[miko]

having just bought an 6800 i'm looking for driver recommendations (MDGX any suggestions ?) for 98SE

i though i'd expand the scope the thread a little so . . . .

post your card (make, model etc) and the best driver(s) you've encountered (for performance and/or reliablity)

i'll start


for any old Nvidia card (say under a Geforce) go for DX8 driver 30.82_win9x_WHQL.exe
possibly the most stable and compatable Nvida driver ever


for Geforce 4 cards (and possibly younger Geforce cards) i used to put a lot of stock in 45.23_win9x_international.exe (which is WHQL in XP). lots of people will recommend 44.03 for this generation of cards but these drivers 'cheat' by being optimised for benchmarks rather than real life applications.


for Geforce 5 (FX) cards i used 56.64_win9x_international.exe (which is WHQL in XP) for stablity,
and 61.21 for performance in my 'gaming' install (i run three windows 98SE installs at once),
any higher resulted in crashing and display problems in some games.


so jump in !, post your card and 9X driver, and maybe we can build a 'referral list' or some such . . .

This post has been edited by miko: 10 June 2006 - 01:20 PM

[Petr]

I had never any problem with any driver, even the latest driver version 81.98 works with the oldest GeForce2 graphics cards.

In the Release Notes for every version you can see what bugs were corrected. And the 81.98 version has bug fixes even for older cards:

• GeForce FX 5200: Textures disappear in CrimeLife v105.
• GeForce4 Ti 4200, Windows 98: Java applications crash when calling OpenGL.

So I think it is not easy to say what driver is the best - apparently it depends on the application too.

http://download.nvidia.com/Windows/81.98/8...lease_Notes.pdf
http://download.nvidia.com/Windows/77.72/7...lease_Notes.pdf
http://download.nvidia.com/Windows/71.84/N...0Notes_7184.pdf
http://download.nvidia.com/Windows/67.02/6...lease_Notes.pdf
http://download.nvidia.com/Windows/66.93/6...lease_Notes.pdf
http://download.nvidia.com/Windows/61.76/6...2000-9x-NT4.pdf
http://download.nvidia.com/Windows/56.64/F...otes_v56.64.pdf
http://download.nvidia.com/Windows/53.04/F...9x_53.04.v3.pdf
http://download.nvidia.com/Windows/45.23/N...otes_v45.23.pdf

Petr

[miko]

true, but sometimes newer drivers come with their own new bugs, witness this thread
(currently i'm testing 71.84 (as advised by MDGX in that thread) on my 'ex'-perimental install (going for stability and compatablity there) but i will probably try 81.98 on my 'gaming' install inspite of it's known bugs)

and 81.85 which you've left out of your list is well known on Guru3D for being an absolute howler and worse than a beta release.

sometimes of the older drivers are somewhat more 'rounded' than later ones, being more stable and compatible than others (30.82 and 56.64 being good examples of this) with the constant push to squeeze more performance out of drivers working to the detriment of other issues (like quality, stablity, and compatablity)

also theres the often quoted line that you should stick to driver of your cards 'generation', when the drivers writers focus was more on your card. i don't follow that religiously but i do run 30.82 under DX8.2 on one of my other rigs (with a TNT2) because i know it's a rock solid combination and i won't be playing any games (or graphical apps) on it



anyway i feel we're getting off track, its not about a finite 'best driver'

just personal recommendations (possibly for future reference by others)

maybe even some 3dmark03 numbers

and where are the Radeon users ? there must be some around

PS. does anyone know why there are two 77.72 versions ?
ftp://download.nvidi.../windows/77.72/

This post has been edited by miko: 10 June 2006 - 08:06 PM

[noguru]

miko, on Jun 11 2006, 02:52 AM, said:

and where are the Radeon users ? there must be some around

Well, here's at least one

Maybe I'm the only one because ATI is so bad when it comes to driver-support for win98, I can tell after always using Nvidia before.
Last Catalyst version for Win98/ME is 6.2 date 09feb2006 (post-date on ATI download site is wrong, link points to 6.2) . But if you want FSAA in NFSU2 you have to go back to 4.7......

Anyway, I have a Radeon 9600pro. I use 5.9 because with 6.2 my 3D performance drops 15%!
This is in benchmarks like Aquamark and 3Dmark2003 and also in plain fps in games. 15% gone just like that. I tried installing 6.2 over 5.9 and completely removing everything prior to 6.2 install. Reinstalling chipsetdrivers and directX didn't help as well. Everything works and looks fine but with a 15% lower 3D performance. In any case I tried to make 6.2 work, reverting back to 5.9 solves the problem.
I reported this to ATI support about 3 months ago, still waiting for reply....

This post has been edited by noguru: 11 June 2006 - 05:06 AM

[MDGx]

This is my experience using NVidia drivers on Win98 SE:
http://www.msfn.org/...showtopic=63505

HTH

[RainyShadow]

I'm currently using a GeForce 4 M61.76X 440 with the 61.76 driver. It's the latest driver working fine on this card. The newer drivers always cause missing textures, even the versions recommended here like 71.84.
I'm thinking about some video upgrade. Anyone familiar with these cards to share his opinions ?

This post has been edited by RainyShadow: 16 June 2006 - 08:18 AM

[rainyd]

RainyShadow, I have no personal experience with those cards but if you plan to play, even occasionally, I wouldn't recommend them (FX family really sucks in the performance).
I think a better idea would be to look for GeForce 6600GT/6600 (they are cheap and quite efficient) or wait for AGP version of GeForce 7600/7300 (probably in July).

This post has been edited by rainyd: 16 June 2006 - 09:19 AM

[RainyShadow]

rainyd, one of the reasons i choosed such a card was because these have a tv tuner integrated. Otherwise i was planning to buy a separate tuner card, but then the combined price of these two is going to be more than i can afford for now. And as my board have only 3 PCI slots, i'll need to get rid of either the USB 2 addon card or the Voodo2 card currently occupying those slots. The third slot has a network card. I use all of these.
kinda sucks having only 3 PCI slots