VOGONS


First post, by Gopher666

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download/file.php?mode=view&id=113574

Hello Folks,

I got this Geforce FX 5200 128 MB ram 4x AGP in my retro gaming box but the poor thing is dieing slowly. This was a garbage card even in it's own days. For old DOS games and majority of the Win98 games it's usable however when you start going more upscale like Sacred 1,2, Morrowind, QuakeSpasm, Dungeon Siege 2, Never Winter Nights 2 this card shits itself together basically those games are unenjoyable with it anymore.

I'm looking something to replace it with preferably NVIDIA and preferably the same mini form factor because I use this box with a plethora of different OSes not just microsucks but old linux, bsd, solaris distros which just hate ati.

As you can see this card fits into mini PCs with a trick if you take off the black plate and throw the VGA out, don't need that anyway since I'm only using DVI.

My box is a slim Aopen PC case and could only put in a full card with the top not being on it.

So what I'm looking for:
-small form factor
-Nvidia
-maximum OS compatibility on a wide range of OSes starting from DOS up to XPSP3
-better gaming performance than the FX5200

Any ideas are welcome

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Reply 1 of 17, by BitWrangler

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In that generation, that's probably the only shortass, maybe there's a 7300GT like that and a 5200 like that.

edit: oh there's a 9400GT PCI that's a shortie, possibly some later in PCI too.

editII: that https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/geforce-gt-520-pci.c91 and this https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/geforce … gt-610-pci.c914

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 2 of 17, by ODwilly

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GeForce 6200 in pci and low profile is pretty common, but going past the FX series makes for sacrifices in compatibility from what people around here have tested and posted. Worth a try, and has fully functioning DX9 unlike the FX 5200.

Main pc: Asus ROG 17. R9 5900HX, RTX 3070m, 16gb ddr4 3200, 1tb NVME.
Retro PC: Soyo P4S Dragon, 3gb ddr 266, 120gb Maxtor, Geforce Fx 5950 Ultra, SB Live! 5.1

Reply 3 of 17, by SScorpio

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Your issue is why I personally keep separate Win98 and WinXP computers.

  • Sacred 1 (2004), 2 (2009)
  • Morrowind (2002)
  • Dungeon Siege 2 (2005)
  • Neverwinter Nights 2 (2006)
  • "QuakeSpasm is a modern Multi-Platform Quake Source port"

None of the games listed are Win98 era. And the FX5200 is an entry-level card from 2003 that people complained had slow performance at launch.

But it's one of the last cards with good DOS compatibility and support for old D3D features. To get better performance while keeping compatibility you'd max out on a FX 5950 Ultra, but those don't come as slim cards.

You haven't listed the rest of your components, but XP will allow a much faster CPU and GPU than what 98 will support. An i3/5 2000 or 3000 series CPU in a surplus office PC with a 750 ti is dirt cheap and would give amazing XP performance. Throw in an SB X-Fi for the end of the era of hardware-accelerated audio. You should be able to acquire that for roughly $100-150 if you get the main system locally from a recycler.

Reply 4 of 17, by Gopher666

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Yeah I know it's always a tradeoff I used to have a separate XP box...

9400GT looks cuteee, also its like 10 bucks however as someone mentioned:
" I don't think there are any. I can't find support for WIN9X past the 6XXX series cards, some say there are 7XXX WIN9X drivers but I couldn't find them. I would be worried if any other part of that system had available WIN9X drivers as well. "

Win98/DOS compatibility is crucial for me.

So 7300, 9400 is a no go
FX 5950 Ultra interesting but its a rarity, expensive + hard to find and yeah not even the right form factor.

I think the 6200 will be the winner for me as it has a slim form factor with passive cooling just like the current card.

BTW I did not even consider PCI cards but now that you said from regular PCI (not pcie) I can put in a full size card.

Reply 5 of 17, by paradigital

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Looking at half-height cards I think is going to limit you to at best, the same performance as you already have.

If you can use full-height PCI, why can't you use full-height AGP? If it's a location problem, could you use a riser or flexible extension to move the AGP card?

Reply 6 of 17, by ODwilly

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A suggestion for if you decide to use a pci 6200, or the like really. Put a small fan on the heatsink and maybe some little raspberry pi heatsinks on the memory. And even if it looks good if you have any weird stability issues recap it.

Main pc: Asus ROG 17. R9 5900HX, RTX 3070m, 16gb ddr4 3200, 1tb NVME.
Retro PC: Soyo P4S Dragon, 3gb ddr 266, 120gb Maxtor, Geforce Fx 5950 Ultra, SB Live! 5.1

Reply 8 of 17, by BitWrangler

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It sounds like you don't want an ATI, but just to point out that there is a 9250 128MB on a low profile board, because I just turned one up today... Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 10 of 17, by Gopher666

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ODwilly wrote on 2021-07-01, 20:11:

GeForce 6200 in pci and low profile is pretty common, but going past the FX series makes for sacrifices in compatibility from what people around here have tested and posted. Worth a try, and has fully functioning DX9 unlike the FX 5200.

