uff....

kanecvr wrote on 2017-02-21, 11:54:

Here's the logic: […]
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PARUS wrote:

OK, and there is no logic. Why exactly against newer than 6800? A problem with 512 mb? I thought everybody knows it and even did […]
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kanecvr wrote:

I strongly advise against using anything newer than a 6800 in win98. Even the 6800 has issues - especially if it's one of the late 512MB DDR2 models. 7xxx drivers are buggy and cause lots of compatibility and performance issues in win98, not to mention BSODs and other weird happenings.

OK, and there is no logic. Why exactly against newer than 6800? A problem with 512 mb? I thought everybody knows it and even didn't say about it. Of course it is necessary to use 256 mb only versions, it's like 2x2=4 for Win98. And 6 or 7 generation doesn't matter here!
If you could say that "strongly against newer than FX 5950GT" I would understand it because it is latest and fastest native AGP chip.
But you said "strogly against newer than 6800" and I don't understand it, sorry. Some possible issues which may be typical (by the way I don't know them) for 7800/7900GS/7950GT will be the same for 6800GS/GT/Ultra too and nothing more. Therefore if any user is satisfied with 6800 he will be excited with 7900. I say again: unofficial version 82.69 is working wonderfully.

And I repeat one more: if you want absolutely trouble-free video in Win98 you should choose a card not newer than GeForce 4600. And old drivers.

Here's the logic:

1. video memory needs to be cached into system ram in win98. That causes problems with video cards that have over 256MB of ram. As you already know, win98 does not support more then 512mb of ram, and win98se supports up to 1GB. Using a 512MB vram card with 512mb of ram will causes windows98 to not start - error is "insufficient memory to run windows". Using 1GB of ram fixes the issue, but I've experienced general instability in win98se, with loads of programs and games performing "illegal operations".
2. the 7xxx series was never intended for win98. Drivers are more or less unfinished and unstable. Use at your own risk. As such, many games will not run correctly. Most openGL titles except for GLQuake work well, I found problems with lots of d3d games.

I found numerous issues with games running a 7 series card under win98 (tested with 7900 and 7600 AGP) among witch crashes to desktop, system freezes and BSODs. Also some older games are not a fan of the new cards. Dungeon Keeper II runs on the 7600 AGP, but has the black screen bug on the 7900. Black and white displays artifacts ingame. This is a driver issue, as the same artifacts are present on the 6800 - BUT you can use older drivers with the 6800, and it will work fine in B&W - the problem is the working drivers do not support 7 series cards. Sacrifice freezes after 5 mins of gameplay on both 7600 and 7900 agp cards. Again, a driver issue. Same thing happens on the 6800 with the same drivers, and again, works fine with older drivers witch do not support the 7 series. Unreal gold also freezes at one point during gameplay.

The problem is not with the cards themselves, but with the drivers. I never said the cards don't work, but getting them to work is a pain in the ass and even after all the work most of my favorite games won't work well on the card + 8x.xx drivers I got the card working with.

If you want to prove the 7 series cards run well in win98, show us what drivers you're using. I really really hope I'm wrong about the cards acting up in win98, and my experience is based on me fucking something up, but i have yet to be proved otherwise. A link to the drivers you used to get it working perfectly as well as the system you used it on would be wonderfull.

If anyone got 7xxx cards perfectly stable in win9x, please post what drivers you used, what system cfg and a quick guide would be awsome...

Yeah I think it was your response somewhere here why I settled to a Geforce 6200 for that box but it just died 🙁
So will be giving a shot for my 7800GS and post the results here as they are related.

Well his right even the 6200 is pain in the a, like for starter if you get the 512MB you MUST use the 256 MB clamper driver patch or the bios patch on the video card otherwise Win9X won't even boot after installing the driver. Strange tho I had 1GB ram in that box both Windows 98SE, Windows ME did the same.

With the 6200 a common bug was that the picture of the game was "shifted" eg sometimes you started some game and it was out of the picture like you would lift the square of the monitor 40% higher. Restarting the game or the whole box solved it.

As others mentioned it in the thread this card is still a good pick to multiboot OS-es. On that machine I got

-Dos
-Win98
-WinME (i know its shit)
-Win2000
-Win2003 server
-Win XPSP3
-Some Linuxes

When you go with so many it's difficult to find a decent tradeoff. With the 6200 you can still enjoy games like Bloodrayne, Prince of Persia sands of time but even this card is the floor for these games.

Gonna give it a shot to the 7800 GS then see how things go.