Farcry was released in 2004. It is a win xp game. Trying to bridge 98 and XP gaming is a fools errand. Build a XP pc with a gtx560.

kolderman wrote on 2020-04-28, 01:08:

Farcry was released in 2004. It is a win xp game. Trying to bridge 98 and XP gaming is a fools errand. Build a XP pc with a gtx560.

Yes I am aware of this. I am currently playing this under 9x.
It won't be perfect but I'm looking for more insight on the cards rather than what's best practise

The insight is all of them suck at dx9 except the 9800 and even it is one of the earliest dx9 cards. You said you have a xp rig? My advice use it for xp games. The FX series is a lot more interesting when you take dx9 out of the equation.

kolderman wrote on 2020-04-28, 01:36:

The insight is all of them suck at dx9 except the 9800 and even it is one of the earliest dx9 cards. You said you have a xp rig? My advice use it for xp games. The FX series is a lot more interesting when you take dx9 out of the equation.

Ah yes I see. Yeah I will be breaking out the XP rig that has a core2 duo as well as much more modern hardware.
I have a Geforce 3 500 TI but the DVI port is faulty, so I can't use my existing monitor.
I'll keep my eyes on a 9800 as it sounds like a go-er

Grab a 9700 Pro if you can find one. They aren't much slower than the 9800 Pro but have much better compatability with games in 9x.
I like the last Omega drivers with both cards. I feel they geared the 9800 Pro more to XP than 9x.

Whichever, make sure you remove that stupid shim from around the GPU die.

texterted wrote on 2020-04-28, 05:54:

Grab a 9700 Pro if you can find one. They aren't much slower than the 9800 Pro but have much better compatability with games in 9x.
I like the last Omega drivers with both cards. I feel they geared the 9800 Pro more to XP than 9x.

Whichever, make sure you remove that stupid shim from around the GPU die.

Ah yes, good idea. I haven't used many ATI cards from this period before. So I'm not sure how easy most of the drivers work with 9x.
I'll keep the 9700 Pro in mind, seems they hold their value on ebay.

Why specifically 9700 Pro though? That card is attracting much higher prices then 9800 Pro. And you can use pretty old drivers with 9800 Pro for good Win98 compatibility, specifically 3.4 and up with 3.7 being the fastest according the testing of one Vogoner. Also, 9700 Pro is notoriously for being hard to get in working state (because of that whole shim situation).

Of the cards you mentioned, either the FX 5900 XT or Radeon 9800 Pro will fit the bill, the 9800 Pro is a faster card, especially in anything regarding Shader Model 2, however I have no experience with it under Win9x so I'm a little hesitant to recommend it. The FX 5900 XT can use 53.04 drivers and perhaps even 45.23 which is pretty nice for compatibility and stability. 45.23 seem to support the FX 5900 Ultra, so the XT should work although it may require some fiddling with the Device Manager.
I too think Win9X and DirectX 9 is a lost cause though. There are many reports even in these forums of people having stability issues when installing DX9 on their Win98 builds. Not to mention, games such as Half-Life 2, Far Cry and Halo will choke really badly on that Pentium 4 2.5GHz with a measly 400MHz FSB and what I suspect may be SDRAM on that board? Totally fine if you want to experiment however, I love to install and try games on hardware that has no business playing them, so there's that 😀.

By the way, Win98 supports up to 512MB RAM officially and after that begins to cause issues. I had a system with 1GB dual-booting Win98/XP, pretty similar to yours in fact, Northwood 3.2, FX5900XT, Audigy1, and even though Win98 seemed fine, weird hangs and BSODs started to pop up. All of them went away as soon as I installed R.Loew's memory patch which you can find below:
https://archive.org/details/PATCHMEM

For Windows 98, the absolute BEST performance (while also maintaining stability) can be achieved with an ATI Radeon 9800Pro/XT.
Now, even though it's the fastest, it does lack some important features for early Win98 gaming (such as Fog table emulation and support for paletted textures). That being said, it depends on what you are playing. I myself have a Radeon 9800 Pro, running with Catalyst 4.3, and I have yet to find a game (among the games that I like) that has issues.

The second best option in terms of performance (while being the BEST in terms of compatibility) would be a GeForce FX 5900 (I'm not even counting the 5950 Ultra versions, those bastards are WAY too expensive nowadays).
I have an FX 5900XT (which is usually cheaper), and it works very well with driver version 56.64, however you can also force it to run on version 45.23, which is one of the most stable/compatible drivers for Windows 98.

Garrett W wrote on 2020-04-28, 11:18:

I too think Win9X and DirectX 9 is a lost cause though. There are many reports even in these forums of people having stability issues when installing DX9 on their Win98 builds.

