VOGONS


First post, by RetroSpector78

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Hi,

I have a Win98SE computer with an Nvidia FX5500 PCI videocard.
With a clean install of

  • windows 98 SE
  • 81.98 nvidia drivers
  • DirectX 9 installation

I cannot get 3D Mark 99 to start.

  • First time it launches but upon clicking New Benchmark it simply quits before running the first test
  • Second time it launches it shows a popup that I do not have a Direct X 6 compatible 3D card.

Also noticed that a lot of games don't want to play nice with this card (not accepting openGL / Direct3D, or simply crashing).

Is this an incompatibility between the FX5500 and windos 98 ? Or can this be fixed with video drivers / direct x versions ?

Thx.

Reply 2 of 8, by cyclone3d

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Did you install the chipset drivers for your motherboard? What are the specs of the rest of your system?

Yamaha modified setupds and drivers
Yamaha XG repository
YMF7x4 Guide
Aopen AW744L II SB-LINK

Reply 3 of 8, by RetroSpector78

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cyclone3d wrote on 2020-10-20, 15:00:

Did you install the chipset drivers for your motherboard? What are the specs of the rest of your system?

It is a pretty crappy Packard Bell system and only has PCI slots.
It uses the SIS 530 chipset. I don't think there are any specific SIS 530 chipset drivers (I did find drivers for the IGP).
Motherboard seems to be this one : http://www.uktsupport.co.uk/pb/mb/980.htm

Reply 4 of 8, by bloodem

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I would recommend trying driver version 45.23 (force install as GeForce FX5200).

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

Reply 5 of 8, by RetroSpector78

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BigDaddyM wrote on 2020-10-20, 12:50:

Try older drivers

Thx ... 56.64 seemed to have done the trick.

3D Mark 99 ran fine with these. Getting a low score but that has probably more to do with the CPU / overall system.
Was a bit surprised to see it score lower than my voodoo banshee in the same system (in 3D Mark : 1100 for the FX5500 Vs 1600 for the Banshee)

Using the 45.23 (by manually "updating" the existing driver as the installer didn't want to run) and it ran a little faster (in 3d Mark I got 1200 now), but my LCD monitor didn't output many of the tests in 640x480 and I only saw part of the screen in 800x600.

Reply 6 of 8, by bloodem

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Judging by that score, it seems you are on a Socket 7 PC (Pentium MMX?).
The lower score with the FX 5500 is not strange at all, it's perfectly normal. You are running a 2003 card with 2004 drivers on a 1997 PC. Those drivers were designed to work with fast CPUs like Athlon 64, Pentium 4, Athlon XP.
On a system like yours, Voodoo cards will always be faster even in Direct3D titles (and when using Glide they will be MUCH faster).

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

Reply 7 of 8, by RetroSpector78

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bloodem wrote on 2020-10-21, 07:23:

Judging by that score, it seems you are on a Socket 7 PC (Pentium MMX?).

It's an AMD K6-2 500Mhz . But I am limited to PCI. The best performing cards I have are a PCI Voodoo Banshee and Voodoo 2.

I thought that more modern PCI cards with OpenGL support would run faster than the Banshee / Voodoo 2.
But I can imagine not only the CPU and PCI is going to be the bottleneck here, but also the cards (drivers and game support).

Unfortunately I only have

  1. very slow PCI cards (matrox / s3 / rendition / ati)
  2. newer Nvidia PCI cards (that don't perform as well as the voodoo cards).

I guess the only real competition for 3DFX were the Riva cards ? (but these are not that easy to find in PCI.)

Reply 8 of 8, by bloodem

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Yeah, come to think about it, that 3DMark99 score is probably good for your combo (K6-2 500 / Voodoo Banshee).
I actually did a similar benchmark a few weeks ago, and I got ~ 3200 points with a K6-2+ 550 MHz & a Voodoo 3 3000 (I used an AGP card, but a PCI Voodoo 3 would be virtually identical). For the record, with a GeForce 2 MX/MX400 the score is ~ 4000 points.

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