8i865gme 775 Download Driver 4 0
Akiko Fleischer
4. Would a Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS be the ideal sound card for this rig? I see both that and the Aureal Vortex 2 recommended pretty often for non-ISA builds. My understanding, though, is that the Vortex 2 has better DOS compatibility but worse WinXP compatibility. Is that accurate? And are there any other sound cards I should be looking at?
Geforce 6 isn't as compatible with older games and drivers as something like a geforce 3 or even a geforce 4. For 98 and older gaming, or just DX7 and older I prefer a geforce 3 or 2 since I can run detonator 20.xx series drivers or late 10.xx series like 12.xx-14.xx, which are a lot more compatible with DX6 and Direct3D.
Audigy 2 ZS would give you great windows gaming experience, but later dos game compatibility isn't so great. That counts for games that will run in windows 98 dos box happily as well. Id probably go for 2 sound cards in the build something like a Yamaha XG that can use tricks to run dos games and has OPL3 and the Creative Card for windows only or something. (lately I seen a tread that SB LIVE is actually a real contender with hacked Audigy drivers running it, as it allows the use of GS wavetable in dos box. So thats something to consider. something id like to try myself.
I wouldn't go higher than a FX 5900 and I would stay away from Ati.If you run FX series u can probably run a glide wrapper that will increase compatibility for some games. Help close the gap of not being able to run old drivers and give u some voodoo compatibility. But there will be some games that wont work and don't like those new drivers, with glide wrapper being of no help.
Anyways slow down tricks are only relevant in the case that the core2 duo is just so fast that even games that don't really have speed issues might somehow exibit them, but its not going to cure not having real ISA for the games that demand it, thats why I recommend the Yamaha XG and while thats not a perfect solution the ISA problem isn't also as big of a issue as people make it out to be around here, and its mostly for games that I dont want to play nice with Yamaha PCI cards, boards without sb-links and Aureal Vortex 2 card hacks. All at the same time of refusing to run in 98 dos box. Its really not a lot of games. atleast ones worth playing, and they are probably so old they are out of the scope of your build.
Geforce 6 isn't as compatible with older games and drivers as something like a geforce 3 or even a geforce 4. For 98 and older gaming, or just DX7 and older I prefer a geforce 3 or 2 since I can run detonator 20.xx series drivers or late 10.xx series like 12.xx-14.xx, which are a lot more compatible with DX6 and Direct3D.
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I wouldn't go higher than a FX 5900 and I would stay away from Ati.If you run FX series u can probably run a glide wrapper that will increase compatibility for some games. Help close the gap of not being able to run old drivers and give u some voodoo compatibility. But there will be some games that wont work and don't like those new drivers, with glide wrapper being of no help.
For your use case, you would have to specify the timeframe you have in mind for the older GPU . If pre-2000 and with Glide support, a PCI Voodoo 3 is a good but expensive option . Otherwise, a PCI Geforce FX or older Geforce might be an option. I have no idea, however, how Nvidia drivers handle having cards from different generation in the same PC . My guess is that everything is OK if both cards use thecsame driver version . If they need different driver revs, I honestly don't know how it would work .
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I have no idea, however, how Nvidia drivers handle having cards from different generation in the same PC . My guess is that everything is OK if both cards use thecsame driver version . If they need different driver revs, I honestly don't know how it would work .
Additionally, though Geforge 6 has drivers for Windows 9x , I have never gotten them to work properly in my AGP setup (admittedly an older 815ep setup in my case ) and I am not alone . Nvidia drivers from that era tended to have weird bugs that came and went from version to version, so expect to have to test different versions to see what works best for you .
I run such a setup. A 800Mhz FSB (200Mhz QDR) CPU can be taken down to 1.2Ghz; in DOS, you might start seeing freaky things start to happen above 2Ghz on things like Sierra games.
I can't talk for implementions on other boards but the 775i65 support for 1066Mhz FSB is a fudge which performs worse than 800Mhz FSB, with RAM running on a divider at 333Mhz (166Mhz DDR) rather than 400Mhz (200Mhz DDR), the 1:1 ratio for RAM:FSB is optimal for the 865 chipset. The 45nm Pentium Dual core CPUs will run cooler and faster on this board at 3.2Ghz than CPUs which would otherwise flex their muscles on a newer chipsets which can actually operate at a 1066Mhz FSB.
For Windows 98, there's no downside to an Audigy 2 ZS, for DOS you'll be using a hacked SB Live driver and I've not tested that beyond 20 or so titles; it will probably work but if you want to play it safe, the SB Live is still a decent card.
Test Drive Unlimited stumped me on Windows 7, only runs on XP and would suck on an FX5900, if it ran at all, if it did it would be stressed all the time and I want my old systems to last. I don't know about Windows 10 compatibility because it's both spyware and trash.
If your games collection after requiring Win98, runs on Win10, and you're happy with the results then great.
Reliable good quality second-hand hardware is plentiful and cheap (won't stay like that forever). An X58 platform Xeon or even someting a bit newer along with whichever of the compatible AMD/Nvidia GPUs you prefer would make a great setup .
I always read stuff about GeForce 6xxx not being supported well with Win9x games. I used to run an AGP Win98SE system with ASRock ConRoe 865PE, some Core2 Duo, 512MB RAM and GeForce 6800 GT and I didn't have any issues.
What games did you guys have trouble with?
Did the game not look all that pretty or were there game breaking issues? What driver were you using? Did you try later patches? Did you try switching between D3D/OpenGL? Did you try Glide emulation as a workaround? (never needed this myself btw.)
For Geforce 6 under Windows 98 :
- general stability
- ability to crash system by scroling in a window (100% reproducible with multiple cards on my system)
- over DVI, black screen when starting full screen DOS application . Requires switching to windowed and then back to full screen as workaround .
- probably others I don't remember .
Some of these issues may only manifest themselves on older platforms like 815ep I am using . The fullscreen DOS one is preety universal, though, AFAICR . Maybe it just works well on newer platforms like 865 ?
That setup could probably run XP but the last chipset with official XP support is the Z77; you might need a PCIe add-on card for USB (NEC controller) with the NEC drivers slipstreamed into your install media and run the BIOS in some kind of SATA compatibility mode. Not something I've attempted personally but USB and SATA support will probably be the main incompatibility... Probably best to make some tests on another boot disk with your current SSD disconnected, perhaps there's a compatibility option in your BIOS for the built in USB ports.
As an aside, the 775i65 runs really nicely with small SATA SSDs with the BIOS set to IDE mode for Win98 use. I'd recommend something like an old Intel 60GB or 120GB disk which probably won't get any cheaper than they are now.
For multi boot, create all partitions as primary, install each OS with the other partitions hidden and use PLOP as a boot manager. This way all operating systems are independent of each other and can be removed/added/re-imaged as you please. Acronis Disk Director is useful for hiding partitions and comes with Hirens Boot CD 10.6 along with Symantec Ghost for OS image backups.
2047MB DOS 6.22 on the first partition (Use the DOS install diskettes to create that partition and a modern OS for the others for 4K alignment).
4094MB NT4 Partition - optional, has the Win95 interface with rock solid stability and performance is great once dmacheck.exe is run to enable DMA (find it on the SP6a CD)
16382MB Win98 boot partition (also enable DMA in device manager)
Use the rest for W2K/XP