Best vid driver for older GeForce 2 card & Win98SE?

[JeffTH]

Guys,

I've put together a basic Win98SE box for a friend's daughter to do MS Works, Office97 and email/internet surfing. System is comprised of the following: Abit BH6 (SS BIOS), iPIII-650 on Abit SlotketIII, 256MB PC133 (2-64MB, 1-128MB), Hercules Prophet GeForce2 440MX 32MB vid card, USR 0484 ISA modem, Yamaha IDE 24x burner.

For best stability what nVidia driver package would you install? I'm thinking DirectX 8 will be the best underpinning, but what vid driver version would you use? 23.11, 30.82, or latest from nVidia (53.04)?

TIA,

Jeff

 

[pmonett]

If I remember correctly, version 41.09 was the last one delivered before the FX came out. You can find it here :

http://www.nvidia.com/object/win9x_archive.html.

That said, nvidia is supposed to be using a unified driver architecture, which would mean that you might as well get the latest and greatest (official release), since it should install the necessary elements for your MX440 and the rest would not be used.
Performance-wise, I would still be wary of installing an FX-level driver on a GF4-level card. I cannot imagine that the guys at nvidia had the time to do automated partial installs based on the type of card. For me, that means that loading an FX-level driver would burden the system with a fair amount of driver code that would not be used.

However, I have no proof to back this hunch.

Pascal.

 

[paparazi]

JeffTH
I think you've got two cards mixed up? pmonett thinks you are talking about a Geforce 4 but I think you are talking about a GF2? Geforce 2 MX400 64mb?
Generally the best driver is the last one which was optimised for that card series, so with a Geforce 2 that would be the last driver release before the geforce 3 cards arrived, after that point optimisations for the architecture of the GF3 would have taken priority.
Later driver releases are known to actually offer less performance.
As for the history of Nvidia Detonators?? the oldest I've got are 30.80's
Martin

Replying helps further our knowledge, without comment leaves us wondering.

 

[JeffTH]

Martin, you're correct in that I'm referring to a GeForce 2 card, specifically an MX400. I'm getting mixed signals as to which driver version I should install. I've also gotten replies in other forums, some which say DX8, some DX9.

Jeff

 

[paparazi]

I can only guess at this one, generally I would recommend installing DX9b, you must realize though, that your older card can't take advantage of the DX9 instructions but as I understand it there is no detrement installing DX9 with a non DX9 compatible card.
Note DX9b (latest version)
Martin

Replying helps further our knowledge, without comment leaves us wondering.

 

[JeffTH]

Well, so far so good. I did a clean install, followed by DX9 and 53.04. None of the anomolies I saw before. After installing an NIC and doing the Windows Update I did a ghost of the drive to another HD and all seems well. Thanks for your guidance.

Jeff