I installed a Voodoo 3 2000 PCI on a HP Z400 workstation next to an RTX 2080. Drivers work on Win3.1/Win95/Win98. Didn't test it on WinXP. 2D graphics work fine. But any moment I try to use 3D acceleration, apps hang or crash. I'm guessing there is something the card needs that the machine doesn't provide. But yeah, PCI card side-by-sids to a PCI-E card, and both work fine in their respective OSes (Win11 for RTX2080, DOS,Win3.1,Win95 for Voodoo3).

I was thinking of buying something like PCI Geforce FX 5500 for a haswell system that has the integrated Intel HD 4600 already and trying to install XP or Vista drivers to with 32bit windows 7 in it and get better compatibility with older games.

Nobody has any idea what are the chances to getting that to work? I would be buying that PCI card for just that purpose if it is something that can work.

You can install XPDM drivers on Windows 7, Windows 7 is last Windows OS to support them. Aero won't work but you can then use full screen NTVDM if you want.

DosFreak wrote on 2023-06-05, 00:32:

You can install XPDM drivers on Windows 7, Windows 7 is last Windows OS to support them. Aero won't work but you can then use full screen NTVDM if you want.

That is only for 32bit windows 7 though, right? If I understood correctly 64bit windows 7 requires drivers to be signed.
Also I read that compatibility is not perfect and not all drivers work. That is one reason why I was asking here if anyone has tried nvidia drivers or other gpu drivers.

There are ways to disable the driver signing or to mod the drivers so that they are signed if they weren't or the signature is invalid.
The number of people using XPDM drivers on Windows 7 has always been very low so don't expect many replies, you'll need to test for yourself.

I had exactly the same idea but with Windows XP and 98. Connect both cards to one monitor. So that FX 5500 would output the image when 98 starts but 750 Ti when it comes to XP. Is this feasible?

Yes, it is.
You will have to disable second card under each os (device manager), and use XP only one as "primary".
DO NOT install two NV drivers on the same OS.

agent_x007 wrote on 2023-06-13, 04:58:

Yes, it is.
You will have to disable second card under each os (device manager), and use XP only one as "primary".
DO NOT install two NV drivers on the same OS.

What if I used only XP and two cards? So I can't use both under XP using different drivers for each? In this configuration I can choose which gpu would run a particular game or not?

agent_x007 wrote on 2023-06-13, 04:58:

Yes, it is.
You will have to disable second card under each os (device manager), and use XP only one as "primary".
DO NOT install two NV drivers on the same OS.

What if you use the intel integrated gpu as the main one and only install nvidia XP drivers for the PCI card? Basically I am asking if the 2 GPUs are from different vendors so you would not need nvidia drivers for both.

nvidia drivers are very buggy on pci fx 5xxx serioes, especially the newer drivers (which you would need to run it on win7) so you should really keep yourself with xp or 9x at least

Geri wrote on 2023-06-13, 12:18:

nvidia drivers are very buggy on pci fx 5xxx serioes, especially the newer drivers (which you would need to run it on win7) so you should really keep yourself with xp or 9x at least

I am running software on the system that was made with QT 5.11 and that windows xp only works with QT up to version 5.6 so that is why I need windows 7 on it. Another option for support for older games would to try pci voodoo 3 2000 card and try if windows XP drivers for that would work in windows 7.

Baoran wrote on 2023-06-13, 11:34:

What if you use the intel integrated gpu as the main one and only install nvidia XP drivers for the PCI card? Basically I am asking if the 2 GPUs are from different vendors so you would not need nvidia drivers for both.

Should be fine with Intel + NV or ATI/AMD + NV, but I didn't tested such configuration.

ultra wrote on 2023-06-13, 05:30:

What if I used only XP and two cards? So I can't use both under XP using different drivers for each? In this configuration I can choose which gpu would run a particular game or not?

NV driver is simply dumb that way. It can't work with multiple versions of itself running concurrently.
In other words : Only 1 NV driver version can work on WinXP, so it needs to support ALL connected cards at the same time.

