[Dave-H]

I'm hoping the Windows 98 experts here can give me some advice.

As you can see from my signature, I have a dual boot system with XP and 98SE.
My ATI Radeon 9200 based graphics card is getting pretty old now (bought in 1998) and I really need to replace it with a better one as it's having problems with recent games.

XP is no problem of course, but I need the replacement to still work at least at a fairly basic level on Windows 98SE!
I need it ideally to work at least with 32bit colour at 1024x768 resolution.

I've looked at later ATI cards like the Radeon HD series, but it seems to be impossible to find any drivers for them which will work at all on Windows 98.

I'd like to stick with ATI/AMD if possible, but it's not essential.
It has to be an AGP card though, as my 2003 motherboard has no PCI-E slot, and not even any free normal PCI slots!

Anyone any suggestions as to what I could use?
Thanks, Dave.

[Queue]

As far as I remember, a Radeon 9800 would be it for the strongest model with full Win9x compatibility. Back when the Radeon 9x00 series was new, I used two 9600s and a 9800 in Win98SE machines (and the 9800 blew the 9600 out of the water). My one remaining Win9x machine has a Radeon 9550 in it (basically an underclocked, fanless 9600).

Queue

Edit - None of those are going to be up-to-snuff for modern games, but they can generally handle HL2-based games set to really low settings. Just don't expect to get anywhere with Unreal Engine 3 games, etc. I imagine you'll get ripped off buying an AGP card though... have you considered dedicating your computer to 98SE and just building a modern computer for XP+? $50 motherboard, $90 CPU, $40 in RAM, $100 video card, $60 hard drive, $20 case and $40 power supply would absolutely pwn your current system and would play modern games fantastically.

[Tripredacus]

I am using a Radeon 9600XT 256MB AGP card. I tried an X1650 but I found there were no drivers for it. I am using a Win98 FE with misc SE files installed. There were no X1650 series drivers available for any 98 that I could find, I didn't even try looking for HD series. Besides the HD series are designed for DX10+.

PS

Quote

None of those are going to be up-to-snuff for modern games

I was able to play Crysis with the 9600XT on the same hardware as my 9x PC but with XP. It is possible, but not recommended.

[rainyd]

Dave-H, same as you, I'd like to replace my old Radeon 9700 (if I remember correctly, bought in 2003).

Theoretically, I'm in a better position than you because I have a PCI-E slot on my motherbord.

But we will face two major problems: first, you can't buy a new graphic card equipped with less than 512 MB of graphic memory (not resolved issue on Win98/ME).
In fact, I don't even know if it's possible to run PCI-E graphic card with 256 MB on those systems.

Second problem, it is of course, lack of drivers.
In theory, you could hack drivers for Windows XP/2000 - they use WDM model driver which is supported by Win98/ME.

But as I presume, it's more than difficult.

As to your question: if your motherboard supports AGP 2.0 (mode 4x) you can put a card from X800 family as the strongest on the ATI side.
From Nvidia, it would be a GeForce 7 family.

[sp193]

rainyd, on 11 June 2010 - 08:40 AM, said:

Dave-H, same as you, I'd like to replace my old Radeon 9700 (if I remember correctly, bought in 2003).

Theoretically, I'm in a better position than you because I have a PCI-E slot on my motherbord.

But we will face two major problems: first, you can't buy a new graphic card equipped with less than 512 MB of graphic memory (not resolved issue on Win98/ME).
In fact, I don't even know if it's possible to run PCI-E graphic card with 256 MB on those systems.

Second problem, it is of course, lack of drivers.
In theory, you could hack drivers for Windows XP/2000 - they use WDM model driver which is supported by Win98/ME.

But as I presume, it's more than difficult.

As to your question: if your motherboard supports AGP 2.0 (mode 4x) you can put a card from X800 family as the strongest on the ATI side.
From Nvidia, it would be a GeForce 7 family.

I think that I should share something interesting - I once had faced something similar.

I had installed Windows 98 SE on a Compaq Presario 2837AP laptop, and it had ATI Mobility Radeon 9500 which was supposed to be unsupported by Windows 98 (According to Compaq and ATI).

I found an older driver that supported Windows 98 (Can't remember which ATI Radeon card it was for)... and it worked with my card (Fully working, all resolutions/modes functional).

Of course, I did something slightly different, but also involved getting drivers to work on "Unsupported hardware".
My new laptop - a Compaq CQ40-538TX has a Nvidia 103M graphics card (Unlisted by Nvidia, and the generic drivers refuse to install). My father's Sony Vaio (With a modified Nvidia 8400M) also faced something similar.

