The Ti4600 is very cool.

The MX440/460 is the best budget card.

kolderman wrote on 2021-09-01, 03:05:

The Ti4600 is very cool.

The MX440/460 is the best budget card.

Isn’t the MX4x0 based on the Geforce2, though?

ragefury32 wrote on 2021-09-01, 04:04:

kolderman wrote on 2021-09-01, 03:05:

The Ti4600 is very cool.

The MX440/460 is the best budget card.

Isn’t the MX4x0 based on the Geforce2, though?

Yes.

vorob wrote on 2021-08-30, 16:00:

I also prefer FX one, especially since FX gives good nglide support so we also cover glide games 😀

Don’t know any game that doesn’t work on FX but works on GF4

Regarding nGlide: I was under the impression this would run fine on a GF4 Ti card. Am I mistaken here? I have never used a glide wrapper before.

Doornkaat wrote on 2021-09-01, 06:32:

Regarding nGlide: I was under the impression this would run fine on a GF4 Ti card. Am I mistaken here? I have never used a glide wrapper before.

nGlide requires Dx9

You will need a DirectX 9 capable card to run nGlide.

I have both a FX 5900XT and a bit or a rarity, a Ti4280 64Mb (basically a Ti4200), and have run both with my P4 2.53Ghz, 2GB RAM, P4PE board, on 98SE and XP.

The 5900XT, which is the likely model you will find affordable, is fast, one of the best legacy DX8.1 cards outperforming the Ti4600. The issue though can be heat, they run warm to hot under load, and if you're fortunately to also be able to afford a really effective and compatible third party heatsink and fan, you will have the equivalent to average laptop cooling for that card, small fan, good spread but thin heatsinks, but cover the core and the memory chips. The fan on mine was not reliable, would sometimes need to be prodded to start, I didn't have anything spare, so re-pasted, reattached the heatsink, and added a large Pentium 4 fan haha, runs very cool, but is loud, but that does not bother me.

5900XT can overclock like a champ, but with it being that old, I leave it at stock. From memory, 3DMark 2001 was around 11700. It can use 45.23, which I installed manually, on 98SE, but for XP, this will not work, so I use 56.64.

Yes, forgot about any DX9 gaming, it's useless for this, Painkiller looks nice, runs awful, Halo is borderline as both default to the higher pixel shader (2.0). The most modern game I play is Max Payne 2, runs maxxed out (no pun intended) and at 1024x768, I don't use AA.

nGlide, I've ran with Clive Barker's Undying so far, all max, Glide at 1024x768, fine in doors most of the time, outside and large areas slows/chops slightly, not too bad, doesn't ruin the game, probably runs as well as it did on hardware back when it was released, but this is all to do with CPU speed. OC the P4 from 2.53 to 2.8, it improved performance, although not by much, probably need at least a 3Ghz P4 if you want it as smooth as possible, or preferably an A64 CPU - btw the latest NGlide installs and seems to work for me in 98SE.

Ti4200 - older, more prone to failure, supports the fabled 45.23 drivers in 98SE and XP, cheaper, more widely available, does clock well, for me anyway, beyond Ti4400 speeds, but I never OC legacy hardware full time. From memory 3DMark01 score was 9.5K, will play anything pre-DX9 comfortable, and surprisingly will play Painkiller and Halo well, but will use a legacy Pixel Shader, hence good performance.

DrLucienSanchez wrote on 2021-09-01, 08:32:

5900XT can overclock like a champ, but with it being that old, I leave it at stock. From memory, 3DMark 2001 was around 11700. It can use 45.23, which I installed manually, on 98SE, but for XP, this will not work, so I use 56.64.

Ti4200 - older, more prone to failure, supports the fabled 45.23 drivers in 98SE and XP, cheaper, more widely available, does clock well, for me anyway, beyond Ti4400 speeds, but I never OC legacy hardware full time. From memory 3DMark01 score was 9.5K, will play anything pre-DX9 comfortable, and surprisingly will play Painkiller and Halo well, but will use a legacy Pixel Shader, hence good performance.

These both seem low for a P4 2.53GHz. Last week I tested my Ti 4200 on stock clocks with a 2.4GHz P4 and it went over 11000 on 3DMark 2001. It scores roughly 9500 on a 1.26GHz Tualatin-S.

RandomStranger wrote on 2021-09-01, 09:41:

DrLucienSanchez wrote on 2021-09-01, 08:32:

5900XT can overclock like a champ, but with it being that old, I leave it at stock. From memory, 3DMark 2001 was around 11700. It can use 45.23, which I installed manually, on 98SE, but for XP, this will not work, so I use 56.64.

Ti4200 - older, more prone to failure, supports the fabled 45.23 drivers in 98SE and XP, cheaper, more widely available, does clock well, for me anyway, beyond Ti4400 speeds, but I never OC legacy hardware full time. From memory 3DMark01 score was 9.5K, will play anything pre-DX9 comfortable, and surprisingly will play Painkiller and Halo well, but will use a legacy Pixel Shader, hence good performance.

