Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-09-08, 22:00:

I'm not sure how to play DEMO001. Is it available in the game or do I need to download it separately from somewhere? I don't see it in the demos menu.

Yes, you either need to find it or convert the original DEMO001 to .DM_68 format. I think I uploaded it here somewhere once.

Win98SE will crash during the second part of the installation if you have more than 1 GB RAM. This is where HimemX comes into the picture and limits available RAM to 512 MB. Later on, after installing R. Loew's PATCHMEM, you can remove HimemX unless you need it for something else.

This step is unecessary. When Windows finishes the first part of the install, let it reboot and give you the error message. Do a reset (or Windows will shut the computer down automatically after some time IIRC), then press F8 when it tries to boot into the second part of the install. Run PATCHMEM and reboot. No need for HIMEMX -- or at least that was my experience.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-09-06, 10:11:

GPUZ.jpg

Is that GPU-Z running under Win98SE?

VivienM wrote on 2023-09-08, 22:59:

There was another amusing bug (which got fixed), I forget if it was in Win98, Win98 SE or Win95 where it would crash after... 49.7 days of uptime.

That would be equivalent to 2 ^ 32 milliseconds: 4,294,967,296 / 1000 / 86400 = 49.71026962

So there must be a timer counting uptime with milliseconds until 2 ^ 32, the limit of many things under a 32-bit OS.

dormcat wrote on 2023-09-08, 23:26:

VivienM wrote on 2023-09-08, 22:59:

There was another amusing bug (which got fixed), I forget if it was in Win98, Win98 SE or Win95 where it would crash after... 49.7 days of uptime.

That would be equivalent to 2 ^ 32 milliseconds: 4,294,967,296 / 1000 / 86400 = 49.71026962

So there must be a timer counting uptime with milliseconds until 2 ^ 32, the limit of many things under a 32-bit OS.

I'm sure that's exactly what it was...

I wonder if it was even a bug (i.e. an unintended/accidental), or if whoever designed this quite intentionally assumed no one would run Win95/98 for that much time and therefore a 32-bit variable was just fine.

mockingbird wrote on 2023-09-08, 23:12:

Yes, you either need to find it or convert the original DEMO001 to .DM_68 format. I think I uploaded it here somewhere once.

If you can link me to the relevant demo file, I can run the test with it.

This step is unecessary. When Windows finishes the first part of the install, let it reboot and give you the error message. Do a reset (or Windows will shut the computer down automatically after some time IIRC), then press F8 when it tries to boot into the second part of the install. Run PATCHMEM and reboot. No need for HIMEMX -- or at least that was my experience.

Using HimemX consists of adding a single line to CONFIG.SYS. This is much more convenient to me than the alternatives that you mention. The line can be deleted or commented out when it's no longer needed.

dormcat wrote on 2023-09-08, 23:26:

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-09-06, 10:11:

GPUZ.jpg

Is that GPU-Z running under Win98SE?

No. I'm dual-booting Win98SE and WinXP on this system.

CPU-Z does have a Win9x friendly legacy edition, but I'm not aware of anything like that for GPU-Z.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-09-08, 14:54:

[*]Install unofficial Win98 ICH9 drivers from here

I did not know this was a thing! I abandoned my plan to build a WinME PC some time ago due to reasons but apparently I already had one, gonna have to give it a try. Though I probably need to swap my 6800 GT to some X800 card as I've found NVIDIA 6x.xx-8x.xx drivers to be kinda iffy even with Win2k, I just bet the late Win9x drivers are nothing but sunshine and peaches.

How loud the fan tends to be with X800 seriers cards, the heatsinks look flimsy as usual for the time period? Any good aftermarket coolers for them?

Sombrero wrote on 2023-09-09, 05:37:

I did not know this was a thing! I abandoned my plan to build a WinME PC some time ago due to reasons but apparently I already had one, gonna have to give it a try. Though I probably need to swap my 6800 GT to some X800 card as I've found NVIDIA 6x.xx-8x.xx drivers to be kinda iffy even with Win2k, I just bet the late Win9x drivers are nothing but sunshine and peaches.

