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Difficult Combinations: GPU for multibootinh Win98 and MacOS Snow Leopard

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First post, by volltollhier

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Hi guys!

So, i built a Haswell I7 4770 machine based around an Asus B85 motherboard. It runs XP, Win7,11, modern Linux and MacOS 10.64 Snow Leopard perfectly. Getting SL to run on this machine was hard - i can tell you. It took me a week until i got it booting onto desktop. And it took me two months until i got it perfectly stable without weirdo things happening out of nowhere.

For this i have two GPUs installed. A GTX980TI in the first PCI-E slot and a Radeon HD5770 in the second. MacOS will use the 5770 as primary GPU and will automatically deactivate the GTX980TI by script on bootup. So that's actually quite nice because i don't have to make Bios changes before booting any of the operating systems. In the other operating systems both GPUs are activated. Maybe in the future i will implement a switch that can cut the powerlines and let me switch between both GPUs before powering on.
I 3d printed a 5.25 inch "SSD bay" that lets me hotplug all boot drives. So it's just - pull XP out and plug MacOS in - then press power and that's it. If you're interested, i made this little video:https://cloud.orphaned-scanners.com/index.php … zTKLqTTFqsJQoff

The attachment Screenshot_20251026_142850_Gallery.jpg is no longer available

Also i am sharing the files for printing the multiboot SSD bay here: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:7022979

You may wonder why i have chosen that specific quite overkill hardware for building a "retro PC" and the answer is simple: it was what i had at hand after upgrading to a modern Ryzen in 2023.
Also i am not that much into gaming actually. I am using the computer to run old analog film scanners via SCSI or Firewire. Most of them need low level bare metal access. So no chance for VMs here. Also Snow Leopard was the last OS that had PowerPC compatibilty - very interesting for my use case.

<TLDR>
Obviously, both the GPUs are way too recent to have driver support in Win98. So i am thinking into two possible directions. Either i need to sacrifice MacOS OpenCL together with the HD5770 and get something older, like something in the X300-X850 range - which seem to be compatible to both, Snow Leopard and 98. But are they?
Or... occasionally - do we have something like "generic support" for 2D acceleration with modern GPUs like (i think it was called) VBE in Win3.11? The latter is a very long shot, i know. But i saw a few thing along my research, like cregfix and R. Lowe patches - or Win3.11 mouse drivers making USB mice work in 98. Maybe there is something i am missing.

Thanks for your help! And sorry for the long post. I always get carried away when talking about beloved projects.

Reply 1 of 6, by wierd_w

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Possibly a Geforce 7 series GPU, using the hacky driver found here?

Does anyone use Geforce 6800 or 7600 with Win98 drivers?

That is a possible intersection of "Extreme top end" win9x driver support + "Extreme low end of Snow Leopard driver support"

Reply 2 of 6, by volltollhier

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Possibly. Not sure. I have had a hard time when i wanted to pair the GTX980TI with another older Geforce. Either it wouldn't boot at all or Windows went bluescreen. Never had any issues with Radeons.

Reply 3 of 6, by wierd_w

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I was meaning that a single Geforce 7 could run in both configurations.

I can look into if there is a similar intersection with AMD cards..

Reply 4 of 6, by volltollhier

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Yeah that could technically work to support all operating systems. Here comes the BUT:
I need full DirectX12 support for modern Adobe stuff. Sorry i forgot to tell about that earlier.

So 27 years of computer history is quite a stretch to do for a single computer. But the challenge makes it even more interesting. And i'm sooo close now.

Reply 5 of 6, by Jo22

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wierd_w wrote on 2025-10-26, 19:10:

Possibly a Geforce 7 series GPU

That was my best guess, too! My Mac Pro 1.1 ran Snow Leopard and Windows XP and it had been upgraded with a GeForce 8..
The original card was a GeForce 7, but shipped with so little video RAM (128 MB?) that Snow Leopard couldn't use acceleration.
512 MB of video RAM should be on the safe side, maybe 256 MB works already (please everyone double check).

The older Mac OS X Tiger runs fine with a GeForce 5/6/7 and can use OpenGL 2 and Quartz Extreme/Core Image.
In a Power Mac G4, I'm using a GeForce 2 or 4MX, because it's compatible with Mac OS 9 still.
That GPU can't do OpenGL 2, of course, but normal 2D/3D acceleration works in both OS 9 and X..

Edit:

I need full DirectX12 support for modern Adobe stuff. Sorry i forgot to tell about that earlier.

Hi, how about a second graphics card and a KVM?
Some monitors also can automatically switch to an active source..

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

//My video channel//

Reply 6 of 6, by volltollhier

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Thanks for the infos. Yes we are actually talking about a second GPU. Right now i'm using a GTX980TI for XP and upwards. And i have a HD5770 in the second slot for Snow Leopard. And i'm about to replace the 5770 with something that is SL and 98 compatible.

So it should be something from AMD, because the system doesn't like two different Nvidia cards when booting. And it should be PCI-E.
This pretty much points on X300 to X850 as my only chance. And as you say preferably with 256MB or more.

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