These both seem low for a P4 2.53GHz. Last week I tested my Ti 4200 on stock clocks with a 2.4GHz P4 and it went over 11000 on 3DMark 2001. It scores roughly 9500 on a 1.26GHz Tualatin-S.

Hmm, I've probably had about x5 installations of 98SE since I tested the Ti4280, hard drive swaps, attempted SSD installations. I do know that Max Payne 2 has issues with the voices syncing to mouth movement/speech, seemed a bit flaky, which have no completely gone this was on the Ti and the FX. Max Payne 1 used to have sound clipping, distorted sound effects, again this has remedied itself up to my last installation. 98SE always a bit hit and miss, seem to have it stable, no issues now, RAM and SATA patched etc. Probably some sort of software issue at the time, but I'm curious, so will run it again, when I've got some time, have the FX in a large server case, no side panel, pain in the backside to pull apart, but I shall see if 3Dmark improves and will update the thread- CPU definitely at 2.53, RAM at 333, PCI and AGP bus on default/auto. I run 3D Mark 01 at 1024x768 triple buffering, 32Bit no AA.

OK so hot off the presses, just tested it. 98SE, 45.23, stock clocks - 250/500 64mb, 3DMark01, almost broke 10K. I believe that XP may give me a slightly higher score from memory, but don't have an XP partition active at the moment. No issues with cooling, P4 correctly set to 2.53Ghz, RAM at 333, up-to-date BIOS, running on SATA 5400 2.5 drive, 2GB RAM, patches installed for this, no unofficial SP3, just USB drivers along with chipset et all. See images, card included prioer to new thermal paste, cooler over the top, but that's how I bought it off ebay, loud, but cooooool.

RandomStranger wrote on 2021-09-01, 07:48:

Doornkaat wrote on 2021-09-01, 06:32:

Regarding nGlide: I was under the impression this would run fine on a GF4 Ti card. Am I mistaken here? I have never used a glide wrapper before.

nGlide requires Dx9

You can install DX9 on a system with a GF4 Ti card.
But does nGlide need all Direct3D 9 features avaliable on the GPU?
Supposedly nGlide also doesn't run on Win9x but there are reports of people using nGlide on Win9x.
Likewise I think I have read (10+?) years ago that nGlide requires at least GF4 Ti cards (which is why I was under the impression it would work fine) while the website reads it needs a DX9 compatible card.
I would just try myself instead of asking stupid questions but I don't have a GF4 Ti here currently to do so. They're all in storage.

So what was the final verdict of the jury in the end? Which one is better for W98 (DX6-8) gaming? GF4 (4x00Ti, MX440, 460) or FX (56xx, 57xx, 59xx)?

Doornkaat wrote on 2021-09-01, 12:11:

You can install DX9 on a system with a GF4 Ti card. But does nGlide need all Direct3D 9 features avaliable on the GPU? Supposedl […]
Show full quote

RandomStranger wrote on 2021-09-01, 07:48:

Doornkaat wrote on 2021-09-01, 06:32:

Regarding nGlide: I was under the impression this would run fine on a GF4 Ti card. Am I mistaken here? I have never used a glide wrapper before.

nGlide requires Dx9

You can install DX9 on a system with a GF4 Ti card.
But does nGlide need all Direct3D 9 features avaliable on the GPU?
Supposedly nGlide also doesn't run on Win9x but there are reports of people using nGlide on Win9x.
Likewise I think I have read (10+?) years ago that nGlide requires at least GF4 Ti cards (which is why I was under the impression it would work fine) while the website reads it needs a DX9 compatible card.
I would just try myself instead of asking stupid questions but I don't have a GF4 Ti here currently to do so. They're all in storage.

That's one of the thing that is poorly understood. Installing the DX9 runtime libraries will not affect support for old hardware that doesn't support the entire DX9 featureset. There are programs that only uses the DX9 libraries and will run on a GF4 Ti (and older) such as the first Far Cry and Half-Life 2.

Well if you're sold on an FX for nGlide, then appear to be as confused as I am.

Ti4200 installed, 45.23 drivers, 98SE, DirectX9, NGlide 2.10, no other cards present, no PCI Voodoo etc, just the Ti4200. Launched Undying with nGlide, and it worked. No idea how, it did, if anyone can clarify this or give an explanation then that'll be good. Couldn't switch to 32bit colours, lamps on the game are glowing, which I believe on D3D doesn't work, so unless it's a convincing bug and I'm running D3D mode and somehow getting some benefits of Glide then I don't know what to say.

But regardless FX5900 is a recommendation from me overall.

