Nvidia Geforce 6600 Driver

[Michael]

Ive just assembled a new pc using old hardware. I tried to install Ubuntu 20.04 and almost every part works correctly. The issue is relative to the video card (NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT). I looked for official and unofficial drivers (nouveau), but every my attempt failed. Actually I can see without problem everything on my screen but at low resolution (1280x1024). I'd like to reach 1920x1080 but it seems impossible to install officials (tried with 304 version with and without dkms) and unofficials (nouveau drivers lets me to reach 1920*1080 but images, text and everything are messy on the screen).Any ideas?

There's no other solution because the last Nvidia proprietary driver that supports your card is 304 and 304 can't be installed with any kernel newer than the one present in the first release of Ubuntu 16.04. So, yes, that was a long time ago.

I've since wiped and reinstalled on that laptop a couple of times, so unfortunately I don't have it available to reference on this problem any more :( I think even this quit working with the 5.X.X-XX kernels though.

I tried the first driver to support the cards (61.76), but I get a fatal exception 00 when trying to launch a Direct3D app. I tried the next release (66.42), but lighting doesn't work correctly in some games. 71.84 is not compatible with some older games (Dungeon Keeper II) and neither is 81.98.

Just stick with the latest drivers. Some games won't work, too bad, don't play these games on such fast cards. It's all about matching cards with games. Focus on later games that still need Windows 98 for A3D for example, but are more demanding.

BTW, Phil is right. GF6 series dropped support for some features that older games may need (8-bit paletted textures for example). A GF4 or FX5 series card is a much better choice if you want full compatibility.

I allready know this, and it's not what I asked. Under winXP, both Black and White and Dungeon Keeper 2 work fine with the first xp driver (61.77). Latest XP driver 304.something brakes compatibility with most old games, including the latter. B&W has missing textures and DK2 will not run.

Now the reason I insist on trying a 6800 with these older games is for widescreen 1920x1080. They both run very well at this resolution and look much better then they do at 1280x1024 - witch is the maximum resolution I can run the games with a good framerate with a GF4 Ti. I no longer own an FX series (well I do heave a 5200 and a 5700 but they both suck, especially the 5200 witch runs slower then the GF4TI). Both my FX5900XT and FX5950 died mysteriously. No artefacting, and they were very well stored in anti-static bags.

There is no driver which would let you run everything with GF6 under win9x. Even FX and 4Ti/MX haven't full compatibility with an old games. If you want best compatibility and perfomance for all leave GF6+81.98 for newer games and plug PCI 3D for older games. It may be Riva TNT PCI for example. Or Voodoo2, ATI Rage, Savage4 PCI, Voodoo3/4/5 PCI etc.

All old games I play work perfectly on a GF4 Ti using 41.09 or 44.03. Besides the 6800, I use two Voodoo 2 cards in SLi for stuff like Carmageddon, Descent 2 and alike. I need to get games like Black & White, Dungeon Keeper 2, Sacrifice, Homeworld and alike working. The problem is each driver breaks compatibility with one or two games.

OK, why don't you want to use Voodoo2 SLI in D3D mode with "GF6-trouble-games"? And: sorry, but are you sure that all trouble-free games work with GF? Maybe with some detonators they simply don't use GF6 but use Voodoo2 in D3D. Not?

The whole point of this machine is to run 1998-2002 games with as much eye candy as possible - that is why I swapped the GF4 Ti for the 6800. That means silly resolutions and maybe some AA. Games that do not run well on modern hardware (2007-present) or require windows 9x to run stable (like Dungeon Keeper 2).

In XP everything from Carmageddon 3dfx to Doom 3 works perfectly. This includes DK2 (witch runs quite fast, looks great, but randomly crashes to desktop), B&W and sacrifice. It's not like I will be playing Carma 3DFX on it or Doom 3 - the later works fine on modern machines so I'd rather play it full HD and with silly amounts of AA on my 980m. Carma and alike are reserved for my K6-3 / Banshee rig.

Leadtek Winfast Nvidia GeForce A6600; mines the 256mb model

Running thru DVI TO HDMI converter works nice.

detonator v66.94 last to have no hanging on win9x shutdown. Later versions hang on shutdown, manual replacement of 4 files transplanted from v66.94. (Commented by Rudolph Loew who said his own fix creation wasn't applicable)

EDIT: I have installed latest driver beta and Loew's patch and it works wondeful for windows Me. shutdown, reboot no issues. I don't need warm reboot for graphics changes.

Now widescreen modes are more interesting thru DVI the HDMI adapter is more useful.

My monitor doesn't like many early display modes so i have to use dos box for those.

I recently bought a gigabyte 6600 for use with a win98 rig. turns out it had a different device id, (DEV_0141). managed to add it to the inf file, but now nothing works, monitor detects a signal but blank screen. Thoughts?

Hi. Can you do recto/verso photo of the board. Knowing the exact model can help.

Awaiting for more information, try this v81.98 WHQL driver [ -us] and let us know.

It seems Gigabyte didn't have any driver for Windows 98/Me for its GeForce 6 series on its website. Maybe this series wasn't supported on 9x OS so nVidia didn't included the DEV ID for Gigabyte GeForce 6600 cards in there official driver either?

My first guess was it was possible the card to be for OEM. So it could have had a modified BIOS (returning a different vendor or device id). As the card is not supported on Windows 9x by Gigabyte and no driver have explicit support for it. By modifying the NVAGP.inf file in the ForceWare extracted installation folder it would have been possible to make the card to work. But after some check, I found that the driver in my link, despite being announced to support GeForce 6 family does not have any entry for it. It support only chipset to NV3x architecture and GeForce 6 is NV4x architecture and consequently you card cannot work with Windows 98. This driver is the latest from nVidia to support Windows 9x.

BTW, I don't see the point to use such a "modern" hardware for Windows 98. Here is my explanation:

During the twenty's ATI and nVidia were doing tiny optimizations in their drivers for best seller games of the time, often by breaking compatibilities or performances for older games. Sometime because this older games (first gen Windows 95 games for the most) needed to be patched in the driver itself for them to work with newer video card. This have to be done because there was a lot of API back then for audio and video, game were ported from DOS too and 3D acceleration was new. Put all of that together and add time development constraints and you get badly programmed games working pretty well only in the environment they expect to find and were developed for.

In conclusion, from my POV a DOS/Win9x OS should be used only on hardware made for it and for using software that does not work well or does not work at all on more recent OS.

I had more after that question as I went digging but just left it for verification so I didn't spew a bunch of wrong info as my first draft was about to be along the lines of "bruh PCIe dont work on Win98" before my googling spree

That's why I asked to have photos at first. I don't know if Gigabyte had partnership with OEM, but if it was the case, it could had come with underclocked GPU and RAM. This is often the case to limit heat and reduce power consumption. Meaning a modified BIOS and an modified driver (with in most of the case the original manufacturer adding the card officially in there driver, but not always). But in case there is a driver available for the targeted OS, it is always possible to hack the BIOS (different frequencies) by editing it or it is also possible to just use a software solution as nVidia gave as an option for their ForceWare control panel.

Here it is the latest driver that does not have NV40 entries in its NVAGP.inf file so if you mean to change device ID in the BIOS, I don't see the point. The logical conclusion is that the latest available driver does not support such chipset. And that's why the card does not work. But the chipset is supported in Windows NT5.x as the same generation of the driver have entry for NV4x architecture. That is odd, but that is a fact.

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