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Geforce 7900 GS AGP Windows 98

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First post, by JaKSLaP

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Hey Guys;

i was wondering has anyone been able to get the 7900 gs agp video card to work with Windows 98. i know there is unofficial drivers for it, but i am curious if someone has actually gotten that card to work in a Windows 98 environment without issues

Reply 1 of 21, by PARUS

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I have. There is no any problem with it. Initialization is proper with all GF7 feautures, really faster than 6800!

First issue is not due to 7 series but is 82.69 problem. It is "shutdown bug". This bug is fully fixed many years ago, Google will help. It is necessary just to replace two or three files in 82.69 from another detonator (AFAIK some 77.XX version).
Second issue is due with not only GF7 but ALL nVidia models over GeForce 4600 AGP4X. It is 3D running (in some few games) in window-mode as default. And AFAIK this problem is solved too. Need to find. Anyway you can always switch to full screen mode manually.

Reply 2 of 21, by JaKSLaP

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PARUS wrote:

I have. There is no any problem with it. Initialization is proper with all GF7 feautures, really faster than 6800!

First issue is not due to 7 series but is 82.69 problem. It is "shutdown bug". This bug is fully fixed many years ago, Google will help. It is necessary just to replace two or three files in 82.69 from another detonator (AFAIK some 77.XX version).
Second issue is due with not only GF7 but ALL nVidia models over GeForce 4600 AGP4X. It is 3D running (in some few games) in window-mode as default. And AFAIK this problem is solved too. Need to find. Anyway you can always switch to full screen mode manually.

Did you use official drivers or the unofficial ones? also i heard BFG actually released official Windows 98 drivers for there 7800 GS, but not sure if that is true or not

Reply 3 of 21, by senrew

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I had a BFG 7800GS AGP a few years ago. It was beastly for Win98. There were BFG drivers for it, but I only used it as a token proof of concept before I redid that machine as an XP box.

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Reply 4 of 21, by JaKSLaP

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senrew wrote:

I had a BFG 7800GS AGP a few years ago. It was beastly for Win98. There were BFG drivers for it, but I only used it as a token proof of concept before I redid that machine as an XP box.

Do yo u know were i can get the drivers for it?

Reply 5 of 21, by senrew

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If I remember, it was the copy of the BFG site from the wayback machine from the period. No clue if it'll still be available though.

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Reply 7 of 21, by JaKSLaP

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PARUS wrote:

JaKSLaP
Why official? I just wrote about 82.69. How can I use official if it supports only up to 6800?
I know about BFG driver but never looked and never tried.

thats what i am trying to figure out. there is unofficial drivers, but at the same time people say there are official drivers for BFG 7800 gs.

Reply 8 of 21, by kanecvr

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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.

Reply 9 of 21, by PARUS

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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.

Reply 10 of 21, by agent_x007

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PARUS wrote:
kanecvr wrote:

If you could say that "strongly against newer than FX 5950GT" I would understand it because it is latest and fastest native AGP chip.

Both NV40 (6800 GT/Ultra AGP) and R481 (Radeon X850 XT AGP) are native AGP chips, that are 2x-4x more powerfull than FX 5950 Ultra.

157143230295.png

Reply 11 of 21, by PARUS

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Yeah, sorry! PCIe bridge is soldered on the NV40 pcb for pci-e cards. Anyway we need old nV card and old driver just about 4xxx-6xxx. And even in this case sometimes we can find some errors like incorrect or impossible work DOS-screens etc. Therefore I think that too much severe critique of the 7 series is not right. With 256 memory size it works flawlessly.

Reply 12 of 21, by stamasd

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In case anyone is still looking for Geforce 7xxx W9x drivers, here's the link to download the BFG unofficial ones. I spent about an hour in the Internet Archive before I could find an archived page that wasn't broken.

https://web.archive.org/web/20070202110210/ht … 7800GS_256.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20070202110 ... 16)int.exe
(second one is direct link to download)

(FWIW I did that because I just got a 7800GS AGP and I plan on using it in a Win98 build)

(edit) there's also http://www.mdgx.com/files/NV8269.EXE which is supposedly an user-modded version of 82.69 with the 7xxx and 8xxx series added in manually. Info in http://www.mdgx.com/files/NV8269.TXT and http://www.mdgx.com/files/nv8269.php
I haven't yet tried either of the above (the card is still in the mail)

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It's off to disk I go,
With a bit and a byte
And a read and a write,
I/O, I/O

Reply 14 of 21, by kanecvr

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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...

