VOGONS


First post, by zapbuzz

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Hello I am thinking of using an NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS based PCI card for retro uses.
What I need to know is if it had a driver for windows 98SE or even Millennium.
This particular card has 512mb ram and whats real cool is that HDMI is onboard as well on this model and Cuda functionality. For a PCI card thats a handy legacy display compatibility adapter for my HD stuff. I was lucky to get it brand new dirt cheap.
If I can't get drivers for 98SE or millennium I will still use it on my XP rig since the AGP prices are really steep in my country and the only ones available are the untested variety which usually don't work or really poultry and this is good enough for that basic slow video encode with CUDA or general basic video acceleration workstation at less than untested price . I just wanted to try run the PCI on a PCIe based mobo with a 4.3 ghz cpu that I know PCIe wasn't popular for win 9x PCI would be ideal to run this card on that platform.
I don't mind a modded driver set if someone has it also am aware of Rudolph Loews patches.

Thanks for reading 😀

Last edited by zapbuzz on 2022-01-08, 18:36. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 1 of 3, by Meatball

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There are unofficial drivers here:
https://msfn.org/board/topic/97786-geforce-67 … win98me-by-zak/

I have read you might run into issues in some games with more than 256MB of VRAM, but I have no experience running any video card in Windows 9x with more than 256MB of VRAM (or any card later than a PCI Geforce6 6200 for Windows 9X).

Last edited by Snover on 2024-02-15, 21:34. Edited 2 times in total.
Reason: Restoring revision 136285

Reply 2 of 3, by zapbuzz

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Meatball wrote on 2022-01-08, 18:31:

There are unofficial drivers here:
https://msfn.org/board/topic/97786-geforce-67 … win98me-by-zak/

I have read you might run into issues in some games with more than 256MB of VRAM, but I have no experience running any video card in Windows 9x with more than 256MB of VRAM (or any card later than a PCI Geforce6 6200 for Windows 9X).

I grabbed their driver package I'm gonna do some testing prolly next weekend I hope it likes PCI I don't expect any CUDA support on 98SE or Millennium and the memory limitation of some games well thats ok because I also found in the past that can be treated by editing system configs after patching the memory support fron the top 1gb to 4gb and I will be sure to run some benchmarks if this works on my 2014 quas 4.3ghz system I mean DDR3 SATA3 have a gigabit LAN card and a supported soundcard for 9x so it'll be very interesting so I will talk again when its happening.
My explination about memory tweaking where gpu card has 512MB vram the system should have 1024mb base memory PLUS double the O.S. minimum base memory to run. This would be a struggle on a non tweaked 9x system due to memory limitations of the stock O.S.
My system I want to smart arse with has 32 GB DDR3 and it will be patched with Rudolph Loews memory patch to run it with SATA 3 and also install a 64bit ramdisk to run a swap space / temp directory in memory as well this will be an adventure because I am deliberately trying to see if that memory patch allows full utilisation of the 3.xgb and usesable to 32bit dos windows good enough to handle the GPU arpeture cache of this GPU in windows but i have to prove it to myself.
Can someone give me names of games that become unstable on video cards above 256mb VRAM so I can test them with this stuff thanks.

This is the card I am going to play with apparently the GPU's were poorly soldered acreoss all vendors offerings in those days but there are many tales online so I take it with a grain of salt the last gpu I got from that era was a nvidia PCIe 1st generation it lasted 5 years and became intermittant in operation but this is PCI and runs cooler in PCI mode (no fan needed just heatsink).

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/809345 … S.html/overview

If I can't give 98se or millennium something cool like HDMI then at least I have a dedicated windows xp dual p3 system thats got a basic shader sis 315 with 128mb vram even on PCI bus this card would most likely cream SiS so I'll even do benchmarks between the two as the SiS 315 runs on 2x AGP and the system had issues WITH dvd'S anyhow.

Reply 3 of 3, by agent_x007

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Just FYI : That "GF8 Win98 support" comes down to just adding IDs into .ini.
It cannot make card work properly in any meaningfull way.
Also, it can also very easily make your installation of Win98 unresponsive.
DO NOT install it, unless you are ready to lose Win98 installation.

There is R_Loew patch that fixes some thing with 512MB VRAM NV card.
Also, PCIe cards (like PCX/GF6) work fine under Win98.
GF7 require hacked/moded driver, but also work.

My explination about memory tweaking where gpu card has 512MB vram the system should have 1024mb base memory PLUS double the O.S. minimum base memory to run.

100% NOT how things work. Especially on PCIe.

The attachment 3DMark 2000 7900 GTX 12GB 2GHz.png is no longer available

There may be a seperate limit per process (for example 2GB), but that's for OS sanity as Win98 wasn't designed to work programs that require such "vast amounts of system memory".

PS. For HDMI support, just use DVI to HDMI passive adapter.
They do work pretty well on any NV DX9 class cards.
Only GF4 is a bit of mixed bag (depends on capture card or monitor).
As for Internet browsing... "https" requirement makes life of Win98 browsers kinda hard.
But that's something for you to explore 😉

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