Pretty sure it’s only the AGP variants of the 6800/7800/7900 that cost £$€£$€. The PCIe variants are around £30-60 here, even on eBay.

ebay search 6800 ultra. non-apple pcie range from 300-700$ not talking about lesser models. 7 series under win98 is too buggy. It's not really a consideration for a stable system in max compatibility.

GeForce 6800GS are dirt cheap. Especially Palit.

7 series under win98 is too buggy

They all are buggy, only original GeForce 6800 AGP cards are slightly better, due to access to earliest drivers.

Wasn't patch for shutdown issue in 81.98 driver released some time ago (for free) ?

all youre doing here is editing the inf and adding the hardware ID of the card. It's good that it fixed your specific problem, it allows a card that is supported by a driver, but the hardware id isn't listed there.

For example the 45.23 driver support FX series cards but only the 5200 is listed, you can go and add the ID for a 5900 a 5950 etc. Then the driver installs properly.

Youre not having to Force install anything like how I always see people post here about how they forced a 5900 to install. Its nonsense and it shows a total lack of understanding how things work.

Youre not doing anything here that actually fix the real problem and Id like to add on my 6800 GT OC I never had any shut down problem to begin with.

But it makes me wonder how many systems are affected by incorrect driver installs by forcing hardware instead of just editing the INF, and they have shut down issues but its not the same shut down issue its one they actually created.

thehinac wrote on 2022-11-26, 13:57:

ebay search 6800 ultra. non-apple pcie range from 300-700$ not talking about lesser models. 7 series under win98 is too buggy. It's not really a consideration for a stable system in max compatibility.

No stipulation of “Ultra” was made in the OP.

Plenty of NV40,42 and 45 available cheaply as Geforce 6800##. Sure Ultras are expensive and Ultra Extreme Edition are like rocking horse dung, but that wasn’t the point of the thread.

Quadro FX 3450 only has the pipeline geometry of the 6800 vanilla, GTO and GS anyway. You’d need Quadro FX 4400 to be equivalent for a 6800GT, Ultra or Ultra EE, and they aren’t $15 cards either.

paradigital wrote on 2022-11-26, 19:20:

You’d need Quadro FX 4400 to be equivalent for a 6800GT, Ultra or Ultra EE, and they aren’t $15 cards either.

Quadro FX 4400 = direct equivalent of GeForce 6800 Ultra 512. Slightly underclocked.
Quadro FX 3400 = GeForce 6800GT with 12 pixel pipes active. Same PCB, memory and everything. Can be unlocked, if you're lucky. Also can be flashed to use 1.4v as 6800 Ultra (can't recommend).
Quadro FX 1400 = Original GeForce 6800 PCIe with 128Mb DDR RAM and NV41 chip. Dirt-cheap and abundant.

The FX3450 is a 6800GS in disguise, same clock speeds of 425/1000 as a real PCIe 6800GS and it does compare well to the 6800GT in benchmarks, its got the same size and speed of ram, just a tad less raw fillrate. But you'd have to clock it beyond its limits to reach 6800 Ultra preformance

6800GS fillrate 12x425 = 5100
6800GT fillrate 16x350 = 5600
6800 Ultra fillrate 16x400 = 6400

Now a 6800GT can easily hit 400mhz core, never seen one that wouldn't but for the 6800GS/FX3450 to do so requires a 534mhz core, and while the NV42 core will overclock the limits without voltmods was around 450-475 or 5400-5700 in fill rate.

You can get a 6800GT equal, but the 6800GT will always be faster if overclocked, but you won't get the NV41 or NV42 to hit the same raw fillrate.

As for the stock 350/700 6800 those things are basically more power hungry 6600GT's in preformance, as the extra memory bandwidth doesn't come into play until 1600x1200 and in contemporary games niether card had the fillrate, though AGP 6800 Cards could sometimes unlock to 16pp, the PCI version is still the NV41 130nm chip so its hard limit is about 350-375mhz, I think the absolute latest ones made may have the NV42 that can do more, but you still have 700mhz DDR1.

Ideally look for a 6800XT with 256bit ram, they show up from time to time in an affordable price range, and while they are 8pp, they are often on the NV40 core for AGP as they where trying to get rid of them when the 6800XT released, it came out to dump NV40/NV41 cores right before 7600GS. That could be a good buy, as often they still have 128 or 256mb GDDR3 at 1ghz. Because the only other cards that used it where also out of production, and they had stockpiles of the stuff. Other cards that used it for Nvidia where 6800GT/Ultra/GS/6600GT all where EOL'd at this point, but the 6800XT was made to clear core and ram stock for the newer cards. Was a great buy new and like i said I still see them on ebay from time to time.

And you can flash them to a 6800 or 6800GT depending on how it unlocks or just add 6800XT to the INF file, its supported

Huh funny thread! Back in the days I used this tricks, but in the opposite way. Was a student with not that much money to spend and wanted a quadro for 3d modelling.
So I was searching for a pciex geforce 6800GT revision A1, which I then modded into a fully working quadro by changing the bios on the card. It was like 20 times cheaper... Now its the opposite 😅

To be fair, you don't need to mod Quadro cards. They work fine in games as is.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2022-12-04, 06:50:

To be fair, you don't need to mod Quadro cards. They work fine in games as is.

Unless you want to SLI, i found that out that the FX3450 requires an approved motherboard to SLI, I used Rivatuner to force device ID on both of mine to 6800GS and SLI worked

Irrelevant for Win9x. And well, irrelevant in general too.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2022-12-07, 01:48:

Irrelevant for Win9x. And well, irrelevant in general too.

Nah part of the fun of them is sli it was a feature most of us couldn't afford it's fun to play with it now