douglar wrote on 2026-02-05, 18:51:

bitzu101 wrote on 2026-02-05, 08:24:

What is wrong with a Riva TNT 2 pci or agp?

Very strong cards , and way overpowered for dos / win95 era pc s.

For win 98 , either a Geforce 4 mx 440 , or a geforce 4 ti 4200.

Nothing wrong with those cards at all. Certainly more than adequate. Do you feel that they are the best cards?

depnds for what. but for a win 95 machine deffo overkill.

I had a PCI Riva128 in my socket 7 K6-2+ Win98 machine for a while and it was great as a DOS only card, but the 3D was pretty awful. Now I'm using a PCI MX400 and love it - MX440 or TNT2 M64 are also great options. They have the same great DOS compatibility and speed as the Riva128 but better 3D.

NVPatch allows Univbe to work with these newer cards too which is handy. PCI versions of these cards are getting more expensive too but they're usually cheaper and easier to find than the Riva128.

What would be a decent GPU for an Athlon XP build, that still has decent DOS support?

Mike_ wrote on 2026-06-13, 17:28:

What would be a decent GPU for an Athlon XP build, that still has decent DOS support?

GeForce FX 5900

appiah4 wrote on 2026-06-16, 09:41:

Mike_ wrote on 2026-06-13, 17:28:

What would be a decent GPU for an Athlon XP build, that still has decent DOS support?

GeForce FX 5900

That's a great card! {If you are lucky enough to find one or have a few hundred dollars to burn}

But it might be overkill unless you really need direct X 9.

If you are on a budget and can get by with Direct X7, an MX 4000 might be a good budget alternative. It's not the greatest 3d card, but decent for direct X 7 games and the DOS compatibility is high and the affordability is best.

Back in the day, I ran my Athlon XP 2100 with a Gefroce 4200ti and mainly played Direct X 8 games. That is also a decent card.

When I started playing direct X 9 games like Crysis and Halflife 2, I upgraded to an Athlon 64 and a Radeon 9800 because DOS compatibility wasn't so important to me at that time.

Mike_ wrote on 2026-06-13, 17:28:

What would be a decent GPU for an Athlon XP build, that still has decent DOS support?

I had issues with the FX 5900 in both Descent 2 and Impulse Tracker 2.14. The former would just show a black screen in attract mode and actual gameplay (the game would play but nothing displayed), the latter would be missing about the bottom third.
In general, DX9 games are XP era anyway, the only real reason to go for a Geforce FX would be a Glide Wrapper that needs DX9. But just about any Glide game also looks great in D3D 32bit, which a Geforce 4 Ti does with ease.

I downgraded from a Geforce FX 5950 Ultra to Geforce 4 Ti 4600 in my Athlon XP 2000+ rig that still has an ISA slot (and sadly, SDR-133 RAM), and the RAM was such a bottleneck that it only brought me down from 9500 to 8700 points in 3DMark 2001SE. A Geforce 3 Ti 200 would only score half that in the same rig, so that might actually be the sweet spot, at least for this CPU and RAM. It certainly solved my compatibility issues, and still has table fog and 8 bit paletted textures.
If it weren't for these two features, I'd go ATI. But ATI really only shines with XP games.

douglar wrote on 2026-06-16, 12:14:

That's a great card! {If you are lucky enough to find one or have a few hundred dollars to burn} […]
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appiah4 wrote on 2026-06-16, 09:41:

GeForce FX 5900

That's a great card! {If you are lucky enough to find one or have a few hundred dollars to burn}

But it might be overkill unless you really need direct X 9.

If you are on a budget and can get by with Direct X7, an MX 4000 might be a good budget alternative. It's not the greatest 3d card, but decent for direct X 7 games and the DOS compatibility is high and the affordability is best.

Back in the day, I ran my Athlon XP 2100 with a Gefroce 4200ti and mainly played Direct X 8 games. That is also a decent card.

When I started playing direct X 9 games like Crysis and Halflife 2, I upgraded to an Athlon 64 and a Radeon 9800 because DOS compatibility wasn't so important to me at that time.

