I would say the card is defective if not for GL Quake seemingly working fine.

Make sure DirectX 9 is installed since the drivers are likely expecting that, even if games aren't (no idea if this is required, but it seems like a good idea).

Next, try running a driver cleaner to get rid of any video drivers on the system, then install an old-ish driver (something from before the X800 series was released, to keep it contemporary to the 9x00 series).

Download and install a high res texture pack for GLQuake, and run the game at the highest resolution possible. This may reveal whether it's a video memory related issue.

Only other thing I can think of is that AGP aperture size and AGP Fastwrites were problematic on some systems back in the day, so those settings may need tweaked in the BIOS or drivers.

If you have DOS running anyways, give it a shot to run R3MEMID and see if there are any memory faults.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2025-10-21, 03:59:

I would say the card is defective if not for GL Quake seemingly working fine. […]
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I would say the card is defective if not for GL Quake seemingly working fine.

Make sure DirectX 9 is installed since the drivers are likely expecting that, even if games aren't (no idea if this is required, but it seems like a good idea).

Next, try running a driver cleaner to get rid of any video drivers on the system, then install an old-ish driver (something from before the X800 series was released, to keep it contemporary to the 9x00 series).

Download and install a high res texture pack for GLQuake, and run the game at the highest resolution possible. This may reveal whether it's a video memory related issue.

Only other thing I can think of is that AGP aperture size and AGP Fastwrites were problematic on some systems back in the day, so those settings may need tweaked in the BIOS or drivers.

What should aperture and fastwrites be set at to avoid issues? Good call about DDU etc.

tehsiggi wrote on 2025-10-21, 04:12:

If you have DOS running anyways, give it a shot to run R3MEMID and see if there are any memory faults.

I wasn't familiar with this tool; will try.

ubertrout wrote on 2025-10-21, 04:17:

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2025-10-21, 03:59:

I would say the card is defective if not for GL Quake seemingly working fine. […]
Show full quote

I would say the card is defective if not for GL Quake seemingly working fine.

Make sure DirectX 9 is installed since the drivers are likely expecting that, even if games aren't (no idea if this is required, but it seems like a good idea).

Next, try running a driver cleaner to get rid of any video drivers on the system, then install an old-ish driver (something from before the X800 series was released, to keep it contemporary to the 9x00 series).

Download and install a high res texture pack for GLQuake, and run the game at the highest resolution possible. This may reveal whether it's a video memory related issue.

Only other thing I can think of is that AGP aperture size and AGP Fastwrites were problematic on some systems back in the day, so those settings may need tweaked in the BIOS or drivers.

What should aperture and fastwrites be set at to avoid issues? Good call about DDU etc.

Usually Fastwrites set to Off is the safer bet (while On can potentially improve performance). As far as AGP aperture goes, this isn't usually an issue, I just figured I'd throw it out there. Changing it from whatever it is (higher or lower) will either help or, more likely, do nothing at all, but at least you'll be able to rule out one of the few graphics related settings that exists outside of the OS and drivers.

Few other things - board is a MSI MS-6330. There's 256 MB of RAM and a Athlon 1700+ CPU. The whole thing except for the CPU was a recycling center find so it's possible it was dropped off for reasons other than being old, but there were no signs of retroish use.

One thing I did notice is that the CF card I'm using in the system in had a ATI MiniGL Driver for GLQuake already installed. If that's why GLQuake is working it implies it really could just be drivers potentially. Or undue optimism - I'll try the above stuff tonight.

9000 series Radeons with DDR2/gDDR2 are apparently known to develop bad vRAM, at least according to what I've been reading around here (Vogons.)
Of course Windows 98 / 9x being iffy could be it too (I never trust that OS when I see system issues.)

But before jumping to any conclusions, I would suggest to just put another HDD in the system and test everything with Windows XP SP3 and some era-appropriate ATI drivers. If that doesn't work, then start thinking about further troubleshooting the card.

So, the plot thickens. I removed all other display drivers and reinstalled and Direct3D really isn't happy. It won't work pretty much ever. I upgraded to 9.0c and it didn't help.

But here's the thing...OpenGL seems to work fine. I replaced the OpenGL file from the driver with the OpenGL driver in Quake 2 and Half-Life 1 and they both started without complaint and seemed to be running fine at 1024x768. Does this make sense to anyone?

