In my opinion the gf3 should be just fine. Solid windows and 3D acceleration, highly compatible with late dos era vesa modes and capable of some glide emulation.

For late 2000 games this card is ok: it came out in 2001, so should handle anything you'll feed it.

Ok, but now i have to find a driver version which works best. The latest arent very useful for old games... any suggestions?

...

atom1kk wrote on 2022-01-11, 19:48:

Hi […]
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Hi

I have found an older pc with a p4 and gf3 ti200 to fiddle around with win 98 and play older games without compatibilty issues. But all the games around 1995to 2000 are still having issues and this is not what i was hoping for.

As i read here in some posts the biggest troubles seem to come from the gpu. So what would be the best gpu ( in terms of compatibilty) for the games of that time? Is nvidia or ati in generall better? And which model? It should be fast enough to run 2k games and also the years before.

Thank you

Ti200 here with Windows 95 and Detonator 21.83 - runs like a champ. Haven't run into any issues yet. What games are you having trouble with?

colin mc raue 1 and H.E.D.Z. , started with them both and...well not a good start 😉. colin does not start, crashes 4 out of 5 to the desktop after intro, or when it starts the menus are blurred. HEDZ runs in software mode, but performance is really poor, with 3D the PC freezes short before the level is loaded with a blurred screen.

atom1kk wrote on 2022-01-12, 08:18:

colin mc raue 1 and H.E.D.Z. , started with them both and...well not a good start 😉. colin does not start, crashes 4 out of 5 to the desktop after intro, or when it starts the menus are blurred. HEDZ runs in software mode, but performance is really poor, with 3D the PC freezes short before the level is loaded with a blurred screen.

Both games look to have quite modest requirements, at least against your P4+GF3 combo:

H.E.D.Z. : Windows95/98, 4X CD-ROM drive, 16 MB RAM, 150 MB hard disk space, Pentium 166 or higher, 2 MB graphics card (DX5.2 and 3Dfx card recommended)
Colin McRae Rally: Windows 95/98, Pentium II 233 MHz, 32MB RAM, 8 MB video card

The PC version of Colin McRae Rally was somewhat infamous for intermittently crashing. I don't know H.E.D.Z.

If I had to make a blind guess, I'd say your computer is fine but the games are a bit shoddy in the way they've been put together.
I remember I could not run Unreal at all when I first got it - it would always crash right back to the desktop. Until we patched it. Try and see if you can patch the games.

Only thing is, you describe both games as getting blurry - can you elaborate on that?

I did patch colin but did bot help.
With colin the menu is getting weired. I mean its hard to describe. If i go theough the menu it starts to fade and keeps fading somehow.

With heds i get with 3d enabled, as soon as the level shall start, totaly colour mash up and the pc hangs up. Software runs fine but veeeery slow.

I have actual the 45.xx driver, eill try the days the 29.xx. see if it brings more success. Will keep you informed

I prefer the gerforce FX because they reliably have high quality DACs and DVI. I haven't run into any issues using the 56.XX drivers. I have asked more than once if someone knows of a particular game that doesn't work on later nvidia drivers and I haven't seen the answer yet, so IMO it's one of those "facts" that keeps getting repeated without anyone actually knowing why.

Open invitation to be corrected 😀

mothergoose729 wrote on 2022-01-14, 00:29:

I prefer the gerforce FX because they reliably have high quality DACs and DVI. I haven't run into any issues using the 56.XX drivers. I have asked more than once if someone knows of a particular game that doesn't work on later nvidia drivers and I haven't seen the answer yet, so IMO it's one of those "facts" that keeps getting repeated without anyone actually knowing why.

Open invitation to be corrected 😀

Ok, I'll bite... Try these:

Need for Speed 3
Need for Speed Porsche
Populous: The Beginning
No One Lives Forever
Midtown Madness
Tomb Raider 2
Descent 3

Try Dino Crisis and watch how the chain link fence renders at the beginning of the game.

Screenshots and testing instructions can be found here. The floor textures in the same area also seemed to be broken on my GeForce 6200 using 7x.xx drivers as seen here. Curiously, a GeForce 2 MX400 didn't exhibit any issues with the floor textures when using that same driver version.

atom1kk wrote on 2022-01-11, 19:48:

Hi […]
Show full quote

Hi

I have found an older pc with a p4 and gf3 ti200 to fiddle around with win 98 and play older games without compatibilty issues. But all the games around 1995to 2000 are still having issues and this is not what i was hoping for.

As i read here in some posts the biggest troubles seem to come from the gpu. So what would be the best gpu ( in terms of compatibilty) for the games of that time? Is nvidia or ati in generall better? And which model? It should be fast enough to run 2k games and also the years before.

