Unfortunately these drivers themselves are to blame for the incompatibilities you're facing. Even using an older card with these drivers will make you face the same issues. Let's hope someone make unofficial drivers that fixes these problems.

An nVidia Windows 98 anniversary driver for 2023 (Windows 98's 25th birthday), would be awesome 😀
Unfortunately, it's never going to happen. These guys only think about $$$, they don't care about the community at all (and especially not the retro community).

@ruthan, like you, I also did extensive tests with GeForce 6800GT/6800/6600GT on Windows 98. And my conclusion is that it's not worth it. Overall, OpenGL titles seem to run better, but DirectX titles are a mess (those broken vertices that you saw in Mafia 2 also occur in other titles).

However, after my tests, I can tell you that:
1. not all 6xxx cards have the same behavior (some work better - albeit, still bad - while others don't work at all).
2. their behavior can be better or worse depending on the motherboard chipset.

Bottom line: in my opinion, although the GeForce 6xxx series was very good back in the day, nowadays I think it's not really worth it (it's unusable in Windows 98 / way too slow for Windows XP)

Still I do appreciate your effort. 😀

ruthan wrote on 2020-04-26, 00:19:

Not graphical issues, which game demos are not even running with Win98, but full games do :
Doom 3 demo - there are Win9x fixes for full game which is running, but not for demo.

Try this executable, which I hex edited for Win98 compatibility.
https://ulozto.net/file/ER17LPeDGG3Z/doom3demo-zip

I tested problematic games with Geforce 5500 PCI and 56.xx driver, results added to main post. Geforce 5500 PCI late frankenstein card (same as Geforce 5 PCI-E cards), with proper geforce card like Geforce 5800 AGP you can use much older drivers from 43.45.

But even this small shift from 66.xx to 56.xx driver fixed few my problems:
Need for Speed 3 demo is now working fine
Evolva demo - is now working fine
Need for Speed Unleashed - menu is now ok, freeze is now on gameplay screen

I did thanks to great Phils Nvidia drivers page:
https://www.philscomputerlab.com/nvidia-9x-gr … cs-drivers.html

small list which drivers are supported by which cards, it could be handy for others:
Riva 128 / ZX - only special one drivers, some drivers are on Vogons - http://vogonsdrivers.com/index.php?catid=24
TNT / TNT2 : 2.08-71.84
Geforce 1=256 SDR/DDR : 3.68-71.84
Geforce 2 : 5.32-81.98 so almost full range..
Geforce 3 : 8.05-81.98
Geforce 4 : 28.32-81.98
Geforce 5 : 43.45-81.98
Geforce 6800 line : 61.76 to 81.98 -
Geforce 6600, 6600 GT : 66.94 to 81.98 -
Geforce 6200 : 71.84 to 81.98 -
Geforce 6600LE : 81.85 to 81.98 , so i discovered, that there are official drivers for it.
Geforce 7 lines : only unofficial 82.69 drivers

We really need same page for ATI cards 😀 I already found most old ATI Radeon 7000- X850 catalyst Win98 drivers and added them to Vogons driver library. So only need thing is now check *.inf files and make list of supported cards for each driver release.

Other good output from my testing is that i made great Windows 98 demos collection, they are getting harder and harder to find and it would be worse and worse.. if someone has some 10 GB on FTP it would nice to host them..

Unfortunately these drivers themselves are to blame for the incompatibilities you're facing. Even using an older card with these drivers will make you face the same issues. Let's hope someone make unofficial drivers that fixes these problems.

I guess that is hard to say, if problem is in driver, or in games which is dont comply to some standards.. and maybe even some one that standards where defined later after game released. Its quite know thing that even in case much later games some games have some broken implementations of some graphics feature, which are working just because some positive accidents and drivers team later have to "fix" drivers to make such things working better.

2. their behavior can be better or worse depending on the motherboard chipset.

KVM/ QEMu is emulating i440fx chipset which should is quite nice for compatiblity.. but yeah, wait a minute, its i440fx chipset some PCI-E support passthrough back to PCI magic. Qemu can emulated second, later proper Q35 chipset, but for some reason, its not possible to install Windows 98 on it, because some bugs.

in my opinion, although the GeForce 6xxx series was very good back in the day, nowadays I think it's not really worth it

I would say, there not ideal solution, like for XP+, where virtually everything working.. yeah you can use some Voodoo 3 card, which is nice for compatibility.. i have one.. but its quite expensive.. Voodoo 4/5 is now luxury stuff and performance worse that later Nvidia / ATI cards. Matrox G400/G450/G550 has similar performance, probably worse compatibility. But when you want to play later titles in higher resolutions and details, you really have not other option that later Nvidia / ATI cards.

If someone has machine with ATI Radeon cards i would like to see if compatibility is better, they are in general underated.. often because ATI fixed some things too slowly, but when experimented with X800 with Catalyst 6.2 all games which i tried worked fine.

