KIng Mustard wrote on 2024-07-05, 19:54:

I am going to build my first retro machine to run 9x programs (as well as Windows 3.x programs within Windows 98SE). […]
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I am going to build my first retro machine to run 9x programs (as well as Windows 3.x programs within Windows 98SE).

So far, I have decided on:

• DFI CS62-TC motherboard (as it has Tualatin support out of the box and supports AGP)
• Pentium III 1266S "Tualatin" CPU (the 1333, 1400 and 1400S are too expensive)

When it comes to the GPU, I believe the latest NVIDIA drivers officially released for Windows 98SE are the 81.98 drivers from Dec 2005, which support up to the GeForce 6800 series (released Jun 2004)

However, this post from @BushLin suggests the 45.23 drivers from Aug 2003 are the 'gold standard' for Windows 98, though surely they would limit my GPU options up to to GeForce4 Ti4200 (released Apr 2002) / GeForce FX 5900 (released May 2003).

Which drivers do you suggest?

Or do you suggest I simply go for an ATI Radeon 9800-series GPU instead?

I would say the nVidia driver package to recommend depends entirely on the card you choose. Unfortunately, the overall optimization for these seems to have leaned towards the later hardware so users of older cards would see some issues crop up and performance drop as the version number went up. I distinctly remember this happening on my P2 450 and TNT2 card back in the day. I originally just installed "what ever" nVidia driver I could find off a computer magazine CD, just to get testing going.

I later reinstalled Windows, and downloaded what were then the latest and greatest drivers for optimum performance. I was shocked that the system saw a clear drop in performance for my favorite games, especially at higher res and 32-bit color. I didn't have to use a FPS counter, I could see the difference with my own eyes under certain conditions. I eventually tracked this down to the display driver - and have been weary of "newer is always better" since.

leonardo wrote on 2024-07-05, 22:22:

KIng Mustard wrote on 2024-07-05, 19:54:

I am going to build my first retro machine to run 9x programs (as well as Windows 3.x programs within Windows 98SE). […]
Show full quote

I am going to build my first retro machine to run 9x programs (as well as Windows 3.x programs within Windows 98SE).

So far, I have decided on:

• DFI CS62-TC motherboard (as it has Tualatin support out of the box and supports AGP)
• Pentium III 1266S "Tualatin" CPU (the 1333, 1400 and 1400S are too expensive)

When it comes to the GPU, I believe the latest NVIDIA drivers officially released for Windows 98SE are the 81.98 drivers from Dec 2005, which support up to the GeForce 6800 series (released Jun 2004)

However, this post from @BushLin suggests the 45.23 drivers from Aug 2003 are the 'gold standard' for Windows 98, though surely they would limit my GPU options up to to GeForce4 Ti4200 (released Apr 2002) / GeForce FX 5900 (released May 2003).

Which drivers do you suggest?

Or do you suggest I simply go for an ATI Radeon 9800-series GPU instead?

I would say the nVidia driver package to recommend depends entirely on the card you choose. Unfortunately, the overall optimization for these seems to have leaned towards the later hardware so users of older cards would see some issues crop up and performance drop as the version number went up. I distinctly remember this happening on my P2 450 and TNT2 card back in the day. I originally just installed "what ever" nVidia driver I could find off a computer magazine CD, just to get testing going.

I later reinstalled Windows, and downloaded what were then the latest and greatest drivers for optimum performance. I was shocked that the system saw a clear drop in performance for my favorite games, especially at higher res and 32-bit color. I didn't have to use a FPS counter, I could see the difference with my own eyes under certain conditions. I eventually tracked this down to the display driver - and have been weary of "newer is always better" since.

Sounds like I will need to post some benchmarks of various driver releases at some point!

KIng Mustard wrote on 2024-07-05, 22:24:

Sounds like I will need to post some benchmarks of various driver releases at some point!

I'm sure people here would thank you for it. If I may be so bold, post results for some actual period games rather than just the 3Dmark score. Those tend to not tell the entire story, I've learned.

