I don't think a bridge chip matters much. A faster GPU will still be faster than a slower one...

A bridge chip doesn't seem to matter, except if you are having issues with getting the cards driver installed.

Friend of mine was struggling for days to get some Ati 1650 AGP running without giving BSoD.
He also tried some HD 2600 AGP (dunno which variant) and couldn't get that one running either and in the end gave up on it and bought a PCI-E motherboard.
Our HD 4670 AGP cards however never seemed to have any issues, but frankly, when I upgraded my Barton 3200+ rig from a 7600GS (256MB DDR2) to the HD 4670, I barely noticed it getting any faster, as if it was the CPU holding performance back.

Personally I'd use the 9600XT till you find something better (like a 6800 AGP or something similar/better).

since it's for windows9x I don't think there is much point in going for stuff much faster than the 9600XT,
and since Nvidia is known for better compatibility you might want to look at something like an FX 5900, but the 9600 should be fine for most games, I haven't tested my 9500PRO much with older games but most stuff seemed to work fine on win98, but I had problems with some popular DOS games (like on Lost Vikings the scrolling is not smooth with it and it's fine with all the other cards I have)

I forgot to take that into account, consider that my above reply had XP in mind, not 9x, my mistake 😊
This changes things though, I agree with SPBHM's post. Though one could always use a GF6800 in this case anyway.

I've been testing a radeon 9600 pro in my win 98 build and been quite impressed. I tried over windows 20 games and only 2 didn't work correctly. European air war didn't display fog properly, and default Need for Speed High Stakes has bad video card detection (but can be fixed to work). Radeon 9000 series filtering options are great. The 9600xt not needing an extra power connector is also nice.

But I totally agree on the dos support. Its awful. There are too many unsupported video modes. Anything other than the lowest video resolution in shadow warrior shows pink green corruption. The higher resolutions in Blood do work, but very jerky compared to the smoothness of 3dfx and Nvidia cards in this game.

Btw, I would pick 9500Pro over 9600XT any time.

i was using a geforce 6600 GT in my win98 box.. running on a p5pe-vm with a intel core 2 extreme X6800 cpu! it was fast but a bit of a waste of that hardware tbh...
so i downgraded it to using a geforce 2mx card that i reflashed to pc from a mac g4. i was really impressed with the performance of the geforce 2mx with win98. it seemed like a sweetspot
for working in windows.. i had it working with widescreen. i could have done dual display if i got a ADC to DVI adapter... (like i said it was an apple card)

let me just leave you with this chart i made
u can do your own comparison with all the info in front of your own eyes.. core clock vs thruput
the info was taken from gpureview.com

i think the best u can get for win98 is around the area of Geforce 6800 + Radeon 9800 Pro..?

Again...
Ati Win9x Catalyst 6.2 supports up to Radeon X850 PE Agp.
The problem is - standard Ati bugs with the table fog and negative blending are included.

Again... 😁 🤣

obtaining the *ultimate* max is not neccessary for alot of people.. especially when it means problems + bugs
the radeon x800 + x850 are great cards but they sell for ALOT more than the cards i referenced..
if u have one lying around. great.. try it out! lets hear how easily they install.. but is it really neccessary to
go on ebay to spend 120$ on a graphic card from 12 years ago? just to have the max ??

the radeon x800 + x850 AGP cards are overpriced on ebay becauuse they are bought by people who reflash them for mac using them
in the last mac g5's where it is the absolute best card u can have in a powermac g5 AGP and they increase the overall "feel" of speed
on mac os X Tiger or Leopard by ALOT on those machines

if u want to spend all your savings on a win98 box u might be a bit crazy 😁 🤣 but passion can be very close to obsession cant it? 😀
i bought my 6600 GT card for 10$ on ebay.. 😉

anyway i hope u find my chart usefull to visualize alot of graphic cards properties!!
i have provided you here with all the info u need to find a lesser known card for a cheap price on ebay
any of the cards that are colored purple in the chart above will give the best performance
due to their enhanced throughput bandwidth
like game collector said above tho u dont want to go past the x850 agp and u probably want to avoid the geforce "FX" series!!

RacoonRider wrote:

Btw, I would pick 9500Pro over 9600XT any time.

Why?

chrisNova777 wrote:

U probably want to avoid the geforce "FX" series!!

Why?

Not saying anyone is wrong, just wanting to learn more about this.

the fx series is known for having crap performance .. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_FX_series
also the fx 5950 was one of the LOUDEST cards ever made i think even tho its specs look good on paper

as u can see on my cahrt the 9600 XT had a high clock speed but low memory throughput performance... (yellow)
still if i had a 9600XT i would be happy using that.. and move on to worrying about something else

Thank for your answers! I thought the 9500Pro and 9600XT would be similar in speed. The only thing I was considering the 9600XT is the probably less power usage and no fdd connector but I like both cards. At that time I had the L shaped one and it ran so well!
Remaining on the vintage world, the Barton 3200+ is probably the newer "old generation" system I would enjoy to use as main computer and considering Win9x os it should run quiet well.

chrisNova777 wrote:

the fx series is known for having crap performance .. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_FX_series also the fx 5950 was one o […]
Show full quote

the fx series is known for having crap performance .. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_FX_series
also the fx 5950 was one of the LOUDEST cards ever made i think even tho its specs look good on paper

as u can see on my cahrt the 9600 XT had a high clock speed but low memory throughput performance... (yellow)
still if i had a 9600XT i would be happy using that.. and move on to worrying about something else

Wasn't the 5800 Ultra the loudest?

maybe thats it. i thought it was the 5950 ultra... it was one of the high numbered 5xxx series "ultra" anyway - supposed to sound like a vaccuum being left on! Lol

Many of the 5000 and 6000 cards have annoyingly loud cooling. The coolers on ATI's chips were preferable back then.

I see 5900 as a sort of a super Ti 4600. The anisotropic filtering is less demanding for it too. The D3D9 features are fun curiosities to play with. Compared to 6000 cards you get hardware palettized texture support which may be useful for some old games and Glide wrappers.

swaaye wrote:

Many of the 5000 and 6000 cards have annoyingly loud cooling. The coolers on ATI's chips were preferable back then.

Didn't the 9800s have problems with overheating and slow death due to the poor cooling solutions that were implemented for them?
The R9800XL (some kind of Medion card it was iirc) I was gifted years ago only used a very small HSF which I intended to replace, but never got around to it.

It seems more of those cards are dead than alive. The 6800s have quite big heatsinks which often also cover the RAM chips, I modded one of my 6800s by removing it's stock fan and the flat cardboard-thick plate which was placed on top of the cooler's heatsink and added an 8cm casefan to the heatsink, it was near silent this way and cooling went very well.

I have to admit though that this was the standard GF6800 and not one of the ones that get hotter, so I can't guarantee this will work with some of the hotter 6800s, but the card gave me no problems whatsoever as far as overheating was concerned.

swaaye wrote:

I see 5900 as a sort of a super Ti 4600. The anisotropic filtering is less demanding for it too. The D3D9 features are fun curiosities to play with. Compared to 6000 cards you get hardware palettized texture support which may be useful for some old games and Glide wrappers.

This is also how I see the highend FX cards, it gives them a niche to fit into. This way they make more sense than seeing the FX's as failed 6800s and personally I prefer to see what they can do well instead of what they can't do ...like running FEAR 😁
An FX will turn FEAR into some kind of slideshow 🤣 (replacing with a 6800 fixed that), but they still have it's uses.

Would be interested in knowing more first hand experiences using the lesser FX cards like the FX5600, FX5700 and possibly also the GF6600 and what their niches could be.

Btw, I didn't know those X800s were so sought after on ebay.

i have 2 9800 pros.. one of them has the ATIcellerator 3rd party cooler that thing kicks ass !

oops i mean ati silencer

Tetrium wrote:

Btw, I didn't know those X800s were so sought after on ebay.

I'm not really sure why they're so sought after with the x1950 Pro AGP out there.

chrisNova777 wrote:

the fx series is known for having crap performance .. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_FX_series
also the fx 5950 was one of the LOUDEST cards ever made i think even tho its specs look good on paper

Louder that the GTX 480? 🤣

What I like about the FX cards is that the cooler is really easy to replace. I do have a video on this, but might make another one specifically for that card. The stock cooler is however already custom, it's a card from Leadtek. I have two Quadro cards, which are based on the FX 5800 cards, they aren't too bad when it comes to the noise.