Heh, me neither until a few days ago. 😁 And yeah, I have tested my PCIe 6600GT as well, but it needed 77.72 drivers (forced install) and those definitively have their share of compatibility issues win Win9x games. Catalyst 6.2 seems to be much better in that regard.

How loud the fan tends to be with X800 seriers cards, the heatsinks look flimsy as usual for the time period? Any good aftermarket coolers for them?

I think it depends on the model and possibly the manufacturer. The high-end cards like the X850XT seem to be fairly loud. Phil demonstrates that in this video around the 2:24 mark.

In comparison, my X800GTO from Power Color is not a high end model, and has much lower clocks than Phil's card. On the plus side, it's significantly more quiet. Subjectively, the noise levels of my X800GTO are slightly lower than those of my GeForce FX 5900XT, for whatever that's worth. The ATi card has very good fan control, so it won't ramp up the speed unless you really load it up. No idea about any aftermarket coolers, maybe someone who has had one of these cards for a bit longer can chime in on that.

BTW, I noticed that Phil's method of installing the PCIe graphics card drivers differs slightly from mine, so I figured I should go a bit more in depth on that. On a clean Win98SE install, I get the following in Device Manager:

I've marked the problematic device in red. Basically, I need to right-click on that entry, choose "Remove" and then restart when prompted. After the restart, the problematic device will be completely gone, and the remaining two devices won't have any exclamation marks. At that point, I can normally install Catalyst 6.2 using the regular setup procedure (no need to force the driver or anything like that). The final result is this:

This seems to work fine for me, so I'm leaving it here in case someone else might find it helpful.

mockingbird wrote on 2023-09-08, 23:12:

Yes, you either need to find it or convert the original DEMO001 to .DM_68 format. I think I uploaded it here somewhere once.

Found your DEMO001 attachment in this post. With that demo, using the maximum settings at 1024x768 in Quake 3 point release 1.32 I'm getting 437.2 FPS under Win98SE using Catalyst 6.2. I should note that this is with a sound card (Audigy 2) fully installed and working. Without sound, the results are a bit higher and I get 462.5 FPS.

For the record, I always benchmark all of my games with sound enabled, but I thought it would make for a nice comparison to do one run without it, like Anandtech used to do back in the day.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-09-09, 08:08:

I think it depends on the model and possibly the manufacturer. The high-end cards like the X850XT seem to be fairly loud. Phil demonstrates that in this video around the 2:24 mark.

Oh god kill it with fire!

Apparently that thing eats 100W so no wonder. Thankfully in my use case I might possibly get away with something as lowly like a X300 or MX420 PCI.

The most crazy thing is that you can have functional LGA1366 X58 platform and working ISA with dISAppointment project in Windows 98.

Sombrero wrote on 2023-09-09, 09:32:

Oh god kill it with fire!

Apparently that thing eats 100W so no wonder.

Heh, I'm definitively glad I didn't get one of those. 😁 That said, it appears that my PowerColor X800 GTO is somewhat special and has 16 pipes officially unlocked from the factory. Here's a period correct Anandtech review. Due to that, it still has decent performance despite being lower clocked and much quieter than the cards from Phil's video. It might also help that it was built using the 110nm process, unlike most X850 cards.

Thankfully in my use case I might possibly get away with something as lowly like a X300 or MX420 PCI.

You can probably get reasonably quiet cooling on X700 or X600 cards. The latter of which are basically PCIe versions of 9600 Pro/XT cards, if I'm not mistaken.