Are FX 5900s *that* expensive in the US? Several hundred dollars sounds like a lot of money for a retro card. It looks like here you could get a FX 5900 XT from a local second hand web page for 65 euros or about $80 or so. Still a little bit expensive for a retro GPU, but not quite that bad.

Though of course there's not much point to play something like Half-Life 2 on a retro PC, as it works just fine on a modern PC.

NorsteinB wrote on 2026-06-16, 16:18:

I had issues with the FX 5900 in both Descent 2 and Impulse Tracker 2.14. The former would just show a black screen in attract m […]
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I had issues with the FX 5900 in both Descent 2 and Impulse Tracker 2.14. The former would just show a black screen in attract mode and actual gameplay (the game would play but nothing displayed), the latter would be missing about the bottom third.
In general, DX9 games are XP era anyway, the only real reason to go for a Geforce FX would be a Glide Wrapper that needs DX9. But just about any Glide game also looks great in D3D 32bit, which a Geforce 4 Ti does with ease.

I downgraded from a Geforce FX 5950 Ultra to Geforce 4 Ti 4600 in my Athlon XP 2000+ rig that still has an ISA slot (and sadly, SDR-133 RAM), and the RAM was such a bottleneck that it only brought me down from 9500 to 8700 points in 3DMark 2001SE. A Geforce 3 Ti 200 would only score half that in the same rig, so that might actually be the sweet spot, at least for this CPU and RAM. It certainly solved my compatibility issues, and still has table fog and 8 bit paletted textures.
If it weren't for these two features, I'd go ATI. But ATI really only shines with XP games.

What do "XP games" mean here? I'm not aiming for a strictly period-correct setup nor do I have a XP retro build.

But I was also considering a geforce 4 as they seem to be relatively cheap. And I'm also using a KT133A board with an ISA slot for sound card.

Mike_ wrote on 2026-06-16, 19:58:

What do "XP games" mean here? I'm not aiming for a strictly period-correct setup nor do I have a XP retro build.

But I was also considering a geforce 4 as they seem to be relatively cheap. And I'm also using a KT133A board with an ISA slot for sound card.

Games that use DX9, or are from 2003 and later.

When DirectX 9 was released in late 2002, XP had already been there for a year, and its acceptance with gamers was high.

Mid tier graphics cards from 2003 (Geforce FX 5700U, 5900XT, Radeon 9600 XT, 9800 SE) would only be necessary to play games from a time when Windows 98 was really being phased out, or for many people already was.

A Geforce 4200 or Radeon 9500 would already be more than enough for any 2002 (and most 2003) games at high resolutions, maximum details and high framerates. Plus, anything above would be severely bottlenecked by the KT133A chhipset anyway, was I mentioned: my AMD Athlon XP 2000+ with 512 MB SDR-133 memory got 8700+ points with a Geforce 4600, 9400 with a Geforce FX 5950 Ultra, the difference is negligible! A Geforce 3 Ti 200 on the other hand would only score 4300.
ATI 9000 series cards were generally faster than their Geforce 4 and Geforce FX counterparts, even more so with AA and AF enabled, but they lack some legacy W98 features like Table Fog and 8 bit paletted Textures, and cause graphical errors in a few small number of DOS games, that unfortunately are some of the more popular ones. Other than that, they make for excellent retro gaming cards, too.
You can look up the affected games with these resources - if you don't care about the particular games, an ATI card might very well be better than an Nvidia card of the time.

https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/List_of_ … texture_support

https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/List_of_ … ble_Fog_support

https://gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS/

NorsteinB wrote on 2026-06-17, 05:07:

Games that use DX9, or are from 2003 and later. […]
Show full quote

Games that use DX9, or are from 2003 and later.

When DirectX 9 was released in late 2002, XP had already been there for a year, and its acceptance with gamers was high.

Mid tier graphics cards from 2003 (Geforce FX 5700U, 5900XT, Radeon 9600 XT, 9800 SE) would only be necessary to play games from a time when Windows 98 was really being phased out, or for many people already was.

