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best windows 98 agp card

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Reply 80 of 153, by swaaye

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nforce4max wrote:

I've always considered those VIA chipsets from the era to be slower than what Intel produced at the time, the memory controller certainly felt like it was the bottleneck.

If we're talking chipsets older than KT266A, yeah those have problems. Their AGP compliance is poor and memory controllers pretty lame. Video drivers often disable AGP features to try to bring some semblance of stability.

KT266A brought them up to par in most respects. But I've still seen a big deficit with Windows GUI performance compared to nForce2 for some reason. Even K8T800 gets beaten. It makes Windows seem less responsive. But as far as I know they are competitive in 3D.

Reply 81 of 153, by Falcosoft

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swaaye wrote:
nforce4max wrote:

I've always considered those VIA chipsets from the era to be slower than what Intel produced at the time, the memory controller certainly felt like it was the bottleneck.

If we're talking chipsets older than KT266A, yeah those have problems. Their AGP compliance is poor and memory controllers pretty lame...

VIA KT133A has one of the fastest memory controller ever built for (SDR) SDRAM. Actually it produces the maximum theoretical bandwidth for SDRAM in practice. AGP/PCI compatibility is another story...

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8 * 144 = 1152
1111/1152 = 96% efficiency. I have never seen such results for SDRAM even from Intel. And with multi-channel DDR will will never see again...

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Reply 82 of 153, by swaaye

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Yeah can't complain about the bandwidth there! Latency is an important consideration too though. I'm not sure how it compares there. That might be hard to compare to Intel because of the differences in how their CPU caches work.

Anandtech actually shows SiS 735 SDR being superior. The chipset that nobody talks about. 😁 It did become quite uninteresting when KT266A arrived though.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/814/5

Reply 83 of 153, by Falcosoft

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swaaye wrote:

Yeah can't complain about the bandwidth there! Latency is an important consideration too though. I'm not sure how it compares there. That might be hard to compare to Intel because of the differences in how their CPU caches work.
Anandtech actually shows SiS 735 SDR being superior. The chipset that nobody talks about. 😁 It did become quite uninteresting when KT266A arrived though.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/814/5

It's not that exceptional but fairly good compared to SDRAM era Intel chipsets:
Celeron 1700 i845 PC133 - 159.8 ns
Pentium III 500 i440BX PC100 - 165.8 ns

Yeah, SiS is clearly superior in cachemem, but not so in Sandra 2001. Unfortunately I have only Sandra 2002 and there my 1400MHz results are far better, so I think it's not comparable. Unfortunately in the Anandtech article it's not mentioned what chipset configuration is used, but I would not be surprised if some of the hidden gems of KT133A were not fully exploited.

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Reply 84 of 153, by Tetrium

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Falcosoft wrote:
It's not that exceptional but fairly good compared to SDRAM era Intel chipsets: Celeron 1700 i845 PC133 - 159.8 ns Pentium III 5 […]
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swaaye wrote:

Yeah can't complain about the bandwidth there! Latency is an important consideration too though. I'm not sure how it compares there. That might be hard to compare to Intel because of the differences in how their CPU caches work.
Anandtech actually shows SiS 735 SDR being superior. The chipset that nobody talks about. 😁 It did become quite uninteresting when KT266A arrived though.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/814/5

It's not that exceptional but fairly good compared to SDRAM era Intel chipsets:
Celeron 1700 i845 PC133 - 159.8 ns
Pentium III 500 i440BX PC100 - 165.8 ns

Yeah, SiS is clearly superior in cachemem, but not so in Sandra 2001. Unfortunately I have only Sandra 2002 and there my 1400MHz results are far better, so I think it's not comparable. Unfortunately in the Anandtech article it's not mentioned what chipset configuration is used, but I would not be surprised if some of the hidden gems of KT133A were not fully exploited.

There used to be a forum which was pretty much dedicated to the ASUS A7V133 (and A7V, which was in essence a 100MHz FSB gimped A7V133) and as I had gotten several of those boards for free back then, I gotten much valuable information from that forum! And of course some day it was gone and I had downloaded hardly anything from there so most information was lost, even some information that I used to build several of my rigs with.

I still remember some of its tricks though, relating to getting it to run stable mostly.

Even though the A7V133 has no ISA, not great compatibility with the newest AXP CPUs (so mostly I used those with Thunderbirds) and were tricky to setup correctly, I still have a soft spot for them 😁

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Reply 87 of 153, by ruthan

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My money are on Geforce 3 too, i assume that you have some PCI videocard for DOS, fastest cards are loosing compatibility and they are for games which are usually for working in XP too and for those can try luck with frankentein Asrock PCI-E + AGP board or with faster non AGP machine with multiple PCI-E videocards.