Thank you

Generaly most of the compatibility issues that arise are from early non direct X 3d APIs and early Dierct3d 2-5 before Direct x 6.

For the early 3d API stuff the only cards that work right are ones that support those APIs directly.
For Direct3d 2-5 there are a lot of choices however most of those choices are terrible cards for anything past Direct 6.
There are few exceptions to directx 6 + games which may have some compatibility issues with cards without propper Fog support but most of those games are Direct3d games and just about any later card from ATI or Nvidia with good driver support for win 9x will work with those.

Most people would probably say Geforece 2-4 with older det drivers are your best bet however even these cards are not perfect.

Personally Id seperate it from "1995-1998 and 1998-2002 With exceptions". Becasue it is almost apples and oranges. Games after 1998 talking 1999 and forwad your getting into the Direct7 era where compatibility is all about directx 7 API and hardware T&L. So Pre DirectX 6 and earlyer I think voodoo 3 is the best choice, DirectX 7 + Nvidia Geforce 4200. These would be my choices.

Yeah, the problem here is, that 1995-2002 is a huge time frame. Even the Geforce 3 suggested before will be underpowered in some 2001-2002 games. Like for me a Ti200 just barely hit 30fps (average, 20fps for 1% low) in Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2. And you can expect a "cinematic experience" in GTA Vice City too with around 25fps average. All set on high details, but why would you play on anything lower? If you want sufficient performance in late-era games (you need non-entry level Geforce FX or Radeon R300), early era compatibility will suffer as you experienced.

Ok. My point is thst most games run also on my windows 10 pc. I think the more interesting timeframe for me is until 99. With those games im getting most problems. I think for that period a TNT2 would be a good choice? Voodoo is not sn option. The prices are too high only for casual gaming and compared with other cards. All those cards i can get around 10 euro. Voodoo starts from 70 and upwards

atom1kk wrote on 2022-01-14, 20:35:

Ok. My point is thst most games run also on my windows 10 pc. I think the more interesting timeframe for me is until 99. With those games im getting most problems. I think for that period a TNT2 would be a good choice? Voodoo is not sn option. The prices are too high only for casual gaming and compared with other cards. All those cards i can get around 10 euro. Voodoo starts from 70 and upwards

I've had all three. A Voodoo3, a TNT2, and the latest addition is the GF3 Ti200.
For the V3 I use DX7 + latest official driver.
For the TNT2 I use DX7 + Detonator 3.68.
For the GF3, I use DX8 + Detonator 21.83.

For any of the games that I've tested that run on the TNT2, I haven't found a single one that wouldn't also work with the GF3.
That said, I haven't tested any of the games you mentioned earlier.

With Win9x, you should be prepared for all kinds of weird and unintuitive problems. For example, on one of the computers I built, not installing USB drivers would result in the computer losing keyboard/mouse if I played a specific game opening fmv. The keyboard and mouse were PS/2. It made no sense whatsoever.

I only bring up that example because your problems with the games freezing or becoming blurry might not have anything to do with the video card or drivers. Logic and experience would suggest so, but you never know...

OK THX will try the 21.83 driver

leonardo wrote on 2022-01-16, 01:22:

With Win9x, you should be prepared for all kinds of weird and unintuitive problems. For example, on one of the computers I built, not installing USB drivers would result in the computer losing keyboard/mouse if I played a specific game opening fmv. The keyboard and mouse were PS/2. It made no sense whatsoever.

I only bring up that example because your problems with the games freezing or becoming blurry might not have anything to do with the video card or drivers. Logic and experience would suggest so, but you never know...

I believe it. Whenever I run into a weird issue with windows I assume it's one of the many undocumented speed, and/or memory, and/or driver, and/or software, and/or hardware bugs, and/or voodoo curses, and/or past life karma, and/or cosmic ray bit flips, and/or rage induced hallucinations that I seem to run into from time to time. Tried a bunch of different platforms, some are better than others, all of them get the windows treatment to one degree or another 😁.

ok tried today the 21.83 and menu is ok, but as soon as i ready to drive and it wants to start the level it crahses to windows. in software mode it works..

What does dxdiag tell you? ...and which version of DirectX are you running anyway?

ok, now i was onto download every driver which exists here from the archive and try them out chronologically and guess what first success, the next version after 21.83, 23.11 made it. at least for colin. now more tests are coming.

I am runnig DX 8.1

I think I just forgot the good old days where gaming was an adventure where it already started with the installation 😁

EDIT.

Fantastic, next success. HEDZ which didnt work before now also works. maybe a good driver to keep in mind