A Geforce 4200 or Radeon 9500 would already be more than enough for any 2002 (and most 2003) games at high resolutions, maximum details and high framerates. Plus, anything above would be severely bottlenecked by the KT133A chhipset anyway, was I mentioned: my AMD Athlon XP 2000+ with 512 MB SDR-133 memory got 8700+ points with a Geforce 4600, 9400 with a Geforce FX 5950 Ultra, the difference is negligible! A Geforce 3 Ti 200 on the other hand would only score 4300.
ATI 9000 series cards were generally faster than their Geforce 4 and Geforce FX counterparts, even more so with AA and AF enabled, but they lack some legacy W98 features like Table Fog and 8 bit paletted Textures, and cause graphical errors in a few small number of DOS games, that unfortunately are some of the more popular ones. Other than that, they make for excellent retro gaming cards, too.
You can look up the affected games with these resources - if you don't care about the particular games, an ATI card might very well be better than an Nvidia card of the time.

https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/List_of_ … texture_support

https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/List_of_ … ble_Fog_support

https://gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS/

I was actually thinking about using it as far into 00s as the CPU can manage, but it's true that 133MHz memory is probably the bottleneck. Although I'm using a barton CPU modded to run at 1.8GHz despite slower FSB, and the large cache might somewhat mitigate memory being so slow. In on itself, an athlon xp 2500+ should definitely be fine for 2003 games, and probably for most 2004 games as well.

Mike_ wrote on 2026-06-17, 07:26:

I was actually thinking about using it as far into 00s as the CPU can manage, but it's true that 133MHz memory is probably the bottleneck. Although I'm using a barton CPU modded to run at 1.8GHz despite slower FSB, and the large cache might somewhat mitigate memory being so slow. In on itself, an athlon xp 2500+ should definitely be fine for 2003 games, and probably for most 2004 games as well.

I used a Barton on that board myself, the Epox 8KTA3+ has no official support for it, but does work with them anyway. Ran it at 1.8 GHz, too, since the board cannot set higher multipliers no matter what.
Did hardly make any difference, the RAM really is too much of a bottleneck. I'd say you're fine up to 2002. Initially this was a dual boot W98SE/XPSP3 system but I soon scrapped the XPSP3 partition and simply built my absolute 2003 dream machine with a higher clocked Barton and 9800 XT (pic related) and a Socket 939 system with an Athlon64 4000+ and X800XT.
There's not really a reason to make a specific 2003 machine I guess, I only did that because I loved the year.

Hmm, I guess I'll check if I can find a cheap geforce 4 ti 4200 somewhere. The FX 5900 XT would be in the same city where I live, so I wouldn't need to pay postage for that, though.

How about slower FX cards, such as 5600? Apparently they are supported on a bit older drivers than 5900 XT and are pretty cheap.

Mike_ wrote on 2026-06-20, 15:30:

How about slower FX cards, such as 5600? Apparently they are supported on a bit older drivers than 5900 XT and are pretty cheap.

I think the FX 5600 hits the price performance the sweet spot for Geforce FX cards in the US right now. Performs like a Geforce 4400ti for less money.

I quickly did some quick eye-ball performance for Y2K vintage games based on 3dmark 2001 scores relative to a 5600. I may have screwed it up. Let me know if you think I'm off base.

The 5600 is probably good for games up to 2004 and some direct X 9 games.

The 64bit cards are cheap & compatible & available & good for games < 2000, but you probably don't want them if you are targeting anything newer than that. The games before 2000 had much lower memory bandwidth requirements and the performance doesn't drop off as bad with these cards in the older games. They look bad in this chart but they will keep up with a GeForce3 Ti200 in direct X8 stuff. However the scale starts to tilt with games that came out after the year 2000 and they don't keep up with the rest of the geforce FX line. The increased shader complexity that started show up on games was the Achilles heal of 64bit FX series and it required more bandwidth to compensate for that.

