FX5500 AGP-LP with or without Fan is also available!

My machine has i845 onboard and I actually use my GF6200/256MB in that setup.
Next I will test the radeon 9600M-T64 I ordered recently if it's better than the gf6200.

Just going in blind without knowing the specs of these cards, I'd say the MX440 should be one of the top tier choice. The Radeon 9xxx series (including the FireGL) could also be good, but I don't know if they support all the features for early W9x games and that also stands for the GF6200, while the MX does. The rest are slower than the MX440 but not more compatible.

GeForce MX 440
Generally quite compatible with old stuff. Does not support EMBM though, so Expendable and Dungeon Keeper II won't work will all bells and whistles. Almost all LP variants have performance of MX420 due to 64-bit memory bus. MX4000 is always 64-bit.

GeForce FX5200
LP variants are horrible, just big NOPE. Compatible, but slow.

GeForce 6200
Fast (in some cases fastest card in the list), but has problems with old stuff and does not support paletted textures due to removed feature in driver.

Radeon 9200 256MB 128BIT and 9550/9600 (assuming they are also 128-bit)
Fast and compatible with old stuff. May have some problems here and there, but nothing serious. Some stuff can be adjusted via fanmade tweakers.

Interesting information. So does the 6200 support EMBM ? I'll have to test it. "pal-textures" could be an issue, but some games could be tweaked via command line (like MotoRacer". The good thing is the GF6200 has PixelShaders that are fast. I have to test a lot more to get the best card. Games look very good on those later cards, because I always force the driver to vsync and 16AF. One big downside of the GF6200 is the blurry image on lower resolutions. I think the GF440mx will do better. I have to test how good the shaders on the 440mx are if there are any built it. I also need some advice for some really beautiful games to test on my setup. Currently only Win98se is installed, but I will install Win2000 and Amithlon too.

Morrowind runs good with the GF6200, Chameleon-Demo (GF3) looks beautiful and runs great too.
Matrox Reef does not work on Win98se but on Win2000 with 3d analyze it should do.
Unreal2 looks great...we will see how good it will work on the ATI cards and the lower MX440.

Some other cards I have found yesterday

How can I check the features on the cards. There are mx440 and mx440se but it's not visible if the "se" are the low-profile ones.
Is there a tool that can read out the full specs on the card itself on win98se?

The FX5200 also supports EMBM, it's generally conspicuously absent on Geforce256/2/4MX.

FX5500 LP-AGP should do EMBM and is DX9 with PS2...perhaps a good alternative.
The Matrox above seems to have no win9x driver and is therefore out.

That's DVI only G450 and of course it has win9x drivers. With some overclocking, should be fast as TNT2 Ultra. Obviously slower than most cards here though, especially in OpenGL.

The FireGL-T2 looks like an interesting card. Basically a workstation version of the full EDIT: MOBILE 128bit 9600. As long as the drivers aren't funky and incompatible that looks like the "fastest" card other than the 6200.

AGP-LP Radeon 7000 <- Works with Windows 95 (DX7), GeForce/GeForce 2 MX competitor performance wise
AGP-LP Radeon 7500 <- Works with Windows 95 (DX7), comparable performance to GF2 GTS/Ultra
AGP-LP Radeon 9200 256MB 128BIT <- Requires Windows 98 (DX8/8.1), faster than GF2GTS, slower than GF3 series
AGP-LP Radeon 9550se <- Requires Windows 98 (DX9), performance wise trades blows with the FX5200/GeForce 4 MX/GF2 GTS/Ultra
AGP-LP Radeon 9600 le/se <- Requires Windows 98 (DX9), performance probably on par with a Radeon9200/GF3?
AGP-LP Radeon 9600M-T64 <- Requires Windows 98 (DX9), if it's a neutered 64-bit model, probably slower than Radeon9200/GF3
AGP-LP ATI FireGL-T2 <- Don't know about these
AGP-LP GeForce 440mx <- Works with Windows 95 (DX7), performance ~ GeForce 2 GTS/Ultra class
AGP-LP GeForce MX4000 <- Works with Windows 95 (DX7), somewhat faster than the MX440
AGP-LP GeForce FX5200 <- Works with Windows 95 (DX8), but better on 98 (DX9), performs like a GeForce 4 MX440/GF2 GTS
AGP-LP GeForce 6200 <- Works with Windows 95 (DX8?) but better on 98 (DX9), GF4Ti4200/Radeon 9600Pro weight class, if not a castrated version of the 6200

Here's some summary about performance, compatibility, and performance in relation to the other players.
I can't say I was a fan of the naming and numbering conventions ATi and nVidia adopted around this time.

