This thread is a continuation from: Windows 98SE USB drivers issue (P55 chipset) | SOLVED

W98:

Some early benchmarks (driver 61.76):

3DMark99 = 6057 (CPU = 80925)
3DMark2000 = 6435

The performance is pretty poor as you can see and am having some issues with the drivers as well. So far I have tried only 61.76 and 66.94. Both give black screen in 3DMark2001 and show these weird superlong polygons in a handful of scenes in 3DMark 99. The latter drivers also cause massive flickering in 3DMark2000.

HW:
Intel 875k @stock, BIOS: HT off, 1 core only, Turbo on
NVIDIA Quadro FX1300, driver 61.76

Games:
Q3A - works
Half-Life - works
Star Wars Episode I: Racer - works
NOLF - works but moving mouse in main menu causes severe FPS drops (does not affect gameplay) and NPC dialogs are cut too short
Splinter Cell - works on 61.76. On 66.94 it works only at 640x480 and other resolutions are causing massive flickering (=unplayable)
Commandos - black screen

Diskspeed:
7MB/s (no idea how to fix it, if at all possible)

Have a passively cooled GeForce 7950 GT on the way, will test that as well once it gets here.

Looks like a nice setup! I love seeing newer hardware running older OSes natively. 😎

duga3 wrote:

Diskspeed:
7MB/s (no idea how to fix it, if at all possible)

I had the same issue on my 'Retro Xeon Rig' (G41 build) under Windows 98 SE - I was able to fix it (normal speeds and no 'triangle' errors in Device Manager) with Rloew's SATA patch:

SATA $10 + $1 S&H […]
Show full quote

SATA $10 + $1 S&H

Patch and INF File to provide support for Motherboard Chipset based SATA
Controllers.
This File is not for use with separate SATA Motherboard Controllers or SATA
Cards. Does not support RAID or AHCI.
Contact Author for SATA Card Support and Compatibility Testing Program.

http://rloew.x10host.com/prerel.htm

You should add an ESS SOLO 1 PCI or an OPL3LPT and make a run at DOS 🤣

I am very curious to see how well the FX 1300 works. So far I haven't had any luck getting windows 98 to install on any of my newer machines, but I am hoping I might have some success with an ivy bridge socket next time I try it.

@FrostyTheSnowman

Thanks, its just a fun project I wanted to try, wanting to get as much as possible (excluding DOS era) out of a single PC (space issues). I went into it knowing I might fail miserably due to compatibility but at least I will learn something new (and old!). But so far it looks more promising than it did when I first started playing with the idea of this build.

I am already using the RAM patch from RLoew here but I will try his SATA patch as well, thank you for the tip!

mothergoose729 wrote:

You should add an ESS SOLO 1 PCI or an OPL3LPT and make a run at DOS 🤣

I am very curious to see how well the FX 1300 works. So far I haven't had any luck getting windows 98 to install on any of my newer machines, but I am hoping I might have some success with an ivy bridge socket next time I try it.

I wont be covering DOS era with this build. Its already a house of cards as it is 😀 I am considering Voodoo 5500 for the last remaining PCI slot (assuming its compatible, didnt really look), that should be fun and cover the older DirectX Windows games which the later PCI-E Win98 GPUs will refuse to play. And glide, yes.

Regarding FX1300, it works for some games, but its not a keeper, it is a little slow for my taste and the compatibility is not very good with the two Quadro drivers I have tried. So "this" will probably need to branch into 2 cards, one more compatible (could be that Voodoo) and one more powerful.

duga3 wrote:

mothergoose729 wrote:

You should add an ESS SOLO 1 PCI or an OPL3LPT and make a run at DOS 🤣

I am very curious to see how well the FX 1300 works. So far I haven't had any luck getting windows 98 to install on any of my newer machines, but I am hoping I might have some success with an ivy bridge socket next time I try it.

I wont be covering DOS era with this build. Its already a house of cards as it is 😀 I am considering Voodoo 5500 for the last remaining PCI slot (assuming its compatible, didnt really look), that should be fun and cover the older DirectX Windows games which the later PCI-E Win98 GPUs will refuse to play. And glide, yes.

Regarding FX1300, it works for some games, but its not a keeper, it is a little slow for my taste and the compatibility is not very good with the two Quadro drivers I have tried. So "this" will probably need to branch into 2 cards, one more compatible (could be that Voodoo) and one more powerful.

The quadro FX 1300 has the same core as the FX 5950, just at 275mhz. You should be able to overclock to 350mhz easily. At that speed, it should be more than enough for any A3D game.

I am not sure when FX 1300 support was added, but I have always been able to get very decent performance out of driver version 56.64.

And yeah, a PCI voodoo 5500 would be sweet, and pretty much double the value the computer 🤣

mothergoose729 wrote:

The quadro FX 1300 has the same core as the FX 5950, just at 275mhz. You should be able to overclock to 350mhz easily. At that speed, it should be more than enough for any A3D game.

I am not sure when FX 1300 support was added, but I have always been able to get very decent performance out of driver version 56.64.

And yeah, a PCI voodoo 5500 would be sweet, and pretty much double the value the computer 🤣

I will now try to fake the FX1300 into thinking it is Geforce and see if I can find some older Geforce drivers that will work with it. I would prefer to save GPU overclocking as a last resort, I am mainly concerned about longevity and heat=noise, the case will be pretty full in the end with all the card slots occupied. But I guess I might as well go all in and watercool everything if this build turns out really really great, we will see about that.

W98:

I was able to INF mod 56.64 drivers, anything older would throw an error during driver installation.

With 56.64, I have not noticed any difference in compatibility with various games (compared to 61.76 and 66.94). But I am not saying there isnt, I just didnt find/see it. The only noticeable difference to me was that the above mentioned artifacting was gone from 3DMark99.

I have also tried faking the Quadro as Geforce using Rivatuner, with various drivers, and there were noticeable FPS differences (both good and bad) so I would suggest anyone with a Quadro card to definitely try it on their own because your mileage might vary. Also notable is that VSYNC control and perhaps other things specifically for DirectX are unavailable in Quadro drivers, only in Geforce drivers. On the other hand Quadro drivers have 16x AA, Geforce only 8x. So if I decide to actually use a Quadro card in this build, I will probably make multiple small Windows partitions with various drivers that will better suit specific games.

Now some good news and bad news.

Good news is that I was able to solve the disk speed issue after installing RLoew SATA patch and doing some specific configuring in BIOS and Device Manager with his great help. The speed increased from 7MB/s to upto 215MB/s. Amazing. It also made the SATA CD-DVD drive work (which I didnt really pay attention to before).

Bad news is that the USB mouse lag issue is kind of back. It was always there but rather small so I didnt notice it at first. Basically the FPS drops when I type too fast on USB keyboard or move the USB mouse around too fast. Not by much (1-20FPS maybe) but it does interfere even with VSYNC on and results in small stuttering either way.

The 7950 GT has arrived now so I will be testing that soon. It is this model:

https://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphics/7089- … -passive-512mb/

I have also tried installing color calibration ICC profile (.ICC file) via Nvidia setting panel which "worked", but somehow looked too bright compared to installing the same ICC on later Windows, and unfortunately did not even "stick" in games, just desktop. I have no problems forcing it in on Windows XP and higher in most games but trying to do this on Windows 98SE will be an issue it seems.

Hmm yeah, "modern" P55 is the chipset I happened to use for my XP system in 2011.

You probably know Splinter Cell is a horrible child and won't work right unless you use drivers from within a couple of years after release. There's a big thread about it on here.

NOLF, IIRC there was some text rendering issue, also touchy on drivers.

Some of this stuff is unsolvable; you just have to use a card old enough to run with the right drivers or they won't run right.

Windows 8 was released in 2012 so its definitely "modern", just not the latest and greatest, hence the quotes. Modern hardware is expensive for the tiny incremental updates it offers anyway, 2080ti is only 2x faster than 980ti which I will probably end up using with some of the "retro" WinXP partitions in this build. You can get 980ti used for around 200usd, 2080ti is like 1000usd for a used one. What a joke.

Yes, I am aware that Splinter Cell needs NV28 or around there if you want buffered shadows. Unfortunately FX1300 and perhaps some rare PCX cards are the closest to NV28 I can use in this build.

