bassix6 wrote on 2022-05-08, 15:33:

I'm already quite happy with the rig, but I have the feeling the performance in certain games should be a bit better. Max Payne 1 doesn't run buttery smooth at 1024x768 and has some dips in FPS, whereas I have the feeling that shouldn't be the case.

From what I remember (and it's been a while so I could be wrong) Max Payne is one of the few 2001 games that actually benefit from extra RAM. Since Win98 supports up to 512 MB natively, you can safely go up to that amount, assuming the motherboard can handle it as well.

Also, which driver version are you using for the GeForce4? Sometimes, Win9x games can misbehave if you use a driver that's too new.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-05-08, 15:47:

bassix6 wrote on 2022-05-08, 15:33:

I'm already quite happy with the rig, but I have the feeling the performance in certain games should be a bit better. Max Payne 1 doesn't run buttery smooth at 1024x768 and has some dips in FPS, whereas I have the feeling that shouldn't be the case.

From what I remember (and it's been a while so I could be wrong) Max Payne is one of the few 2001 games that actually benefit from extra RAM. Since Win98 supports up to 512 MB natively, you can safely go up to that amount, assuming the motherboard can handle it as well.

Also, which driver version are you using for the GeForce4? Sometimes, Win9x games can misbehave if you use a driver that's too new.

I just ordered 2 RAM sticks for a total of 512 MB, so I'll see if that helps! I installed these drivers I found in the Vogons Driver Library. Think it should be the correct one: http://vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=1 … &menustate=14,1

bassix6 wrote on 2022-05-08, 16:07:

I just ordered 2 RAM sticks for a total of 512 MB, so I'll see if that helps! I installed these drivers I found in the Vogons Driver Library. Think it should be the correct one: http://vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=1 … &menustate=14,1

That's a known good driver version, so you're fine in that regard. Technically, you could go slightly lower to 40.72 for a bit of extra performance, but it probably wouldn't make a huge difference.

I also think the latest patch (v1.05) for Max Payne resolved some performance issues. Be sure to install that, if you haven't already.

bassix6 wrote on 2022-05-08, 15:33:

I'm already quite happy with the rig, but I have the feeling the performance in certain games should be a bit better. Max Payne 1 doesn't run buttery smooth at 1024x768 and has some dips in FPS, whereas I have the feeling that shouldn't be the case. I have several GPU's laying around such as a Geforce 3 Ti 200 and a Voodoo 3, so I'll test them for better compatibility.
I'm also considering upgrading to a 1.4 GHZ Tualatin CPU in the future as it may be more appropriate for what I'm trying to achieve with this build. I'm also open to any suggestions you guys might have.

I'd be happy too! I think maybe 512mb could be useful in some later games, at least it wont harm anything and the 1.4ghz, whilst not that noticeable, would potentially give you that extra bit of speed in those same games

but it's a very nice p3 system already, hope the SD to IDE is giving good performance

gerry wrote on 2022-05-09, 08:11:

bassix6 wrote on 2022-05-08, 15:33:

I'm already quite happy with the rig, but I have the feeling the performance in certain games should be a bit better. Max Payne 1 doesn't run buttery smooth at 1024x768 and has some dips in FPS, whereas I have the feeling that shouldn't be the case. I have several GPU's laying around such as a Geforce 3 Ti 200 and a Voodoo 3, so I'll test them for better compatibility.
I'm also considering upgrading to a 1.4 GHZ Tualatin CPU in the future as it may be more appropriate for what I'm trying to achieve with this build. I'm also open to any suggestions you guys might have.

I'd be happy too! I think maybe 512mb could be useful in some later games, at least it wont harm anything and the 1.4ghz, whilst not that noticeable, would potentially give you that extra bit of speed in those same games

but it's a very nice p3 system already, hope the SD to IDE is giving good performance

Is there any way I can test the transfer rates from the SD?

Hi, the GF4 Ti4200 should be significantly faster than the Voodoo3 and the Gf3, obviously. So, if not a driver issue or something really weird, you'll need that game patch.
Never tried Max Payne myself, but assume it should run smoothly on a GHz rig? I wouldn't bet on that, it seems pretty demanding for a 2001 game:
https://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/max-payne/techinfo
So, will require a DX8 card, apparently. Maybe 1024 resolution is simply asking too much?
Think my little brother played through it on an 2002 Athlon XP 1700+ and Gf3 Ti200 and a 19", so prett sure in 1024x res. But Athlon XP1700+ is quite a leap.

