Radeon 9700 works fine for DOS, but it's limited to VBE 2.0, so if you want change refresh rate in VESA modes you'll have to edit BIOS.

Radeon cards don't have good DOS compatibility. The Radeon 9700 should be kept out of any real use because of how prone to failure it is.

mockingbird wrote on 2025-08-05, 18:49:

Radeon cards don't have good DOS compatibility. The Radeon 9700 should be kept out of any real use because of how prone to failure it is.

The longevity issue is, AFAIK, mostly due to the stock cooling solution being insufficient and the shim issue. Theses can be addressed,if one has a still working card, to prevent death by overheating.

As for the DOS compatibility, it is indeed not great. One notable thing that does not work is the Second Reality demo by Future Crew.

mockingbird wrote on 2025-08-05, 18:49:

Radeon cards don't have good DOS compatibility. The Radeon 9700 should be kept out of any real use because of how prone to failure it is.

If you are not going to use it, then surely makes little difference if its alive or dead? 😀

For me, this is an early WinXP card though. Not DOS or 9x. Though it can be used for that purpose, with some compatability issues.

There are, of course, faster GPUs to use for XP and more compatible ones for 98 and DOS. This is the main reason I have not got my 9700 Pro in a build.

If I were the OP, assuming they are not interested in collecting, I would sell the working 9700 Pro, as they are worth quite a lot, and buy a cheaper more compatible card for 98/DOS.

darry wrote on 2025-08-05, 21:39:

The longevity issue is, AFAIK, mostly due to the stock cooling solution being insufficient and the shim issue. Theses can be addressed,if one has a still working card, to prevent death by overheating.

Zalman VF900-Cu is the third party cooler to get I believe. VF700-Cu is a slightly inferior alternative. I have both of these coolers. One for my Radeon 9700 pro and another for my Radeon 9800 Pro, but have not installed them yet.

mockingbird wrote on 2025-08-05, 18:49:

Radeon cards don't have good DOS compatibility. The Radeon 9700 should be kept out of any real use because of how prone to failure it is.

That is complete and total BS... 9700 was a sweet solid card in the ATI era Radeon line. And it certainly did not suffer from failure.

Radeon 9700 had a lot of RAM failures from Samsung BGA chips. DOS problems are exaggerated though.

As far as I'm aware my 9700's memory is also from Samsung... Makes me a bit worried that this card might be down to some failure early onto usage.
From what I hear around different forums, they say it's to do with cracked solder joints and exposure to lots of heat and cooling though.

Also, for the shim mod, I've researched more about it and found out that some newer revisions of the 9700 Pro actually have a non-flat surface. It seems ATI were already aware of this issue and began fixing it in newer versions of the card. I may have been VERY lucky to get one with that non-flat heatsink... (Images attached below) This probably still doesn't solve the memory problem unless I do reballing or something which I haven't even done before, but it surely does solve the annoying heatsink issue.

TYX8926 wrote on 2025-08-07, 04:31:

As far as I'm aware my 9700's memory is also from Samsung... Makes me a bit worried that this card might be down to some failure early onto usage.
From what I hear around different forums, they say it's to do with cracked solder joints and exposure to lots of heat and cooling though.

Also, for the shim mod, I've researched more about it and found out that some newer revisions of the 9700 Pro actually have a non-flat surface. It seems ATI were already aware of this issue and began fixing it in newer versions of the card. I may have been VERY lucky to get one with that non-flat heatsink... (Images attached below) This probably still doesn't solve the memory problem unless I do reballing or something which I haven't even done before, but it surely does solve the annoying heatsink issue.

Don't blindly reball / heat or reflow memory ICs. You might make things worse. Don't repair anything that's not broken.

I had cards where reflow and/or reball did not work. So you might put unnecessary stress on components. Rather get good airflow and if possible additional passive coolers for the memory.

TYX8926 wrote on 2025-08-07, 04:31:

As far as I'm aware my 9700's memory is also from Samsung... Makes me a bit worried that this card might be down to some failure early onto usage.
From what I hear around different forums, they say it's to do with cracked solder joints and exposure to lots of heat and cooling though.

