It doesn't matter in which order the drivers are installed. Usually. But apparently in Ydee case the AGP problem is fixed when VIA GART driver is installed last.

The Serpent Rider wrote on Yesterday, 16:23:

It doesn't matter in which order the drivers are installed. Usually. But apparently in Ydee case the AGP problem is fixed when VIA GART driver is installed last.

It's difficult to install the network card driver first if it's not listed in the OS device manager at all.
I wouldn't be writing about this with such confidence if I hadn't spent half a day replacing several network cards 20 years ago.
That's why I still remember these subtleties.

In Windows 98, 4-in-1 technology almost completely reconfigures the chipset, as the VIA support implementation in the BIOS\OS build-in drivers turned out to be less than ideal.
At least in the Award BIOS.

I have to admit, I have the onboard LAN, AC97,LPT and COM disabled in my BIOS. So I don't know if the W98 would have any problem without installing 4in1 drivers if I had everything enabled, but I turn off anything I don't use.
I just wanted to write that when installing 4in1 drivers as the first software after installing the OS itself, the AGP texture acceleration was disabled and unavailable. When I installed the 4in1 package after forceware drivers were installed, the acceleration switched on and can be turned off - before the button was inactive.

Of course, I don't know if this will help solve the buggy problem every time, but I haven't had a chance to get any older versions of the BIOS (the oldest version is from 2006), changing the speed of the AGP (8x to 4x) hasn't helped, and other tips on the solution haven't worked either. The procedure described above solved the problem in my case.

Detonator most likely reads the state of the chipset registers; if it doesn't like something, it disables AGP memory.

At the time, Nvidia drivers were actively changing modes due to stability issues with VIA-based motherboards.

It would be interesting to compare Nvidia driver registry keys for different installation methods.
Perhaps we can identify key something like "AGP RAM disabled" or "Capability mode on."

Ydee wrote on Yesterday, 15:33:

I don't know if I've come across a one-size-fits-all solution, but I'll describe what worked in my case.
<...>

Thanks for the info. I've tried my best to replicate this on my 4CoreDual-VSTA with GeForce 5700LE. Unfortunately - no dice.

dxdiag does indeed say that AGP Texture Acceleration is enabled (was it ever unavailable on 4CoreDual?), however 3dmark2001 still says that Total AGP Memory is 0 bytes. AGP capabilities tab shows that Aperture Size is 0 bytes.

The system scores ~7300 marks in 3DMark 2001SE (Core E7600, Geforce 5700LE).

Ah well.