Radeon 9200 was slower than a 9000, which was slower than a 8500.
The GeForce went the same way with MX being faster than a MX200 being faster than a MX400 etc.

Stupid, inconsistent naming. 😁 nVidia has better support for Windows 95 across the board, but ATi typically had more robust hardware level stuff (for example the Radeon 9600 Pro which traded blows with the GeForce 4 Ti-series had hardware level DirectX 9-support, whereas the GF4 Ti only had DX8.1)...

edit: Fixed some details I clearly got wrong the first time around.

leonardo wrote on 2021-08-09, 22:26:

AGP-LP GeForce FX5200 <- Works with Windows 95 (DX8), performs like a GeForce 4 Ti4200

Nope. Especially since almost certainly the LP variant is 64bit only (I don't know if 128bit LP exists). By my experience the 128bit variant trades blows with the 128bit MX440, though the MX is generally more consistent, and it's nowhere near the Ti4200. The Ti is roughly 50% faster. Maybe in lower resolutions where the bandwidth doesn't bottleneck the FX it gets closer.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2021-08-09, 21:32:

That's DVI only G450 and of course it has win9x drivers. With some overclocking, should be fast as TNT2 Ultra. Obviously slower than most cards here though, especially in OpenGL.

Interesting, thx!

https://web.archive.org/web/20050214102214/ht … g450/page10.asp

RandomStranger wrote on 2021-08-10, 05:34:

leonardo wrote on 2021-08-09, 22:26:

AGP-LP GeForce FX5200 <- Works with Windows 95 (DX8), performs like a GeForce 4 Ti4200

Nope. Especially since almost certainly the LP variant is 64bit only (I don't know if 128bit LP exists). By my experience the 128bit variant trades blows with the 128bit MX440, though the MX is generally more consistent, and it's nowhere near the Ti4200. The Ti is roughly 50% faster. Maybe in lower resolutions where the bandwidth doesn't bottleneck the FX it gets closer.

My bad. I was just writing stuff down from off the top of my head. Turns out I didn't remember how crappy the FX series really was. 😮

Anyway, the only thing the FX5200 has on the 440MX is that it has hardware DX9 support, shaders and newer OGL - all of which given how it performs is almost moot for retrogaming...

Don't buy 9600M-T64 because it's NOT a low-profile card. It looks like one but it's a lot higher then my other lp-cards and it defently does not fit in the case. I think phil is right as he mentioned lp fire-gl card. 🙁

Did some more testing. R9550 vs. 9600LE, basically identical chip/pipes/tmu's but R9600le runs 325Mhz for the Chip, R9550se runs the chip at 250Mhz. GF6200 is a great card, but I actually prefer 9600le because of EMBM that seems to be supported on R9600le.

leonardo wrote on 2021-08-11, 11:51:

My bad. I was just writing stuff down from off the top of my head. Turns out I didn't remember how crappy the FX series really was. 😮

Really depends on the model. Generally it has appealing features for W98 retro gaming, but most models had abysmal reference coolers which killed many cards and the entry level variants (FX 5200/5500) were crippled beyond reason. That's why if I ever recommend the FX it's only for W98 (pre-DX9) and only FX5600 or faster, preferably with a decent aftermarket cooler.

Had to be compatible to Amithlon and Win9x so I checked my newly arrived FX5200/128MB against the formerly Matrox G550 32MB.

G550 does not drive the 20" cinema-display regardless what cable I am using
FX5200 does drive the 20" cinema-display (on win8x only 1600x1024, native re is 1680x1050, on Win2k no problem, seems to be a win98 driver issue.

G550 has much better image quality, but performance is not so good, featureset also not so good, has EMBM, no Shaders, no TNL, only 32MB
FX5200 has issues on 3DM01, black lines in the EMBM test, DOT3 Test, performance is acceptable BUT! the textures on some games look very blurry. DS9, STVOY, unreal is fine in S3TC.

Why are the textures so blurry on FX5200, it's very obvious. I am not sure what to do, both cards are nice...

Edit.. I tested different nvidia drivers no one seems to fix these issues.