Also, for the shim mod, I've researched more about it and found out that some newer revisions of the 9700 Pro actually have a non-flat surface. It seems ATI were already aware of this issue and began fixing it in newer versions of the card. I may have been VERY lucky to get one with that non-flat heatsink... (Images attached below) This probably still doesn't solve the memory problem unless I do reballing or something which I haven't even done before, but it surely does solve the annoying heatsink issue.

Be really careful about making assumption here. People are often too quick to assume it is BGA issue and treat reballing like a magic cure for all issues, when in reality BGA issues are not very common and reballing rarely makes sense at all.

Personally my opinion - if you care about the card and the component in question, like a RAM chip, is not obviously pressure sensitive (like starts working when you apply some pressure) reballing makes no sense at all. You are desoldering the component anyway, it is much better to just replace the chip instead of soldering it back without knowing for sure it is the chip itself causing issues. Even if it is pressure sensitive it is often better to swap it anyway if you have a known good chip, just to be safe. The board can only survive so many heating cycles...

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2025-08-07, 03:08:

DOS problems are exaggerated though.

Honestly i find most compatibility issues in vintage hardware to be severely exaggerated. Have to keep that in mind when picking things.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2025-08-07, 03:08:

Radeon 9700 had a lot of RAM failures from Samsung BGA chips. DOS problems are exaggerated though.

I'm sure lots of DOS stuff does work. I wonder why Second Reality does not, however.

I'm pretty sure my Dell OEM Radeon 9700 (non pro) has Infineon chips. It also had lower clocks (being a non pro), which might explain why it still works fine.
I've already removed its shim (and confirmed it still works). Next step is to source a better cooling solution for it.

Matchstick wrote on 2025-08-07, 02:27:

]
That is complete and total BS... 9700 was a sweet solid card in the ATI era Radeon line. And it certainly did not suffer from failure.

Why is it then that working ones are hard to find?

Have to admit though my 9700 Pro has been fine, and I have had it from new. Certainly its a very elegant card. Tiny cooling compared to the monstrous cooling apparatus on the nVidia FX line that it was up against.

Archer57 wrote on 2025-08-07, 05:17:

Be really careful about making assumption here. People are often too quick to assume it is BGA issue and treat reballing like a magic cure for all issues, when in reality BGA issues are not very common and reballing rarely makes sense at all.

Personally my opinion - if you care about the card and the component in question, like a RAM chip, is not obviously pressure sensitive (like starts working when you apply some pressure) reballing makes no sense at all. You are desoldering the component anyway, it is much better to just replace the chip instead of soldering it back without knowing for sure it is the chip itself causing issues. Even if it is pressure sensitive it is often better to swap it anyway if you have a known good chip, just to be safe. The board can only survive so many heating cycles...

tehsiggi wrote on 2025-08-07, 04:52:

Don't blindly reball / heat or reflow memory ICs. You might make things worse. Don't repair anything that's not broken.

I had cards where reflow and/or reball did not work. So you might put unnecessary stress on components. Rather get good airflow and if possible additional passive coolers for the memory.

I see... Thanks for the feedback. I think I misinterpreted "reballing" and thought it was just part of the chip replacement process. Anyway, I might as well swap those memory chips when time comes and when it fails then, though I need to learn how to deal with BGA-related issues in the first place.

TYX8926 wrote on 2025-08-07, 05:45:

I think I misinterpreted "reballing" and thought it was just part of the chip replacement process.

Which is not completely wrong, if you are replacing with used chips. What is usually meant by this word though is desoldering the chip and then soldering it back.

To do that BGA balls on the chip need to be restored (new chips come with balls from the factory), that's why it is called "reballing". Each time BGA chip is desoldered it has to happen to reuse it/solder it back.

The assumption is that the fault is caused by cracked solder joints/balls in the first place so simply doing that should fix it. Which often is not the case.

If you see artifacts with a 9700, try underclocking it.

Alright. A bit off the rail from where the talk went off, but I think it would be best to sell this Socket 939 motherboard I have with me due to poor Soundblaster card compatibility. I noticed some important posts here and here that say nForce chipsets don't support SB16 emulation or any kind of that sorts due to the fact that they use DMA which isn't supported. I will still keep the Radeon card though, and I'm gonna go look for a Pentium III motherboard instead.

