First post, by bloodem
- Rank
- Oldbie
Hey, guys!
I'm having a weird issue with Need for speed 3 under Windows 98 SE, on two PCs with the following specs:
PC1
CPU: Pentium 3 Tualatin 1.4 GHz
MB: Gigabyte GA-6IEM
RAM: 512 MB
Video card: Gainward GeForce 4 Ti 4200 (tried multiple older/newer drivers including 45.23, without luck)
PC2
CPU: Core 2 Duo E4700
MB: Asrock 775i65g
RAM: 1GB (with R. Loew's mempatch)
Video card: GeForce FX 5900XT (tried only Detonator 56.64, since I'm sure other drivers will behave the same)
Basically, on a fresh Windows 98 SE install (just drivers), I install the game and immediately launch it (without running 3DSetup). The game starts in software mode, menus work OK, but when I hit "Race", I get the loading screen and once it reaches 100%, the game crashes and I'm back on the desktop (no errors, at least none displayed or written to any file that I could find).
If I run 3DSetup and switch to the Direct3D Device 1, it's even worse: the game crashes before ever reaching the menu.
Could it be that both the Tualatin, not to mention the Core 2 Duo, are way too fast for it and some CPU speed related bug is triggered? Anybody had a similar problem and managed to solve it? I also tried searching for the latest official patch but didn't have any luck, all old URLs are dead, but it probably wouldn't solve my issue anyway.
The funny thing is that I can play the game just fine on Windows 10 64 bit with the modern patch (but that patch does solve A LOT of bugs and also makes it compatible with modern systems).
Still, I remember playing this game in 1999 on a K6-2 500 with Riva TNT2 M64 and after that, in 2001 / 2002, on an AMD Thunderbird 1333 MHz with a GeForce 3 Ti 200 and it worked just fine... so it really bugs me and I want to see it run on Win98 😁
1 x PLCC-68 / 2 x PGA132 / 5 x Skt 3 / 9 x Skt 7 / 12 x SS7 / 1 x Skt 8 / 14 x Slot 1 / 5 x Slot A
5 x Skt 370 / 8 x Skt A / 2 x Skt 478 / 2 x Skt 754 / 3 x Skt 939 / 7 x LGA775 / 1 x LGA1155
Current PC: Ryzen 7 5800X3D
Backup PC: Core i7 7700k