5800, because it is a beast.

Voodoo2 mismatched Works with soms cards. It Works with my creative with a trust voodoo Dragon
2 But not with a diamond....matched is best solution. yes its worth it! Much faster and Nice 1024x768 res.

Oh I forgot to mention - 5800 will negate Voodoo2 SLI as it's dual-slot.

Radeon 9xxx works ok in Win9x with Catalyst 6.2. With 2 graphical bugs. Table fog and negative blending are broken. The fog was fixed only in Xp with Catalyst 7.11+, the blending is still broken (yeah, 10 years)...

For me, I have had really good results using Matrox G400 and Voodoo1 (yeah I know it's not V2)
I would say, that you should try out the Matrox G400, as it has a good signal output.
For 2d gfx, I allways go for G400, if the processor is fast enough.

brostenen wrote:

For me, I have had really good results using Matrox G400 and Voodoo1 (yeah I know it's not V2)
I would say, that you should try out the Matrox G400, as it has a good signal output.
For 2d gfx, I allways go for G400, if the processor is fast enough.

If I went with G400, is there any preference for drivers? Or just go with the latest and greatest?

Just go for those wich are on their website. They work well. 😀

brostenen wrote:

For me, I have had really good results using Matrox G400 and Voodoo1 (yeah I know it's not V2)
I would say, that you should try out the Matrox G400, as it has a good signal output.
For 2d gfx, I allways go for G400, if the processor is fast enough.

But for a Pee-4, those cards seem kind of dated/underpowered

5800 gets in the way of the v2's? Well, in my book, voodoo wins (but i am 3dfx biased)

The radeon will do well also, considering it is a p4 2ghz. That p4 is not a fast cpu so both cards will be overkill unless you use a good deal of AA in your games.

Matrox? meh..... i have these cards (g200, g400 and g450) and i just can't get a good use for them. 2d is great? Yes, but many other cards are good at that and i can't see the difference. 3D? Almost every card that can do 3D is just as good and most of the time way better....

If you want to use it for games, no Matrox imho.

For a p4 2ghz a geforce 4ti is a good option as well, with the v2's in place ofcourse 😎

smeezekitty wrote:

But for a Pee-4, those cards seem kind of dated/underpowered

The CPU is massively over-powered for what this build needs to do; pretend we're talking about a mid-grade Pentium 3 if it helps. As far as why the CPU is chosen: it's the only 100% working mATX system I have, and I have no interest in messing about with a new platform, so it gets to stay (and this exact CPU/MB pair has been successfully winning this argument since 2003). 🤣

meljor wrote:

5800 gets in the way of the v2's? Well, in my book, voodoo wins (but i am 3dfx biased)

It can take a single V2 (and I've had that working fine in testing (and no, when combining NV30, Voodoo2, and Willamette it did not melt through the floor china syndrome style 🤣)), but SLI is a no-go unless I want to give up sound, or the 5800, because there simply aren't enough available slots. Given that I don't have a second V2 on-hand right now, it isn't really a big deal *today*, but if I wanted to go SLI (which would probably require buying two cards, since most of what I'm finding on ebay is Diamonds - I'm not sure I'm up to spending ~$100 on that at the moment) it'd be a problem.

My bigger "gotcha" with the 5800 is if 45.23 can't make that fan work right - when I tested it in 98 I used the latest drivers from the nV website (81-something if I remember right), and it seemed to work correctly just as it does on XP. But testing 45.23 on XP resulted in the fan never turning on at idle, and a very hot GPU (I turned the machine off and blasted it with a gas duster once it hit 75* C sitting in Windows). Of course, I don't think I have any games that conflict with newer-than-45.23, so I could probably just go with newer drivers, but I'd really be annoyed if down the road I loaded something up and it didn't work right due to the newer drivers. 😵

The radeon will do well also, considering it is a p4 2ghz. That p4 is not a fast cpu so both cards will be overkill unless you use a good deal of AA in your games.

Yeah, that's kind of the point of the 5800 (or a card in its class) being considered - I could just leave 4x or 8x AA on all the time. 🤣 (not that I really need 4x or 8x AA all the time, it just could; at least that's how it worked out when this thing ran XP).

Matrox? meh..... i have these cards (g200, g400 and g450) and i just can't get a good use for them. 2d is great? Yes, but many other cards are good at that and i can't see the difference. 3D? Almost every card that can do 3D is just as good and most of the time way better....

If you want to use it for games, no Matrox imho.

Thanks for an alternate opinion - I'll have to think about it. I'm guessing I'm going to vote "no" given that I'm seeing a G400 would cost around $30, and for that price I can get a GF3 or 4 Ti (and at that point, why not just go with the bigger-and-better 5800?).