SD card performance: Well, those things will have a rating in MByte per second or a speed class or something like "66x" meaning 66 times 150 kByte per second.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SD_card#Class
Then, I'd assume the mobo has the VT82C686A south bridge which includes a UDMA-66 IDE controller, so allowing 66 MByte per second. In that case, you'd have to get the appropriate cable for speeds beyond UDMA-33.
If the SD card is indeed fast enough to make any good use of that.
Since that thing is supposed to emulate a normal HDD, any HDD benchmark tool should be able to test it.
If controller, cable and card allow for a certain speed but you don't achieve it, it's probably the adapter that's too slow. Or you'll have to tweak it in Windows, like activating DMA in the hardware manager.

Upgrades, well, maxing out the platform can be a costly luxury, compared to getting a whole rig of a later generation. For obvious reasons, the 1.4 GHz Tualatin is in short supply. Will the board even take that chip?
The moment you don't use an ISA sound card, there's a lot of headroom for Win98. With an ISA sound card, you'd probably have better DOS support, if at all interested. Though I don't know about that Turtle Beach card's capabilities there.

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-05-09, 09:45:

Never tried Max Payne myself, but assume it should run smoothly on a GHz rig? I wouldn't bet on that, it seems pretty demanding for a 2001 game:
https://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/max-payne/techinfo
So, will require a DX8 card, apparently. Maybe 1024 resolution is simply asking too much?

On a GeForce4 Ti4200, it shouldn't be a problem to run Max Payne at 1024x768 fully maxed out, except for Anti Aliasing. I just tried it on my Athlon64 rig (in signature) and was getting 100+ FPS at that resolution. So his bottleneck is either the CPU, RAM or the SD card.

Also, seeing the game in action after all these years made me nostalgic. I think I'll put it at the top of my replay list. 😀

What SD card are you using? When I had just put my 650MHz P3 DOS/Win98SE rig together I wanted to try something without messing the Win98SE installation I had and used some crappy SD card that had come along something I had bought and it was awful. The Samsung SD card I had used for the original installation was very fast and snappy, like using a SSD, but using that freebie SD card was like driving a bike that had large bricks for tires. So if the SD isn't up to snuff it absolutely will cause issues when something needs to be loaded quickly.

And back in the day I ran Max Payne maxed out with a Radeon 8500 + 1.4GHz thunderbird, sure that CPU was faster but I'm still kinda doubtful the CPU is the issue here.

Edit: hmh that 1.4GHz thunderbird might have already been a Athlon XP 1700+ palomino at that point, so maybe I shouldn't rule the CPU out that quick.

Sombrero wrote on 2022-05-09, 10:17:

What SD card are you using? When I had just put my 650MHz P3 DOS/Win98SE rig together I wanted to try something without messing the Win98SE installation I had and used some crappy SD card that had come along something I had bought and it was awful. The Samsung SD card I had used for the original installation was very fast and snappy, like using a SSD, but using that freebie SD card was like driving a bike that had large bricks for tires. So if the SD isn't up to snuff it absolutely will cause issues when something needs to be loaded quickly.

And back in the day I ran Max Payne maxed out with a Radeon 8500 + 1.4GHz thunderbird, sure that CPU was faster but I'm still kinda doubtful the CPU is the issue here.

Edit: hmh that 1.4GHz thunderbird might have already been a Athlon XP 1700+ palomino at that point, so maybe I shouldn't rule the CPU out that quick.

I currently use a Kingston Canvas Select Plus 32 GB SDHC card. According to the packaging it has a write and reading speed of 100 MB/S.

bassix6 wrote on 2022-05-09, 14:44:

Sombrero wrote on 2022-05-09, 10:17:

What SD card are you using? When I had just put my 650MHz P3 DOS/Win98SE rig together I wanted to try something without messing the Win98SE installation I had and used some crappy SD card that had come along something I had bought and it was awful. The Samsung SD card I had used for the original installation was very fast and snappy, like using a SSD, but using that freebie SD card was like driving a bike that had large bricks for tires. So if the SD isn't up to snuff it absolutely will cause issues when something needs to be loaded quickly.

And back in the day I ran Max Payne maxed out with a Radeon 8500 + 1.4GHz thunderbird, sure that CPU was faster but I'm still kinda doubtful the CPU is the issue here.

Edit: hmh that 1.4GHz thunderbird might have already been a Athlon XP 1700+ palomino at that point, so maybe I shouldn't rule the CPU out that quick.

I currently use a Kingston Canvas Select Plus 32 GB SDHC card. According to the packaging it has a write and reading speed of 100 MB/S.

Then chances are, if you test the SD drive, it will consistently max out around 30 MB/s.
For 66, you'll need a cable with 80 wires. As far as I can see in that photo, you're using the old type on both ports. Those will work, but slow down faster drives to UDMA-33 mode. They're fine for CD-ROM drives.

If the card does not reach 33 MBps,
- correct VIA IDE drivers? "4 in 1" etc...
- DMA active?
- Shitty adapter?

HDD benchmark - ATTO come to mind:
https://www.atto.com/disk-benchmark/
They somehow managed to chose a name that stuck in my head 😉
There should be free downloads available for several tools.

