You'll probably have to manually add the PCI vendor and device IDs to the driver INF file. I have had to do that with a number of later cards to get them to work with available Catalyst 6.2 drivers.

Drivers starting from 4.11beta can find the video card without any problems, but the problem is that they consider it to be a PCIe card. In 6.2, where official support for X700 AGP is declared, they can also be installed without any problems, but they do not allow you to increase the resolution or color beyond 16 colors in 640x480. If you install the 5.9 driver after 6.2 through the Device Manager, everything seems to work fine, and 3D Mark 2001 runs and displays the same points as under XP. However, if you install the ATI Control Panel, you will see a black screen.

Do you have Internet Explorer 5.5 or greater and DirectX installed first? As I recall, the later ATI drivers had dependencies on certain Windows calls in those updates.

Yes, I've tried installing ie5.5 and dotnet 1.1, but it doesn't solve the problem. The Radeon 9200 on the same system works fine with 6.2, and the control panel opens.

Have you tried installing the 6.2 driver in a clean Windows 98 (after the IE and DirectX 9 updates) and then used Safe Mode to remove all instances of display adapters. On restart, Win 98 should redetect the x700. I've found that procedure can sometimes resolve the 16-color issue.

I tried it, but it didn't work. I tried it on ich2 and ich5, but it doesn't seem to work on Intel chipsets. It might work on SIS or VIA chipsets, or even only on AMD platforms. Unfortunately, I can't test it.

Is the card identified as a Radeon X700 in the device manager or as Standard VGA controller ? If the latter you have to add the vendor and device IDs into one of the driver INF files and manually install the driver for the device, in device manager.

The problem is not that it is not detected - the problem is that after installing 4.11-5.9 drivers, the screen is black, and after installing 6.2, it does not allow you to increase the resolution or color depth. However, in the device manager, the Radeon X700 is listed without any exclamation marks. I found a mention on the internet that someone with an AGP X700 also had a black screen on older drivers, but it worked with 6.2. However, the platform they used is not mentioned. At the moment, I've tested it on ich2, ich5, and sis962, but it doesn't work properly.

MaRCer wrote on 2026-07-20, 09:49:

The problem is not that it is not detected - the problem is that after installing 4.11-5.9 drivers, the screen is black, and after installing 6.2, it does not allow you to increase the resolution or color depth. However, in the device manager, the Radeon X700 is listed without any exclamation marks. I found a mention on the internet that someone with an AGP X700 also had a black screen on older drivers, but it worked with 6.2. However, the platform they used is not mentioned. At the moment, I've tested it on ich2, ich5, and sis962, but it doesn't work properly.

Do you want to try the driver that comes with a Built-by-Ati X700?
https://archive.org/details/data-1_20260720

Edit: sorry bad link.

If I had to guess, Rialto bridge chip doesn't like something present on those boards.
Check for hardware conflicts, and disable devices that have the same IRQ as Rialto bridge (or GPU itself).
Maybe your motherboard needs to have PnP mode enabled in BIOS for Win98 to get this sorted out ?

Can you get a screenshot of what Windows says in Device Manager about your card ? (with 6.2 driver)

agent_x007 wrote on 2026-07-20, 12:35:

Can you get a screenshot of what Windows says in Device Manager about your card ? (with 6.2 driver)

No device conflicts. The driver, even 5.9, correctly identifies it as an AGP card, but it doesn't work properly. Everything works smoothly under XP.

MaRCer wrote on 2026-07-20, 19:04:

agent_x007 wrote on 2026-07-20, 12:35:

Can you get a screenshot of what Windows says in Device Manager about your card ? (with 6.2 driver)

No device conflicts. The driver, even 5.9, correctly identifies it as an AGP card, but it doesn't work properly. Everything works smoothly under XP.

You know when you install a PCI-E card in 98 how you have to change the color bit depth to 16bit on first reboot and then let the machine reboot again? Otherwise the driver doesn't take control or something, I vaguely remembering having to do that.

Edit: You could also try deleting the primary X700 device and let windows find it again.

MaRCer wrote on 2026-07-20, 19:04:

agent_x007 wrote on 2026-07-20, 12:35:

Can you get a screenshot of what Windows says in Device Manager about your card ? (with 6.2 driver)

No device conflicts. The driver, even 5.9, correctly identifies it as an AGP card, but it doesn't work properly. Everything works smoothly under XP.

If 16-bit setting doesn't help, try limiting AGP aperture size to 16MB (or less).

There's a conflict with AGP - as I mentioned earlier, if you install 5.9 after 6.2, everything starts working, the resolution and colors change, games launch, and 3D Mark 2001 displays 20,000 points. However, in the AGP control panel, AGP mode is disabled, and FastWrites is also disabled. You can click on the check button to enable FastWrites, but this will return to the initial black screen. Full-fledged AGP cards - Geforce 5900, Radeon 9200 - have no problems. Everything was tested on 3 boards, and the problem is not with the boards, but with the poor compatibility of X700 AGP.
I've tried changing the aperture, removing the video card from the device manager, but nothing works.

MaRCer wrote on 2026-07-21, 14:47:

There's a conflict with AGP - as I mentioned earlier, if you install 5.9 after 6.2, everything starts working, the resolution and colors change, games launch, and 3D Mark 2001 displays 20,000 points. However, in the AGP control panel, AGP mode is disabled, and FastWrites is also disabled. You can click on the check button to enable FastWrites, but this will return to the initial black screen. Full-fledged AGP cards - Geforce 5900, Radeon 9200 - have no problems. Everything was tested on 3 boards, and the problem is not with the boards, but with the poor compatibility of X700 AGP.
I've tried changing the aperture, removing the video card from the device manager, but nothing works.

@ 20,000 points it would seem that you're not leaving anything on the table. I doubt that score is possible in PCI mode, Maybe the control panel has left overs from the 5.9 driver.

Dothan Burger wrote on 2026-07-20, 19:21:

MaRCer wrote on 2026-07-20, 19:04:

agent_x007 wrote on 2026-07-20, 12:35:

Can you get a screenshot of what Windows says in Device Manager about your card ? (with 6.2 driver)

No device conflicts. The driver, even 5.9, correctly identifies it as an AGP card, but it doesn't work properly. Everything works smoothly under XP.

You know when you install a PCI-E card in 98 how you have to change the color bit depth to 16bit on first reboot and then let the machine reboot again? Otherwise the driver doesn't take control or something, I vaguely remembering having to do that.

Edit: You could also try deleting the primary X700 device and let windows find it again.

I had issues on a Notebook (Samsung x20), because there is no scaler between display setting and the resulting LCD screen timings. But when I cranked up the resoluion near 1400x1050, it started to work, because the display is compatible with the specific timing. Unfurtenately I cannot change to that 1400x1050 resolution of the display in Windows 98 SE. Normaly the driver would use the correct timing for the display and a scaler (or dump black bar function) cares about matching both resolutions.

The whole screen access seems to be broken in Windows 98, because they focused on XP in driver developement at that time. Any suggestions, how to get proper screen scaling are welcome, but my assumtion is, it's just broken.

Ruled out weird resolution settings especially refresh rate?
Some monitors say out of range. Others especially with adapters just don't display.

Eg dos mode is 720x400x70hz

Cheap vga adapters don't support it. So no bios.