m aware its biggest dissapointment for the year when it was made, but i`m asking is it gonna work good for DOS games from middle 90s classic like Diablo, Ceasar 3, Duke Nukem 3D etc, Dune 2 etc? Are drivers reliable for these older titles?
What attracts me for this particular card is that its the only one that has strong 98 support PCI card with DVI connection. Thats something you dont see often.

Kind regards,
Dado.

Reply 1 of 6, by jmarsh

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Diablo was not a DOS game...

Reply 2 of 6, by Studiostriver

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jmarsh wrote on 2025-07-03, 07:13:

Diablo was not a DOS game...

My bad, but its ancient old game, and on some new cards i had problem on 98SE , thats why i put it on the list.

Reply 3 of 6, by mockingbird

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Should work just fine. If you want to run UniVBE to enable more VGA modes, there is a mod available for it that patches it for later models.

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Reply 4 of 6, by SScorpio

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Caesar 3 is also a Windows game. Duke 3D is an SVGA era game. Dune 2 is DOS but from the VGA era, unless it's trying weird resolutions it's normally very compatible.

The FX 5200 has the same DOS compatibility as other earlier NVIDIA cards. This list goes over problem games, note that these are all known corner cases and a card having issues doesn't mean it's bad.
https://gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS/

The FX 5200 in the last series of cards with support for features from early versions of Direct3D making it good for early Windows games. I don't recommend it for Direct3D 9 games as the performance isn't good. And it's a bad card for XP as you can get way more performance with later cards.

Overall it's a great card for a Pentium 3/4 or Athlon XP/64 build that's targeting Win98 that you also want to run late SVGA era DOS games. So anything that's pre XP. And you're more likely to run into CPU speed or sound card support issues with earlier DOS games on a build like that before the FX 5200's DOS performance is an issue.

Reply 5 of 6, by Halofiber86

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If that could be of any help here, I have a FX5200 AGP by Sparcle under Windows 2000 currently. I have been using the 77.72 (somewhat sharper image) and 81.98 (somewhat blurry) drivers for GForce 2MX 400 and FX5200 under W98 and W2000 before. When I deserted to W2000, the 5200 gave me wrong DVD colours with both sets, so I had to experiment and finally version 61.77 works fine.

I'm mostly into the Tomb Raider series. The most glitchy TR game is the Angel Of Darkness, and I do remember it giving me some trouble with the FX 5200. I think since the Nvidia drivers are easily available, you may as well start with the 77.72 and 81.98 for W98, and if those do not fit, keep trying the other sets, and you'll finally have the version that is good for you.

DOS titles do not run natively under W2000, so I have resorted to using DosBox for them, and the DosBox is fine with Fx 5200.

The DVI option is awesome and it is the main reason I've chosen the FX 5200 card and have another one for spare. My eyesight is not good, so I have to use the large modern HDMI screen instead of the era-contemporary CRT, the simple DVI->HDMI cable is working fine and I even have some wide-screen resolutions on the FX 5200.

Reply 6 of 6, by Studiostriver

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Halofiber86 wrote on 2025-07-03, 17:56:
If that could be of any help here, I have a FX5200 AGP by Sparcle under Windows 2000 currently. I have been using the 77.72 (so […]
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If that could be of any help here, I have a FX5200 AGP by Sparcle under Windows 2000 currently. I have been using the 77.72 (somewhat sharper image) and 81.98 (somewhat blurry) drivers for GForce 2MX 400 and FX5200 under W98 and W2000 before. When I deserted to W2000, the 5200 gave me wrong DVD colours with both sets, so I had to experiment and finally version 61.77 works fine.

I'm mostly into the Tomb Raider series. The most glitchy TR game is the Angel Of Darkness, and I do remember it giving me some trouble with the FX 5200. I think since the Nvidia drivers are easily available, you may as well start with the 77.72 and 81.98 for W98, and if those do not fit, keep trying the other sets, and you'll finally have the version that is good for you.

DOS titles do not run natively under W2000, so I have resorted to using DosBox for them, and the DosBox is fine with Fx 5200.

The DVI option is awesome and it is the main reason I've chosen the FX 5200 card and have another one for spare. My eyesight is not good, so I have to use the large modern HDMI screen instead of the era-contemporary CRT, the simple DVI->HDMI cable is working fine and I even have some wide-screen resolutions on the FX 5200.

I`m like you, my eyesight is not very good and i play games via dvi to hdmi on big 40inch tv monitor. I having hard time getting apart with 6600 GT on XP in my dual boot Pentium, thats why i want to try PCI FX5200 since i havine problem with most basic 680x480 resolution, sort of bug in drivers (i tried on all drivers i could find but no luck) , all other resolution works great.