The other thought I've had, is to ignore the 45.23 thing entirely, and dig out my 5900XT - it's somewhat slower than the 5800, but it's single-slot (the cooler looks fairly similar to some GF4 Ti cards), so I could have the option of V2 SLI (or some other #3 PCI card). Physically it'd be the same situation as the Radeon or a Matrox card though, and it should still be able to run with AA enabled all over the place.

The CPU is massively over-powered for what this build needs to do; pretend we're talking about a mid-grade Pentium 3 if it helps.

Still wouldn't suggest the Matrox.
Matrox is one of the most overrated cards in my opinion. They have next to no 3d support.

Good image quality in 2d mode but otherwise quite limited.

I wouldn't pair a Matrox with anything faster than a fast P1 or a P2

Alright, was going to go with the FX 5900XT based on the mostly negative feedback for the Matrox, questionable support situation for the Radeon, and wanting to leave all the PCI slots open for potential V2 SLI...and then I found an eVGA GeForce 2 Ultra for under $10. So I went ahead and snagged that for this build. It supports 45.23 (and lots of older revisions (given how far back it can go, any prime suggestions? Or just go with 45.23?))), is single slot, can't possibly use as much power as the 5800 or 5900, and will still provide good DX5-7 performance. If I remember, I'll update the thread when it arrives.

Thanks for all the input thus far. 😀

Good choice. I would've said GeForce 3 or 4, but for a 98 box, a GeForce 2 is plenty.

I had the same dilemma a few weeks ago. Started with an FX6200, down to FX5200, tried some Geforce4 MX's, and settled for a Geforce2 Ultra at the end. I don't know what you will play, but the games that I wanted to play are mainly older SW titles (X-Wing, TIE Fighter -both w9x versions- and X-wing Alliance) and all had different problems with the more powerful/modern cards. I also suggest loading older drivers as much as possible, if your requirements (i.e. games you will play) allows you to (I had problems with newer drivers, too). Any of these cards and even their older drivers are already more than what a w98 system needs, in any case, as far as I know.

Mismatched brand Voodoo2 SLI is theoretically possible, but in practice, I never reached a stable solution with my four different brand Voodoo2's in any possible combination (one is a Creative). There is only one combination that "seems" to work when you first installed, but gives problems when you try it under load. By the way, instead of stock drivers, you can also try 3rd party drivers, which claims SLI capability with mismatched brand cards (falconfly.de).

For the GeForce 2 Ultra I would suggest 30.82 drivers first, they're very stable in Windows 98. If problems with games arise, then try 12.41; 7.58 are the oldest drivers I would go back to. I used these when I had my GeForce 2 GTS back in 2000-2001.

Thanks for the tips on the GF2 and V2. JayCeeBee64: any reason not to start with something like 12.41 or whatnot? Or is there a big performance difference between those and newer drivers? (I don't know what the GF2 Ultra's "release" drivers are so I have no idea how new/old these versions are against it). I think I'm just going to hold out until I eventually find another 12MB Creative V2 (or a really good deal on two matched cards) - the single one and the GF2 will more than satisfy my purposes at the moment, and eventually I'll find another one to complete it. 😊

obobskivich wrote:

Thanks for the tips on the GF2 and V2. JayCeeBee64: any reason not to start with something like 12.41 or whatnot? Or is there a big performance difference between those and newer drivers? (I don't know what the GF2 Ultra's "release" drivers are so I have no idea how new/old these versions are against it). I think I'm just going to hold out until I eventually find another 12MB Creative V2 (or a really good deal on two matched cards) - the single one and the GF2 will more than satisfy my purposes at the moment, and eventually I'll find another one to complete it. 😊

Is there any reason TO start with something old? I would try the newest drivers since they will likely support the most features
and be the fastest and go for older if you have problems.

smeezekitty wrote:

Is there any reason TO start with something old?

Personally I never had issues with the FX 5800 + 71.89 under XP, so I'm inclined to just install 45.23 or 30.82 or whatever else "new" and hope for the best, but if there's some glaring, important reason to pick an even older driver, I was hoping to hear about it beforehand. 😊

obobskivich wrote:

any reason not to start with something like 12.41 or whatnot? Or is there a big performance difference between those and newer drivers?

None really, just personal choice. The 30.82 drivers are very compatible and have no graphical glitches or issues with games. 12.41 is also compatible, just older. Performance-wise they are about equal (some have claimed that 30.82 is slower, but I haven't seen this myself). Newer drivers do slow down the GF2 significantly.

(I don't know what the GF2 Ultra's "release" drivers are so I have no idea how new/old these versions are against it)

The earliest Nvidia driver I have that supports the GF2 Ultra is 6.31, so I'll presume this is probably the original "release" driver it came with.

I wasn't aware they slowed the GF2 so early - I thought that coincided with the "optimization" period starting in the 50.xx series. For example in XP I've seen 45.23 improve the 5800's performance versus 71.89, and I just assumed that other cards that it supported would be equally benefited. Guess I'll just try 30.82 and see what I get.