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best windows 98 agp card

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Reply 100 of 153, by Der Kuenringer

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Fair enough, I will probably end up with the Geforce 4 anyway. But still, is there any benefit to having 8-bit palletized textures & table fog, if I already run a late voodoo as a secondary card? The only game in my timeframe that I could see profiting from it would be Thief II. Or am I missing something here?

Reply 101 of 153, by KT7AGuy

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If you've got a Voodoo as a secondary card, then I wouldn't worry about it. Thief games, FF7, and European Air War are some of the titles that use 8-bit palletized textures & table fog.

Reply 102 of 153, by schmatzler

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Der Kuenringer wrote:

Hm, well maybe I should specify then. I would be happy if the card is able to play late space sim games, like Freespace Open, Independence War 2 & Freelancer at 1600x1200.

I can confirm that at least I-War 2 runs very well on 1680x1050 with a GF4 4800.

Don't know about the other games, though.

"Windows 98's natural state is locked up"

Reply 103 of 153, by ruthan

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Der Kuenringer wrote:

Yes, the Voodoo is PCI. I hadn't considered ATi cards yet, mainly because of the warnings about compatibility. Would the Radeon 9000 series also be a good option? Another requirement for the card: i want it to be single slot, so in that respect ATi cards would likely compare favorably to Nvidias high end offerings.
Thanks for the suggestions!
And btw, as for 256mb vram, am I likely to run into problems with this?

Radeon 9xxx line is quite slow, im not really sure, if it would be upgrade which you want. There is lots of half dead Radeon Xxxx... cards which sometimes boot and something dont and have some dead memory chips => artefacts.. Its also first PCI-E generation, so even with AGP bridge, so there are a bit pre-destinated to be problematic, but there are just working in most cases.
With X line, X300 and x600 are just some modified 9xxx line, real deal is only X8xx single.. there are variants with single slot cooler - but it could be problem to find fan with decent sound profile.. lesser modes have quite reasonable TDP.. but prefer more silence than performance, or you can change cooler. There are some variant with 1 slots cooler at the bottom of card and 1 slots heatsink above.
Some my experience are X8xx much more compatible in DOS, probably because of ATI history from 1986 or something like that.. than any Nvidia cards (1995+).. and there working fine with fast systems.. they can really benefic from faster cpu.. Im using even some Radeon 3850 AGP (XP+) plus on Core 2 MBs and there are fine.

Update: 256 MB is fine, problem is with Nvidia 512 MB cards and there is some paid rLoew patch for it, which modifies cards bios.. I not sure if other 512 MB cards are affected too, probably not.

Im old goal oriented goatman, i care about facts and freedom, not about egos+prejudices. Hoarding=sickness. If you want respect, gain it by your behavior. I hate stupid SW limits, SW=virtual world, everything should be possible if you have enough raw HW.

Reply 104 of 153, by Der Kuenringer

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Oh well, I just realized I can't actually use a Geforce 6800 or an ATi x800 🤣
They are all 1.5v keyed, and I need a 3.3v compatible agp card. Seems like I'm reaching the end of the rope with a 5900/5950 or 9800 pro.

Reply 105 of 153, by tanasen

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I was looking for almost a year now for an upgrade for my Win98 PC (GF3, GF4, 9700 etc.) but with no luck. It currently has a GF 2Ti 32MB. I've tested some FX cards (5500, 5700LE) but those appeared to be slower than the GF 2Ti. Just found a good deal on an Albatron FX5900XTV and can't wait to test it!

PC1😜 III-S 1.4GHz, GA-6VTXE, 512MB SDRAM, Albatron FX5900XTV 128MB, SB Live! 5.1
PC2😜 III 800MHz, MS-6178, 256MB SDRAM, 3DFX Voodoo3 2000 PCI, Creative CT4810
PC3😜 MMX 200MHz, SY-5EAS5, 128MB SDRAM, Diamond Monster 3D, Diamond Viper V330, ESS 1868F

Reply 106 of 153, by oohms

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A GF2 Ti is faster than the later geforces in some older games

Stick to nvidia 45.23 and older drivers.. everything later has issues

Please don't bother with the very latest AGP cards. They were only made for people who were too poor to upgrade their systems to pci-e (i worked in a pc shop around this time) - you might as well go for a pci-e pc instead, when you can retrospectively choose any hardware you want

DOS/w3.11/w98 | K6-III+ 400ATZ @ 550 | FIC PA2013 | 128mb SDram | Voodoo 3 3000 | Avancelogic ALS100 | Roland SC-55ST
DOS/w98/XP | Core 2 Duo E4600 | Asus P5PE-VM | 512mb DDR400 | Ti4800SE | ForteMedia FM801

Reply 107 of 153, by The Serpent Rider

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A GF2 Ti is faster than the later geforces in some older games

Only without AA and AF, you can easily ramp up image quality on late GeForce cards.

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 108 of 153, by tanasen

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Sadly the oldest compatible nvidia driver was the 53.04. In 3DMark01 I get over double the performance but that's about it. Almost all games run terrible (Unreal Gold 25fps, Expendable 35fps...) OpenGL runs ok but not better than the gf2ti. I guess I should stick with the GF2 Ti for Win98... Nevertheless I will continue testing the card in the same machine in Windows XP.