There is also some Geforce 4 to 7 Win98 Dos mode fullscreen bug, at least with some drivers:
Dos games on Geforce 2/4/5/6/7 and LCD in Win98SE, black screen in fullscreen mode..Nvidia drivers 5x.yz + problem

I have not experience with Radeon Xxxx for AGP. With very fast machines i have better experience (more stable) with Radeon Xxxx than with Geforce 6/7 but its about PCI-E not AGP. For Nvidia 512 MB cards is there Rlowe paid patch.

lilkuz2005 wrote:

i just got a gainward geforce3 this week from ebay $27.50 a plus shipping, a bit higher then i wanted to pay but it looks brand new, well im getting the same dips in fps in pretty much the same places in all the games i have been testing, im leaning towards a motherboard issue, seeing as old posts dating back to 2000-2003 report issue with via chipsets on intel motherboards

I had similar issues because of storage controllers or sound cards, it occurs too when you forget to enable DMA mode for storage device.

Im old goal oriented goatman, i care about facts and freedom, not about egos+prejudices. Hoarding=sickness. If you want respect, gain it by your behavior. I hate stupid SW limits, SW=virtual world, everything should be possible if you have enough raw HW.

Reply 88 of 153, by KT7AGuy

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ruthan wrote:

I had similar issues because of storage controllers or sound cards, it occurs too when you forget to enable DMA mode for storage device.

I've seen this problem with motherboards that have SATA controllers. Disabling the SATA controller in device manager usually solves the problem. However, you are then limited to IDE drives.

Win9x runs best on period-correct hardware.

Reply 89 of 153, by ruthan

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I dunno why, but often you have enable DMA per device manually. Sata - there are some cotnrollers with Win98 drivers, for others which have at least IDE mode there is again paid Rloews patch with is working fine. I didnt test it but i heard what Rloew somehow managed to get working even boards without IDE sata mode (Intel 1xx(H110 and others) chipset).

Im old goal oriented goatman, i care about facts and freedom, not about egos+prejudices. Hoarding=sickness. If you want respect, gain it by your behavior. I hate stupid SW limits, SW=virtual world, everything should be possible if you have enough raw HW.

Reply 90 of 153, by Bige4u

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After experimenting on a recently built WIN98se P3 1.0Ghz/coppermine system(intel mATX s370 mobo shoehorned in a dell dimension 3000 case) with a multiple of AGP4x video cards, i've setted on using a GF2 GTS/32mb unit... games work great in pure DOS from the early 90's(Wolf3d/Doom/Doom2/Duke3d/heretic/hexen/blood/descent/quake/etc) to windows games up to 2000, runs really smooth with great frame rates to match.

SPECS:
CPU - Intel 1.0Ghz 133fsb Coppermine
MOBO - Intel D815BN s370 mATX
MEM - Crucial 2X256mb pc133 cl2
HARD DRIVE - WD Caviar 20gb pata 7200rpm
VIDEOCARD - Nvidia GF2 GTS 32mb AGP4x
SOUNDCARD - HP CT5801 Creative SB128 ES1373
POWER SUPPLY - Enermax 420w EG425P-VE
Dell CDrom - Dell 3.5'' floppy drive
Windows98se

Pentium3 1400s/ Asus Tusl2-c / Kingston 512mb pc133 cl2 / WD 20gb 7200rpm / GeForce3 Ti-500 64mb / Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 SB0100 / 16x dvdrom / 3.5 Floppy / Enermax 420w / Win98se

Reply 92 of 153, by Bige4u

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vvbee wrote:

Not a fan of the geforce experience, as much as I like the geforce 2.

That graphics anomaly in the background is a bug in the game with GeForce cards, i believe theres an update that will fix that.... or just turn off the "pedestrian" option and the game will play normally.

Pentium3 1400s/ Asus Tusl2-c / Kingston 512mb pc133 cl2 / WD 20gb 7200rpm / GeForce3 Ti-500 64mb / Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 SB0100 / 16x dvdrom / 3.5 Floppy / Enermax 420w / Win98se

Reply 94 of 153, by Der Kuenringer

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Hello guys,
I'm looking for a card that will offer the best performance (1600x1200 + eye candy, if possible) with late win98 games from about 2000 to 2004, but running on a Tualatin 1400. I already have a Voodoo 5 taking care of early win9x titles, so would there be any benefit in going for a card in the Geforce4 Ti series (since i'm not looking for DOS compatibility that much), over something like a FX 5900 or 6800 Ultra? Will I be able to tease out a bit more performance with these cards compared to a Geforce4 ti, or am I too bottlenecked?
Also, is a 256mb VRAM card likely to cause problems with win98?