NV driver is simply dumb that way. It can't work with multiple versions of itself running concurrently.
In other words : Only 1 NV driver version can work on WinXP, so it needs to support ALL connected cards at the same time.

OK, so if the second card is AMD it should be fine?

Yes. However, like I mentioned in first post.
You only have to worry about this if you wanted to use both NV cards under XP at the same time (examples : NV FX card doing graphics under XP while GTX 750 Ti does PhysX; being lazy about disabling second card and XP trying to install incompatible driver for it [not sure how "VGA Compatible" only driver on one of the cards would work in this case])

In other words :
Disabling one of the NV cards under XP, makes swapping second card for AMD/ATI/Intel/Matrox(?) not necessary.

Baoran wrote on 2023-06-13, 12:45:

Geri wrote on 2023-06-13, 12:18:

nvidia drivers are very buggy on pci fx 5xxx serioes, especially the newer drivers (which you would need to run it on win7) so you should really keep yourself with xp or 9x at least

I am running software on the system that was made with QT 5.11 and that windows xp only works with QT up to version 5.6 so that is why I need windows 7 on it. Another option for support for older games would to try pci voodoo 3 2000 card and try if windows XP drivers for that would work in windows 7.

The issue is: every video card will only (properly) work for the era of software environment (os, games, etc) which it was designed for.
There are no general solutions exists.

You could use multiple video cards in the system, if you have multiple free slots. For example the fx5200 for windows, and some newer video card for win7.

You could just buy some lga775 or i7 motherboard that has pci-e and pci on it, and have both os installed.

ultra wrote on 2023-06-13, 00:14:

I had exactly the same idea but with Windows XP and 98. Connect both cards to one monitor. So that FX 5500 would output the image when 98 starts but 750 Ti when it comes to XP. Is this feasible?

Easy. I did this and it worked. It is selected in the FX5500 BIOS as the main one (For the needs of Windows 98), and it is not necessary to install the second driver. You can just turn it off. Windows XP starts and an alternative driver VBEMP NT is installed on the main card (FX5500), which, unlike the standard VGA, supports switching video cards. Then just go to the display properties and switch to 750 Ti. Windows XP will remember this setting and will always automatically switch to the 750 Ti on boot. Windows 98 will always have the FX 5500. Nothing needs to be switched anywhere else.

The only problem I haven't solved is howling the 750 Ti under Win98. The fan works at full speed and I didn’t figure out how to turn it off without installing the driver. Perhaps just not a good copy of the card caught. In any case, for sure it can be configured in the firmware and run it through RAMBIOS or flash it by setting the correct rotation speed. Everything is great in XP.

I have not had luck getting geforce fx 5500 pci card to work in 32bit windows 7 properly. I manually installed winxp driver to it and it shows picture on desktop but display updates quite slowly and in device manager it has been marked as not working and in properties it shows error code "device failed to start". I used the newest windows xp 32bit driver from nvidia site for geforce 5 fx series. If anyone has any ideas what else I could try let me know. It is a haswell system and it only has single pci slot and rest are pci express.

If you need the XPDM driver, try earlier versions for XP. In addition, try through the device manager item "Install an old device". If you need standard device performance, it's easier to install drivers from Windows Vista:
https://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/2/en-us/
Or earlier versions (From Guru3d.com).

DoZator wrote on 2023-06-20, 00:20:

If you need the XPDM driver, try earlier versions for XP. In addition, try through the device manager item "Install an old device". If you need standard device performance, it's easier to install drivers from Windows Vista:
https://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/2/en-us/
Or earlier versions (From Guru3d.com).

Thanks. That driver version worked and something like 3dmark01 runs fine on the FX card.
Is there any reason why 8bit paletted textures dont work though? I installed FF7 from the original CD and the configuration program shows that 8-bit paletted textures test failed. Could it have something to do with the driver version?