Have you tried the 53.04? They 're not as great as the 45.23 but I think they are the oldest you can go.

add the device ID string for the Fx5500 to 45.23, an FX5500 is an overclocked FX5200, you could use it unmodified by just telling the drivers its an FX5200 🤣

candle_86 wrote:

add the device ID string for the Fx5500 to 45.23, an FX5500 is an overclocked FX5200, you could use it unmodified by just telling the drivers its an FX5200 🤣

Ηey, how can you do this? I could try this on an FX5900XT to squeeze some more performance in older games.

tanasen wrote:

candle_86 wrote:

add the device ID string for the Fx5500 to 45.23, an FX5500 is an overclocked FX5200, you could use it unmodified by just telling the drivers its an FX5200 🤣

Ηey, how can you do this? I could try this on an FX5900XT to squeeze some more performance in older games.

control panel > system > Device Manager > Update Driver > I want to pick my driver manually > browse to C:\Nvidia\Detonator 45.23\ > pick FX5200 for FX5500/ Pick FX5900Ultra for 5900XT > reboot

candle_86 wrote:

tanasen wrote:

candle_86 wrote:

add the device ID string for the Fx5500 to 45.23, an FX5500 is an overclocked FX5200, you could use it unmodified by just telling the drivers its an FX5200 🤣

Ηey, how can you do this? I could try this on an FX5900XT to squeeze some more performance in older games.

control panel > system > Device Manager > Update Driver > I want to pick my driver manually > browse to C:\Nvidia\Detonator 45.23\ > pick FX5200 for FX5500/ Pick FX5900Ultra for 5900XT > reboot

That is not adding ID string to the ini file. Just find the ID string in a newer driver that has the card there and copy/paste it to ini file of 45.23 driver. That way you can make it show up as correct card name in windows device manager. That is what I did with FX 5950 ultra.

candle_86 wrote:

tanasen wrote:

candle_86 wrote:

add the device ID string for the Fx5500 to 45.23, an FX5500 is an overclocked FX5200, you could use it unmodified by just telling the drivers its an FX5200 🤣

Ηey, how can you do this? I could try this on an FX5900XT to squeeze some more performance in older games.

control panel > system > Device Manager > Update Driver > I want to pick my driver manually > browse to C:\Nvidia\Detonator 45.23\ > pick FX5200 for FX5500/ Pick FX5900Ultra for 5900XT > reboot

The card will be act/detected as a fx 5200?

Baoran wrote:

That is not adding ID string to the ini file. Just find the ID string in a newer driver that has the card there and copy/paste it to ini file of 45.23 driver. That way you can make it show up as correct card name in windows device manager. That is what I did with FX 5950 ultra.

The 5900XT has the same string path as the NV35. If I replace it the driver installs but I cannot run anything in d3d. OpenGl works fine though.
Oh, and the ini file is the setup.ini. Do you mean the Nvami.inf file?

tanasen wrote:

Baoran wrote:

That is not adding ID string to the ini file. Just find the ID string in a newer driver that has the card there and copy/paste it to ini file of 45.23 driver. That way you can make it show up as correct card name in windows device manager. That is what I did with FX 5950 ultra.

The 5900XT has the same string path as the NV35. If I replace it the driver installs but I cannot run anything in d3d. OpenGl works fine though.
Oh, and the ini file is the setup.ini. Do you mean the Nvami.inf file?

They changed the name of the inf file at some point in drivers. Basically you need to put 2 lines from NVaml.inf file of a newer driver version that has FX 5500 support to NVagp.inf file of 45.23 driver and put them in correct sections of the inf file.
There is one line that says FX 5500 in newer driver inf file and that same line has the device ID for the card too and then you need to find another line that mentions the same device ID and copy that line as well.

I''m not very good at explaining these things, but it should not be very complicated when even I managed to figure it out without any help.

This doesn't work for me. In 53.04 the 5900XT is DEV_0332. In 45.23 there is a device DEV_0332 that is called NV35. Replacing it with "Nvidia GeForce FX 5900XT" results in broken direct3d compatibility. The other line that I found the same ID is exactly the same in both files so there is nothing else to add.

tanasen wrote:

This doesn't work for me. In 53.04 the 5900XT is DEV_0332. In 45.23 there is a device DEV_0332 that is called NV35. Replacing it with "Nvidia GeForce FX 5900XT" results in broken direct3d compatibility. The other line that I found the same ID is exactly the same in both files so there is nothing else to add.

