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Last ATI Catalyst driver for Windows 98?

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First post, by retro games 100

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I know version 6.2 works, which is on ATI's website. I've also got an old VX.D version 3.8. I ran both using 3DMark 2001 s.e, and here are the results:

6.2 WDM = 7514
3.8 VX.D = 8140 (I had to put the . character in to stop this php website from making the letters X and D look like a laughing face)

That's quite a difference. Please bear in mind that I'm running a Radeon 9800 XT card on a very underpowered PC. Its spec is just a 2000+ rated Athlon. I read on Wikipedia that ATI dropped support for Windows 98 on Catalyst version 4.4. I wonder if that meant dropping VX.D support, because that article went on to say that a later Windows ME version (6.2) works on 98.

I downloaded version 4.4 from the "old apps" website, but it would not recognise my R9800XT card. Inside this package, there is a WDM 9x folder, but the release notes only mention Windows 2k/XP. I don't understand why this WDM 9x folder exists. Besides, I was really hoping to discover some kind of updated VX.D folder.

I downloaded some old Catalyst drivers from "old apps". However, all of them appeared to be for 2k/XP only. All other old Catalyst driver links found using google point back to ATI, who appeared to have removed them from their website. Does anyone have the last ATI Catalyst driver for Windows 98, which uses the VX.D driver model, rather than the WDM driver model? Thanks a lot.

BTW, the Catalyst version 3.8 VX.D driver on my Hercules 9800 XT CD-ROM is called wme-7-93-030812a1-010736c.exe.

Reply 1 of 1, by retro games 100

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I just found version 4.3 on the net. It's on FilePlanet. The search to do is: ATI Catalyst V4.3. The file name is wme-catalyst-7-991-040224m-013831c.exe. I wonder if that Wikipedia article meant that version 4.4 is the one where they dropped support for 98? And so therefore version 4.3 is the last to support 98? (Please note that I realise the later version 6.2 was made to work on 98. It's a WDM package.) I ran 3DMark 2001 s.e. again using version 4.3 (VX.D), and now the benchmark results look like this -

6.2 WDM = 7514
4.3 VX.D = 7903
3.8 VX.D = 8140

So, it looks like the "improvements" made to the VX.D driver, from 3.8 from 4.3, have resulted in a small drop in performance. Perhaps as you add more code to these things, to add more functionality and to fix things, it slows things down a bit. Stands to reason, I suppose.

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