i'd say the Radeon. I had bad BSOD experiences with the Geforce family on 9x (particularily when it doesn't even set the video mode properly to display a standard text-mode bsod, leading me to a permanent black screen)

6800 is the faster one. I don't think there will be visible differences in sharpness unless you buy a really no name or damaged card. I personally use ATI 9800 Pro while my brother the 6800 and there are much more issues with nVidia and older games than with the ATI - but we run them with Windows XP.

Thanks for your suggestion.

Do you happen to know roughly how much faster or slower these two cards are, if you compared them side-by-side to each other?

Thanks.

well for one thing, a 6800 is an entire generation ahead - an equivelant would be radeon x600-850. They also have massive heat issues.
Nvidia doesn't really have an equivelant card for the 9800 because their own GeforceFX series, which was supposed to be that card's competitor, was slower than their own Geforce2 at a lot of things. I mean 50fps in Quake3 in 16bit color 800x600? Come on this was supposed to be 3 generations ahead of Geforce2!!

Hehe, GL1zdA you were so fast in answering, that I didn't see your reply until after I posted mine! 🤣

It's very interesting that the nVidia card has more problems than the ATI card. I am beginning to favour the idea of getting an ATI card!

I am currently testing an ATI 9250 (which I really like), and also an nVidia 5200 FX (which I haven't tested enough to make a firm opinion about.)

leileilol wrote:

well for one thing, a 6800 is an entire generation ahead - an equivelant would be radeon x600-850. They also have massive heat issues.
Nvidia doesn't really have an equivelant card for the 9800 because their own GeforceFX series, which was supposed to be that card's competitor, was slower than their own Geforce2 at a lot of things. I mean 50fps in Quake3 in 16bit color 800x600? Come on this was supposed to be 3 generations ahead of Geforce2!!

Oh wow! I am currently testing a GeForceFX 5200. I must try and get some proper benchmark test results done on it, just to see how, um, slow it is!

However, the GeForceFX 5200 card is going to be for my "DOS/Win 95" box, so I am not too worried about it's slow performance.

a 6800 should be about twice a 9800 as for problems they are about the same :ie very rare
ive owned both cards went from a 9800pro to a 6800gt

ps: the 6800 does not have massive heat problems

retro games 100 wrote:

However, the GeForceFX 5200 card is going to be for my "DOS/Win 95" box, so I am not too worried about it's slow performance.

It's not just the performance you should be worrying about. Crappy VESA support plays a factor, too

leileilol wrote:

It's not just the performance you should be worrying about. Crappy VESA support plays a factor, too

Oh dear. I really need good VESA support from the XFX / nVidia GeForce FX 5200 card. I understand that the nVidia 5950 has very good VESA support. What I don't understand is that both these cards come from the same family (I think) - that is, they are both GeForce 5 cards. So, how come one has bad VESA support, and the other has good VESA support?

All cards have VESA issues. It's just that DOS game programmers worked around some and not others. 😀

I've found GFFX to be pretty good. Although, for Terra Nova, I had to use a Voodoo Banshee TSR to fix palette corruption, believe it or not. The GeForce cards are better than the Radeon cards for VESA, in my experience.

If you really, really want the most likely to be compatible card then you have to use something like S3 Trio, S3 Virge, or maybe even Tseng ET4000. S3 chips were hugely popular during the peak DOS years and, as such, got lots of attention from DOS game devs. Most of the S3 cards seem to have VESA 1.2, but there is an official VESA 2.0 TSR out there and a tweaker called S3SpeedUp (S3SpdUp). Of course, Scitech UNIVBE works with them too but I've found that can cause issues.

Thanks very much for all that info.

Re: S3 graphics cards, I got a Diamond Multimedia Stealth 3D 2000 Pro 4mb PCI card. Running DOS games, it seems very fast. I think it's a good card for old DOS games.

