I'm already familiar with Intel and VIA chipset drivers, but I just bought my first ALI board with a ALI M1541 (rev. G). What is the latest chipset/AGPset to use with this board for Windows 9x?
ALi and ULi Integrated Chipset Installer v2.20 Final is the latest.
ignore me.
Vogons Wiki - http://vogonswiki.com
Which exact motherboard did you get ? What OS are you going to run ?
Asus P5A is an Aladdin V board and they show aliagp v1.54e and aliide v3.40 as their last driver updates for Win9x and Win2k.....
Gigabyte GA-5AX shows aliagp v1.82 and newer unknown aliide version for Win9x...
just an observation.
Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. Stuff: https://archive.org/details/@horun
It's an Asus P5A. I'm using it with an AMD K6-2 500Mhz overclocked to 550Mhz. The AGP performance using a GeForce 2 MX 400 is very disappointing compared to a Pentium 3. The Unreal flyby demo lags quite a bit. I thought that this was a problem with the AGP drivers.
I ended up installing the AGP driver version 2.30 and tweaked the settings with AGP Utility, but the performance only improved slightly. The system is reporting that the AGP slot is running correctly at 2x, although I couldn't find a way to enable Fast Write.
I clocked the CPU down to 500Mhz and my 3DMark 99 score dropped by a relatively close percentage, so I think the issue is the CPU and not the GPU. The MX 400 is not a fast card, but it should be fast enough for smooth frames in Unreal.
Well Unreal original does say it will run on a Pentium but that is minimum requires. Game Debate recommended a P3 or Athlon MP and GeForce FX 5200 for smooth game play 😀
I remember Morrow Wind having video slowness even when I ran it on a system that 2-3x what the requirements were.
Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. Stuff: https://archive.org/details/@horun
Kahenraz wrote on 2022-03-20, 23:40:It's an Asus P5A. I'm using it with an AMD K6-2 500Mhz overclocked to 550Mhz. The AGP performance using a GeForce 2 MX 400 is very disappointing compared to a Pentium 3.
Thats where things go wrong. You are comparing a budget CPU from at the time a budget CPU brand to the best available CPU.
Philscomputerlab made a video about how underwhelming the K6-2 really is.
See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_DlaT4ni40
My goal was to analyze this platform and to try and identify what AGP cards would be optimal the paired with it. It's not uncommon to find that newer, faster cards result in an unplayable experience due to driver compatibility changes, as I demonstrated.
I wanted to see if it would be possible to play Unreal with smooth frame rates, and I was able to accomplish this with NVIDIA up through the GeForce 3. Anything that came after that was a laggy mess due to driver performance specifically on this platform. One very striking example of this would be how a GeForce 2 MX 400 can score about 3500 in 3DMark 99, but a GeForce FX 5900 could only manage 2400, and was still somewhat laggy in Unreal.
There is definitely a CPU bottleneck introduced with the later drivers, and it would be interesting to see if a newer chip with L2 cache and a fast enough card can "brute force" past the 12.41 driver performance barrier. I don't have one of these professors yet, but I hope to have one soon.
In my opinion, early 3D accelerators like the TNT2 are an excellent match for this platform, with a GeForce being available for some extra performance resulting from its T&L features, and even pixel shaders with a GeForce 3 if you want the absolute latest features. I found the GeForce 2 Ultra to be the fastest card that I tested at stock speeds, but only slightly behind the GeForce 3.
I was unable to find any pairing from ATI that could provide a playable experience in Unreal. I tried a Rage 128 Pro (128-bit), Radeon 7200, Radeon 9200, and a Radeon 9700 Pro, but performance was always very poor. Phil's benchmarks suggested better performance with Radeons than I experienced, but he was also using a K6-3+, which is why I think that there is still some performance to be had, and possibly even driver compatibility, with on-chip L2 cache.
I would be very interested to see comparable tests performed on a Gigabyte GA-5AX to compare with my ASUS P5A. The only relevant information I'm interested in is whether Unreal flyby demo is choppy or smooth and what score you can get in 3DMark 99. I would like to see comparisons on a TNT2 Pro and GeForce 2 MX 400 on driver version 12.41 and after.
See here for more information:
