"deimos" <> wrote in message
news:gYt_g.296$...
> Neil Harrington wrote:
>> It's been a while since I put together a Win9x machine with an Nvidia
>> card, but IIRC the best (most stable, etc.) drivers for Win9x were
>> considered to be the 45.23. Is that still the case? Now I'm about to set
>> up a small form factor Biostar 200N (Nforce2 motherboard) with WinME and
>> an FX5500 AGP card.
>
> 52.16 was considered the "FX" driver at launch. 81.98 is the last
> 98/SE/ME supported driver, and I've never had a problem with stability on
> an FX5700 I use in an older P2 machine.
>
> 71.84 (pre-WHQL) is also considered a legacy driver
> (ftp://download.nvidia.com/Windows/71.84), but there isn't a compelling
> reason to use it over 81.98 unless your AGP GART driver doesn't agree with
> it.
Thanks for the info. I'll give 81.98 a try then. I've already downloaded it
along with 71.84 and a couple of older ones.
>
> In fact with a 98 based system, you're far more likely to have stability
> problems with your chipset drivers and the OS itself than any Forceware
> version. Even if you don't want to put XP on there, find a used copy of
> Windows 2000 (there's tons of them everywhere, ebay, computer sales, etc).
Heh. Actually I've already got Win2000 on this Biostar mini-computer (still
using the onboard Nvidia graphics at this point), and was planning to
reformat and install WinME instead. I know, that's weird. The Win2000 does
run fine, and of course I'm aware that WinME is notorious for problems. But
I really like Win98SE and WinME anyway (I have Win98SE on another Biostar
mini) and there are some games that don't work properly, if at all, on
Win2000/XP.
>
> Win2k performed AS GOOD or better than ME back when I had a dual boot of
> ME/2k on an old Celeron 433 system with a TNT2U and GF2MX. In fact for
> many games (back then it was Tribes 2 and UT), Win2k was absolutely faster
> and more responsive. Framerates were steadier, etc.
That's very interesting, and surprising. One Win95/98 game I installed under
Win2000 warned me at the time of installation that since I was running
Win2000 the performance might be poor. But it was fine. I've never actually
made a comparison between the OSs on the same hardware, but what comparisons
I've made running benchmarks with similar machines has not suggested any
advantage or disadvantage in performance whether running Win98/ME/2000/XP.
However, you've got me rethinking this and so far I haven't been able to
find my WinME disc anyway. I now think that at least for the time being I'll
put the FX5500 in this with the Win2000. I've got an FX5700 in another
machine (half completed and set aside months ago) and I know that would be
much better, but these little Biostar SFF machines only have 200W power
supplies and I'm a little concerned about that. What do you think?
My other Biostar mini with Win98SE is all I really *need* to play the
Win95/98/ME games anyway. (But of course, what a dull world this would be if
we only had the things we really need.)
>
> Plus 2000 doesn't have product activation crap, so you can use an old copy
> from an OEM system or decommissioned workstation.
Absolutely! IMO that's the really, really great thing about Win2000. I'll an
old retired geezer who loves building and tinkering with computers, I build
'em only for myself and no one else ever uses 'em, so I don't think I'm
cheating Microsoft when I reuse the software in more than one machine --
whatever the EULA says. I have a couple of WinXP machines too, but that
product activation really gripes me.
For Win2000 and the FX5500 (or maybe FX5700), any preference in drivers or
should I just get the latest?
Thanks for the help and advice.
Neil
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