I just checked mine and my NVagp.inf in 45.23 file doesn't have DEV_332. It has DEV_331 as 5900 ultra and I have added 5950 ultra as DEV_333 and there is a quadro card as DEV_338 as last one on the list. Looking at later driver versions inf files 5900XT should use same NV30 driver as my 5950 ultra and not NV35. Not sure why mine doesn't have that DEV_332 id that yours does.

Baoran wrote:

tanasen wrote:

This doesn't work for me. In 53.04 the 5900XT is DEV_0332. In 45.23 there is a device DEV_0332 that is called NV35. Replacing it with "Nvidia GeForce FX 5900XT" results in broken direct3d compatibility. The other line that I found the same ID is exactly the same in both files so there is nothing else to add.

I just checked mine and my NVagp.inf in 45.23 file doesn't have DEV_332. It has DEV_331 as 5900 ultra and I have added 5950 ultra as DEV_333 and there is a quadro card as DEV_338 as last one on the list. Looking at later driver versions inf files 5900XT should use same NV30 driver as my 5950 ultra and not NV35. Not sure why mine doesn't have that DEV_332 id that yours does.

Thanks for looking that up! Apparently the guru3d version is different from the official... Anyway I downloaded the correct 45.23 driver and did exactly what you described but the same problems still remain. direct3d doesn't work and when it does (in unreal for e.g) the performance is unacceptable. I believe the 5900xt is simply not compatible with this soft mod.

Has anyone got the 45.23 driver to work with the FX 5950 Ultra ?? I have tired to edit the NVAGP by adding the live under [MFG] %NVIDIA&DEV_0331.DeviceDesc% = NV30, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0331 and adding the line under [Strings] NVIDIA&DEV_0333.DeviceDesc="NVIDIA GeForce FX 5950 Ultra" but I still get a message from installer "Setup was unable to locate any NVIDIA graphics chips on this system. The installation will be terminated." Windows 98 SE

You don’t need to edit the ini file, you can simply force the installation - (from memory, might not be 100% accurate) you can choose “Display a list of drivers in a specific location” —> “Have disk” —> Select the location where you extracted the driver archive. You should see a list of all video cards that are supported by that driver version. Select a similar card (like the 5900 Ultra) and see if it works.

Now, I should point out that this usually works when the cards are basically identical (same GPU) except for different clock speeds. In the case of the 5900 Ultra / 5950 Ultra… the first one has an NV35 GPU, while the latter has an NV38. So it’s a long shot (but still worth trying) 😀

PS: try and wrap that ini file contents in code tags or something 😀

bloodem wrote on 2021-05-29, 04:57:

You don’t need to edit the ini file, you can simply force the installation - (from memory, might not be 100% accurate) you can choose “Display a list of drivers in a specific location” —> “Have disk” —> Select the location where you extracted the driver archive. You should see a list of all video cards that are supported by that driver version. Select a similar card (like the 5900 Ultra) and see if it works.

Now, I should point out that this usually works when the cards are basically identical (same GPU) except for different clock speeds. In the case of the 5900 Ultra / 5950 Ultra… the first one has an NV35 GPU, while the latter has an NV38. So it’s a long shot (but still worth trying) 😀

PS: try and wrap that ini file contents in code tags or something 😀

Hey thanks for the reply I'm about to give your advice a go 😀 I just created this account so I'm still figuring out how to use this website 😁

Baoran wrote on 2019-02-21, 00:23:

They changed the name of the inf file at some point in drivers. Basically you need to put 2 lines from NVaml.inf file of a newer […]
Show full quote

tanasen wrote:

Baoran wrote:

That is not adding ID string to the ini file. Just find the ID string in a newer driver that has the card there and copy/paste it to ini file of 45.23 driver. That way you can make it show up as correct card name in windows device manager. That is what I did with FX 5950 ultra.

The 5900XT has the same string path as the NV35. If I replace it the driver installs but I cannot run anything in d3d. OpenGl works fine though.
Oh, and the ini file is the setup.ini. Do you mean the Nvami.inf file?