Anyway, if it makes a difference - I'm on Detonator 3.68/DX7 for my TNT2, and Detonator 21.83/DX8 for my GF3 Ti200. Don't know if another driver would be faster for the GF3, but all my games run and none are really bottlenecked so my curiosity for trying different drivers sort of waned. 😁

with that setup, i would just go for an affordable ti4200 and call it a day. it's already almost a year newer than the CPU. with the old driver it's probably the best you can hope for in terms of compatibility for older games. in my experience, late 2002 games like NFS HP2 and ut2003 with full settings are already quite CPU-limited on a p3 1100/100 and a better GPU wouldn't help. the 1266s will be a little faster but not exactly a world faster. you may want to look up how tualatin actually performs in newer games.

you can put in a 9800 if you want of course, but i don't see the point. that card would be better off on a faster platform with XP.

The most important thing with GPUs for Windows 9x is avoiding GeForce 6 and 7 cards.
Drivers are one thing, missing obscure features like table fog and paletted textures are other thing but biggest issue of these cards is that they don't do proper 16-bit dithering.
GF6/7 does dithering only of opaque polygons - throw anything transparent and it will render without dithering. Makes 16bpp completely unsusable in many games. Some especially very old games that used alpha blending sparingly might look reasonably ok with only occasional banding. In this sense GF6/7 is better than GF8 but far from being ideal or even adequate for early D3D/OGL games.

This is not only relevant for very old 16bpp-only games but even newer games because a lots of these do just look better at 16-bit. It is in the way texture texels visually blend in 16-bit mode versus 32-bit and often games just seems to look very different, like have slightly different lighting or something. Some games also just run much better at 16-bit even on cards which actually always render at 32-bit like Radeons do On the other hand GeForce cards up to FX benefit greatly from using 16-bit and at times its like you can increase resolution a notch or two or increase AA just because you render at 16-bit. It is actually a very nice side-effect of what for me became not "ah goddammit game don't support 32-bit color!!!" but I actually often prefer 16-bit + dithering and deliberately choose it. I just like how it looks and especially at lower resolutions like 640x480 or 800x600 with tons of AA (preferably SSAA that also does the same thing as AF to textures making resulting "AF level" being much higher than 8x on Nvidia cards!) dithering makes games with low resolution filtered textures look less soap-like. Heck, in some sense I like to even disable 22bit filter on 3dfx cards to get this pseudo-detail-texture effect.

Anyways, where it comes to Radeons they do have nicer 16-bit. Performance don't really benefit from using it other than some games (e.g. GTA San Andreas) just use much more CPU time for 32-bit Z-buffer processing than 16-bit). AA and AF is like on GF6/7 - in fact Nvidia just copied ATi's tricks verbatim. Radeons also don't support table fog in Win9x but you do get support for it in Win2K/XP so it is at least possible to dual-boot XP and run games which need table for which can run on XP that way. AA and AF looks better on Radeons. AA because ATi tweaked points from which they sample near-edges samples that gives better smoother results comparable to higher AA. AF is just because 16x AF is available but also ATi AF has generally slightly higher quality.

GPUs I recommend:
- FX5900XT - still somewhat available and prices don't hurt your walled and can be OCd, especially if you edit voltages in the card's rom. Much faster than GF4Ti and especially when using AA and AF. Use driver 45.23 so still quite good when it comes to Nvidia drivers.
- 4Ti 4200 - if you can find one that doesn't cost fortune... best non-AGP8x version as if you get card for ability to install older drivers you might just as well go for the one which supports older drivers even if slightly slower due to less bus bandwidth.
- Radeon 9700/9800 - cards from ATi's golden era...
- Radeon x800 - cards from past ATi's golden era that most people just ignored because everyone jumped DX9c/SM3.0 bandwagon despite Radeons being faster and cheaper and SM3.0 being for few years unused and is some instances some effects looking better without SM3.0 (like shadows in FarCry being smoother and such). Obviously what interest us today is these cards are much better for Win9x and older games in general. Also there is as far as I know no reason to get R3xx card over R4xx card for Win9x. ATi's drivers 6.2 "just work". Might be wrong on that but generally consensus seems to be that ATi drivers follow trend newer==better. Not sure about AGP compatibility but it looks like your motherboard should support all AGP cards so you should be good to go.