Text in NOLF seems fine for me, but the audio dialogs are cut too short, I have tried VSYNC to 60FPS and there was no change. I plan to look for some (community) patches later, perhaps that will make it work.

I was also hoping System Shock 2 will work natively with FX1300 but I get black screen after menus. I think this card should have support for paletted textures, table fog and 16-bit dithering that some of these older games required. SS2 has community patches though so that should be easy to fix I think.

W98:

Finally had some time to test the "Geforce 7950 GT Extreme edition 512MB" and it is much better than the Quadro FX 1300. It is a lot faster and at the same time a lot more compatible (cannot stress this enough).

The modded drivers (http://www.mdgx.com/files/nv8269.php) page says even Geforce 9xxx is supported so I might try one of those at some point in the future as well if I find one for a steal. But I am really liking the GF7 series so far, I would say it was a great purchase for W98. Some games still have problems but in the end its only 10-20% of the total problems I had with the FX 1300. Naturally I do not expect any GPU to handle any game I throw at it but GF7 holds up like a champ compared to FX 1300 so it is a keeper for now.

Unfortunately the large passive cooler makes this single-slot card a dual-slot card in practice - this will be in issue later when I will be adding more cards to the system so I will need to figure out some solution to this.

duga3 wrote:

W98: […]
Show full quote

W98:

Finally had some time to test the "Geforce 7950 GT Extreme edition 512MB" and it is much better than the Quadro FX 1300. It is a lot faster and at the same time a lot more compatible (cannot stress this enough).

The modded drivers (http://www.mdgx.com/files/nv8269.php) page says even Geforce 9xxx is supported so I might try one of those at some point in the future as well if I find one for a steal. But I am really liking the GF7 series so far, I would say it was a great purchase for W98. Some games still have problems but in the end its only 10-20% of the total problems I had with the FX 1300. Naturally I do not expect any GPU to handle any game I throw at it but GF7 holds up like a champ compared to FX 1300 so it is a keeper for now.

Unfortunately the large passive cooler makes this single-slot card a dual-slot card in practice - this will be in issue later when I will be adding more cards to the system so I will need to figure out some solution to this.

There are single slot versions of that card. Single slot coolers for later cards might work too, if you want to sacrifice a 9800gt or something.

Interesting that the 7 series is working better for you. Probably just better drivers.

W98 - Some quick tests on FX1300 with 82.69:

Note: A result ended the same on FX1300(82.69) and 7950GT(82.69) unless otherwise noted.

call of duty - freezes after intro videos or in safe mode shows graphical glitches such as models missing etc (ok on 7950GT)
mohaa - everything in-game is rendered black and yellow
half life - ok
ij infernal machine - ok
splinter cell - ok
red alert w95 edition - black screen and freeze (ok on 7950GT)
ofp cold war crisis - ok
black and white - most models are black
sw racer - ok
red faction - ok
sin - ok but unplayable low fps (1-5) with opengl renderer even at lower resolutions (ok on 7950GT)
commandos - black screen and freeze (ok on 7950GT)
gta 3 - ok but massive fps drops (almost freezes) every few seconds (ok on 7950GT)
croc - ok
metal gear solid - error on startup saying it requires over 50mb (Buffer.dwAvailPageFile < 0x4000000) disk size (ok on 7950GT but only in software renderer, hw renderer is not working probably because of lack of support for 8-bit paletted textures)
d2lod - ok
fallout - ok
infestation - ok
lego racers - crashes upon starting
aoe2 demo - freezes 2 seconds after you pick the first tutorial campaign and are thrown into in-game (ok on 7950GT)
midtown madness 2 - massive graphical glitches
monster truck madness - ok
monster truck madness 2 - ok
dune2000 - ok
nolf - white character models, all other textures are randomly swapped for different textures (lol)
omikron demo - ugly dithering and sneak menu freezes pc (on 7950GT I do not remember any ugly dithering and sneak menu worked there although very very slowly at low fps)
deus ex - ok
thps2 - ok
rune - ok
q3 demo - ok
revolt - ok
neverhood - ok
supreme snowboarding - ok
system shock 2 - ok

Overall impressions:
- Some games had much lower fps (sin 5fps at 640x480, rune 20fps at 640x480) or much higher (supreme snowboarding 60fps at 1600x1200) fps than I expected. 7950GT had fps in those games at expectable levels.
- Often ugly dithering or banding (especially visible on skybox). Dont remember 7950GT having this.
- Mouse felt like it had slightly higher input lag (might be just me though). Dont remember 7950GT having this.
- Image quality felt somehow slightly worse. Dont remember 7950GT having this.