Radeon X700 cards are actually driving me insane with driver bugs, because for some reason all of them operate as 4 pixel pipes GPU in OpenGL games. My X600 Pro GDDR2 card is faster than my X700Pro GDDR2 cards in Doom 3, because X600 core can be overclocked higher.

bloodem wrote on 2023-09-08, 18:11:

Glad to hear that it's working for you! :-) If you have time, maybe you can also test Incoming. I remember seeing major performa […]
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Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-09-08, 13:14:

That was indeed the cause of the issue. Removing the second 2 GB RAM stick brought Win9x performance much closer to that of WinXP. I've only tested Quake 2 and 3 so far, but it was enough to see the difference. I'll post more detailed benchmarks a bit later. Also, my E8600 CPU has arrived, and it should improve the scores even more.

Glad to hear that it's working for you! 😀
If you have time, maybe you can also test Incoming. I remember seeing major performance issues with this game (it runs at 1 - 2 FPS at most) in Win98 with Radeon 9x00 / X8xx cards when using the Catalyst 6.2 driver. I haven't dug deeper, though, hopefully there's a workaround.

In case you or anybody else will find it useful, I also have benchmark scores with a Core2 Duo E8600 OC @ 4GHz and Radeon X850XT PCIe (520MHz core / 1080MHz memory):

Win98 Radeon X850XT PCIe Benchmarks

3DMark99 Max: 50253 / 106479
3DMark2000: 50901 3DMarks / 1810 CPU Marks
3DMark2001: 41520 3DMarks

GLQuake 640 x 480 x 16: 1459.3 FPS
GLQuake 640 x 480 x 32: 829.1 FPS
GLQuake 1024 x 768 x 16: 504.3 FPS
GLQuake 1024 x 768 x 32: 408.0 FPS
GLQuake 1600 x 1200 x 16: 399.6 FPS
GLQuake 1600 x 1200 x 32: 381.4 FPS

Quake 2 640 x 480 x 16: 994.2 FPS
Quake 2 640 x 480 x 32: 994.2 FPS
Quake 2 1024 x 768 x 16: 991.4 FPS
Quake 2 1024 x 768 x 32: 971.8 FPS
Quake 2 1600 x 1200 x 16: 672.2 FPS
Quake 2 1600 x 1200 x 32: 601.2 FPS

Quake 3 640 x 480 x 16: 979.0 FPS
Quake 3 640 x 480 x 32: 976.0 FPS
Quake 3 1024 x 768 x 16: 795.5 FPS
Quake 3 1024 x 768 x 32: 675.6 FPS
Quake 3 1600 x 1200 x 16: 531.0 FPS
Quake 3 1600 x 1200 x 32: 456.5 FPS
Quake 3 1600 x 1200 x 32: 382.3 FPS (MAX TEXTURE DETAIL + TRILINEAR TEXTURE FILTER)

MDK2 640 x 480 x 16: 1091.77 FPS
MDK2 640 x 480 x 32: 1085.72 FPS
MDK2 1024 x 768 x 16: 833.13 FPS
MDK2 1024 x 768 x 32: 659.69 FPS
MDK2 1600 x 1200 x 16: 431.21 FPS
MDK2 1600 x 1200 x 32: 392.11 FPS
MDK2 1920 x 1440 x 16: 370.81 FPS
MDK2 1920 x 1440 x 32: 324.62 FPS

Unreal 640 x 480 x 16: AVG 693.48 FPS / HIGH 1318.09 FPS / LOW 340.76 FPS
Unreal 640 x 480 x 32: AVG 670.17 FPS / HIGH 1248.49 FPS / LOW 325.66 FPS
Unreal 1024 x 768 x 16: AVG 633.59 FPS / HIGH 1173.88 FPS / LOW 332.65 FPS
Unreal 1024 x 768 x 32: AVG 591.08 FPS / HIGH 1044.44 FPS / LOW 310.30 FPS
Unreal 1600 x 1200 x 16: AVG 464.26 FPS / HIGH 667.95 FPS / LOW 277.77 FPS
Unreal 1600 x 1200 x 32: AVG 377.42 FPS / HIGH 574.50 FPS / LOW 226.90 FPS
Unreal 1920 x 1440 x 16: AVG 339.86 FPS / HIGH 493.96 FPS / LOW 208.85 FPS
Unreal 1920 x 1440 x 32: AVG 283.37 FPS / HIGH 442.44 FPS / LOW 165.73 FPS