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-05-09, 15:01:

Then chances are, if you test the SD drive, it will consistently max out around 30 MB/s. For 66, you'll need a cable with 80 wi […]
Show full quote

bassix6 wrote on 2022-05-09, 14:44:

Sombrero wrote on 2022-05-09, 10:17:

What SD card are you using? When I had just put my 650MHz P3 DOS/Win98SE rig together I wanted to try something without messing the Win98SE installation I had and used some crappy SD card that had come along something I had bought and it was awful. The Samsung SD card I had used for the original installation was very fast and snappy, like using a SSD, but using that freebie SD card was like driving a bike that had large bricks for tires. So if the SD isn't up to snuff it absolutely will cause issues when something needs to be loaded quickly.

And back in the day I ran Max Payne maxed out with a Radeon 8500 + 1.4GHz thunderbird, sure that CPU was faster but I'm still kinda doubtful the CPU is the issue here.

Edit: hmh that 1.4GHz thunderbird might have already been a Athlon XP 1700+ palomino at that point, so maybe I shouldn't rule the CPU out that quick.

I currently use a Kingston Canvas Select Plus 32 GB SDHC card. According to the packaging it has a write and reading speed of 100 MB/S.

Then chances are, if you test the SD drive, it will consistently max out around 30 MB/s.
For 66, you'll need a cable with 80 wires. As far as I can see in that photo, you're using the old type on both ports. Those will work, but slow down faster drives to UDMA-33 mode. They're fine for CD-ROM drives.

If the card does not reach 33 MBps,
- correct VIA IDE drivers? "4 in 1" etc...
- DMA active?
- Shitty adapter?

HDD benchmark - ATTO come to mind:
https://www.atto.com/disk-benchmark/
They somehow managed to chose a name that stuck in my head 😉
There should be free downloads available for several tools.

Cheers Cuttoon! I'll check the benchmarks and see if I can replace the cables.

bassix6 wrote on 2022-05-08, 15:33:

I'm already quite happy with the rig, but I have the feeling the performance in certain games should be a bit better. Max Payne 1 doesn't run buttery smooth at 1024x768 and has some dips in FPS, whereas I have the feeling that shouldn't be the case. I have several GPU's laying around such as a Geforce 3 Ti 200 and a Voodoo 3, so I'll test them for better compatibility.
I'm also considering upgrading to a 1.4 GHZ Tualatin CPU in the future as it may be more appropriate for what I'm trying to achieve with this build. I'm also open to any suggestions you guys might have.

You may be running into an AGP driver issue. Very common on VIA Apollo boards with NVidia. You should check to see if AGP is properly enabled either in RivaTuner or the NV control panel with coolbits registries enabled. Also check 3DMark01's System info page to see if your AGP apurture is working, it should reflect what is set to in BIOS, and not 0 bytes like mine. Increasing the aperture in BIOS and tweaking the AGP bus settings might help too.

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-05-09, 15:01:

Then chances are, if you test the SD drive, it will consistently max out around 30 MB/s. For 66, you'll need a cable with 80 wi […]
Show full quote

bassix6 wrote on 2022-05-09, 14:44:

Sombrero wrote on 2022-05-09, 10:17:

What SD card are you using? When I had just put my 650MHz P3 DOS/Win98SE rig together I wanted to try something without messing the Win98SE installation I had and used some crappy SD card that had come along something I had bought and it was awful. The Samsung SD card I had used for the original installation was very fast and snappy, like using a SSD, but using that freebie SD card was like driving a bike that had large bricks for tires. So if the SD isn't up to snuff it absolutely will cause issues when something needs to be loaded quickly.

And back in the day I ran Max Payne maxed out with a Radeon 8500 + 1.4GHz thunderbird, sure that CPU was faster but I'm still kinda doubtful the CPU is the issue here.

Edit: hmh that 1.4GHz thunderbird might have already been a Athlon XP 1700+ palomino at that point, so maybe I shouldn't rule the CPU out that quick.

I currently use a Kingston Canvas Select Plus 32 GB SDHC card. According to the packaging it has a write and reading speed of 100 MB/S.

Then chances are, if you test the SD drive, it will consistently max out around 30 MB/s.
For 66, you'll need a cable with 80 wires. As far as I can see in that photo, you're using the old type on both ports. Those will work, but slow down faster drives to UDMA-33 mode. They're fine for CD-ROM drives.

If the card does not reach 33 MBps,
- correct VIA IDE drivers? "4 in 1" etc...
- DMA active?
- Shitty adapter?

HDD benchmark - ATTO come to mind:
https://www.atto.com/disk-benchmark/
They somehow managed to chose a name that stuck in my head 😉
There should be free downloads available for several tools.

