I don't like FX-5xxx series of cards. Yet that is personal taste. I would keep any Radeon-9xxx over any FX-5xxx cards.

The 9700 and 9800 are nice late Win9x cards, but there's nothing really special about them other than perhaps their late AGP 1.0 slot compatibility. Older (nVidia/3dfx) cards had better compatibility with DOS and older Win9x titles, and newer cards perform a lot better under XP with few compatibility concerns.

The whole FX line was a huge failure, as a NV fan i have to admit that ATI won the 2002-2003 GPU competition in terms of raw performance with R9500-9800.

That's definitely true of the GeForce FX line's performance in DirectX 9. The Radeon 9700 was first and kicked butt. But the DX9 performance comparison from this vintage of cards really doesn't matter anymore - all hopeless compared to an 8800 or better.

Large leaps were made from generation to next:

I was looking at a 9800XT 128MB AIW card unopened in box for $50, but picked up a x800XT 256MB for $10 instead for my 2004 PC.

I don't like Radeon 9xxx cards for Win9x because they lack 8-bit palletized textures and fog table. The drivers/software are also awful. However, they make fine video cards for XP where those features are enabled and the drivers/software aren't so bad.

I sometimes use a 9800XT with my socket 754 system and it works really well.

firage wrote:

That's definitely true of the GeForce FX line's performance in DirectX 9. The Radeon 9700 was first and kicked butt. But the DX9 performance comparison from this vintage of cards really doesn't matter anymore - all hopeless compared to an 8800 or better.

I LOVED my 7950 GTs in SLI, XFX passively cooled. They got blown away by an 8800 GTS I got off a friend for $30. (I had kids so I didn't PC game much between the era of the 7950GT and when the 8800 became obsolete.)

If i had a 9800pro i would keep it

its that time in history where ATI raped nvidia

Honestly the higher end fx cards are not that bad if you know how to tweak them right.
I had a setup with a fx5950 ultra and was able to get more out of it them with a 9800.
For instance, i was able it max out games like amnesia at 1280x1024 with decent fps, but then i dont know much about tweaking a ati card.

The problem with the fx line was not exactly dx9 but PS2 support. PS2 was a last minute addition to the fx cards and not well implemented. A grate example of the fx lines poor PS2 support is penumbra Black Plague, with all setting on max the game runs grate, but then turn on your flash light and the fps drop throught the floor.

Dx 7 and 8 support was far better in the fx line then the 9800 if i recall

I still say... Keep the Radeons and get some GF4-ti4200/4400/4600 cards if you want a nice collection.
Even GF4-ti4200 is a great card, as it never heats it self to death, when not overclocking.
Shure you need to install patches for early Win98 games. Any faster, then use the Radeons.

Really looking for using voodoo wrapper for Win98 on highend machine. Otherwise, I got a hellaciously overkilled XP PC for Steam and GOG. (See signature)

brostenen wrote:

I still say... Keep the Radeons and get some GF4-ti4200/4400/4600 cards if you want a nice collection.
Even GF4-ti4200 is a great card, as it never heats it self to death, when not overclocking.
Shure you need to install patches for early Win98 games. Any faster, then use the Radeons.

5800 ultra aside the fx cards really don't run all that hot

I'd keep my 9800 Pro, but it's gone to artifact hell despite sitting unused in storage for a long while. What a shame.

Now, while they're generally outclassed for a number of reasons, there is one use for which they might be handy: they're amongst the easiest cards to flash for Power Mac G4 use, no need to track down a Mac Edition. Thing is, so are the more powerful X800 cards (and FireGL X3 deriatives) from the next generation, so if you don't already have a 9x00 card, you're better off springing for one of those.

That's exactly why I broke the 9800 Pro out of storage to begin with, until a quick POST revealed the sorry state it was in.

As for the GeForce FX line, I saw no value in it initially, but they're a bit more well-regarded in this community when it was discovered that they still do 8-bit paletted textures and fog table, as well as theoretically supporting proper shadows in Splinter Cell (but that game's so finicky of a port job that just having a driver version that's too new will make them render incorrectly, hence the push for using a GeForce 4 instead). GeForce 6 Series apparently can't do any of that, neither can Radeon 9x00.

Too bad my FX 5950 Ultra has what looks like a tantalum cap busted out of place, one tab snapped right off where it meets the packaging, and I can't even read the values on it. I need to fix that part up so I can test it. Even then, I wouldn't dare replace my 6800 Ultra with that sort of downgrade on my P4EE box; SM2.0 performance that doesn't suck and SM3.0 support is important to have for how hard I push the XP side of gaming on that thing, Doom 3 and Far Cry included, and heck, I should test F.E.A.R. on it as well.