BTW. I would also recommend getting at least one GeForce 2 card. Can be MX400 or something like that to make it cheap purchase. It is just to have something that can use very old drivers to act as a reference in case of "is it Nvidia thing or driver thing or just not-3dfx thing?". Also GF2 cards still had texel alignment adjustment which some games need. For similar reason I generally recommend getting both FX and Radeon R300/R400 cards at once - just to cover all fronts. And of course for all retro-win9x systems that don't already use 3dfx as main GPU I recommend throwing Voodoo2, preferably 12MB to be true reference how game was intended to be played.

e8root wrote on 2024-07-07, 12:39:

AA and AF looks better on Radeons. AA because ATi tweaked points from which they sample near-edges samples that gives better smoother results comparable to higher AA. AF is just because 16x AF is available but also ATi AF has generally slightly higher quality.

Radeon X800 series cards also have ATi's early Temporal AA which looks very nice to me. Of course, it's best used in games which can hold a steady 60 FPS, because of the mandatory V-Sync. Most pre-2002 Win9x titles should qualify for this, even while running at 1600x1200. Also, using AA in some 16-bit only titles (e.g. Thief 2) seems to provide an even better blending result, at least to my eyes.

On topic, depending on which Nvidia GPU is used, stick with either 45.23 drivers (most GeForce FX cards) or 30.82 (early 4xAGP GeForce 4 cards). Those drivers offer a good balance between performance and compatibility.

KIng Mustard wrote on 2024-07-05, 19:54:

However, this post from @BushLin suggests the 45.23 drivers from Aug 2003 are the 'gold standard' for Windows 98, though surely they would limit my GPU options up to to GeForce4 Ti4200 (released Apr 2002) / GeForce FX 5900 (released May 2003).

It's the gold standard for Geforce 4 and the early version of Geforce FX cards (the later versions don't support it, for those it's 56.64). For earlier cards, they are often faster with older drivers than 45.23. There is a reason it's endorsed by the retro community. 45.23 is in general the fastest and most compatible for these cards.

RandomStranger wrote on 2024-07-07, 17:51:

It's the gold standard for Geforce 4 and the early version of Geforce FX cards (the later versions don't support it, for those it's 56.64). For earlier cards, they are often faster with older drivers than 45.23. There is a reason it's endorsed by the retro community. 45.23 is in general the fastest and most compatible for these cards.

I was able to use 45.23 with 5900ZT by using RivaTuner's NVStrap so all NV35 cards should be easily supported by 45.23
The issue is with more readily available FX5700 cards as those were released at later date and those cards will need newer drivers. I think 52.xx are the earliest supported drivers.

If going below FX5900 I think good option might be FX5600 - those are still readily available and unlike GF4Ti not too expensive. Those cards will work with 43.45. Some models might need tinkering with .inf files or NVStrap driver to change id's to normal FX5600. Performance-wise FX5600 are usually somewhat slower than GeForce 4Ti. Unless game heavily uses multi-texturing then lack of second TMU per ROP makes quite a big difference in GF4Ti favor. Still these cards should be pretty ok, especially for the price and if you overclock one.

e8root wrote on 2024-07-07, 21:00:

The issue is with more readily available FX5700 cards as those were released at later date and those cards will need newer drivers. I think 52.xx are the earliest supported drivers.

53.04 for W98 I think, but for that card 56.64 is the fastest and most compatible driver. Starting from 71.84 game compatibility goes down the toilet.

Newest driver that any FX card should possibly need is 61.xx series for GeForce PCX and Quadro FX1300 which uses the same NV38 chip. Even PCX 5750 which is NV39 chip is listed as officially supported by 61.77 driver.

Not sure if that is 'good driver' or already terrible 'none of your old windows 98 directx 5/6 games will run on it' driver but I guess it should still be still relatively ok.
I would really expect most issues on drivers that are much newer than GPU. If cards were still sold in shop when driver was released I guess it should still be ok for the card.

I did a little testing some years ago:
Re: GeForce FX driver testing on an Intel 440EX summary and report
I'm planning on doing something similar with a few more games on more cards (from Riva TNT up to FX5700) and platforms (3 or 4 CPU performance tier from PII-300 to P4-3000).