Bottom line, it felt a bit unstable/unpolished/ugly so just because something runs it doesnt mean it produces a good result when inspected closer. I think this driver is more suited for later cards, although it is still probably more compatible than 61.76 or 66.94. Please take these "tests" with a grain of salt, I did not test it side-by-side nor performed a clean installation of Windows (only re-installed the NVIDIA driver) as this is good enough for my purposes. I went from my (fairly recent) memory of my 7950GT testing so I may be wrong about some details. And as always, YMMV 😀

Bonus benchmarks:

FX1300 61.76 and 66.94:
99 = 6057 (a couple of glitches)
00 = 6435 (massive flickering only on 66.94)
01 = black screen

FX1300 82.69:
99 = 6051
00 = 6966
01 = 10163

7950GT 82.69:
99 = 10083
00 = 40973
01 = 41311

Thanks for giving it a try. I was curious how the card would perform... not great looks like.

You can try using riva tuner, which can configure the card as a geforce. Tricking the drivers into treating it like a 5900xt would be interesting, as would a PCX 5900.

I would also be curious to know how it performs in XP.

I'll be working on it as well. I will see if I can mod other drivers and do some more tricks to see if I can fix these issues presented here. My system just isnt ready yet.

Cross checking duga3 results with a different driver, updated other thread. So far I have not be able to reproduce the same issues with the FX1300 on driver 70.
PCIE Graphics Card

Updates to the build during 2020:

Slot 2 (PCI-E): Geforce GTX960 2GB >>> Geforce 980 Ti - 6GB EVGA Kingpin
Slot 3 (PCI-E): Geforce 7950 GT Extreme edition 512MB >>> Geforce 7950 GT - 512MB XFX
Slot 4 (PCI): empty >>> Voodoo 5500 - 64MB 3dfx PCI Mac
Slot 5 (PCI-E): Geforce FX1300 >>> Geforce PCX 5900 - 128MB ASUS

Currently playing with 980 Ti on Windows XP, uploaded a bunch of super resolution screenshots (SGSSAA, 32xS, 4x4SS, etc.) with FPS counters here:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/13pYtb … JIDzXkQdllzeUH-

See the "_info.txt" files in there, for game-specific settings info. I recommend downloading the images first and then viewing them (in e.g. Irfanview). The screenshots appear lighter because I do not use ICM calibration profiles for retro gaming and CRTs have natively higher gamma response curve. So I just adjust in-game gamma to bring back some of the details in the shadows. This will make the pictures slightly lighter in appearance on properly calibrated displays. I will try to do better next time though, this time I just forgot.

Making 980 Ti work under Windows XP was very easy, just followed this tutorial for the INF mod:

https://mattpilz.com/windows-xp-drivers-nvidi … 980-ti-titan-x/

No OC for now, nothing in the build is OCed (yet).

Wanted to try overclocking of the CPU so I added a pretty beefy air cooler. At the same time I wanted to see how all of the desired components fit. Took a few pics while I was at it:

It fits all right. But don't try this at home. I do not run all that at once. Not yet anyway. I still need to figure out how the "PCIE disable" feature works on this mobo and should probably go with some custom water cooling as well. That would be the last stage of this build, I am still trying to find the ideal combination of sound cards and graphics cards that I will enjoy using in the long run.

And some quick i7-875K overclocking, went from 2.9GHz to 4.5GHz:

It is not really stable but it did finish the F.E.A.R. benchmark for example. In the long run I think something like 4.0-4.2GHz should be rock solid, hopefully under 1.4V.

I will post some of my 980 Ti related benchmarks later this week, with quick FPS comparisons to both Geforce 960 and 1080 Ti, just to put the 980 Ti into perspective.