Try this executable, which I hex edited for Win98 compatibility.
https://ulozto.net/file/ER17LPeDGG3Z/doom3demo-zip

Thanks i will try it.

If you want to continue your testing I'd suggest C&C Generals

This is the only game of mine that I seemed to have trouble on my 6800 Ultra but never really looked into it and maybe it was a driver issue, I would have been running a one of the later drivers.

Should be able to tell as soon as you enter the game, The terrain didn't draw properly behind the menu screen (at least in the full version)

Quick google thinks the demo can be found here
https://www.fileplanet.com/archive/p-16115/Co … r-Generals-Demo

ruthan wrote on 2020-04-26, 17:48:

Unfortunately these drivers themselves are to blame for the incompatibilities you're facing. Even using an older card with these drivers will make you face the same issues. Let's hope someone make unofficial drivers that fixes these problems.

I guess that is hard to say, if problem is in driver, or in games which is dont comply to some standards.. and maybe even some one that standards where defined later after game released. Its quite know thing that even in case much later games some games have some broken implementations of some graphics feature, which are working just because some positive accidents and drivers team later have to "fix" drivers to make such things working better.

This was when the worst nVidia software started to come out, which they were focusing on WinXP/2000 drivers while leaving 98/ME behind. The exact same thing happened when Vista came out, but many, many years later they decided to finally fix XP drivers in their 2xx.xx release (later versions were kinda messed up again, but not as badly as the 1xx.xx series).

filipetolhuizen wrote on 2020-04-26, 21:44:

This was when the worst nVidia software started to come out, which they were focusing on WinXP/2000 drivers while leaving 98/ME behind. The exact same thing happened when Vista came out, but many, many years later they decided to finally fix XP drivers in their 2xx.xx release (later versions were kinda messed up again, but not as badly as the 1xx.xx series).

Nice that someone is able to discover such facts. I was reading game maganizes / webs back in this period, but they switched to Xp and there was some Win9x / XP performance comparison, but nobody care about compatibility.. I guess that users were angry, but im not aware some magazines / webs articles which would reflect that and they should, this should be public knowledge. Same as later performance degradation, its great thah Phil video like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRhm4aGNI3o
But i was 13,15 years after.

On my 815E based board, under Windows 98 SE, I was never able to find a Geforce 6 driver that did not crash when doing something as mundane as scrolling . I had the same issue with a Geforce 6600 and a Geforce 6600GT . No such issues are present with aGeforce FX5900 (do not remember what driver version I am running) .

ruthan wrote on 2020-04-26, 00:19:

Offside of scope: because its actually Dos game, there is special DOS Qemu 3dfx build from kjliew for it, but.. RedGuard demo […]
Show full quote

Offside of scope:
because its actually Dos game, there is special DOS Qemu 3dfx build from kjliew for it, but..
RedGuard demo - 3dfx executable give me black screen- some switching and kick me off, probably because its running in DOS 3dfx mode. In error log is: Log opened. and nothing.
nGLide its support it only true Dosbox Gulikoza 3dfx build and Qemu at present time is not good with Win98 Dos, so i thing that is most problematic situation for KVM.

QEMU KVM Glide pass-through to OpenGlide running Redguard Demo scaled to 1024x768 on Intel Core m3-6Y30 laptop. 😀

QEMU MESAGL pass-through with Zeckensack's Glide Wrapper.
NFS Porsche Unleashed demo

Intersting would also an additional mark on featureset. e.g.

T&L Support: Y/N
Table Fog: Y/N
Palletized Texture-Support: Y/N

@kjliew : Im sure that for these few people on planet which have patience to build it works nice:)

Otherwise these framerate graphs look very nice. How it is released?

When you plan release that new version with OpenGL support? Any news about Direct3D to make finally complete solution? Because if and when if will working for Glide / OpenGL / Direct3D we can finally move from KVM / real HW to it.

ruthan wrote on 2020-04-27, 19:59:

@kjliew : Im sure that for these few people on planet which have patience to build it works nice:)

But building QEMU on Linux is peanuts for people who actually use Linux as daily driver. If PCI pass-through would work on Windows, then it would be different a story. Typically, Linux gamers resort to PCI pass-through to play modern Windows games on Windows 10.

ruthan wrote on 2020-04-27, 19:59:

Otherwise these framerate graphs look very nice. How it is released?

Do you mean the FPS overlay graph? This is a feature from Gallium3D based GL drivers from MESA on Linux. It works for any GL/GLES applications, not a QEMU implementation. It also works for DOSBox with OpenGL output, any SDL2 since SDL2 is basically OpenGL under Linux or any Linux OpenGL games, source ports or commercial releases.

ruthan wrote on 2020-04-27, 19:59:

When you plan release that new version with OpenGL support? Any news about Direct3D to make finally complete solution? Because if and when if will working for Glide / OpenGL / Direct3D we can finally move from KVM / real HW to it.