*Edit* I thought I'd then test the MX440 128Mb AGP, launched, it then just a mess of graphical artifacts when selected Glide API , no discernible images, just a blue screen with blocks.

So looks like nGlide compatible with Geforce 4 Ti, as well as FX, latest nGlide, within 98SE. If anyone can also test as well, that would be interesting.

(below images taken via the Ti4200)

DrLucienSanchez wrote on 2021-09-01, 13:04:

Well if you're sold on an FX for nGlide, then appear to be as confused as I am. […]
Show full quote

Well if you're sold on an FX for nGlide, then appear to be as confused as I am.

Ti4200 installed, 45.23 drivers, 98SE, DirectX9, NGlide 2.10, no other cards present, no PCI Voodoo etc, just the Ti4200. Launched Undying with nGlide, and it worked. No idea how, it did, if anyone can clarify this or give an explanation then that'll be good. Couldn't switch to 32bit colours, lamps on the game are glowing, which I believe on D3D doesn't work, so unless it's a convincing bug and I'm running D3D mode and somehow getting some benefits of Glide then I don't know what to say.

But regardless FX5900 is a recommendation from me overall.

*Edit* I thought I'd then test the MX440 128Mb AGP, launched, it then just a mess of graphical artifacts when selected Glide API , no discernible images, just a blue screen with blocks.

So looks like nGlide compatible with Geforce 4 Ti, as well as FX, latest nGlide, within 98SE. If anyone can also test as well, that would be interesting.

(below images taken via the Ti4200)

Thanks for trying this! 😃👍
Of course we can't rule out that some games/effects don't work as intended on the GF4 Ti series but at least we now know there's some level of support.

This makes sense as even of the GeForce 4 MX could replicate some of the Glide API, without shaders it would fail at anything that isn't supported by the fixed function features of the hardware.

Ydee wrote on 2021-09-01, 12:52:

So what was the final verdict of the jury in the end? Which one is better for W98 (DX6-8) gaming? GF4 (4x00Ti, MX440, 460) or FX (56xx, 57xx, 59xx)?

Keep in mind that even if one card is measurably better than another in an ideal configuration, the "best" card for your system may work with a cheaper card depending on the rest of the hardware.

For example, when doing some very basic benchmarking on a 440EX chipset with AGP 2X and a Pentium 2, there was no difference between a GeForce 4 Ti 4200, GeForce FX 5200, and a GeForce FX 5950. So in the end I opted for the 5200 because it did everything that all of the other cards did but also provides DirectX 9.

I would like to play at a maximum resolution of 1280x1024, but more like 1024x768, as I was playing on 17" CRT at the time. Overkill for the most challenging W98 games I already have, Turion64 on nForce3 250 with GF 6800, but I need to decide which card to choose in daily rig for W98 gaming. There I have unlocked Tbred (500-2000 MHz), 512MB DDR, VIA KT400A and I don't know if there to choose the older GF4 Ti4200 or FX 5700(LE) that I have available to cover as much as possible all graphic effects in period games. Overhead won't be a problem here, so vote more FX or stay on the sure Ti?
I don't care about the DX9, I have another machine for these games.

Have you got onboard graphics on those two boards? Just thinking switching to gf2 or Via unichrome onboard might give more range downwards, '99 and prior.

What is this game?

Cheers,

Full DirectX 9.0 support is required for most accurate Glide emulation. Zeckensack wrapper readme sums it up nicely: http://www.zeckensack.de/glide/readme.htm

Kahenraz wrote on 2021-08-30, 22:50:

I'd love to see some benchmark comparisons with these games.

Some quick and dirty benchmarks if you are still interested. Unfortunately the FX series card I had was only a 5600, not the Ultra as I had originally thought.

Basic system specs:
Win98SE, DX8.1, Nvidia drivers 45.23
CPU: Pentium 4 (641) 3.2 GHz, Intel 865G Chipset
All tests at 1024x768, 32 bit colors
Vsync for OpenGL & Direct3D disabled via drivers with CoolBits tweak

3DMark 99:
Geforce 4 Ti 4400: 15714
Geforce FX 5600: 12375

3DMark 2000:
Geforce 4 Ti 4400: 14770
Geforce FX 5600: 8012 *** This is the weirdest one out the benchmarks. I ran it multiple times to be sure.

3DMark 2001:
Geforce 4 Ti 4400: 12903
Geforce FX 5600: 9242

Quake III Arena: Time Demo Four
Geforce 4 Ti 4400: 267.7 FPS
Geforce FX 5600: 197.2 FPS

No One Lives Forever 2: Speed run of the first level captured by FRAPS:
Geforce 4 Ti 4400: Avg 84 FPS, Min 61 FPS, Max 126 FPS
Geforce FX 5600: Avg 52 FPS, Min 23 FPS, Max 82 FPS *** This was a little better than I expected. I probably used a different driver when I first bought and tested this card with NOLF2.