I got around 25000 score with Geforce 7800GS and Athlon 64 FX-60 system in 3dmark2001, so I personally think there might be something wrong with the driver version you are using that causes you to lose performance.

Baoran wrote on 2020-10-24, 00:33:

I got around 25000 score with Geforce 7800GS and Athlon 64 FX-60 system in 3dmark2001, so I personally think there might be something wrong with the driver version you are using that causes you to lose performance.

Which ForceWare driver are you using? You get this score on Win98?

Thanks!

Those scores look low to me for Win98.

I have a 4CoreDual-VSTA running an x6800 at about 3.3Ghz and get way higher scores even with an FX5950 Ultra. I am overclocking via the FSB though with a pencil mod to get the voltage for the chipset able to do that.

See this thread for info:
Re: Asrock 775Dual VSTA & Core4Dual thread

Feamane wrote on 2020-10-24, 00:58:

Baoran wrote on 2020-10-24, 00:33:

I got around 25000 score with Geforce 7800GS and Athlon 64 FX-60 system in 3dmark2001, so I personally think there might be something wrong with the driver version you are using that causes you to lose performance.

Which ForceWare driver are you using? You get this score on Win98?

Thanks!

I don't remember. I googled for modded drivers for win98 that support geforce 7000 series cards back then because official nvidia drivers don't support them.

Probably 81.98 Easy enough to check.

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-10-24, 04:17:

Those scores look low to me for Win98. […]
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Those scores look low to me for Win98.

I have a 4CoreDual-VSTA running an x6800 at about 3.3Ghz and get way higher scores even with an FX5950 Ultra. I am overclocking via the FSB though with a pencil mod to get the voltage for the chipset able to do that.

See this thread for info:
Re: Asrock 775Dual VSTA & Core4Dual thread

Ya, I read through that whole thread, good info, but I didn't find the answer there. I tried the different versions of VIA and nVIDIA drivers mentioned there but to no avail. I've tried the FW 77.72 & 81.98 drivers with the 6800 card with only minor differences in benchmark scores, and I've tried the 82.16 & 82.69 drivers with the 7800 card with the same results. I've also tried mixing the various FW drivers with different VIA drivers like 4.56v, 5.09A, 5.11A, and 5.13A without finding the magic formula.

Often people talk about the hardware and OS they have running, but not the specific versions of drivers that they found to be best. Obviously a few people here have (or had) the same mobo and video cards, and they got them to work with decent performance under Win98. But after doing a lot of reading here I'm not finding the posts that tell me what combination of drivers they used to get those hardware bits to work well together.

So I'm asking: if anybody has gotten a system with a ASRock 4CoreDual-SATA2 R2.0 mobo and a GeForce 7800GS, 7600GS, 6800GT, or even a plain 6800 AGP card to score much better scores than I'm getting--what mobo and graphic card drivers did you use? And also, did you install any unofficial service packs or any patches/tweaks that might have made the difference?

I'm hoping to find someone who has similar hardware so I can compare benchmarks, drivers, and diagnostics to help pinpoint the problem.

With a stock 4CoreDual-VSTA , X3230 and Radeon 9800pro I get 17,324 in Win98 in 3dMark2001SE, and 22,000+ in XP. a 7800, even a 7800 GS should definitely outclass a 9800pro.

However, I think even if you aren't getting optimal performance you probably have enough to run anything appropriate to that time frame and Win 98 maxed out either in its appropriate resolution.

I'll throw a 7800GS in my rig when I get a chance and run some tests. Might be a while though.

Baoran wrote on 2020-10-24, 04:59:

I don't remember. I googled for modded drivers for win98 that support geforce 7000 series cards back then because official nvidia drivers don't support them.

The only ones I know of are 81.98, 82.16, and 82.69. There are several versions of each floating around and I've tried them all. I have the 82.16 from BFG, and an unofficial version. I also have the 82.69 from MDG and another one from ZakMcKracken. I also found a 81.98 with modified .inf that is supposed to support the 7xxx series cards. So far the only one that seems to install and work well for me is the MDG 82.69, but with the caveat that I get the low benchmark scores.

Does anybody know which exact version of drivers they are using with 7xxx series cards on Win98?

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-10-24, 06:09:

I'll throw a 7800GS in my rig when I get a chance and run some tests. Might be a while though.

