Best Graphics Card With Win98SE Drivers?

[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]

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.

Edited June 18, 2010 by Dave-H

[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.

Edited June 18, 2010 by rainyd

[Dave-H]

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.

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]

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.

[dencorso]

My friends, that's why the Important / "Stickified" / Pinned Windows 95/98/98 SP1/98 SE/ME Topics sticky exists!

By looking into it you'd've found this link to

nVidia GeForce and Win 9x/ME - Relevant Threads

which points to the thread rainyd already pointed to, besides some shorter but no less interesting threads...

It's always worth remembering to look up there, when starting to search on any 9x/ME related subject. HTH

[Dave-H]

Thank as always Den!

You made me feel very lazy not to have found all that for myself!

It seems as if the 512MB memory on the card may still be an insurmountable problem here, although the debate about it seems to be from last year so things may have changed.

I have Rudolph Loew's RAM Limitation Patch installed, as you know, but it seems unclear whether that helps in this situation.

I have e-mailed Rudolph about it, so hopefully he can tell me what the current situation is.

Thanks again, Dave.

[dencorso]

If I remember right, RLoew did indeed solve the 512 MiB Video Card issue (PATCHMEM /A), for most if not all cases.

I think you'll have to remove, then reinstall the patch and perhaps also upgrade (I don't remember whether v. 6.0 already recognized the /A switch).

[rainyd]

Dave-H, I would be grateful, if you could share results of your tries with that GeForce 7950 GT (I'm looking for replacement of my card too).

[Dave-H]

@dencorso

I have version 6.0 of Rudolph's patch installed, which does not support the Patchmem /A switch, so I will have to upgrade to version 6.1, which I have but have never installed.

I have ordered the card, so let's hope it works!

@rainyd

I will certainly let you all know how it goes!

[dencorso]

@Dave-H: Since you're going to reinstall anyway, ask RLoew for the latest version, which I think is 7.0, although I believe he may already have sent it to you. It's always best to upgrade to the newest possible codebase, IMHO.

[Dave-H]

@Dave-H: Since you're going to reinstall anyway, ask RLoew for the latest version, which I think is 7.0, although I believe he may already have sent it to you. It's always best to upgrade to the newest possible codebase, IMHO.

Thanks Den.

I've checked my e-mail archive, and I was informed about version 7 by Rudolph, but the e-mail said that the only change from 6.1 was that it now supports Windows 95.

In fact the message said that those with Windows 98, 98SE, and ME did not need to update as the patches are the same in 6.1 and 7 for those operating systems.

I have e-mailed Rudolph again to clarify that, and I'm sure he will send me version 7 if he thinks I need it.

Edited June 21, 2010 by Dave-H

[Cyker]

I have a 7950GT with 512MB RAM and have never been able to get it to work in Win98, even ith rloew's patch

Partly, I can't get any driver to recognize the card, but it may be a problem with the 512MB thing.

One problem I have is, for some reason, my Win98's VMM32.VXD is not recognized by his patch so I had to kludge it...

If you get it working, I'd love to see the steps you went through.

At the moment I have 3 cards in here (Well, 4 technically; Voodoo2 SLI, Radeon 9200SE PCI and the 7950GT AGP!) so I can boot between Linux, Win2k and Win98 and still play all my games!

Edited June 21, 2010 by Cyker

[Dave-H]

I have a 7950GT with 512MB RAM and have never been able to get it to work in Win98, even ith rloew's patch

Partly, I can't get any driver to recognize the card, but it may be a problem with the 512MB thing.

One problem I have is, for some reason, my Win98's VMM32.VXD is not recognized by his patch so I had to kludge it...

If you get it working, I'd love to see the steps you went through.

At the moment I have 3 cards in here (Well, 4 technically; Voodoo2 SLI, Radeon 9200SE PCI and the 7950GT AGP!) so I can boot between Linux, Win2k and Win98 and still play all my games!

That's slightly worrying!

I'll be getting my card delivered soon, so I hope I have better luck.

Which driver(s) have you tried?

This is the one I'm intending to use -

http://www.mdgx.com/files/NV8269.EXE

Have you tried that?

I'm puzzled by your problem with Rudolph's patch, it has always worked perfectly for me.

Why are you using it, is it just to enable Windows 98 to work with a large amount of RAM?

Presumably it does that if that's the case.

Did it not extract the files from your VMM32.VXD and patch them?

It should have patched VMM.VXD and VCACHE.VXD, as well as VMM32.VXD.

Which version of the patch are you using?

The /a switch for the AGP fix is only recognised by versions 6.1 and 7.0 as far as I'm aware.

Edited June 21, 2010 by Dave-H

[dencorso]

I'm puzzled by your problem with Rudolph's patch, it has always worked perfectly for me.

So am I.

One problem I have is, for some reason, my Win98's VMM32.VXD is not recognized by his patch so I had to kludge it...

No. It is *the* problem. How comes your VMM32.VXD is not recognized by his patch? Were it badly corrupt, your system wouldn't even start windows OK, so it is not... In fact, unless we can understand fully why the RAM Limitation Patch didn't like your VMM32.VXD, and the nature of the kludge you used, your case can hardly be considered an instance of the video card not working with RLoew's patch. Moreover, as Dave-H just pointed out, only the very latest versions of the patch cater for the 512 MiB video card issue, did you use one of the right versions (6.1 or 7.0 only)? With all due respect, it's frivolous to affirm for a fact something doesn't work, when it was tested outside the conditions it was designed to work in, as seems to be what happened in your case... How can you be sure your kludge was enough for having the patch fully working?