I hope there are ways to leverage WineD3D or other similar forms of Direct3D-on-top-of-OpenGL to achieve Direct3D acceleration. The problem with WineD3D is that upstream does not support building for Windows with MinGW toolchain. The build process is complicated and assumes a Linux cross compiling environment, which implies that upstream does not anticipate anyone to use WineD3D on native Windows. Nothing wrong with such assumption at Wine inception, but as virtualization picking up the steam I hope one day upstream will see the values of being the primary Direct3D stacks for virtual machines, especially for Windows guests.

But building QEMU on Linux is peanuts for people who actually use Linux as daily driver.

You are really living in coders world. Linux userbase is at best for desktop users 2% - Steam reporting 1.1% or something.. and even than most popular distros are these most bfu friendly.. what is saying something. And even than its big trend that Linux application are less and less distributed by way download these files and here make file.. Trend is right opposite of it.. Flatpack, Snap like distribution style which is Distros agnostic and works like Windows like exe or next. next installer. So you doing something for 0.5% of userbase..

I personally using Linux for 15 years, but usually for some servers corporate stuff.. im usually able to make things working, but im doing often just as challenge and a bit of fun, but its not really worth of time investment.. even in companies lots of admins, just saying that Linux is nice for servers (it make sense, because of MS / IBM (AIX)/ Oracle+HP (Solaris / Hp UX ) overpriced server licencing..), but its not good for desktop. And lots of desktops users are usually admin or coders, which are saying how is great.. but they are have money for Linux and they just train for work at home, so they are biased a lot.

Do you mean the FPS overlay graph? This is a feature from Gallium3D based GL drivers from MESA on Linux. It works for any GL/GLES applications, not a QEMU implementation. It also works for DOSBox with OpenGL output, any SDL2 since SDL2 is basically OpenGL under Linux or any Linux OpenGL games, source ports or commercial releases.

Yeah, ok i though that its your creation, im using everywhere Nvidia cards with proprietary drivers, so no Mesa, so i dont know that.. Some universal as Rivaturner / Afterburner for all cards for Linux / MacOS would be nice. Im using Mesa for Intel only with Android x86.

I hope there are ways to leverage WineD3D or other similar forms of Direct3D-on-top-of-OpenGL to achieve Direct3D acceleration.

In best scenario, do you have any forecast (date), when i could be done?

-------
I tried CnC general demo, but i cant eve execute it.. this error, i have 56.xx driver, too old?

Far Cry 1 demo on Windows 10 QEMU WHPX MESAGL pass-through using OpenGL renderer. This one runs on desktop with AMD FX8300 and NVIDIA GT730.
This one fully takes advantage of VBO and doubles the FPS for view distance that covers large area. Without VBO, the same position would only render at 13~15 FPS. When the view distance does not cover large area, the game plays at 60FPS. Just for fun 😁, and a test case for checking out MESAGL pass-through.

A few days ago I completed mi retro Win98 build.

After 3 times reinstalling Win98. Today I faced the games problems. Particularly with Need For Speed Porsche.
My build:
Athlon XP 2000+
Asus A7v333
512MB
GF 6200 AGP 512MB.

I had the same problem described by ruthan. Empty menu with no text at all. I was with 77.72 drivers. After update to Phil's drivers (81.98), now game crash right after the intro. All this on Directx9
I'm doomed with the 6200?.

Yeah the 6200 sucks pretty much (at least if its a weirdo 64bit Card), even my 3TI is faster and has better compatibility.
Also have 6200 in "real 128bit version" which unlocks to full 6600 Card.

With your Build i would go for Radeon 9600XT or better..
If you want compatibility go for Geforce 3/4 xxx Series.
For NFS Porsche maybe a 3Dfx V2 would be the best.

matze79 wrote on 2020-08-07, 07:19:

For NFS Porsche maybe a 3Dfx V2 would be the best.

Definitely not, not even close. 😀 NFS Porsche appeared during a time when Glide was almost dead. Furthermore, it supports 32 bit high resolution textures, which means that it will look great on a Radeon/GeForce card, but washed out on a Voodoo 2 / 3 card. Not to mention that you can play it at very high resolutions on a GeForce 4 / GeForce FX / Radeon 9700/9800, while also enabling antialiasing, anisotropic filtering, etc.
I think the last NFS game that was specifically optimized for Voodoo 2 was Need for Speed 3 Hot Pursuit.
For NFS Porsche on Windows 98, my vote goes to GeForce FX 5900 / Radeon 9800 Pro.

If your game of focus is NFS Porsche, you can obtain OpenGL render 3rash drivers from here. NVIDIA GPUs' OpenGL implementation is stellar since the GeForce eras.