I was wondering if I should also consider getting either an ATI Rage card, or an nVidia TNT card?

I have got a Matrox G2+ (G200) card, which I like a lot.

FOR YOUR OWN SAKE PRETEND THAT ATI RAGE DOESN'T EXIST

S3 cards are simply the most DOS game compatible choice. Matrox, ATI, and NVIDIA cards will cause you problems in some games.

And yes, leileilol's suggestion is a good one. Rage/II/II+/II+DVD/Pro/etc is just a Mach 64 with some crappy 3D tacked on anyway (excepting Rage 128's decent 3D). Mach 64 was never the DOS gamer's choice.

BTW, did you know that Radeon was almost called Rage 6?

swaaye wrote:

Mach 64 was never the DOS gamer's choice.

I had a Mach 64 in my old DOS computer, and it never gave me any issues.

I agree with swaaye. S3 is very comfortable with Dos games and vice-versa. If you wanna use dos games, use s3.
If you wanna use W98 games, use ATI RADEON 9800 XT or PRO.
Games of W98SE era have almost been saturated with 3D technology, unlike nowadays where the fastest card is STILL not enough. So, either GeForce 6800 or Radeon 9800 will do for your W98 Gaming needs. Anything faster or resource hungry games, will rather be run on your WinXP or Vista based newer system.

Just to give you of my current latest configuration : 3 PCs : 1) Classic PC - Pentium 133 with 40MB of EDO RAM, SB AWE64 Gold, LAPC-I, S3 Trio 64V+ graphics card, Pentium MOBO - Baby AT form factor, with a turbo switch to run it slower for more older games. Running Dos 6.22, has Windows 3.1.
2) Windows 98 SE based mid PC : P4 2.8GHz with DDR1 400MHz 512MB RAM, MSI 848P Neo-V MOBO, ATI 9800 XT (AGP8x), Voodoo3 2000 PCI (for those 3Dfx only games), SB Audigy1.
3) Main PC - Q9300, 4GB PC28500, Geforce 9800GTX SLI, ASUS Striker II Formula, X-Fi Platinum, with XP Pro 32-bit in one hard disk, Vista Ultimate 64-bit in another, with 2TB+ HDD space.

Nothing beats a dedicated DOS machine.

swaaye wrote:

S3 cards are simply the most DOS game compatible choice. Matrox, ATI, and NVIDIA cards will cause you problems in some games.

And yes, leileilol's suggestion is a good one. Rage/II/II+/II+DVD/Pro/etc is just a Mach 64 with some crappy 3D tacked on anyway (excepting Rage 128's decent 3D). Mach 64 was never the DOS gamer's choice.

BTW, did you know that Radeon was almost called Rage 6?

I'm very glad I managed to get an S3-based gfx card the other day then! 😀 And I am going to steer clear of the Rage!

I really didn't know that Radeon was going to be called Rage 6! However, I do have a budget Radeon for my Win98 box (not for DOS usage), and I kinda like it!

Nice systems you got there Malik. I'm very interested in your mid-range PC. I have an old P4-based mobo lying about doing nothing, so I was thinking of building myself a "fast 98 box". I was thinking of this spec -

AGP - GeForce 6200 (or possibly a 6800 for faster performance)
PCI - Voodoo 5500
Sound PCI - Audigy 1
Sound PCI - Turtle Beach Santa Cruz

(I'm not sure what problems I'll encounter by having two PCI sound cards in the same box though.)

leileilol wrote:

FOR YOUR OWN SAKE PRETEND THAT ATI RAGE DOESN'T EXIST

OK!

If you need a "fast 98 box", I suggest you go for 6800 or 9800 since these will, imho, provide the best graphics for a Win9x based system. And you've got good sound cards there too.
And again, use the S3 Diamond Stealth card for dos games. That's a wonderful card for dos. I'm still looking for one. And yes, keep the Voodoo 5500 PCI card for those classic 3dfx only games.