Expendable 640 x 480 x 16: AVG 756.78 FPS / HIGH 909 FPS / LOW 611 FPS
Expendable 640 x 480 x 32: AVG 755.57 FPS / HIGH 909 FPS / LOW 611 FPS
Expendable 1024 x 768 x 16: AVG 736.35 FPS / HIGH 876 FPS / LOW 617 FPS
Expendable 1024 x 768 x 32: AVG 735.71 FPS / HIGH 874 FPS / LOW 616 FPS
Expendable 1600 x 1200 x 16: AVG 544.47 FPS / HIGH 653 FPS / LOW 489 FPS
Expendable 1600 x 1200 x 32: AVG 525.28 FPS / HIGH 629 FPS / LOW 458 FPS
Expendable 1920 x 1440 x 16: AVG 424.15 FPS / HIGH 493 FPS / LOW 356 FPS
Expendable 1920 x 1440 x 32: AVG 385.51 FPS / HIGH 456 FPS / LOW 325 FPS

One thing I found funny is that, in GLQuake, at 640 x 480, the Radeon X850XT is "bottlenecking" the E8600 🤣.
When running GLQuake with the "-window" argument, you can test lower resolutions like 320 x 240 (in window mode) and you will see more than 2000 FPS.

Yo bloodem, sorry for going off topic on this thread but I was wondering if you got my "Ezra-T doesn't work on ASUS P3B-F REV 1.04" private message?.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-09-08, 13:14:

You're the man! :) […]
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bloodem wrote on 2023-09-08, 10:13:

Your benchmark scores are quite low, indeed.
Off the top of my head, even though I don't recall exact numbers, I seem to remember having a similar performance issue when I ran the benchmarks on Win98 with 4GB RAM in dual channel. This is the reason why I reverted to using a single 2GB DIMM. Not sure if it's the same problem in your case (on your specific motherboard), but it's definitely worth a try.

You're the man! 😀

That was indeed the cause of the issue. Removing the second 2 GB RAM stick brought Win9x performance much closer to that of WinXP. I've only tested Quake 2 and 3 so far, but it was enough to see the difference. I'll post more detailed benchmarks a bit later. Also, my E8600 CPU has arrived, and it should improve the scores even more.

EDIT - updates benchmarks:

Win98SE - ATi Radeon X800GTO PCIe (Catalyst 6.2)

• Quake2 640x480 software - 317.8
• Quake2 1024x768x32 OpenGL - 807.7
• Quake3 1024x768x32 OpenGL - 553.4
• Drakan 1024x768x32 Direct3D - 435.1
• 3DMark 2001SE - 32875

Now that's more like it! The scores are still lower than those posted by bloodem, but I think that's likely due to his higher clocked CPU and X800XL card. I'm very happy with these results, and now I can finally take this build off of the test bench and put it in a proper case.

So what, in the end, was the reason for the difference in 3DM2k1 results between W98 and WXP? Dual channel config or 4GB RAM size alone?

Ydee wrote on 2023-09-10, 09:00:

So what, in the end, was the reason for the difference in 3DM2k1 results between W98 and WXP? Dual channel config or 4GB RAM size alone?

All I can say is that after removing the second 2GB module, the benchmarks under Win98 improved dramatically.

I doubt it's related to the total memory amount since limiting the RAM through HimemX or MSCONFIG didn't result in any performance changes. Still, I might get a 2x1GB DDR2 kit at some point to see if that makes any difference.

That would be nice to confirm that dual channel is the "deal breaker", thank you very much.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-09-09, 01:09:

Using HimemX consists of adding a single line to CONFIG.SYS. This is much more convenient to me than the alternatives that you mention. The line can be deleted or commented out when it's no longer needed.

