vinxi2 wrote on 2021-10-27, 21:40:

Everybody, join the last GPU fight! Who's going to win?!

For peak Win9x performance while retaining good compatibility, go for the FX5900 if you can find it at a decent price. IIRC, it can use 45.23 drivers without any modifications which is the version that you want.

The only game that I know of where GeForce4 provides slightly better compatibility is Splinter Cell. See Phil's video for more details.

God Of Gaming wrote on 2021-10-27, 22:47:

honestly - people here would keep repeating 8bit palletized textures and table fog, but only a small handful of games are affected by that, the majority of games should work fine.

I've said this before, but the main problem is that those games aren't well documented. The list on the Vogons wiki is certainly not complete. And if someone never played such games on hardware which supports those features, they might not even notice the issue.

But if you know how it's supposed to look, the differences are quite apparent, especially for table fog.

Even with your great help I can't seem to find a 5900XT at a decent price. And the problem is even worst since my only sources are eBay or Facebook Marketplace.

So I started to look for something "cheaper" for the meanwhile, even if it doesn't support table fog/8 bit palletized texture. (I can't find the game list on Vogons wiki by the way)

I found:
Fanless 5200/5600/5700 18€/21€/23€
https://www.ebay.it/itm/193666492104

Fanless 6200 512MB 40€
Same 23€

9800SE 45€

Never used 5700 256MB - 43€

4200 TI 128 MB 59€ (not that cheap for a "meanwhile card")

I also found a funny video about how the FX series is noisy, I completely forgot the fan noise. I could easily fall in love with a fanless card even sacrificing table fog/8 bit palletized texture.

The only 5900 I found are this one (54€) (but the seller wrote he can't say that it's working or not) and this one (received an offer of 60€ shipped) listed as "not working" but in the description the seller says it does (??).

See what I mean? Ebay prices are crazy these days.. I wouldn't pay this much even for the 5800 ultra (which btw nowadays sells for over $2k). The future of the vintage PC hardware hobby is doomed

Yes, and the problem is that there is only chaos.

1) People who put high prices and let the auction sits there for long time, waiting for the one who is willing to pay

2) People who put mid prices and tells you that they can't test the card, so it's your problem

Anyway, the "cheapest meanwhile cards" are the 5200/5600/5700 and 6200. I know they're not the top of the line, but are them any good?
With the 6200 I will lose table fog/8 bit palletized texture (even if I don't know a list of affected games), right?

well, is win98 what matters most (in which case definitely go for the ti4200, fx5600 or fx5700, or maybe even wait patiently for a cheap 5900 that may show up eventually), or is winXP equally important, for which the 4000/5000 series are really not that good, in which case... 6200 is low end and fairly potato, rather, if theres no cheap radeon 9800s, how about a radeon 9600 pro, you should be able to find at least that for cheap and should still be better than a 6200...

The 9600 Pro is definitely cheap.

https://www.ebay.it/itm/193390379373

Here I could get for around 30€ a 9600 Pro 128MB, 9600 Pro 256MB, 9600 XT 128 MB.
Is the 256 MB the best of three?

Phil is really happy about the 9600 Pro but he clearly states that it doesn't have table fog/8 bit palletized texture, but that cards runs up to Doom 3, GTA San Andreas, Half Life 2. If only I could measure the loss of that two graphic effect.

I'd go for the 9600xt out of those three, but.... 30€ again sounds a bit much, I got my 9600xt for like 5€... I suppose you'll do best to wait patiently, decent deals do show up occasionally, like an year ago I found a working msi fx5900 ultra for 10€... paying trough the nose for obsolete old hardware just makes the situation worse, those greedy scalpers won't learn till we all stop doing business with them

I'd be willing to pay those 30€ for a 9800XT, but these now go for 10 times that... atrocious

You're right. If you happen to find a deal like that or a place where I could ask, please let me know.

And if anyone reads this and have a FX5900 that he/she is willing to sell at decent price to Italy please let me know.

I wrote to this guy:

https://www.ebay.it/itm/133904849057

the one in Germany that made me an offer of 60€ shipped, asking why he listed the auction as "not working / for spare parts" and then wrote in the description that the card does work.
He said it was an error while opening the auction and the card does work. The problem is that if in reality the card does NOT work, I'm thinking that I won't be able to open a PayPal controversy about that.