I also encountered a few problems with a 9800 pro even though it's a great card (when it works). Some games from 00-02 just doesn't seem to like it and I had freezes and other graphical problems that I didn't have with Ti 4-series cards. I'm happy with the more slower GF cards as long as they work and I've never had a problem with them so far. You could obviously have 2 similar builds, other one ATI and the other one Nvidia so you could always choose the best card for the job at hand, but to me it seems too much trouble. I tend to to cheat (like others) when it comes to DX9 games and use a bit more modern card so I don't need to trouble my self with FPS.

I currently hold an ATI Radeon x700 Pro 256MB AGP (8x ONLY!) card that I cannot use in my vintage Windows XP gaming rig because the system fails to POST while the card is inserted. The fan spins up just fine and I have cleaned it up myself, removing the heatsink/fan and replacing the TIM with Arctic Silver 5. Yes, I know it's not known as the "best" anymore, but it's pretty damned good stuff in its own right. And I don't over-paste. I double-check my TIM every time I apply it and adjust from there.
The reason I am saying this is that this card doesn't work for me, but might work for someone else. I have an AGP 2x/4x motherboard in my Windows XP system and need a card that is guaranteed to work on 4x. This card is 8x only, as it's a PCI-Express GPU with a PCI-E <-> AGP converter. This limits it to only working with 0.8v signal strength, which is AGP 8x only. Since my MB is AGP 4x spec and can only go down to 1.5v signal strength, this card refuses to POST in my system. I would willingly trade this card for an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro or 9800XT if someone was willing to trade. PM any response to this request. I live in the U.S.A.

As with most ATI\AMD cards, they work fine but there's nothing about them that really stands out unless you're trying to complete a collection. If you need an AGP card for Windows 9x with more performance than a Geforce 4 Ti or FX can offer but are having trouble finding a Geforce 6 or 7 series (6600 GT or better would be enough to best a Radeon 9800), then one of the Radeons may be easier to find without spending a lot.

Once you start getting into games that work fine with XP though, you'd be best off just having a newer system (Socket 775, Socket 939\AM2, Socket 1156) with PCI-Express slots and whatever GPU you can find cheap on ebay. A 9800GT or something like that would be ideal for late XP games, unless you want to go real crazy and get a high end 2xx or even 4xx series (they are cheap now) so you can use tons of anti aliasing... but then you're into the 200+ watt GPU space heater stuff, which is a lot less appealing these days. For XP you can technically go up to Kepler based Geforce GTX 7xx and Titan cards.

Well, I know for my XP build, I'm rebuilding and maxing out my original Windows XP system, not building a new one. So the specs I have to work with include:

A completely re-capped Abit KX7-333 motherboard - it has an AGP 4x slot and DDR memory slots for Socket 462 (Socket A)
An AMD Athlon XP 3200+ Barton @2.16GHz (replacing the system's original Palomino 1800+ @1.53GHz).
2GB of DDR-400 running at the motherboard's full 166MHz FSB double-pumped for DDR speeds to 333 MHz (originally only had 256MB DDR-266)
A 120 GB PATA-100 hard drive
A Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live 5.1 PCI sound card that works perfectly
A Sony DVD-RW PATA drive that also works properly with a 2-pin digital audio cable hooked up to the sound card

I am currently using an ATI Radeon 9550XL 256MB AGP card, but it's only a workstation-level graphics card and is just not up to scratch for vintage 2001-2004 XP gaming, hence why I'd love to have a working 9800XT, but I can't find one for sale that's not priced in the $200+ range on Ebay. And I'm sorry, but I'm just not spending that much cash on a hobby.

I also kind of wish I had one of those Audigy-style break-out boxes for a 5.25" drive bay. You know the ones I'm talking about. The Live 5.1 has a cable header for those, but I never did get one back in the day. They were always too expensive.

Yeah, the 9800 XT looks like an expensive option, too much for the guarantee. Does the X700 Pro PCI-e bridge really require 0.8V? Maybe the card is just faulty or a fluke. Try other newer cards, like X1950 Pro, X800 XT, HD2600 XT, 7600 GT, X800 XL, X1650 XT, etc. They should almost all be 1.5V compatible.

Jade Falcon wrote:

Honestly the higher end fx cards are not that bad if you know how to tweak them right.

Have you ever considered writing some mini-guide to tweaking the FX line of graphics cards?
I want to love them, but FEAR was running kinda abysmal 🤣