They changed the name of the inf file at some point in drivers. Basically you need to put 2 lines from NVaml.inf file of a newer driver version that has FX 5500 support to NVagp.inf file of 45.23 driver and put them in correct sections of the inf file.
There is one line that says FX 5500 in newer driver inf file and that same line has the device ID for the card too and then you need to find another line that mentions the same device ID and copy that line as well.

I''m not very good at explaining these things, but it should not be very complicated when even I managed to figure it out without any help.

I can confirm It works.

I downloaded the nvidia_9x_56.64.zip driver from philscomputerlab which contains the first mention of FX5500 . Opened the inf file NVAML.inf and copied these 2 lines

%NVIDIA&DEV_0326.DeviceDesc% = NV30, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0326
under [Mfg]

and

NVIDIA&DEV_0326.DeviceDesc="NVIDIA GeForce FX 5500"
under [Strings] , nearing the end of the file

copied those lines to NVAGP.inf in the 45.23 driver folder , saved the file
...great success!

Hi there, I recently bought a chinese FX5500 and assembled it into my retro PC (P5M4-M + K6/2 450) and noticed the poor performance of this GPU.
I tried the following games:
- NFS4: unplayable at 800x600
- NFS5: unplayable at 800x600
- Half Life: playable with OpenGL but slow when moving objects on screen. With D3D has worst performance
- Fifa 99: playable but horrible textures (maybe is the way it is... 🤣)
- 2D games playing well
- Grand Touring: crashes "illegal operation" (Anybody knows this game? i love it, it was the first real 3D racing game i played)

I tried both 45.23 and 56.64 with same results (didnt notice any FPS difeence). NFSV and Half life have D3D/OpenGL options but they performance is pathtic 🙁
Do you think that is normal??

In my youth i owned VOODOO2 8MB and NFSs and half life were very enjoyable.
I think i will need a voodoo to play this games, i'm considering a voodoo3 agp because they are much more affordable than voodoo2 pci. Do you think is a good option to play late 90s 3D games?

Thanks!!!

The FX series uses drivers that require SSE to perform well. You will actually see *less* performance from an FX series card than a GeForce 2 or 3 using an earlier driver when the CPU is the bottleneck.

I believe my TNT2 was outperforming a GeForce MX 4000 in 3DMark 99 when testing recently on a Pentium MMX 200. The driver overhead was just too much. I don't recall the specifics other than realizing that there was too much or a performance bottleneck.

See here:

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-03-10, 13:37:

That's what I have imagined. If this is true, then the MX 460 would be the top performing DX7 card. The only advantage with the […]
Show full quote

That's what I have imagined. If this is true, then the MX 460 would be the top performing DX7 card. The only advantage with the GeForce 2 Ultra would be if you needed a very specific driver that the MX 460 doesn't support. But I can't think of any example of this.

Another thing to consider is that the GeForce 2 Ultra supports the 23.11 driver, which is much faster than anything that came after it if you have a slower processor. Conversely, if you have a faster processor then later drivers, especially the 50 series, see a huge performance boost. My guess is that NVIDIA moved the hardware T&L to software around this time because modern processors with SSE and SSE2 could outpace the original hardware.

For comparison, on a 440BX with a P3 650-100 (Coppermine), my GeForce 2 Ultra scored the following on 3DMark 99/00/01:

99 - 7051
00 - 4939
01 - 2553

But on 56.64 it scored much less:

99 - 5229
00 - 4684
01 - 2729

When pairing the GeForce 2 Ultra with a fast P4 3Ghz it scored the following on 23.11:

99 - 7483
00 - 5439
01 - 4070

And on 56.64:

99 - 7531
00 - 10342
01 - 4855

The question I have is how the MX 460 performs by comparison. Even if it's faster, is the GeForce 2 Ultra still faster on a slower processor because it has the ability to use older drivers?

I also believe that this makes a lot of the modern "benchmarking" where old cards are paired with modern or much later processors and drivers to be an unrealistic comparison that can skew scores significantly. It also provides no frame of reference to how these cards perform on hardware from that era. A perfect example is when people try using the latest 81.98 drivers on Windows 9x and everything is broken. These are details that a lot of modern reviewers fail to take into consideration.

