First post, by Ozzuneoj
- Rank
- l33t
I've had this card for a while and I was intrigued by the interesting full-screen BIOS image it shows at startup. I couldn't seem to get it working properly with any drivers I found here.
I tried to get this card working over a year ago but gave up on it because none of the drivers worked. Today I pulled it out of the "needs diagnosing" box and decided to try again.
I tried the Graphics Blaster Exxtreme driver CD that is available on vogons driver archive but it doesn't detect it as a compatible card and even if I force it to install it never allows me to set the resolution properly... seems odd considering the BIOS startup graphic says exactly the same name as the card on the CD. But wait, this is Creative... they don't exactly have a good track record of putting out drivers that work with all the cards they appear to be made for.
I also tried what appear to be the latest Permedia 2 drivers on the archive, and they install and seem okay for desktop use on my test setup (440BX, PIII 850, 98SE), but the system actually reboots when I try to play any games. I thought maybe because this is a "Permedia 2V" model that it might need a different driver so I downloaded a driver on Driver Guide that said it was specifically for the 2v (at least according to the file name) and much to my surprise, it works much better and and actually allows some games to work! It seems to be a slightly older version than the .366 driver on the archive, but for whatever reason it works when the others do not.
The desktop looks beautiful at 1024x768 in 32bit color, and I'm amazed at how smoothly it runs some games. I have an old Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith demo from a PCGamer CD and it runs the game very smoothly at 640x480 and decently at 800x600 as well. I know this isn't "first generation" 3d acceleration like the Virge or Laguna3D, but this runs so much faster and looks so much better that it feels more like an early Voodoo. Anyway, I've attached the drivers I used and a few pictures to identify the particular card in case anyone else is trying to get one working.
Also, here are the driver versions from the readme.txt
Display Driver Ver 4.10.01.2105-0358
OpenGL Driver Ver 4.10.01.2105-0409
Heidi Driver Ver 4.10.01.2106-x.62
EDIT: Somehow forgot to mention that this is the 4MB PCI version of the card. I have mainly come across AGP Permedia 2 cards, so maybe that's why this one is picky about drivers?