The problem is, that's a lot of work and I'm the world's greatest procrastinator.

e8root wrote on 2024-07-07, 12:39:

GPUs I recommend:
- FX5900XT - still somewhat available and prices don't hurt your walled and can be OCd, especially if you edit voltages in the card's rom. Much faster than GF4Ti and especially when using AA and AF. Use driver 45.23 so still quite good when it comes to Nvidia drivers.
- 4Ti 4200 - if you can find one that doesn't cost fortune... best non-AGP8x version as if you get card for ability to install older drivers you might just as well go for the one which supports older drivers even if slightly slower due to less bus bandwidth.

well, that's an interesting claim if i have seen one. 5900xt more available and affordable than ti4200? the former is a high-end model of a series that clearly wasn't so well regarded, while the latter was a popular midrange card that was very much present in OEM builds. press X to doubt. by the way, 45.23 that everybody swears by here works on the 8x card too, it's almost a year newer than the ti4200 8x.

i think ti4200 is still cheaper and more common than even fx5600 (that apart from all the 5200s was clearly the only part that was actually sold in any real volume). there are more crappy versions of the 5700 around than of the real thing, too.

auron wrote on 2024-07-08, 19:10:

well, that's an interesting claim if i have seen one. 5900xt more available and affordable than ti4200? the former is a high-end model of a series that clearly wasn't so well regarded, while the latter was a popular midrange card that was very much present in OEM builds. press X to doubt. by the way, 45.23 that everybody swears by here works on the 8x card too, it's almost a year newer than the ti4200 8x.

I checked the prices again and yeah, 4200 AGP8x are actually pretty plentiful these days compared to FX5900XT. At least at 64MB models.
FX5600 are somewhat cheaper at 128MB than 64MB Ti4200 ... though really Ti4200 @ 64MB with an ability to install older drivers and two TMU per pixel pipe makes much more sense than FX5600 @ 128MB

Driver-wise 43.45 has Ti4200 AGP8x entry and I would recommend this driver for this card. At least back in the day I always used this driver for GF3Ti200 and then Ti4200 and didn't have any issues. Then again I didn't try very old games. It was always about the present in the past 😉

I checked earliest entry for AGP 8x version of 4200 in drivers and earliest driver with Ti4200 AGP 8x support are ~31.40 and earliest for non-AGP8x driver is ~29.42. Not sure if there is any reason to go that old and if AGP8x version needing slightly newer drivers would be any limitation and cause for concern for very old games. I think the bigger concern in this case would be not to install DirectX 9 for old <DX7 games and stick with at most DirectX 8 install as there are apparently some issues with DX9 for earliest D3D games.

Memory-wise I had 128MB even on GeForce 3 Ti200 and never really had either GF3 or GF4Ti card with 64MB so its hard to say how much memory such card can possibly need. Definitely GF3 didn't need 128MB - the card was too slow to use higher resolutions in more demanding games and AF was brutal on this card. Enabling 8xAF was akin to enabling full blown 4xMSAA. AF got much cheaper on 4Ti and even cheaper on FX cards. Where it comes to frame buffer memory isage 1600x1200 32-bit with double buffering and 24-bit Z-Buffer needs about 20MB and 28MB with tripple buffering. It leaves more than 32MB for textures. Even assuming AF @ 8x uses more texture memory having just 64MB on Ti4200 should be enough for any game that was supposed to run fine on 32MB card and most of early games ran great on Voodoo3. Heck, Voodoo2 with its at most 8MB texture memory was usually enough so yeah, 64MB should be plenty enough.

ut03/04 should be able to take advantage of 128 mb, at highest settings. i've not tested this myself yet, but epic mentioned this as well: https://docs.unrealengine.com/udk/Two/TweakGuideUT2003.html the data they gave out in these kinds of pieces was usually pretty realistic. maybe also some late games that still run on these cards, like need for speed most wanted. also, doom3 had a setting that required 512 MB VRAM if i recall so you should definitely see some differences between 64 and 128 meg cards in that game. it should run feature complete on gf4ti but will be performance limited to lower resolutions so the question is how much you'd even notice of a higher texture quality setting.

and yeah, i agree that a ti4200 is probably overall preferable over an fx5600 unless running AA is an absolute requirement. 5600's main advantage is more widespread DVI support. there was also the 5600 ultra which is a little step up, but that seems so rare that it's completely irrelevant, leaving only the 9600s as an alternative if you want something from that generation. 5700 LE/VE are clocked so low that they probably fall even below a 5600, unless one would be willing to OC them. they even made 64-bit memory versions of those things if you can believe that...