There is a thread about "best windows 98 agp card" here
best windows 98 agp card
Check the post by "the_ultra_code" where he tells how to get older Windows 98 drivers to install with a Geforce 6800 card.

There are DOS drivers for the Audigy posted by "edelbeb" in this thread
audigy dos drivers

Full AA and AF is really hard. Cards back then had less efficient filtering algorithms and really limited VRAM and bandwidth. At 1024x768, you shouldn't have any trouble with 4X AA and 4X AF in windows 98. 8xAA and 8XAF might be too much to maintain 60fps in some games. For better performance, you can also try in windows XP. My Quadro FX 2000 performs much better in Quake III for example in XP than in does in win9x. Dual booting is an option if you need the compatibility. Just switch your boot priority in the bios and install each OS on a separate hard drive.

I would recommend a faster FX card. A 5600 ultra, 5900xt or a Quadro FX 2000 or Quadro FX 3000, or a Geforce ti 4200 or better are good choices. More VRAM is better. 128MB should be enough but 256MB of VRAM won't hurt.

Thanks for the informative posts guys.

Good card suggestions mothergoose729, I've actually been looking at a 5900XT but it's from Poland so might give that a miss. I want to try and stick with the FX series of cards as they are known to be compatible with Dark Omen in 3D mode. My old GF 4 Ti 4200 wasn't able to do 3D mode with this game. I'm just hoping the better FX series cards support it too.

I presume my CPU won't be a bottleneck for these cards? as you can pick up P4's for so cheap now perhaps a CPU upgrade would help?? Or is 2.2ghz plenty for the cards I'm using? I noticed in 3D mark 99 that my CPU score was crazy high whereas my GPU score was much, much lower so i presume my CPU is sleeping with the FX 5200.

darkomen wrote:

Thanks for the informative posts guys.

Good card suggestions mothergoose729, I've actually been looking at a 5900XT but it's from Poland so might give that a miss. I want to try and stick with the FX series of cards as they are known to be compatible with Dark Omen in 3D mode. My old GF 4 Ti 4200 wasn't able to do 3D mode with this game. I'm just hoping the better FX series cards support it too.

I presume my CPU won't be a bottleneck for these cards? as you can pick up P4's for so cheap now perhaps a CPU upgrade would help?? Or is 2.2ghz plenty for the cards I'm using? I noticed in 3D mark 99 that my CPU score was crazy high whereas my GPU score was much, much lower so i presume my CPU is sleeping with the FX 5200.

2.2ghz P4 is plenty. You can get faster if you want but it won't stop you from hitting good frame rates.

My actual win98 pc has the same cpu but with a gf2mx
Is your fx5200 card a 128bit version?
Also use Nglide too!

My current 3D Mark 2001 score is 5471.

That's weird. I get around 6100 score in 3dmark01 SE with a Northwood 2.0ghz and a Gf4 mx460 on a SIS 645DX motherboard.

MKT_Gundam wrote:

My actual win98 pc has the same cpu but with a gf2mx
Is your fx5200 card a 128bit version?
Also use Nglide too!

My card is a "PV-T34K-UAHG" model. It's a XFX Geforce FX 5200 with 256MB RAM but I'm unsure if it's 64 or 128 bit? Nglide? May sound silly but what is that?

I saw this listing for the card which says it's a 256 bit bus?? I somewhat doubt that though for a budget card...?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/XFX-FX5200-AGP8X-256 … R/dp/B0000E2Y8M

That's weird. I get around 6100 score in 3dmark01 SE with a Northwood 2.0ghz and a Gf4 mx460 on a SIS 645DX motherboard.

Indeed i did think it was rather low too. But after doing some research it seems in some non Direct X 9 stuff the FX 5200 series actually is comparable to a Geforce 4 MX440! It's a very poor performing card for what it is. I do recall the FX series being considered bad back in the day but i didn't think they were that bad!

One thing I noticed is my Aopen board supports AGP x4 maximum... would this effect performance? It does state my FX 5200 is a AGP x8 card but I'm unsure how much impact this will actually have??

I've just ordered a XFX Geforce FX 5700 LE 256MB card I know the LE is the lower end model but it is highly overclockable (apparently to 5700 Ultra level clocks with little effort) and it was dirt cheap. It also destroys my FX 5200 at stock clocks in Passmark so it should be fine for me.