Last edited by kanecvr on 2017-02-21, 13:43. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 15 of 21, by vetz

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stamasd wrote:
In case anyone is still looking for Geforce 7xxx W9x drivers, here's the link to download the BFG unofficial ones. I spent about […]
Show full quote

In case anyone is still looking for Geforce 7xxx W9x drivers, here's the link to download the BFG unofficial ones. I spent about an hour in the Internet Archive before I could find an archived page that wasn't broken.

https://web.archive.org/web/20070202110210/ht … 7800GS_256.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20070202110 ... 16)int.exe
(second one is direct link to download)

(FWIW I did that because I just got a 7800GS AGP and I plan on using it in a Win98 build)

(edit) there's also http://www.mdgx.com/files/NV8269.EXE which is supposedly an user-modded version of 82.69 with the 7xxx and 8xxx series added in manually. Info in http://www.mdgx.com/files/NV8269.TXT and http://www.mdgx.com/files/nv8269.php
I haven't yet tried either of the above (the card is still in the mail)

Thanks for the links. I think when people are referencing specific info and/or drivers they should link to them, atleast I try to do this 😀

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Reply 16 of 21, by meljor

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vetz wrote:
stamasd wrote:
In case anyone is still looking for Geforce 7xxx W9x drivers, here's the link to download the BFG unofficial ones. I spent about […]
Show full quote

In case anyone is still looking for Geforce 7xxx W9x drivers, here's the link to download the BFG unofficial ones. I spent about an hour in the Internet Archive before I could find an archived page that wasn't broken.

https://web.archive.org/web/20070202110210/ht … 7800GS_256.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20070202110 ... 16)int.exe
(second one is direct link to download)

(FWIW I did that because I just got a 7800GS AGP and I plan on using it in a Win98 build)

(edit) there's also http://www.mdgx.com/files/NV8269.EXE which is supposedly an user-modded version of 82.69 with the 7xxx and 8xxx series added in manually. Info in http://www.mdgx.com/files/NV8269.TXT and http://www.mdgx.com/files/nv8269.php
I haven't yet tried either of the above (the card is still in the mail)

Thanks for the links. I think when people are referencing specific info and/or drivers they should link to them, atleast I try to do this 😀

Yes! When people know where to get them they should always do that. It becomes harder and harder to find the right driver for the old stuff.

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Reply 18 of 21, by TimWolf

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Thread, rwise from your gwave.

So I am looking at a build with a 925XE chipset and single core prescott EE P4. Trying to do a dual boot XP / 98SE. The board I am pondering has PCI and PCI-E only. Thank you for the archival links above. Will they work on PCI-E versions or only AGP? I've not bought a video card yet, but would like to make the best selection for both intended purposes. Was this debate ever settled about 7800 or 7900 working well on 98SE?

Thanks in advance,
TW

Reply 19 of 21, by Amiten

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Hi @all,

Thank you all for keep & support all this old machines alive ! ,

I quite busy on my day to day , but like to keep an eye on this forum at time to time.

Thanks to this thread I found nice info to one of my projects , build an Extreme W98/ME with semimodern hard...

Ok , I got a Nvidia PCIe 7900GT with 256mb Vram , a Xeon E3110 (2.4ghz?¿) 2GB RAM DDR2 , Mobo GA-945P-S3 (rev. 3.3) , SB Live and 160GB SATA Drive

I try first to have W98se running on this machine , I try allmost all to get the 7900GT Drivers on W98se but after many attempts and diferent drivers the system get crashes or not work at all ...

I will say will be not imposible but to hard or to stress to get that hardware run on win98se , i try many diferent ways to get 7900gt working but the drivers not install properly at the end of any attemps , allways finalize with diferent errors , exclamation signs on device manager, windows boot problems etc...

And at the end tired of trying, I tried with winme and here things changed quickly...

First I try the ones on this thread NVIDIADisplayWin9x(82_16)int.exe and semi detect and seems to work but at the end I get black screen , extrange ....

them i try that unofficial ones NV8269.EXE and installed manually and "Bingo" they work on Win98ME

To say that I install the Nvidia Graphics after install first DirectX9c ...

I still have to continue working on this project, to see if it is finally stable / usable as I want, but at the moment it promises a lot.

One question, with the drivers I'm using the 7900gt fan is always at maximum, does anyone know how to change this?

Ok here some pic´s of my system running WinME on that such hardware , and I hope my post can be usefull for some one who have similar hardware and want to do something similar. all the best

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Edit : With all the mess I notify My CPU are: Procesador Intel® Xeon® E3110
caché de 6 M, 3,00 GHz, FSB de 1333 MHz I made the benchmarks at 2.4GHZ not at 3.0GHZ 😁 , a little mistake xD , results will improve on next post , stay tune