GF6 isn't a bad choice however compatibility isn't as good as the GF 4 Ti or FX cards.

This post gives you an idea of what games will/wont work.
WIndows 98 + Geforce 6 which games )(demos) are working and which are not and maybe some fixes for them

You have to make sure you get an AGP that supports 1.5v, yes? Avoid the cards that only have a front notch.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerated_Graphics_Port

These were my favorite back in the day:

The Geforce 6600 was nice too

chinny22 wrote on 2020-11-20, 10:29:

GF6 isn't a bad choice however compatibility isn't as good as the GF 4 Ti or FX cards.

This post gives you an idea of what games will/wont work.
WIndows 98 + Geforce 6 which games )(demos) are working and which are not and maybe some fixes for them

Thanks chinny22. I am now considering the FX 5600 AGP one (Aopen nVidia GeForce 5 FX 5600 256MB). Let me know how good this one is.

douglar wrote on 2020-11-20, 18:23:

You have to make sure you get an AGP that supports 1.5v, yes? Avoid the cards that only have a front notch. […]
Show full quote

You have to make sure you get an AGP that supports 1.5v, yes? Avoid the cards that only have a front notch.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerated_Graphics_Port

These were my favorite back in the day:

The Geforce 6600 was nice too

Thanks douglar. Yes my mobo supports only 1.5V. Thinking of getting something like Aopen nVidia GeForce 5 FX 5600 256MB AGP which has 2 notches.

A geforce 3 or Voodoo 4 would be very nice

benjamin91609 wrote on 2020-11-22, 15:35:

A geforce 3 or Voodoo 4 would be very nice

Thanks benjamin91609. I was thinking of choosing a one which has decent compatibility with both XP and 98. Let me know how a GF3 or Voodoo 4 fares in this regard.

Both the Voodoo 4 and GeForce 3 are ridiculously overpriced on eBay and similar platforms. Performance-wise you wouldn't be happy with a Voodoo 4 anyway, and there is no official XP driver support.

I'd recommend a GF 4 Ti 4200 which is readily available at a reasonable price point.
My personal experience with the FX series is limited, but so far I wasn't impressed with compatibility or performance, so personally I'd stay away from these cards. If you want something more powerful than the GF 4 Ti, have a look at the Radeon 9700 and 9800 series. Just make sure to get a tested and working card, they have quite a tendency to fail.

gex85 wrote on 2020-11-22, 16:31:

Both the Voodoo 4 and GeForce 3 are ridiculously overpriced on eBay and similar platforms. Performance-wise you wouldn't be happy with a Voodoo 4 anyway, and there is no official XP driver support.

I'd recommend a GF 4 Ti 4200 which is readily available at a reasonable price point.
My personal experience with the FX series is limited, but so far I wasn't impressed with compatibility or performance, so personally I'd stay away from these cards. If you want something more powerful than the GF 4 Ti, have a look at the Radeon 9700 and 9800 series. Just make sure to get a tested and working card, they have quite a tendency to fail.

Thanks gex85. I had initially thought of Ti 4200. However, having a tough time finding a good deal on ebay as it seems to be a little overpriced. The MX 440/4000 is quite abundant. How well do these compare against Ti 4200?

I do not understand exactly what motherboard are you using: the one with DDR support or the one with SDR support - this is important because with Pentium 4 memory bandwidth is of critical importance. As for the video card if you want something with enough performance in XP and very good in 98 I would choose a Radeon 9600 series - they are cheap and outperform FX series. Geforce 4200 would be also very good in 98 however in XP I do not think it would provide an adequate level of performance for 2003 and later games at high resolutions!

nd22 wrote on 2020-11-23, 04:45:

I do not understand exactly what motherboard are you using: the one with DDR support or the one with SDR support - this is important because with Pentium 4 memory bandwidth is of critical importance. As for the video card if you want something with enough performance in XP and very good in 98 I would choose a Radeon 9600 series - they are cheap and outperform FX series. Geforce 4200 would be also very good in 98 however in XP I do not think it would provide an adequate level of performance for 2003 and later games at high resolutions!

Thanks nd22. My mobo is similar to the specs in this page : https://www.cnet.com/products/intel-desktop-b … -i845ge-series/. I was leaning more towards Nvidia cards as I felt they are more compatible with win 98 games as compared to Radeon. Let me know otherwise. Looking at a balance of compatibility and performance.

Agree with everything above, to summarise.

Geforce 6200, Great performance in XP but compatibly issues in 9x
Geforce 4200, good performance in XP and 99.9% no compatibility issues in 9x *
GeForce 5600, Average Performance in XP, but fine win 9x
Geforce 4MX anything. basically a rebranded GF2, Fine for 9x but weak for XP era

*I forget the full details but Splinter Cell does have incompatibility with the GF4 Ti, It's not a game I own so don't remember the details.

I'm not overly familiar with ATI cards either , I'm getting my info of Vogon's wiki
https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/ATI

By the looks of it this post lists games that will have compatibility problems.
Table Fog & 8-bit Paletted Textures

As with most things in life, there is no 1 answer. price, availability, and games you want to play are all deciding factors unique to your setup.

chinny22 wrote on 2020-11-23, 10:13:

*I forget the full details but Splinter Cell does have incompatibility with the GF4 Ti, It's not a game I own so don't remember the details

Fully compatible as long as you use period-correct drivers, meaning 45.23 for the first game and 56.64 for the second one.

I just played through both games on my Ti4200 and got all the proper shadows and lighting. Also, the readme file lists NV2x cards as officially supported.

yeah I was watching a Phil's computer lab video yesterday, and iirc, he was saying that the GeForce 3 was the only card that would do the shadows in splinter cell correctly.

RedCharles wrote on 2020-11-24, 02:54:

yeah I was watching a Phil's computer lab video yesterday, and iirc, he was saying that the GeForce 3 was the only card that would do the shadows in splinter cell correctly.

If you're referring to the video that I linked, Phil uses a GeForce4 for his tests that showcase correct behavior.

I have yet to see a side by side comparison between GeForce3 and GeForce4 where one is different than the other with regards to Splinter Cell.

Ya, you're right, he does Geforce 3 and 4 cards in another video. https://youtu.be/vxwQMvsuHtM?t=295

I think you should skip the FX. Regarding DX8 as I remember for anything below FX5700 the Geforce 4 Ti 4200 is better while above FX5700 the FX is more rare and expensive and if you need DX9 than the Radeon R300 cards are faster and cooler. The 9600XT is generally easy to pick up and cheap. For the best XP performance I'd go for the Geforce 6600GT which is also fairly cheap and abundant. I think anything faster would be wasted on a 2.4GHz Pentium 4.

Also, I'd say the joker might be the RV410 based Radeon X1050 with 128bit memory interface. These are basically Radeon X700 rebrands with really nice performance close to the 6600, but since they were low-end trash cards no one enthusiastic about they can be very cheap. But you have to be careful with these, there are three variants under the same name. The others are built with the RV360 GPU and 64bit interface or RV410 but with 64bit and they really are trash.