I fixed that by modifying the .inf file. Perhaps some of you could modify the inf of a older Catalyst driver to make it work with the newer graphics card? From what I know, these drivers are "unified" - meaning that they are designed to work on many hardware versions (Even newer ones that still follow it's standard).

This post has been edited by sp193: 11 June 2010 - 10:17 AM

[wsxedcrfv]

Dave-H, on 10 June 2010 - 04:56 PM, said:

As you can see from my signature, I have a dual boot system with XP and 98SE. It has to be an AGP card though, as my 2003 motherboard has no PCI-E slot, and not even any free normal PCI slots!

My systems used ATI cards up until maybe 2002 or 2003, but I wasn't happy with the stability of these cards (or their drivers) so I switched to Nvidia. The Nvidia 6200 (or maybe some higher 6x00 version) is likely the most advanced Nvidia card that you'll likely get running under win-98.

If you really are motivated enough to run your XP side with a more advanced card, consider the Asrock Dual or Quad-core VSTA motherboard. These boards came out about 3 years ago, and they might still be available. The Intel version is socket 775, and they have both AGP and PCIe slots. You might be able to put both a PCIe and AGP card on this board, and under win-98 use just the AGP card, but both cards would be available under XP. If you had a single monitor with 2 inputs, you could connect input-1 to the AGP card and input-2 to the PCIe card.

[ebernard]

Dave-H, on 10 June 2010 - 04:56 PM, said:

.. I have a dual boot system with XP and 98SE. It has to be an AGP card though, as my 2003 motherboard has no PCI-E slot, and not even any free normal PCI slots!

Matrox has Driver for all their products available, very neat and thorough!
This card: Matrox Millennium G400 / Matrox Millennium G400 MAX has drivers from Win 98 up to Win server 2003 and Linux 32 and 64 bits!
Look here:
www.matrox.com And look
here, for drivers by OS

The meticulous care for good drivers is a specialty of Matrox.

kind regards
Eveline

This post has been edited by ebernard: 11 June 2010 - 07:32 PM

[fortcollins]

Note a thread in the Zoom Player group,

"Do Post DX9 Video Cards Provide Any Advantages for Viewing Images and Videos?"

http://forum.inmatri...?showtopic=9393

where one responder suggests that for non-game, picture and video viewing, the benefits of higher level video cards may be marginal.

[sp193]

Quote

This card: Matrox Millennium G400 / Matrox Millennium G400 MAX has drivers from Win 98 up to Win server 2003 and Linux 32 and 64 bits!

I used to have (and used) that card before: A Matrox Millenium G400 with 32MB of VRAM.

Unfortunately, it lacks hardware T&L (Nor were it's drivers fully Directx 9.0 compliant).
Although it's general 2D graphics performance wasn't too bad, it really can't play new games (My games bought from 2003 onwards were mostly unplayable/playable with poor graphics performance).

I think that the thread OP was looking for a graphics card that could play "modern" games that need a slightly newer graphics card model compared to the one he's using now.

Edit: I think that I should also suggest that the thread OP should also try Nvidia cards
There was a ongoing project (Modified Nvidia 82.69 drivers) on this forum board to modify the last version of the Nvidia driver meant for Windows 9x to work with the newest line of Nvidia graphics cards.

Personally, I didn't own such a new card at that time when I still had my Windows 98 machine, but I heard that users even with the Geforce 9 series had little/no problems (Need confirmation/backing up on this point) getting their cards to work with Windows 98.

This post has been edited by sp193: 13 June 2010 - 01:37 AM

[Dave-H]

Thanks everyone, and sorry for not responding sooner, but I've been very busy the last few days!

That's certainly given me a lot of food for thought.
I'm not going to be changing my motherboard any time soon, as it is a dual processor server board with 3.2GHz Xeons and 4GB of a hard to get type of RAM, all which cost a lot of money!
It's more than powerful enough for everything I want to do with it, it's just the graphics card (which is five years older, and was transplanted from my previous motherboard) which is now letting the system down.

I will certainly investigate all the suggestions and get back.
I do run my present card at 8xAGP BTW.
Thanks all.

This post has been edited by Dave-H: 13 June 2010 - 08:57 AM

[wsxedcrfv]

Dave-H, on 13 June 2010 - 08:56 AM, said:

I'm not going to be changing my motherboard any time soon, as it is a dual processor server board with 3.2GHz Xeons

Is the Xeon part of the x86 family? Can DOS, or even Win-98 even be installed on a Xeon-based motherboard?

On a system like that, why would you consider running win-98 in any way other than as a virtual OS?

