I'm benchmarking a Radeon 7500 on Windows 98 using Catalyst 6.2. Performance is okay but not great, so I'm wondering if earlier drivers might be better. I know ATI's early drivers are a mess, so I wouldn't want to go too far back... Catalyst 4.2, maybe? I get the feeling the later drivers are stressing the CPU more than they need to.
Probably something dated around 2003-2004.
I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.
I would just go for the OmegaDrivers package.
If I'm not mistaken, the Catalyst Control Center is a .NET application, which might bog things down. The OmegaDrivers package uses ATI Tray Tools instead.
I don't think CCC is available for Win9x. But it is always optional anyway.
As for best driver? Who knows. Probably depends on the game. I doubt they developed the R100 driver branch much beyond 2002 though.
You generally want to steer towards the 3.x range with that card under 98SE. What I would usually do is install a driver and load up UT2004 to see if the NVIDIA logo was rendered correctly. On newer drivers it does not.