I have quite a few Win98 rigs running DirectX 9.0C, and never had an issue with them. DirectX 9.0 is even forcefully installed by the Audigy 2 ZS driver (which can be found on quite a few Retro98 PCs) 😀

Interesting info bloodem, good to know! However, just because you never ran into issues with DX9 in Win98, doesn't mean they don't exist. Here's a post from an old thread that I tend to agree with:

swaaye wrote on 2016-03-27, 04:17:

I typically run DirectX 7.0a because after lots of experimentation over the years I've found this version to be the last really stable choice. Anything beyond that and I see more frequent BSODs, especially with subsequent launches of 3D programs during a single session.

I tend to attribute those issues to other problems (which sometimes can even be hardware related), but who knows. All in all, as far as my experience goes, I never had issues with or without DirectX 9.0 (and whenever I experienced any type of instability, it turned out to be something else, completely unrelated to DirectX).
Of course, it's also true that I only install DirectX 9.0 where it's needed (for sure I will never install it on a Super Socket 7 PC, running a GeForce 2 MX/GTS/Pro, Voodoo 3, etc). I'm pretty sure that for such a configuration, there's a real possibility of having issues when installing DirectX 9.0 😀

Well, I just put my 9800 Pro back in my rig, to try it with the 3.7 drivers suggested in the post linked to by Srandista.

Pretty good they are too! But you have to have the D3D and OpenGL sliders over on the highest quality, or it becomes a blurry mess in a lot of games.
That's why I like my 9700 Pro, it just works, pretty much with any driver you care to throw at it.

But I agree, getting ones that are still alive is becoming difficult, 9800 Pro's too. The first thing I did was de-shim them and put on better coolers and ram sinks.

What do you mean by blurry mess? I don't have such an issue with the 9800 Pro (only tested drivers 4.3 / 6.2).
Image is extremely sharp and clear on VGA (I don't use DVI).

Garrett W wrote on 2020-04-28, 11:18:

Of the cards you mentioned, either the FX 5900 XT or Radeon 9800 Pro will fit the bill, the 9800 Pro is a faster card, especiall […]
Show full quote

Of the cards you mentioned, either the FX 5900 XT or Radeon 9800 Pro will fit the bill, the 9800 Pro is a faster card, especially in anything regarding Shader Model 2, however I have no experience with it under Win9x so I'm a little hesitant to recommend it. The FX 5900 XT can use 53.04 drivers and perhaps even 45.23 which is pretty nice for compatibility and stability. 45.23 seem to support the FX 5900 Ultra, so the XT should work although it may require some fiddling with the Device Manager.
I too think Win9X and DirectX 9 is a lost cause though. There are many reports even in these forums of people having stability issues when installing DX9 on their Win98 builds. Not to mention, games such as Half-Life 2, Far Cry and Halo will choke really badly on that Pentium 4 2.5GHz with a measly 400MHz FSB and what I suspect may be SDRAM on that board? Totally fine if you want to experiment however, I love to install and try games on hardware that has no business playing them, so there's that 😀.

By the way, Win98 supports up to 512MB RAM officially and after that begins to cause issues. I had a system with 1GB dual-booting Win98/XP, pretty similar to yours in fact, Northwood 3.2, FX5900XT, Audigy1, and even though Win98 seemed fine, weird hangs and BSODs started to pop up. All of them went away as soon as I installed R.Loew's memory patch which you can find below:
https://archive.org/details/PATCHMEM

Thanks for the info, I ended up removing some RAM sticking to the native 512MB.
I'm thinking a 9800 Radeon pro will be the best card for this PC.
I will also checkout the RAM patch as well, I can always give it a go

Odd question, has anyone managed to play GTA Vice City on these CPU's under Windows 98/ME?
The CPU is being worked at 100% and stuttering really badly. Win2k is fine.
I've tested a Geforce 3 TI as well as a bunch of others. Most of everything else I play is fine.

Vice City is definitely an XP era game, so I for one avoid playing such games on Win 98.
By the end of 2002, nobody was thinking of Windows 98 anymore. So, clearly, all the development/QA work went in making this game run best on XP 😀

bloodem wrote on 2020-05-11, 17:36:

Vice City is definitely an XP era game, so I for one avoid playing such games on Win 98.
By the end of 2002, nobody was thinking of Windows 98 anymore. So, clearly, all the development/QA work went in making this game run best on XP 😀

Yes it most definitely is, I have the same issues with GTA 3 as well, it's like the optimisation for that OS and CPU combo isn't a thing.
I have used a 1.4ghz P4 in the past without issues, so perhaps that combo will be the issue

When GTA3 came out I played it originally on a P3 700, Windows ME, was under spec but the game ran, just had to keep the settings down. As for the Dx9 I normally install it on a patched and updated windows 98se seem to have less issues with an updated DirectX, just my experience not had any negative impact or stability issues because of it over a range of hardware(that's not to say others have a difference experience) But they're totally XP era games.

9800pro would be my pick from the cards listed by OP.

Played both GTA3 and VC on my P2 400 GF2MX running Win9x
GTA3 was playable, not smooth but you learnt to deal with the lag
VC was really pushing it but I was young and thats all I had

Nostalgia hasn't hit me hard enough to want to go and relive that setup yet