That being said, has anyone tried pairing these Radeon cards with some other card like the S3 Virge? I was thinking of doing that but I don't have a sense of whether or not this is really a good point to tackle, and since I don't have that card with me, I can't test it to see if it works well.

Thanks for all the feedback, by the way.

TYX8926 wrote on 2025-08-10, 15:26:

That being said, has anyone tried pairing these Radeon cards with some other card like the S3 Virge? I was thinking of doing that but I don't have a sense of whether or not this is really a good point to tackle, and since I don't have that card with me, I can't test it to see if it works well.

I havent tried that. When you switch the active graphics card, are you also intending to switch the VGA cable from one card to the other? Sounds a bit of a pain if so. Though if your monitor has two inputs you might be able to have both connected.

RetroPCCupboard wrote on 2025-08-10, 15:33:

I havent tried that. When you switch the active graphics card, are you also intending to switch the VGA cable from one card to the other? Sounds a bit of a pain if so. Though if your monitor has two inputs you might be able to have both connected.

At the moment I'm looking for a suitable display I can use for this specific PC, but yeah, two inputs on a monitor is what I'm mainly looking for. The worst case scenario is essentially just what you said, switching VGA cables to the right graphics card.

For me the main question would be - is trying to use 2 videocards like this actually beneficial compared to using 2 separate systems?

It saves space, but having 2 separate systems makes things a lot easier in general, for example you do not have to bother about compromises between performance and compatibility...

Also if you want to combine everything into one system - why go that far from s939 all the way to P3? S462/S478 would seem like a reasonable compromise...

And yeah, that S939 board you have is quite interesting. May be not fit for specific task, but i was actually trying to find a good nforce3 s939 board and it turned out to be quite hard. May be worth keeping around...

Archer57 wrote on 2025-08-10, 23:54:

For me the main question would be - is trying to use 2 videocards like this actually beneficial compared to using 2 separate sys […]
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For me the main question would be - is trying to use 2 videocards like this actually beneficial compared to using 2 separate systems?

It saves space, but having 2 separate systems makes things a lot easier in general, for example you do not have to bother about compromises between performance and compatibility...

Also if you want to combine everything into one system - why go that far from s939 all the way to P3? S462/S478 would seem like a reasonable compromise...

And yeah, that S939 board you have is quite interesting. May be not fit for specific task, but i was actually trying to find a good nforce3 s939 board and it turned out to be quite hard. May be worth keeping around...

Second that. The problem here is that you're trying to do too much with one system. A period-correct (1998-2000) Windows 98SE system is usually great for DOS late. A massively OP Win98 system on WinXP hardware from at least 5 years later less so. Nothing wrong with choosing a system like that (I have a C2D AGP system for exactly that reason), but it's a poor match for the old stuff. Of course you can try to cherry-pick 2004-era components to get the basics working for DOS, but it will still be a compromise with subpar DOS compatibility, if only due to the CPU speed and the fact that a lot of the PCI DMA crutches still place restrictions that limit options (TSR drivers that require EMM386, for example).

Particularly as you say this is your first Win98 retro build, I'd suggest not trying to shoehorn too many requirements into one machine. Getting Win98SE to behave itself on non-period hardware is enough of a challenge for starters. If you want a Win98 system that can run any DOS game, look at a system with a Via C3 CPU around 800-1000MHz (as it can be clocked down to almost XT speeds) and at least one ISA slot for a proper ISA sound card. But don't expect it to run Quake 3 or Unreal Tournament acceptably, let alone the sort of stuff that an So939 CPU can handle.

But one step back: as already stated, VESA compatibility issues are frequently overstated. Only a small subset of DOS games even use SVGA and of them only an even smaller number use enough VESA features to frequently run into trouble with poor VESA implementations. What do you intend to play? Have you already tried it with the Radeon 9700 Pro and hit issues? Are you sure that the issues are related to VESA compatiblity and not say due to the very fast CPU?