Some things worth considering. 😀

posting.php?mode=quote&f=46&p=1051039

Kahenraz wrote on 2024-02-27, 10:26:

The FX series uses drivers that require SSE to perform well. You will actually see *less* performance from an FX series card tha […]
Show full quote

The FX series uses drivers that require SSE to perform well. You will actually see *less* performance from an FX series card than a GeForce 2 or 3 using an earlier driver when the CPU is the bottleneck.

I believe my TNT2 was outperforming a GeForce MX 4000 in 3DMark 99 when testing recently on a Pentium MMX 200. The driver overhead was just too much. I don't recall the specifics other than realizing that there was too much or a performance bottleneck.

See here:

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-03-10, 13:37:

That's what I have imagined. If this is true, then the MX 460 would be the top performing DX7 card. The only advantage with the […]
Show full quote

That's what I have imagined. If this is true, then the MX 460 would be the top performing DX7 card. The only advantage with the GeForce 2 Ultra would be if you needed a very specific driver that the MX 460 doesn't support. But I can't think of any example of this.

Another thing to consider is that the GeForce 2 Ultra supports the 23.11 driver, which is much faster than anything that came after it if you have a slower processor. Conversely, if you have a faster processor then later drivers, especially the 50 series, see a huge performance boost. My guess is that NVIDIA moved the hardware T&L to software around this time because modern processors with SSE and SSE2 could outpace the original hardware.

For comparison, on a 440BX with a P3 650-100 (Coppermine), my GeForce 2 Ultra scored the following on 3DMark 99/00/01:

99 - 7051
00 - 4939
01 - 2553

But on 56.64 it scored much less:

99 - 5229
00 - 4684
01 - 2729

When pairing the GeForce 2 Ultra with a fast P4 3Ghz it scored the following on 23.11:

99 - 7483
00 - 5439
01 - 4070

And on 56.64:

99 - 7531
00 - 10342
01 - 4855

The question I have is how the MX 460 performs by comparison. Even if it's faster, is the GeForce 2 Ultra still faster on a slower processor because it has the ability to use older drivers?

I also believe that this makes a lot of the modern "benchmarking" where old cards are paired with modern or much later processors and drivers to be an unrealistic comparison that can skew scores significantly. It also provides no frame of reference to how these cards perform on hardware from that era. A perfect example is when people try using the latest 81.98 drivers on Windows 9x and everything is broken. These are details that a lot of modern reviewers fail to take into consideration.

Some things worth considering. 😀

posting.php?mode=quote&f=46&p=1051039

Very interesting, i'm discovering a very complex world, it was much more simple back on 90s 🤣

So i think i'll go for the voodoo3 AGP option, i hope it is a good option, what do you think?

Voodoo would be the fastest. It might be bottlenecked from the slower processor, so even a Voodoo 2 or Banshee could suffice. I've been playing around with different graphics cards in my Socket 7 this past week; old, new, Nvidia, ATI, Matrox, and decided that I like the Rage XL the most. It has great Direct3D 5 and OpenGL 1.1 support. It's not the fastest, but it's nearly perfect and I'm happy with it.

You can also pair a Rage Turbo AGP, Voodoo 2, and a PowerVR PX2 for D3D 5, OpenGL 1.1, Glide, CIF, and PVR.

If you want to push the envelope a bit, the TNT2 is also a great pick for this era. Anything GeForce feels a bit gratuitous, and also suffers from a texel issue with DirectX 5 titles. These problems can be mitigated, but there may be more:

Mipmap settings that fix Incoming (DirectX 5) on the GeForce FX

Newer drivers are not always better on older hardware (especially without SSE):

Kahenraz wrote on 2021-10-03, 10:04:

I've finally managed to track down the cause of the driver instability I've been experiencing since version 56.64 in my testing. It comes down to Nvidia having a different code path for SSE-enabled processors or a bug introduced by a new optimization. This can be demonstrated exactly by the T&L demo with the missing light.

When testing any Pentium 2 or "Mendocino" Celeron, the light model disappears, graphical glitches begin to occur, and drivers overall become unstable. But without changing any drivers I swapped my CPU for a Coppermine and suddenly everything renders properly and the drivers become stable.

On a similar note, the Dawn demo will crash when run without a processor that supports SSE but only on NT 2000 or higher. It will still crash on Windows 98/ME even with SSE, but this may be for a different reason.

NVIDIA GeForce FX driver testing on an Intel 440EX summary and report