Shagittarius wrote:

These are the last (Latest and Greatest) of the detonator drivers straight from Nvidia:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp-2k_45.23

http://www.nvidia.com/object/win9x_45.23.html

while the 4x.xx~5x.xx drivers do yield some improvement in certain tests(3dmark03 etc), i wouldn't recommend them cause they are also the most faultful and unreliable, as they were intended to optimize for the poorly designed geforce5 series, which was a complete failure itself. 😳

The best driver choice tends to be ones that are a few months newer than the game you want to play. They are most likely to be optimal for the game.

That's very good advice!

I remember playing Bioshock on a 9600GT on XP and the game was stuttering. It was a known driver bug and Nvidia recommended loading an old driver 😀

[GPUT]Carsten wrote:

Are you still looking for more drivers? I think I've got a few dozen of them flying around somewhere.

Thanks a lot for the offer. Very unfortunately, I can't do any retro hardware testing at the moment..

noshutdown wrote:

Shagittarius wrote:

These are the last (Latest and Greatest) of the detonator drivers straight from Nvidia:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp-2k_45.23

http://www.nvidia.com/object/win9x_45.23.html

while the 4x.xx~5x.xx drivers do yield some improvement in certain tests(3dmark03 etc), i wouldn't recommend them cause they are also the most faultful and unreliable, as they were intended to optimize for the poorly designed geforce5 series, which was a complete failure itself. 😳

Anything after 45.23 is forceware, are you sure thats not where the optimization for the FX series was implemented? I run the drivers I specified on my Win98 machine with a ti4200 and have never seen anything age appropriate act up in any way. The last detonator drivers seem really solid to me. However I'm up for a suggestion, what is the latest detonator driver that you would use?

retro games 100 wrote:

[GPUT]Carsten wrote:

Are you still looking for more drivers? I think I've got a few dozen of them flying around somewhere.

Thanks a lot for the offer. Very unfortunately, I can't do any retro hardware testing at the moment..

I'm actually looking for those drivers now. Do you have them available please? Thanks a lot if possible.

retro games 100 wrote:

retro games 100 wrote:

[GPUT]Carsten wrote:

Are you still looking for more drivers? I think I've got a few dozen of them flying around somewhere.

Thanks a lot for the offer. Very unfortunately, I can't do any retro hardware testing at the moment..

I'm actually looking for those drivers now. Do you have them available please? Thanks a lot if possible.

that's very easy
ftp://download.nvidia.com/Windows/
from 12.41 to 93.71
for more drivers especially those older than 12.41, there is a driver collection site in chinese.
still, my recommendation goes to:
tnt 8.05
tnt2 30.82
gf256/gf2/3/4 66.93
gf5/6/7 93.71

Thanks a lot. I didn't realise nVidia had an FTP site. Do you have a link for the 8.05 version download please?

If you still miss a particular one, just post which - I'll try to help. Have just rediscovered some reviewer's kits from the past which also have drivers attached.

retro games 100 wrote:

Thanks a lot. I didn't realise nVidia had an FTP site. Do you have a link for the 8.05 version download please?

the ftp site is from ages so there are only old driver versions on it, no new ones. there are even riva128 drivers in the riva directory.

8.05 drivers (in chinese, no sign up required)
win9x: http://drivers.mydrivers.com/drivers/35-14287 … 5-For-Win9x-ME/
win2k: http://drivers.mydrivers.com/drivers/35-14286 … 05-For-Win2000/

i recommend 8.05 for tnt because:
1. its the last known version in the 5 series, which were released with geforce256 and geforce2 and focus on dx7 instead of dx8.
2. it allows disabling vsync in d3d while 10 series don't. (honestly this isn't useful for tnt cause it can't handle vsync off, there would be a lot of broken screens, vsync off only became useful with tnt2.)
3. 20 series seem to allow less agp texturing memory, which is important for tnt as it has only 16mb ram. i was able to run 3dmark01 default test(1024*768*32, 32bit texture) on tnt with 8.05 driver in win2000 and push it to 1200 points, but with 20 series driver it simply fails to start with "insufficient video memory" error.

[GPUT]Carsten wrote:

If you still miss a particular one, just post which - I'll try to help. Have just rediscovered some reviewer's kits from the past which also have drivers attached.

Thanks a lot for the offer! ATM, unfortunately I don't know which driver versions I am missing. I wonder if there is a list on the internet, showing all of the versions that were written? If so, I would be able to identify the versions that I don't have.

noshutdown wrote:

8.05 drivers (in chinese, no sign up required)
win9x: http://drivers.mydrivers.com/drivers/35-14287 … 5-For-Win9x-ME/
win2k: http://drivers.mydrivers.com/drivers/35-14286 … 05-For-Win2000/

Great, thanks a lot, I've just downloaded it!

On the whole 45.23 thing, that tends to be the driver I use also. I have had the least amount of issues with it on the Geforce 1 through 4 line.

ProfessorProfessorson wrote:

On the whole 45.23 thing, that tends to be the driver I use also. I have had the least amount of issues with it on the Geforce 1 through 4 line.

i feel the contrary as you do. while the 4x.xx drivers do yield some performance boost, i also had most issues with them so i would avoid them at any cost.
also, while they may be more optimized for dx8, they don't perform well in later dx9 games, one example is need for speed most wanted, which i tried on a geforce3.

To be honest, I'd not be running Need for Speed Most Wanted on a Geforce 3 anyway. That one is well past that cards life cycle. I only run games released during the actual hardwares life cycle, not past it. Anything DX 9 related, I already have DX 9 hardware set aside for those titles. I don't believe in trying to force some end all solution using one hardware platform and multiple drivers on it for diff games from 1999 all the way to 2005. Its just not going to work out well that way for me. As far as the Geforce 3 even goes, that card was a little long in the tooth from mid 2003 on, so I wouldn't use it for anything past 2k3.

batracio wrote:

You can find those old drivers here:

ftp://download.nvidia.com/Windows/

THANK YOU. You have no idea how much you just helped me out. 😅

I found a FTP with NV RIVA TNT drivers going back to 1998.
ftp://84.205.160.1/drivers/vga/rivaTnT/

feipoa was looking for them so I went digging...

That link seems to be the motherload for all pre-TNT2 NVIDIA drivers. This guy has archieved the TNT1 drivers from Creative, STB, Diamond, ELSA, Hercules, and more!

I will be testing them as part of this project,
Anyone have a RIVA TNT PCI card and a UMC motherboard?

which is to get an original RIVA TNT1 working on a 486 SiS or UMC motherboard. It has been established that a Matrox G200 will work on a UMC (and probably SiS?) motherboard, and that a Voodoo3 3000 will work on a SiS-only 486 motherboard. While 3dfx and Matrox have been maxed out, I'd like to get an NVIDIA card better than the RIVA 128 to enter the arena, hence the TNT1. For the card to be established as working, it must work with a minimum of Win98 graphic drivers.

Heh, "this guy" with all the ancient drivers seems to be this company:
http://bmj.net.pl/

I have found a lot of old drivers on various CDs from a computer magazine, dating from 1997 to 2001.
If you see anything you want from the list, let me know.