This post has been edited by wsxedcrfv: 13 June 2010 - 09:22 AM

[Dave-H]

wsxedcrfv, on 13 June 2010 - 09:21 AM, said:

Is the Xeon part of the x86 family? Can DOS, or even Win-98 even be installed on a Xeon-based motherboard?
On a system like that, why would you consider running win-98 in any way other than as a virtual OS?

I'm not an expert on processor types, but I assume the Xeon is an x86 processor. Windows 98 (and DOS) runs on one fine, but only sees one of my two physical processors of course. XP Pro sees them both as four processors using hyperthreading, which was the predecessor to multi-core technology I believe.
The reason I run it like I do is just a legacy one. I originally had just Windows 98SE (and 98FE and 95 before it) on my previous motherboard, then in 2000 I added Windows 2000 in a dual boot setup. The whole lot was ported to my present motherboard, (which despite never being tested with Windows 98 seemed to work fine with it) in 2003. Earlier this year the Windows 2000 installation was updated to XP Pro.

[Dave-H]

Well I'm now looking at nVidia cards.
I quite like the look of the GeForce 7950 GT.
Seems pretty powerful, is an 8x AGP card, and claims to have Windows 98 drivers available!
Anyone any thoughts or experience with this?
Thanks, Dave.

[EGOvoruhk]

The 6800 is the last card with official (ie non-hacked) drivers. I've got an AGP BFG 6800 GT OC myself

[Dave-H]

EGOvoruhk, on 18 June 2010 - 03:05 PM, said:

The 6800 is the last card with official (ie non-hacked) drivers. I've got an AGP BFG 6800 GT OC myself

Thanks.
I found the 7950 GT available here -
http://www.epartsand...jq4pr5ff7t5i8e0
The seller says that it's compatible with Windows 98.
Is that not so?

[LoneCrusader]

The ATi Catalyst 6.2 drivers are the last official ones for Windows 98. Although ATi's driver search for 98/ME will not lead you to it, this driver package contains drivers for the X800 series up to the X800 XT Platinum Edition. I have not used these myself, so I cannot vouch for their operability. Have a look at this thread.

I have a computer under construction that I plan to use a X800 XT Platinum Edition card in, if I can ever get the time to work on it.

[Dave-H]

LoneCrusader, on 18 June 2010 - 04:24 PM, said:

The ATi Catalyst 6.2 drivers are the last official ones for Windows 98. Although ATi's driver search for 98/ME will not lead you to it, this driver package contains drivers for the X800 series up to the X800 XT Platinum Edition. I have not used these myself, so I cannot vouch for their operability. Have a look at this thread.

I have a computer under construction that I plan to use a X800 XT Platinum Edition card in, if I can ever get the time to work on it.

Thanks.
I already use the Catalyst 6.2 driver for Windows 98 with my Radeon 9200 based card.
The nVidia cards which supposedly have Windows 98 drivers seem to be more up to date than the ATI/AMD equivalents.
What I don't know yet is whether to go ahead with an nVidia card which supposedly has drivers for Windows 98. I don't want to buy it only to find that it actually hasn't got Windows 98 drivers!
Can someone confirm or deny that drivers exist for the nVidia 7xxx series of cards?
I'd obviously like to use the 7 series if possible as it's the most recent, but the 6xxx series would probably do.

This post has been edited by Dave-H: 18 June 2010 - 05:01 PM

[rainyd]

Sorry but you don't find official GeForce 7 drivers for Win98/ME.

The last which supporting those systems is GeForce 6 family.

But you can use unofficial drivers and some people from our forum running with them cards from Geforce 7 series.

http://www.msfn.org/...__fromsearch__1

This post has been edited by rainyd: 18 June 2010 - 05:40 PM

[Dave-H]

rainyd, on 18 June 2010 - 05:39 PM, said:

Sorry but you don't find official GeForce 7 drivers for Win98/ME.

The last which supporting those systems is GeForce 6 family.

But you can use unofficial drivers and some people from our forum running with them cards from Geforce 7 series.

http://www.msfn.org/...__fromsearch__1

Thanks for the link to that thread!

That looks very interesting.
It appears that the unofficial driver does support the 7950 GT under Windows 98SE.
It seems to support other higher cards too, but am I right in saying that the 7950 GT is actually the last with an AGP version?

[rainyd]

Dave-H, on 18 June 2010 - 06:01 PM, said:

It seems to support other higher cards too, but am I right in saying that the 7950 GT is actually the last with an AGP version?

Yes, it's last and strongest AGP card in Nvidia offer (initially was planned to release 7950 series only for PCI-E).

AMD/ATI has newer AGP cards like Radeon HD 4670/4650 but of course drivers for Win98/ME doesn't exist.

Btw, how much of VRAM that card have?

If it is 512 MB, you could have problem with it.