Again though... with my board being AGP 4x will it bottleneck this card? Perhaps that is my issue??

darkomen wrote:

Nglide? May sound silly but what is that?

http://www.zeus-software.com/downloads/nglide

nGlide is a 3Dfx Voodoo Glide wrapper. It allows you to play games designed
for 3Dfx Glide API without the need for having 3Dfx Voodoo graphics card.

Well damn...! That is insanely cool!! Thank you i will certainly give that a try.

Is there much performance benefit using this over say Direct X or OpenGL ??

Ok, i've been rather busy with this...

I got my 5700LE card and i tested it in 3D Mark 2001 SE and I went from 5000 or so to 7912 so a huge increase and that's with stock clocks which match my old FX 5200 with massive overclocking potential so very happy with this. Even Windows 98 SE feels smoother when using the start menu which is strange.

Anyway, the fan was screwed on the FX 5700 LE... Typical eBay so I've stripped the card down and ordered a new pure copper cooler.

I also ordered some cheap upgrade parts too. I got a ASUS P4R800-VM motherboard with AGP 8x as my current Aopen board is AGP 4x. I got a 2.8Ghz Pentium 4 with 800Mhz FSB over my current 2.2Ghz 533Mhz CPU and i also ordered a Sidewinder joystick for flight sims and a joypad for Jazz Jack Rabbit etc.

As you can see.. I also ditched my Sound Blaster Audigy.. Why? Well... No game port!! 🙁 So i had to order a 00060 Sound Blaster Live! Value model so i can use my game pads. I also got 512MB of DDR400 to swap out my 533Mhz DDR RAM I have currently.

Should be a fairly nice machine once built. 😊

Slowly making more progress... More parts arrived and my cooler for the GPU arrived which I'm very happy with as i literally just guessed it would fit from looking at it on eBay and it's literally the same cooler but pure copper and a working fan!

Also arrived is a my matched pair of DDR400 RAM sticks, my Sound Blaster Live 00060 model and my new Pentium 4 2.8Ghz/512/800Mhz FSB CPU.

Looking forward to this new build! Just waiting on the motherboard now.. 😒

Well... the machine is together at last!

When it works, games are sooo much better, silky smooth but... like i say, when it works... this board does not like windows 9x at all. So many issues from sound to game port to CD drives to multiple BSOD and reinstalls... it's been rough. I don't recommend this board but I hope i can coax it into working as games are so good now when it works.

I don't think you'll get much luck from any board of that generation. Win9x support on Pentium4 systems, especially high-end ones, is a mere afterthought. It's XP territory.

Maybe give Windows ME a try? It often runs really well on later hardware like yours.

You could always boot into a DOS environment off a floppy.

True DR_ST this is certainly XP era stuff. Plus the manual does clearly state it does not support Windows 98. I knew it was a gamble but the board was literally £9 which is super cheap these are at least £30 on eBay normally.

That said though, after lots and lots of tinkering i have managed to get the machine functional and reliable. Games are absolutely fantastic now with no lowered FPS at any stage or game.

The only thing missing is Sound Blaster 16 emulation which i can live without as i don't do much DOS gaming and if i choose to later on i will actually build a DOS system with ISA slots and all that good stuff.

One thing of note which may be of interest to some of you is going from AGP 4x to AGP 8x has made a huge difference. I read online that it doesn't but my results say otherwise. I benchmarked the 5700LE card on my old AGP 4x board and then again on this one once i built it and I've gone from 7900 or so to 9256! From the FX 5200 it was 5700 or so, so with this upgrade which cost me... £23? I've almost doubled my 3D performance which is great.

And that is stock clocks on the 5700LE too which are pretty low. I could easily overclock it to 5700/5700 Ultra speeds as they do so very easily according to posts online. Not going to though as the games i play are old, much older than this system spec it's certainly not period correct this machine but it works for me. The FPS is always so smooth it's pointless to overclock anything.

Just wanted to point out a few things for you and others who might read this thread:

Most of the speed improvement you got was not from AGP 8x but from the faster CPU, RAM and FSB you upgraded to. A FX 5700LE looses only a little speed at AGP 4x.

Also, that cooler is not copper but aluminum that has been anodized with an orange color.

As for the Sound Blaster 16 emulation, the chipset is probably to new (2004) to support Non-Maskable Interrupt needed for that.

dr_st wrote on 2019-12-28, 07:16:

I don't think you'll get much luck from any board of that generation. Win9x support on Pentium4 systems, especially high-end ones, is a mere afterthought. It's XP territory.

I think it depends on the board. My 865p chipset has been probably the most stable with windows 98 of any of my machines.