Indeed, I've had multiple cases of falling for that trick. Also 60€ is too much for a good condition one, let alone a non-working one. Keep in mind the 5900xt is a model below the regular 5900, with only 128mb ram vs 256mb, and lower clocks, but its still more than good enough for win98 gaming and is only 30-ish watts tdp so it runs cool and likely to live long. But yeah, for 60€ one would expect to get the top of the line 5950 ultra, new in factory sealed box... yet this is the reality

benefits of fx 5000 series over ti 4000 series is that you can apply AA and AF from nvidia control panel without too much of a performance hit (enabling both on a ti4200 hits quite hard) and also, fx 5000 supports dx9, even if not very well at all, it supports it just good enough to use the nglide wrapper on those cards

Understood.

New question while we're waiting for a 5900. (I'm your nightmare, of everyone)

I started to search in the forum for other Windows 98 builds and I saw a lot of Geforce 6800 (GT, GS, whatever).
The first thing that I thought was the famous fog table and its trusty friend 8bit palletized textures. Then I saw this:

from an utility called RivaTuner:

https://www.guru3d.com/content-page/rivatuner.html

It seems that the fog table can be emulated and RivaTuner is available on Windows 98.

I then found an Point of View GeForce 6800 GS 256Mb AGP at 70€ on eBay from France.

It's not cheap but could it be the card to rule them all while waiting ?

Nvidia dropped paletted textures with the GeForce 6 series, but they kept table fog for a while longer.

You can read up on what features the different generations of 3DFX, Nvidia and ATi cards have on the Vogons wiki. Remember that Nvidia drivers newer than the 4x.xx series may bring their own compatibility issues, unrelated to the aforementioned hardware features. For some examples, search this forum for "driver too new" and such.

Ok, I will close my mouth until I find a decent priced 5900. 🤣

If you guys happen to find one, please tell me.

I'll keep you updated as soon as Motherboard, CPU and RAM arrive.

I just received the motherboard, it's unused as the auction said. I really hope it works.

Do you see anything wrong? Capacitors? Is everything good?

I can't connect to the PSU and "turn on" without CPU, cooler and RAM, right?
I just want to see if something start, like a connected fan or whatever.

If it's new old stock, everything should be fine. Just check if the coin-cell battery still has a charge, and replace it if it's discharged. Yeah, you can't really test anything till you install cpu and ram

God Of Gaming wrote on 2021-10-29, 20:06:

If it's new old stock, everything should be fine. Just check if the coin-cell battery still has a charge, and replace it if it's discharged. Yeah, you can't really test anything till you install cpu and ram

oem button cell batteries have a storage life of 5 years - Some won't supply one due to cost of transport safety clearances where a local brand is dangerous eerywhere else 🤣 .

That's a 2006 motherboard, which was replaced in 2012 with the newer r3.0 revision with black pcb and 45nm cpu support (E5800 best 800fsb cpu for r3.0). So his r2.0 mobo was produced somewhere between 2006 and 2012, but even if it was one of the very last r2.0s made, almost 10 years have passed, not 5

I already bought a new battery just in case. I can’t thank you enough guys.
Next steps:

RAM: I’m starting to surrender that I’ll never find a CL2.5 module other then 256 MB. I’m writing to all the eBay sellers but those who reply say always CL3.

Cooler: The SUGO SG11 clearence is 82mm. I was looking for a Noctua one to keep everything silent, but they need an adapter that Noctua is willing to send but will take time. I searched one that I could put a Noctua fan on, and I found the CM Hyper 212 Evo but it’s too high. I kept searching but I don’t understand if this or this are compatible. Or if I should ask and wait for the Noctua adapter to arrive.

HDD: In this thread two solutions emerged, a 500GB HDD with multiple partitions and dualboot, or two SSDs, 120GB for Windows 98 and 240GB for XP. SSDs would be nice, no patch needed and no bootloader (right?) but I won’t be able to add later a traditional HDD for games and ISOs (is it needed?) unless I use a SATA to IDE since the motherboard has two sata ports.

The E4700 doesn't run particularly hot, and you won't be overclocking it either, so no need for a super beefy cooler, in fact the stock intel box cooler should do fine