I got the AGP version of this card with 512MB ram.
It works great in XP. Just some comparison with the FX5200:

FX5200 in XP
Unreal Gold 1920x1080 => 30 FPS
Dungeon siege 2 1024x768=> 12FPS
HL2 EP1 1024x768 => 12FPS
Q1 darkplaces 1920x1080 => 9FPS
NFSC 1024x768 => 14FPS
TIMESHIFT (won't even start)
Crysis warhead (won't even start)
Titanquest 1024x768 9 FPS
Sacred 2 (won't even start)

GT6200 in XP
Unreal Gold 1920x1080 => 40 FPS
Dungeon siege 2 1024x768=> 30FPS
HL2 EP1 1024x768 => 20-50FPS
Q1 darkplaces 1920x1080 => 60FPS
NFSC 1024x768 => 14 FPS < same crap
TIMESHIFT => 13-16 FPS unplayable
Crysis warhead 1024x768=> 10FPS unplayable
Titanquest 1024x768 9 FPS
Sacred 2 (won't even start)

So yeah there are major improvements compared to that garbage FX5200 card, that's really a large letter trash. However I having issues in Win98SE afterwards.

I have tried:

81.98_forceware_win9x_english.exe - this is the latest official forceware for both cards

However with this I get black screen, the machine frozes at win98 boot, I have tried to install the unofficial SP3 on it, doesn't help at all.

Can you recommend any previous forceware versions for this card?

I have read 7x.00 something in other threads.

Thanks

Reply 11 of 17, by ODwilly

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It looks like 77.72 might work better, not sure. I have only ever used the 6200 in PCI only P4 systems under XP and 7 to replace onboard Intel Extremely Bad graphics using the latest drivers for more "modern" general usage.

With a decent SATA drive, 2gb of DDR 400 and a 3.0ghz P4 HT it turned an old Emachines into a pretty snappy web browser for a few more years, and Unreal Tournament 99 was a blast to run on it 😀

Main pc: Asus ROG 17. R9 5900HX, RTX 3070m, 16gb ddr4 3200, 1tb NVME.
Retro PC: Soyo P4S Dragon, 3gb ddr 266, 120gb Maxtor, Geforce Fx 5950 Ultra, SB Live! 5.1

Reply 12 of 17, by cyclone3d

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Wolfus wrote on 2021-07-02, 11:00:

I am still looking for FX 5500/5600 low profile PCI for reasonable price for my Tulareon build in low profile mATX case 😒

The FX5500 is just a slightly higher clocked FX5200. No reason to even get an FX5500. The "new" FX5500 cards from China even have an FX5200 chip on them that has been clocked up to FX5500 speeds.

For PCI cards, there is always a Quadro FX 600 which is basically an FX 5200 Ultra which is better than an FX5500.

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Reply 13 of 17, by Gopher666

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ODwilly wrote on 2021-07-13, 18:51:

It looks like 77.72 might work better

Might? 😀 Like I get nothing black screen, nada, machine freezes in both Win98SE and WinME with both drivers.

I can boot to safe mode that's about it.

I have tried to adjust the AGP gart no success.

I have downloaded this 512MB patch: "PTCHNVSZ - Win9x patch for 512MB nVidia Graphics Cards "

Now this is a bit promising, for this you will need the 82.69 unofficial Nvidia driver. (BTW after installing just this driver it's the same machine dies issue).
So after patching this driver and rebooting a couple of time finally I get back the 16 bit and 32bit mode but with some very weird resolutions such as 720x576

and nothing like 800x600 1024x768 etc can be added but now at least I have color image and the Nvidia control panel seems working.

However this driver is pretty screwed up in this state because Quake3 and any gl games cannot initialize the GL subsystem and even 2D games like Diablo Hellfire refuse to start anymore with video error which is just bad 🙁

Tomorrow I will give a try to the BIOS patch instead of the driver patch. I didn't want to start with that because the card is just working perfectly in XP and other Linuxes so why should I be screwing it up...

Reply 14 of 17, by ODwilly

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I wonder if the older drivers dont work properly because it is a later 512mb version. From reading on Wikipedia the earlier models used a cut down Geforce 6600 core with a different die revision than the later cards.

Main pc: Asus ROG 17. R9 5900HX, RTX 3070m, 16gb ddr4 3200, 1tb NVME.
Retro PC: Soyo P4S Dragon, 3gb ddr 266, 120gb Maxtor, Geforce Fx 5950 Ultra, SB Live! 5.1

Reply 15 of 17, by Gopher666

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This is what I love about this community that there are some folks always trying to help.
As I have said without that 256MB patch I can't even get any driver to work and that is locks you in using the 82.69.

Anyway I have figured out that much that the problem is that I cannot set the resolution. I have pretty much tried everything, disable the second monitor, reenable it. Interestingly on that I could set any resolution what I want. There is no second monitor connected to the machine of course.

I have now replaced the monitor to a HP Prodisplay P221 same thing, resolution cannot be changed.

No it's not a problem with the monitor because these monitors worked fine with the FX5200 in Win98 in all resolutions. As these are 2013+ monitors there won't be any driver for them but I doubt it's even needed.

Oh yeah I even installed PowerStrip as it was suggested in some other thread, cannot change the resolution even with that.

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Reply 16 of 17, by waterbeesje

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For a duron system without AGP I've got a PCI 9250 128MB. Works just fine in both XP and 98SE. However for DOS compatibility you're better off skipping it.

Can't you use dual graphics card?
Say, a Virge for DOS and a higher end, may be one without solid DOS support for Windows. Set it to boot from the Virge and in Windows you can choose the fast card for games.

Stuck at 10MHz...

Reply 17 of 17, by Gopher666

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Ok guys I actually fixed this, here is the solution for those who will have the same card, same issue:

Use forceware 81.98 instead of the unofficial 82.69

This solved everything, driver works with the 256 MB limiter patch in both Win98SE and WinME.

Thats a lie that the patch can only patch the 82.69 version.