VOGONS


First post, by Mouldotron

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Greeting all, sorry I've not posted in a while.

I'm having a lot of trouble getting anything that needs OpenGL to work in Windows XP sp3, on any of my PCI Nvidia cards (inc FX5200, GT210 and GT610). These are straight PCI cards not AGP or PCI-e.

Direct3D is no problem.

The system is a twin Pentium II 450 with 1gb of ram, and as such has no SSE instructions. I'm wondering if the drivers need SSE maybe?

If I put a 3DFX card in there then games like Q3 and RTCW work ok, but not with an Nvidia card. I get a BSOD as soon as it tries to load.

Has anyone had similar issues?

Thanks so much for your help

Reply 1 of 7, by elszgensa

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Can't say anything either way about those drivers, but if the cause for a crash/BSOD is SSE (or some other unsupported instruction) then I'd expect to see an EXCEPTION_ILLEGAL_INSTRUCTION.

Reply 2 of 7, by swaaye

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Try an older driver such as between 45.23 through 56.64. Though obviously that's not possible with a GT210 or GT610.

Last edited by swaaye on 2025-11-17, 20:38. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 3 of 7, by Mouldotron

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elszgensa wrote on Yesterday, 16:50:

Can't say anything either way about those drivers, but if the cause for a crash/BSOD is SSE (or some other unsupported instruction) then I'd expect to see an EXCEPTION_ILLEGAL_INSTRUCTION.

hmmm, the BSOD doesn't mention that, it's a Stop error with file nv4_disp.dll

It happens regardless of the Nvidia card I'm using, and I've tried a couple of different driver versions, all the same result.

Reply 4 of 7, by Mouldotron

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swaaye wrote on Yesterday, 20:36:

Try an older driver such as between 45.23 through 56.64. Though obviously that's not possible with a GT210 or GT610.

Right, I can give that a go if I can find one, I think it's a version in the 300's that is on there now.

Reply 5 of 7, by swaaye

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Another thing that comes to mind is your Pentium II motherboard is probably equipped with PCI 2.1? Those cards are likely PCI 2.2 or later. Though it's strange that only OpenGL is a problem if that is a problem.

Reply 6 of 7, by Mouldotron

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swaaye wrote on Yesterday, 20:45:

Another thing that comes to mind is your Pentium II motherboard is probably equipped with PCI 2.1? Those cards are likely PCI 2.2 or later. Though it's strange that only OpenGL is a problem if that is a problem.

Well I'm not quite sure but all the cards right up to the GT610 work fine, even in 1080p using the HDMI socket. Not sure exactly which PCI revision I have but it's an earlier board with no AGP or USB. I'm writing to you now on it in Firefox.

Reply 7 of 7, by Mouldotron

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swaaye wrote on Yesterday, 20:36:

Try an older driver such as between 45.23 through 56.64. Though obviously that's not possible with a GT210 or GT610.

Well, some progress, thanks to you.

I put the FX5200 in and installed Version 45.23... and behold, I assume OpenGL to be working as I just played a round of Quake 3 😀

After I installed the driver I found an option in the OpenGL settings to "Disable support for CPU extensions" which surely means SSE? I disabled it anyway. I guess on the newer drivers that option isn't there and it just always assumes the extensions are present.

Gutted I've had no luck with Minecraft though! I've installed Betacraft and it does try to run the early versions but I get an error that the OpenGL won't provide hardware acceleration and then it drops out. I'd hoped it would work but doesn't seem to (I know it'll be slow, I just want to see it work).

Classicube runs at like a million FPS.