megatron-uk wrote:

Scrolling and moving windows with video playback in progress is quite jerky.

This is just plain wrong. I know an S3 Virge is reasonably snappy in Windows, provided the monitor settings aren't set too high.

I'd suggest you try a (much) older version.

I'll go do some googling and see what I can find 😉
One note, I never tried an FX in 9x (never owned one).

So far I didn't really find much, but I'd still recommend to try one of the older drivers. Perhaps a 9x compatible driver that was released about 1 or 2 years after the initial release of the FX series.

I'll see what I can find.

Go here

http://www.nvidia.com/object/win9x_archive.html

It's best to start with the version that was current when your video card was released and then move to more mature drivers one step at a time until performance maxes out without losing compatibility with any software that you can't live without. When you reach a version that shows decreased performance or introduces glitches, roll back to the previous one.

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/97140-nvidia-drivers-8269/

Excellent, thanks for the Win9x link!

Ok, downgraded to Forceware 71.84 and though video playback has not improved (perhaps it was just wishful thinking on my behalf!) the actual stability and benchmark performance seems better.

I get a score of 8500 in 3DMark 2001SE, that's with the following spec:

iBase MB800H (i845GE, s478 up to P4 3.06GHz/533, DDR333, 3xISA, 3xPCI, 1xAGP)
Intel Pentium 4 2.26 (Northwood)
2 x 512MB (no dual channel support)
MSI FX5600 VTDR - testing at 1024x768x32bit
SB16

I'm thinking about fitting a 3.06GHz Northwood (512k l2 cache, 533 fsb, hyperthreading, SSE2, 23x multiplier, 81w tdp) - as that is the best processor that is supported by the MB800H - the only other option is the early 2.80A GHz Prescott (1024k l2 cache, 533 fsb, no-hyperthreading, SSE3, 21x multiplier, 89w tdp).

I've currently got the following cards in the system:
AGP - MSI FX5600 128Mb
PCI - Diamond Monster 3D 4Mb (Voodoo1)
PCI - Netgear 1000BaseT NIC
PCI - (free)
ISA - SB16
ISA - GUS Max
ISA - Midiman MM401

I'm replacing the Netgear NIC with an Intel Pro 1000MT, as the Netgear is flaky under Win98 (though bizarrely, absolutely fine under Linux on the same machine), and will probably add a SB Live to the free PCI slot and remove the SB16 drivers to get better windows sound support (though the SB16 will stay for Dos).

(edit: iBase, not Iwill!)

Just updated this morning, spec is now:

I've currently got the following cards in the system:
AGP - MSI FX5600 128Mb
PCI - Diamond Monster 3D 4Mb (Voodoo1)
PCI - Intel Pro 1000MT NIC
PCI - SB Live! (CT4760)
ISA - SB16
ISA - GUS Max
ISA - Midiman MM401

I've got my eye on a SL6S5 3.06Ghz Northwood on Ebay now. The only other thing I'd like to do is replace the SB16+XR385 with a AWE32 (CT2760/3900/3980), keeping the XR385 of course.

I don't remember ever having smooth playback while scrolling/dragging windows until I went dual-core on XP.

I'd think your 3dmark 2001SE score would be higher! That FX5600 must be holding you back!

Over the last couple of days I installed 3dmark2001SE on my Pentium 3 machines to see how they would go. My system with the Geforce 4 Ti4600 gets up to 83xx without overclocking. (my poor lil Voodoo 5 5500AGP system only gets 23xx!!)

Using a older 45.23 driver and Via 4in1 4.56 driver got me the 83xx score. I found it interesting that going back to the Via 4in1 4.43 drivers gives me a lower score of 8103!!!

System:
Pentium III-S 1.4GHz L2=512k
Gigabyte GA-6VXTE (Via 694T chipset)
3x 256 KingMax PC-150 MHz SDRAM
PNY Geforce 4 Ti 4600 128MB
2x SLI'ed Diamond Monster 3D II Voodoo 2 12MB
D-Link DFE-530TX NIC
StarTech 7-Port USB 2 PCI card
Soundblaster AWE64 Gold with 32mb SimmConn
Western Digital 120GB SE 8MB buffer 7200RPM
Pioneer 16x DVD-ROM