Ff you go back to Direct X 7 / 3d mark 2000, there's a significant reordering on the low end. 5500 and lower get a boost

The 256 bit cards could probably get you up to 2005 or 2006 games maybe, if you have a fast enough CPU, as long as the game didn't use more than 256MB of textures.

1Card        Core    Memory   Perf    Price
25950 Ultra  NV38    256-bit  350%    $350
35900 Ultra  NV35    256-bit  325%    $300
45900        NV35    256-bit  275%    $200
55800 Ultra  NV30    128-bit  250%    Unobtainium
65700 Ultra  NV36    128-bit  200%    $170
75800        NV30    128-bit  200%    Unobtainium
85900 XT/LE  NV35    128-bit  200%    $130
95700        NV36    128-bit  166%    $100
105600 Ultra  NV31    128-bit  133%    $100
115600        NV31    128-bit  100%    $60
125200 Ultra  NV34    128-bit  70%    $70
135500        NV34    128-bit  55%     $50
145200        NV34    128-bit  50%     $30
155500 PCI    NV34    128-bit  45%     $80
165200 PCI    NV34    128-bit  40%     $50
175700 XT/LE  NV36    64-bit   40%     $40
185600 XT/LE  NV31    64-bit   35%     $35
195200        NV34    64-bit   20%     $15
205200 PCI    NV34    64-bit   15%     $40

FX5600/Ultra is a good pick as well, but it will be a dog in DX9 games, just run those in DX8 mode instead.

A friend borrowed me a FX 5600 Ultra, and I got 8389 points in 3D mark 2001 SE with it. This is pretty close to what NorsteinB got with his Geforce 4 Ti 4600. I wonder whether a regular FX 5600 would be a bit underpowered for this system?

However, for some reason it only works if you use AGP in 1x mode. Otherwise it crashes in 3dmark. I wonder if this is caused by too low AGP drive strength when set to auto in BIOS? There's a BIOS setting "Manual AGP Comp. driving" that can be set from 0x00 to 0xFF, any idea what that means?

Mike_ wrote on Yesterday, 17:49:

A friend borrowed me a FX 5600 Ultra, and I got 8389 points in 3D mark 2001 SE with it. This is pretty close to what NorsteinB got with his Geforce 4 Ti 4600. I wonder whether a regular FX 5600 would be a bit underpowered for this system?

I expect that GeForce 4 Ti 4x00 cards should perform similarly to a FX 5600 Ultra, +/- 10%. A regular FX 5600 would be about 30% slower than a FX 5600 Ultra.

Mike_ wrote on Yesterday, 17:49:

However, for some reason it only works if you use AGP in 1x mode. Otherwise it crashes in 3dmark. I wonder if this is caused by too low AGP drive strength when set to auto in BIOS? There's a BIOS setting "Manual AGP Comp. driving" that can be set from 0x00 to 0xFF, any idea what that means?

How do the capacitors look? That's the first thing that comes to mind when I see inexplicable behavior in 2003 vintage equipment.

While being limited to AGP 1x isn't ideal, there are worse things. I bet that the 5600 ultra has enough video ram that AGP speeds are not a major performance limiter in direct x 8 games.

I've never had to mess with Manual AGP Comp. driving. I would love to know more about it.

https://archive.techarp.com/showFreeBOG02b2.h … ang=0&bogno=318

douglar wrote on Yesterday, 20:56:

How do the capacitors look? That's the first thing that comes to mind when I see inexplicable behavior in 2003 vintage equipmen […]
Show full quote

How do the capacitors look? That's the first thing that comes to mind when I see inexplicable behavior in 2003 vintage equipment.

While being limited to AGP 1x isn't ideal, there are worse things. I bet that the 5600 ultra has enough video ram that AGP speeds are not a major performance limiter in direct x 8 games.

I've never had to mess with Manual AGP Comp. driving. I would love to know more about it.

https://archive.techarp.com/showFreeBOG02b2.h … ang=0&bogno=318

They seem to be fine, though I don't recognize their brand. The black caps are Rubycon caps I replaced the original through-hole G-Luxon caps with.

But yes, it's probably true that running AGP at 1x isn't a major performance issue.