nVidia's DOS VESA support was unsurpassed up to and including the FX-series. 9600Pro wouldn't be terrible, but with DOS in the list the FX5600 has a small advantage. Apart from that performance & features are very comparable.

Take a look at the exact cards though: if one is cheap crap with bad analog filters, and the other a superbly build card, choose the better built one.

Well, one is a Sapphire 128Mb:

and the other is a Sparkle 256Mb:

To be really honest, the Sapphire looks like it's a solid build, especially on the heatsink/fan. The Sparkle looks OK. Then there's the double VRAM but I highly doubt it would be of any use under DOS or 98...

Forget about the FX for WinXP or DirectX 9. Dos/98/XP is the impossible build.

kolderman wrote on 2020-04-01, 06:39:

Forget about the FX for WinXP or DirectX 9. Dos/98/XP is the impossible build.

I know it's next to impossible to have the best of all three, that's why I'm mainly focused on 98.
XP is more like a wild card, let's put it that way. Out of, say, ten games I can't run properly on Windows 10, eight or nine would work with 98 and only a couple would require XP.
So yes, I'm trying to have a balanced system capable of running XP but mostly aimed at high 98 performance.

I found the 9600 Pro works great in 98se on my Asus A8V board.

ATI 9600 Pro.

Sparkle made solid cards my sparkle GTX 470 is still working and is solid stable I've owned it since new. I've had nothing but issues with Sapphire parts in the past.

ATi 9600

If you want to play DX8/9 games use the 9600PRO, if you want to play DOS and DX5/6/7 games then pick the FX5600

appiah4 wrote on 2020-04-07, 08:43:

If you want to play DX8/9 games use the 9600PRO, if you want to play DOS and DX5/6/7 games then pick the FX5600

+1