Can't say anything either way about those drivers, but if the cause for a crash/BSOD is SSE (or some other unsupported instruction) then I'd expect to see an EXCEPTION_ILLEGAL_INSTRUCTION.

Try an older driver such as between 45.23 through 56.64. Though obviously that's not possible with a GT210 or GT610.

elszgensa wrote on 2025-11-17, 16:50:

Can't say anything either way about those drivers, but if the cause for a crash/BSOD is SSE (or some other unsupported instruction) then I'd expect to see an EXCEPTION_ILLEGAL_INSTRUCTION.

hmmm, the BSOD doesn't mention that, it's a Stop error with file nv4_disp.dll

It happens regardless of the Nvidia card I'm using, and I've tried a couple of different driver versions, all the same result.

swaaye wrote on 2025-11-17, 20:36:

Try an older driver such as between 45.23 through 56.64. Though obviously that's not possible with a GT210 or GT610.

Right, I can give that a go if I can find one, I think it's a version in the 300's that is on there now.

Another thing that comes to mind is your Pentium II motherboard is probably equipped with PCI 2.1? Those cards are likely PCI 2.2 or later. Though it's strange that only OpenGL is a problem if that is a problem.

swaaye wrote on 2025-11-17, 20:45:

Another thing that comes to mind is your Pentium II motherboard is probably equipped with PCI 2.1? Those cards are likely PCI 2.2 or later. Though it's strange that only OpenGL is a problem if that is a problem.

Well I'm not quite sure but all the cards right up to the GT610 work fine, even in 1080p using the HDMI socket. Not sure exactly which PCI revision I have but it's an earlier board with no AGP or USB. I'm writing to you now on it in Firefox.

swaaye wrote on 2025-11-17, 20:36:

Try an older driver such as between 45.23 through 56.64. Though obviously that's not possible with a GT210 or GT610.

Well, some progress, thanks to you.

I put the FX5200 in and installed Version 45.23... and behold, I assume OpenGL to be working as I just played a round of Quake 3 😀

After I installed the driver I found an option in the OpenGL settings to "Disable support for CPU extensions" which surely means SSE? I disabled it anyway. I guess on the newer drivers that option isn't there and it just always assumes the extensions are present.

Gutted I've had no luck with Minecraft though! I've installed Betacraft and it does try to run the early versions but I get an error that the OpenGL won't provide hardware acceleration and then it drops out. I'd hoped it would work but doesn't seem to (I know it'll be slow, I just want to see it work).

Classicube runs at like a million FPS.

I had problems going beyond 56.64 with a Pentium III / 440BX system. So I don't think it's SSE. It could be a SSE2 requirement but that's just a guess.

45.23 is a great driver for GeForce FX though.

I used to have the GeforceFX working on Athlons which lack SSE so I can only think about driver versions mattering here.

I've swapped the driver to 56.54 to see how that changes things.

I can load and play Minecraft now! It's slow but it's not that slow, once the chunk loading is done it's around 15 - 25 fps (reached 29 at one point). Whilst the chunk loading happening, it's single digits FPS.

That's on the FX 5200 PCI card, full screen 1280x1024 in 32 bit colour but with the MC quality settings all pretty low.

I'm well chuffed though, thank you for your advice!