Geforce 6800 Windows 98

[Elder Raman]

Itried 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.

So I understand the issue of decreased performance with newer 9x Geforce drivers has been discussed before, but I hope that someone with a 6800 series card can help me with the issue of drivers. I'm currently running 81.98 drivers, and I've notice problems ranging from inexplicably poor frame rate, constant screen tear, misloaded textures, to games crashing claiming there is no free video memory. The current system I'm using dual boots to a separate windows 2000 hard drive, and none of these problems occur on that install. So, for anyone with experience, are the earlier driver revisions better? It seems the earliest driver to support 6800 series cards is 61.76. I've seen PhilsComputerLab's video showing a clear decrease in performance with newer drivers for earlier series cards, but is the same true for 6 series cards? If it helps, here's the specs of my current system:

Most games work well, but there are too many examples of strange glitches in other games to list here. Most glitches involve poor framerate or games refusing to start if the resolution is too high or some sort of problem with textures failing to load or game breaking screen tear even when v-sync is enabled (Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell is the worst for this)

Newest NVIDIA GPU drivers for 9x do contain the most amount of bugs in games (and not only games, say hello to the broken uninstaller ). Definitely try earlier versions.

As for the performance decrease, from what I know, it doesn't apply much to the 6 and 7 series. Mostly because there's no earlier driver versions to compare with so don't have to worry about that. The 6 and 7 series GPUs are much more powerful than FX and older series so even if drivers were to decrease performance, it wouldn't be so noticeable in day-to-day gaming.

I just got back from vacation, so I'll try out driver revision 77.72 (the last to mention 9x support in release documentation) and maybe 61.76 (first release to support 6800 gt) and I'll post here with the results.

Ok, so I have been comparing 61.76 and 77.72 for a couple hours. It seems 77.72 is the best driver revision for 9x compared to 61.76 and 81.96. I don't claim I was absolutely thorough in my testing, but from trying out the games I've had problems with, 77.72 is the best. All the glitches I mentioned in my original post when using 81.96 were not present when using 77.72 or 61.76. However, I had some strange occurrences with 61.76 where some programs such as 3DMark03 or Operation Flashpoint CWC would blue screen the computer when ran (yes, my copy of Cold War Crisis is a legit retail copy). I even had one time with 61.76 during testing where the system BSODed after startup in spite of no hardware or driver chances. So, if anyone is seeing this thread, I would recommend you use Nvidia 77.72 instead of 81.96 if you have a 6 series card in a 9x system.

I even had one time with 61.76 during testing where the system BSODed after startup in spite of no hardware or driver chances. So, if anyone is seeing this thread, I would recommend you use Nvidia 77.72 instead of 81.96 if you have a 6 series card in a 9x system.

did you install Direct X 9? On my driver tests old directX was main reason to crashing. 61.76 can bsod even when trying open DXDIAG or anything that tries to read GPU, I need try 77.72 on mine since only tried 81.96

are not listed anymore as supported on the nvidia last win98 drivers.

I know there was an BFG edition of 7800 GS OC AGP that they made it work with windows98 with a modified driver they included on their website.

lots of people for very long time. works fine don't expect really old games to work with anything newer than FX series GPUs. but thats not what you asked, just think it should be said that you shouldn't think just becasue it works just fine all games should work on cards without table fog support and 8 bit palatalized textures. Howver it does mean that you can run nglide on a 6-7 series gpu and it should play windows glide games just fine on 98se

3D Mark 2001 ran fine, as did most newer games. However, I could run these newer games on even faster GPUs. I tested an old Win98SE game, Flanker 2, in 32bit colour and there was colour banding on the sky box. GeForce 6800 Ultra had less banding, but Voodoo 5 and GeForce 5900 Ultra ran the game fine, so I dropped the 6 and 7 series.

These are all the supported products for the drivers included in the post. The check mark icon next to a NVIDIA model means that a user successfully installed Windows 10 and leaved a comment ?.

Thank you so much for posting this fix. It worked perfectly for my NVIDIA 7300LE card. I used your link to download the new video driver first which took some time due to its size. I then used the the link for your manual windows upgrade which took many hours to download and install Windows 10. After the upgrade finished, I installed the new video driver and it is all working perfectly. It all went smoothly without problems. Thanks again for making it possible.

Ivan, thank you very much for researching the problem of installing Windows 10 with a Nvidia driver issue. I followed your scenario exactly and had absolutely no problems with the install. Even though I was a little nervous I should not have been. Thank you for your efforts which will obviously help many more folks like me. To them I say, follow the instructions, they work!

Excellent help. Well done and Thanks. I have an old Dell dimension E520 NVIDA 7300 LE and your plan worked perfectly. I had read elsewhere how to do this but as usual the geeks speak another language and are actually not that helpful as they try to show how smart they are. This was brilliant and so simple to follow. Again well done and Thanks mate!

Hello! I had no warnings about driver prior to installing windows 10. But after the install the system was unable to detect my geforce 660M graphic card. Instead It is Intel HD 4000 thats showing up in the list. I f I choose hidden devices I can se my Geforce card, but in properties it says I have to connect it to the computer. Any idea if reinstalling windows 10 will solve this?

3a8082e126