Edit: if it helps running timedemo demo1 in GLQuake at 1024x768 got 222.3 fps.

Update: You'll be happy to know that I'm a idiot and hadn't properly installed the AGP drivers. Seems to be working now although Windows seems kind of unstable for what I hope is other reasons. Need to try some games.

Edit: So it all works now...but the video card seems to have problems. I don't know if it's bad cooling or memory what but it's crashing out fast of most things. This time though a 3D signal is working, including in Direct3D.

I'd test it in DOS but I can't get a PS/2 keyboard to work with this PC and the USB keyboard doesn't seem to work in DOS. I think I'm going to go back to the Radeon 9000 I had in there before. Less fun, but fine for Win98.

momaka wrote on 2025-10-21, 20:57:

9000 series Radeons with DDR2/gDDR2 are apparently known to develop bad vRAM, at least according to what I've been reading around here (Vogons.)
Of course Windows 98 / 9x being iffy could be it too (I never trust that OS when I see system issues.)

But before jumping to any conclusions, I would suggest to just put another HDD in the system and test everything with Windows XP SP3 and some era-appropriate ATI drivers. If that doesn't work, then start thinking about further troubleshooting the card.

It's not DDR2, it's most of the time plain DDR1 (sometimes called GDDR1) memory. Usually from Hynix or Samsung, up to 350MHz clock speeds. There were a few DDR2 (not GDDR2) variants of the 9550, 9600 and 9800 but they are pretty rare compared to the DDR1 variants.

Did you run R3MEMID to see if the memory is faulty?

Can you try it in some other PC?

tehsiggi wrote on Yesterday, 10:45:

momaka wrote on 2025-10-21, 20:57:

9000 series Radeons with DDR2/gDDR2 are apparently known to develop bad vRAM, at least according to what I've been reading around here (Vogons.)
Of course Windows 98 / 9x being iffy could be it too (I never trust that OS when I see system issues.)

But before jumping to any conclusions, I would suggest to just put another HDD in the system and test everything with Windows XP SP3 and some era-appropriate ATI drivers. If that doesn't work, then start thinking about further troubleshooting the card.

It's not DDR2, it's most of the time plain DDR1 (sometimes called GDDR1) memory. Usually from Hynix or Samsung, up to 350MHz clock speeds. There were a few DDR2 (not GDDR2) variants of the 9550, 9600 and 9800 but they are pretty rare compared to the DDR1 variants.

Did you run R3MEMID to see if the memory is faulty?

Getting R3MEMID to run was a struggle because the PC doesn't seem to recognize PS/2 keyboards and DOS doesn't want to work with my USB one (yes, I checked BIOS settings). I finally realized that I could put R3MEMID into dosstart.bat and to put dos4gw into the root directory. After a second this is what the screen showed. Pretty sure it's the memory.

What happens if you apply pressure to the memory ICs (front and back, use your thumb and indexfinger like a vice) during that? does the pattern change?
You can run r3memid "blind" and get the result logged.

Re: ATI 9700 Pro Broken

ux-3 wrote on Yesterday, 13:29:

Can you try it in some other PC?

I don't have another AGP 4/8x system. But it's pretty clearly memory.

tehsiggi wrote on Yesterday, 14:19:

What happens if you apply pressure to the memory ICs (front and back, use your thumb and indexfinger like a vice) during that? does the pattern change?
You can run r3memid "blind" and get the result logged.

Re: ATI 9700 Pro Broken

Um, that's more hands on than I'm used to getting in testing. I'll double check getting a log file first 😀

How long does r3memid take to run? The screen output is totally corrupted and when I rebooted after ten minutes or so the log file was blank.

Did you take the command from that thread? That shouldn't take more than 3-5 minutes at best if it's only running the first test. Furthermore, the pattern should change quite a lot, as the tests are executing.

tehsiggi wrote on Yesterday, 18:06:

Did you take the command from that thread? That shouldn't take more than 3-5 minutes at best if it's only running the first test. Furthermore, the pattern should change quite a lot, as the tests are executing.

Yes, and I gave it more time than that. The pattern at first was the attached, then the monitor went into standby, and when I came back it was garbled like in my previous post.

Hmm.. strange.. Can you try to wipe the complete log file and run it again? I can recall this happening to me as well once.