Reply 95 of 153, by schmatzler

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Der Kuenringer wrote:

late win98 games from about 2000 to 2004, but running on a Tualatin 1400

That is a pretty big timeframe.
We're talking about a range between No One Lives Forever 1 and The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay. A lot of development happened in these few years.

I think it won't be possible to play all of the games in that range on the UXGA resolution. I have a Tualatin 1.4 GHz and it is very limiting on late games.

My two favorite cards are the GeForce 4 4800 and a Radeon HD4650 (for XP), which is one of the fastest AGP cards.
In some games, the Radeon HD is much faster than the GeForce 4. Far Cry runs buttery smooth with the HD and somewhat acceptable on the GeForce, for example.

But not all of the games benefit from the card. On some, I can't make out a lot of difference between them.

The limiting factor is the CPU and the SDRAM. Don't expect magic results. Games around 2002/2003 should run really well, 2004 games can mostly run with lowered details and in 2005 it starts to get really problematic. Scrapland is barely playable on both cards even with the CPU overclocked to 1.6GHz and it really needs a stronger CPU.

You might benefit from a 6800 in some special occasions, e.g. The Chronicles of Riddick's highest graphics mode was specifically built for that card and Prey runs really well with it, too. But in my opinion, it's not worth it to get one of these, since you can't use them to its full potential on a Tualatin 1.4. Also, later models than the GF4 don't have support for palettized textures and you might need that.

(I mostly bought the Radeon HD card to experiment with AntiAliasing and H.264 decoding and it is doing its job in that regard. The GF4 is my main beast and doesn't need an upgrade.)

"Windows 98's natural state is locked up"

Reply 96 of 153, by ruthan

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Der Kuenringer: Because of Geforce 4 Win9x fullscreen bug (check few post above) i would still stay with Geforce 3, or if you have Vooodoo 5 in PCI variant and its not too much hassle to run 2 gpus win Win98 or switch between primary PCI/AGP in Bios, i would try Radeon X8xx card, there is reports of bad earlier Direct3D games, but there is not silver bullet solution and could try what is better Radeon or Vooodoo, there also some Geforce PCI at least up to FX5xxx series cards, if would have Voodoo 5 in AGP version.

Im old goal oriented goatman, i care about facts and freedom, not about egos+prejudices. Hoarding=sickness. If you want respect, gain it by your behavior. I hate stupid SW limits, SW=virtual world, everything should be possible if you have enough raw HW.

Reply 97 of 153, by KT7AGuy

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A GF4 Ti4600 is (IMO) the ideal card for Win98SE stuff from 2000 onwards. An FX 5900/5950 Ultra card will do better with anti-aliasing, but performance is not otherwise much better than a GF4 Ti4600. Also, Splinter Cell may have some problems with shadows with an FX card.

A 6800 GT or Ultra will give you ultimate performance under Win98SE, but it lacks support for 8-bit palletized textures and table fog. You may also have issues with some of the later drivers that a 6800 requires.

I recommend either a GF4 Ti4600 or an FX 5900/5950 Ultra. Hint: Quadro FX 3000 is the same thing as an FX 5900 Ultra, but can be found for a bit cheaper.

Reply 98 of 153, by Der Kuenringer

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schmatzler wrote:

That is a pretty big timeframe.
We're talking about a range between No One Lives Forever 1 and The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay. A lot of development happened in these few years.

Hm, well maybe I should specify then. I would be happy if the card is able to play late space sim games, like Freespace Open, Independence War 2 & Freelancer at 1600x1200. Is a good framerate achievable with a Tualatin 1400 in these titles? As for "2004", it was mainly based on the eccentric idea of getting Doom 3 to run on win98, but it's not that important.

@ruthan
Yes, the Voodoo is PCI. I hadn't considered ATi cards yet, mainly because of the warnings about compatibility. Would the Radeon 9000 series also be a good option? Another requirement for the card: i want it to be single slot, so in that respect ATi cards would likely compare favorably to Nvidias high end offerings.
Thanks for the suggestions!

And btw, as for 256mb vram, am I likely to run into problems with this?

Reply 99 of 153, by KT7AGuy

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Radeon cards lack support for 8-bit palletized textures and table fog in Win98SE. Under WinXP, later drivers re-enabled support for 8-bit palletized textures and table fog. Of course, that doesn't do ya much good since you would be using it with Win98SE.

For a single-slot solution, just get a GeForce 4. It should work great for what you want. Your Tualatin 1400 CPU and PC133 RAM will be the limiting factors, so don't blame the video card if you're not getting the performance you want.