Would it make more sense to just use cheap SSDs with an ATA/100 adapter for early 2000's builds? I've personally had good luck with CF on DOS builds, but typically go SSD for post-1999 builds.

VDNKh wrote on 2022-05-15, 14:24:

bassix6 wrote on 2022-05-08, 15:33:

I'm already quite happy with the rig, but I have the feeling the performance in certain games should be a bit better. Max Payne 1 doesn't run buttery smooth at 1024x768 and has some dips in FPS, whereas I have the feeling that shouldn't be the case. I have several GPU's laying around such as a Geforce 3 Ti 200 and a Voodoo 3, so I'll test them for better compatibility.
I'm also considering upgrading to a 1.4 GHZ Tualatin CPU in the future as it may be more appropriate for what I'm trying to achieve with this build. I'm also open to any suggestions you guys might have.

You may be running into an AGP driver issue. Very common on VIA Apollo boards with NVidia. You should check to see if AGP is properly enabled either in RivaTuner or the NV control panel with coolbits registries enabled. Also check 3DMark01's System info page to see if your AGP apurture is working, it should reflect what is set to in BIOS, and not 0 bytes like mine. Increasing the aperture in BIOS and tweaking the AGP bus settings might help too.

Agreed. I remember this being a common problem with VIA boards back in the day.

A new problem arose today. I installed the VIA 4 in 1 drivers (version 4in1435v) and when I start any game (Max Payne 1 and Dungeon Siege) they immediately freeze at the menu... I tried reinstalling my ti 4200 drivers, but that doesn't seem to help. Does anyone have an idea what might be the problem ? I read on another Vogons forum post I shouldn't use any nvidia driver newer then 5x.xx. However I used the nVidia Forceware 45.23 and I still get the crashes...

If you got this problem after you installed the VIA drivers and had no issues before, it's not likely that the graphics driver just suddenly crapped itself. I'd guess that this version of VIA driver is at fault. Or I heard installing drivers in a specific order sometimes matters. Maybe going GPU first and chipset after can cause issues?

Try the VIA PCI Latency Patch.

I have a Geforce4 ti 4200 that is also finicky when used in 98 with the VIA chipset. I think it may be due to it being an 8x card. The compatibly issues are too annoying for me to deal with so I just run my Voodoo 3 instead.

Older versions of the VIA driver are called 4 in 1 and include AGP driver as VXD. The newer drivers are called Hyperion and don't include the VXD driver versions for Windows 98 but instead use the SYS format. The Windows 95 drivers in the Hyperion still use VXD. You may want to try version 4.53 of the Hyperion instead of 4 in 1.

For what it's worth, I always install chipset drivers first after Windows install is complete. Do a restart and go with video, network, USB, sound, etc..

bassix6 wrote on 2022-05-27, 15:46:

A new problem arose today. I installed the VIA 4 in 1 drivers (version 4in1435v) and when I start any game (Max Payne 1 and Dungeon Siege) they immediately freeze at the menu... I tried reinstalling my ti 4200 drivers, but that doesn't seem to help. Does anyone have an idea what might be the problem ? I read on another Vogons forum post I shouldn't use any nvidia driver newer then 5x.xx. However I used the nVidia Forceware 45.23 and I still get the crashes...

Try this modded Hyperion driver a user here made. Their installer isn't broken on 98 and just works.

VDNKh wrote on 2022-05-27, 22:16:

bassix6 wrote on 2022-05-27, 15:46:

A new problem arose today. I installed the VIA 4 in 1 drivers (version 4in1435v) and when I start any game (Max Payne 1 and Dungeon Siege) they immediately freeze at the menu... I tried reinstalling my ti 4200 drivers, but that doesn't seem to help. Does anyone have an idea what might be the problem ? I read on another Vogons forum post I shouldn't use any nvidia driver newer then 5x.xx. However I used the nVidia Forceware 45.23 and I still get the crashes...

Try this modded Hyperion driver a user here made. Their installer isn't broken on 98 and just works.

The link is unfortunately broken..

ptr1ck wrote on 2022-05-27, 19:03:

Try the VIA PCI Latency Patch. […]
Show full quote

Try the VIA PCI Latency Patch.

I have a Geforce4 ti 4200 that is also finicky when used in 98 with the VIA chipset. I think it may be due to it being an 8x card. The compatibly issues are too annoying for me to deal with so I just run my Voodoo 3 instead.

Older versions of the VIA driver are called 4 in 1 and include AGP driver as VXD. The newer drivers are called Hyperion and don't include the VXD driver versions for Windows 98 but instead use the SYS format. The Windows 95 drivers in the Hyperion still use VXD. You may want to try version 4.53 of the Hyperion instead of 4 in 1.

For what it's worth, I always install chipset drivers first after Windows install is complete. Do a restart and go with video, network, USB, sound, etc..

The VIA PCI Latency Patch fixed it! Thank you so much for your suggestion