I've been banging my head on this rock for a couple months now, off-and-on; so it's not exactly an emergency. 😉

Thanks!

Feamane wrote on 2020-10-24, 06:12:

Baoran wrote on 2020-10-24, 04:59:

I don't remember. I googled for modded drivers for win98 that support geforce 7000 series cards back then because official nvidia drivers don't support them.

The only ones I know of are 81.98, 82.16, and 82.69. There are several versions of each floating around and I've tried them all. I have the 82.16 from BFG, and an unofficial version. I also have the 82.69 from MDG and another one from ZakMcKracken. I also found a 81.98 with modified .inf that is supposed to support the 7xxx series cards. So far the only one that seems to install and work well for me is the MDG 82.69, but with the caveat that I get the low benchmark scores.

Does anybody know which exact version of drivers they are using with 7xxx series cards on Win98?

I switched to Geforce FX 5950 ultra in my Athlon64 system that I mentioned earlier because of better compatibility with win9x games so I can't check the version I used, but after looking at sites I went through back then I think I must have used 82.16 version. I had some installation issues back then but if I remember correctly the manual installation worked.

I just ran 3dmark01 benchmark in my Athlon64 win98 system that has the Geforce fx 5950 ultra and I got 18617 which is higher than your 7800gs benchmark result in win98. That basically proves that your system shouldn't be that slow.

Thanks for the confirmation! It's good to know I'm not on a wild goose chase.

I run a X3220 stock (2.4ghz) with 2GB of Corsair 3200 on a Asus P5PE-VM with a X850 XT PE also stock and get this in 2001SE. I actually need to flash the modded bios floating about and try my e5800 with it.

I would be very happy to get scores more like these! Now the question is how do I troubleshoot this to find out why I'm not even getting close.

Here are some of the combos I have tried. All following tests with 4CoreDual-SATA2 R2.0, E6800(3330MHz), 1GB DDR2-667, DX9.0C, & RLoew SATA Patch:

Video____OS______VIA(GART)________FW______3DMark03
=====================================================
GF6800___Win98___4.56v(V4.43)____77.72______6846
GF6800___Win98___5.09A(V4.50E)___77.72______7438
GF6800___Win98___4.56v(V4.43)____81.98______6955
GF6800___Win98___5.09A(V4.50E)___81.98______7594
GF6800___Win98___5.13A(V4.60A)___81.98______7592
GF6800___Win98___4.56v(V4.60A)___81.98______7594
GF6800___XP_____5.11A(V4.60A)_ __81.98______10400
GF6800___XP_____5.13A(V4.60A)_ __81.98______10324
GF7800___XP_____5.24A(V4.60A)___94.24______14436

Are you running with a single 1GB stick of RAM or 2x 512MB sticks. If only a single stick, you are going to be tanking your RAM throughput due to running in single channel instead of dual channel.

You are also reporting 3dmark03 scores which are going to be quite a bit lower than 3dmark2001 scores.

Dual-channel. I've also tried 2GB dual-channel with the RLoew patch but that didn't change the performance very much. I have dual-channel and 4-way set manually in the BIOS. I have read in other threads about this motherboard that 8-way doesn't work. Actually I tried auto settings, 2-way, 4-way, and 8-way: no appreciable difference in the benchmark scores with any of them. I've read a lot of threads on tweaking the BIOS settings with this mobo and have tried just about everything. HWiNFO and CPU-Z report that my FSB, RAM, and GPU clocks are running at the correct speeds.

Yes, the 3DMark03 scores will be a lot lower, they have been about 33-50% of the 3DMark01 scores when I have run them both (as can be seen in my first post). I just stuck with 03 for that batch of tests just because other people seem to use 03 a lot. Bancho got 29209 in 3DMark01, the best I got on Win98 was 16558. That's 56% of Bancho's score. I'd be super happy to get over 25000 3DMark01 or over 10000 in 3DMark03 at this point. And I think that's setting the bar pretty low.

But the bottom line is I'm getting way worse performance than other people with similar hardware. And the performance improves a lot with the same hardware and same benchmark on XP (is that just because stock XP can utilize the hardware that much better?). So it seems something is borked with my Win98 install/drivers. But what?

XP always benches better than Win 98 for me.

Shagittarius wrote on 2020-10-25, 03:39:

XP always benches better than Win 98 for me.

Yeah it does, but from my experience the difference in score should not be more than 10%