Not to nitpick, but please allow me to modify your original post to better illustrate my point:

1. In the BIOS, set SATA to IDE Compatible mode (I'm using SATA SSDs) and disable all on-board devices including HDA, LAN, Serial and Parallel ports
2. In the BIOS, set the total number of USB ports to 6 (default is 12) because they take up valuable IRQs
3. Boot from a floppy disk and start the Win98SE installation normally
   After the first stage of the installation completes and the system restarts, boot from the floppy disk once again
4. After the first stage of the installation completes and the system restarts, let it give you the error, reboot from floppy (or reboot with F8 to command prompt)
5. Apply HimemX PATCHMEM and R. Loew's SATA patch then restart
   
6. After the Win98SE installation completes apply R. Loew's patchmem and remove HimemX if no longer needed

The step where you allow it to give you the error is necessary (as opposed to omitting it and directly booting to a command prompt after the first part of the install. Otherwise PATCHMEM will complain that the files weren't decompressed). Still, my method has one less step.

And there's also an alternative method of getting the chipset drivers installed during Windows setup:

• Install unofficial Win98 ICH9 drivers from here
• Follow the instructions here to integrate the chipset drivers into the Windows setup directory
• Install NUSB 3.3, reboot, and then manually update the "PCI Universal Serial Bus" device for USB 2.0 support
• Install DirectX 9.0c
• Under Device Manager, remove the "Standard Display Adapter (VGA)" then reboot
• Install Catalyst 6.2 normally
• Install Audigy2 ZS drivers as per my guide

This has more steps. You need to either modify your install media or copy the WIN98 folder to your harddrive before the install so you can insert those INF files, but it's cleaner and gives a better rate of success since Windows will be installing the necessary drivers during the hardware detection process.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-09-09, 08:51:

Found your DEMO001 attachment in this post. With that demo, using the maximum settings at 1024x768 in Quake 3 point release 1.32 I'm getting 437.2 FPS under Win98SE using Catalyst 6.2. I should note that this is with a sound card (Audigy 2) fully installed and working. Without sound, the results are a bit higher and I get 462.5 FPS.

For the record, I always benchmark all of my games with sound enabled, but I thought it would make for a nice comparison to do one run without it, like Anandtech used to do back in the day.

Thanks, that looks about right. With a Wolfdale at 3Ghz and an X850 and no sound card, I get 515FPS. Your results look about right. This is 1.32c, correct?

mockingbird wrote on 2023-09-10, 16:33:

The step where you allow it to give you the error is necessary (as opposed to omitting it and directly booting to a command prompt after the first part of the install. Otherwise PATCHMEM will complain that the files weren't decompressed). Still, my method has one less step.

This is why I prefer to temporarily use HimemX, instead of letting the Windows installer error out. But to each their own, both methods work.

Thanks, that looks about right. With a Wolfdale at 3Ghz and an X850 and no sound card, I get 515FPS. Your results look about right. This is 1.32c, correct?

Yes, it's Quake 3 version 1.32c.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2023-09-09, 12:01:

Radeon X700 cards are actually driving me insane with driver bugs, because for some reason all of them operate as 4 pixel pipes GPU in OpenGL games. My X600 Pro GDDR2 card is faster than my X700Pro GDDR2 cards in Doom 3, because X600 core can be overclocked higher.

X600 Pro is DDR only unless the wiki is in error? X600 XT do exist as well.
Even that, 700 Pro is way faster than 600 Pro due to vertex pipelines of 6 vs 2. Another problem, Even at X800, they have death issues as well so I'm limited on choice of video cards.

Are you running XP? Then I wouldn't use any old of these defective chips and go for much newer ATi/AMD video cards or use 7900 GTX or GTX 285 with XP.
For older video cards with 98SE, I'm limited to Geforce2, 3 or 4 and Geforce FX or 6600, 6800 series if the price is right. Right now these FX and 6xxxx is so expensive. For ATi, I would be stuck with 9600 Pro or XT or TX.

What kind of issues with driver bugs is it you were preferring specific version of drivers?

Cheers,