PC1😜 III-S 1.4GHz, GA-6VTXE, 512MB SDRAM, Albatron FX5900XTV 128MB, SB Live! 5.1
PC2😜 III 800MHz, MS-6178, 256MB SDRAM, 3DFX Voodoo3 2000 PCI, Creative CT4810
PC3😜 MMX 200MHz, SY-5EAS5, 128MB SDRAM, Diamond Monster 3D, Diamond Viper V330, ESS 1868F

Reply 110 of 153, by ruthan

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I rember that i read some actual test of G400 and we bought Matrox G4000 and returned it quickly because of bad games compatibility maybe later, compatibility was better.

For 640x480-1024x768 i think is still best to use Voodoo 3, if need more if need more modern cards. Im using Radeon X8xx for 1600x1200 gaming, i had time only play only few major titles on Win98, not something especially not mainstream, or problematic from GPU compatibility as far, i remember..

I think that we need some modern machine testing matrix, because there are lots of claims and its hard to verify them.

We dont need zillions games or cards to test, we just need to select good game list with good mix blockbusters and problematic games (i think that 20 games with 10 from each category could be enough).. and well will maybe need to test zillions of Nvidia drivers versions 🙁

Im old goal oriented goatman, i care about facts and freedom, not about egos+prejudices. Hoarding=sickness. If you want respect, gain it by your behavior. I hate stupid SW limits, SW=virtual world, everything should be possible if you have enough raw HW.

Reply 111 of 153, by vvbee

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With matrox, one driver handles everything. With nvidia, you need as many drivers as you have games.

The voodoo 3 has worse compatibility than the g400 with newer games, ones released around 2000. The g400 with 32-bit color is almost as fast as the voodoo 3 2000 doing 16-bit color.

Reply 112 of 153, by KT7AGuy

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The G400 Max is a great card, but I still feel that overall the Voodoo 3 3000 hits all the best marks: Price, Performance, Compatibility, Availability. You also don't need an additional two slots for GLIDE compatibility.

NVIDIA GeForce 4 cards are also quite good as my 2nd choice. They're cheap, perform well, and they're readily available. Also, you can use a GLIDE wrapper if you don't feel like using a pair of Voodoo 2 cards.

The Matrox G400 Max is awesome, but only if you can include a pair of Voodoo 2 cards for GLIDE support. With this setup you're getting excellent performance and compatibility. Unfortunately, those Voodoo 2 cards are neither cheap nor readily available. However, you ultimately have a system that is overall better than one with just a Voodoo 3.

Reply 113 of 153, by vvbee

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The g400 max is about 10% faster than the regular g400. Nice, but not a huge deal. I got my regular 32-mb g400 for about five euros on ebay, while the max tends to be overpriced and uncommon in europe.

I think price and availability favor the g400 vs the voodoo 3. Compatibility with games past 2000, no competition based on what I've seen. Matrox has a strong late driver that also maintains good backwards compatibility (rare to see). Issues tend to be limited to very old 3d games, around 96 or so. With performance in 16-bit it's a toss up, but then you realize the g400 gives you 32-bit color, high-resolution textures, and an overall higher-quality image. I've seen the voodoo be considerably faster in quake 3, though, and that may also apply to similar opengl games. You won't have glide nor the 3dfx nostalgia with the g400, but that's just the nature of it.

Reply 114 of 153, by ruthan

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What about Matrox G450/G550 are they good deal too?

Im old goal oriented goatman, i care about facts and freedom, not about egos+prejudices. Hoarding=sickness. If you want respect, gain it by your behavior. I hate stupid SW limits, SW=virtual world, everything should be possible if you have enough raw HW.

Reply 117 of 153, by ruthan

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Hmm, regarding of wikipedia, there is not much differences between G400/G450 and G550:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrox_G400#Matrox_G450

Im old goal oriented goatman, i care about facts and freedom, not about egos+prejudices. Hoarding=sickness. If you want respect, gain it by your behavior. I hate stupid SW limits, SW=virtual world, everything should be possible if you have enough raw HW.

Reply 118 of 153, by vvbee

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Putas wrote:
vvbee wrote:

The g400 max is about 10% faster than the regular g400.

20 %

Averages 9% on a p3 1.1 ghz with latest drivers at between 800 x 600 and 1024 x 768, as per Matrox Roundup G200, G400, G400 MAX, G450 and G550.

At 640 x 480, probably close to 0%.

Reply 119 of 153, by Putas

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vvbee wrote:
Putas wrote:
vvbee wrote:

The g400 max is about 10% faster than the regular g400.

20 %

Averages 9% on a p3 1.1 ghz with latest drivers at between 800 x 600 and 1024 x 768, as per Matrox Roundup G200, G400, G400 MAX, G450 and G550.

At 640 x 480, probably close to 0%.

I can replicate his G400 Max numbers, but not vanilla G400.
For example I get:
Quake 2: 57,6
Quake 3: 39,7

Maybe it is because my G400 has only 16 MB of memory, but I doubt that.