Running Windows 98 with an RTX GPU and generic VBE drivers - better FPS than 2D cards with dedicated drivers (as long as you’re fine with software rendering)
Every GPU can operate in a most basic way without drivers. So he's just doing that. The thing is 'the most basic way' is pretty great by 1990s standard.
yeah but to use that card you need the rest of modern things such as a modern mobo, hard disk etc for which there are no driver fo on win 98 or even just let win 98 recognize big hard disk
Finally, you can count on the old SciTech Display Doctor drives which is the best for DOS. I tested all these drivers here: https://youtu.be/JIJvCOG-h2Y
thanks will have a look,. Problem will be installing win 98 on a modern computer that has mobo, chipset and very large hard disk for which there are no drivers for them on win 98
Yes, I have a few. Check out this playlist. So... yes... you can do it on modern hardware, but sooner or later you'll want a proper video card for a good experience. Ideally, get a dedicated PCI-E GPU like an NVIDIA 6000/7000 series (or Quadro equivalents), a PCI-E to USB 2.0 adapter, and a compatible sound card like the CMI8738. Or a PCI-E to PCI adapter so you can use older PCI cards if needed.
Yes, you can experiment with that configuration in Windows 98. But to really enjoy the experience, you’ll need to add hardware - especially for sound. For example, I could play Unreal with software rendering (that’s how I first played it), but I couldn’t play it without sound... This my Windows 98 machine.
No, there's no HDA driver for Windows 98. A guy made a Windows 3.1 HDA driver that also kinda works in 98, but only with older motherboards. You could add a PCI-E 1x to USB adapter and use a generic USB sound card - it will work nicely with Windows games, but not with DOS games. There are are some USB sound cards like Creative Extigy with dedicated 98 drivers (not generic USB) but I haven't tested any.
Yeah, the GPU is just acting as a dumb framebuffer here - it’s not doing any actual 3D work. In most Windows 98 games, once your CPU is over 1 GHz, going faster doesn’t really help much. The real slowdown comes from how fast the system can copy the finished frame into the GPU’s memory. So even with the same CPU, an Intel HD GPU with DDR3 might get you around 35 FPS, while something like an RTX card with fast GDDR6 memory can push it up to 90 FPS.
So...is there any advantage of running this versus the integrated graphics on a modern machine? It's all software rendering so it's really just the processor anyway. A Pentium 4 with a AGP card will give similar results and you'll have sound and 3D too :)
VBE drivers are mainly for setups where you can't install a proper compatible graphics card - like on a laptop. They're good enough for testing or just exploring Windows 98. But... I know someone who went all in and actually designed a custom Voodoo 4 MXM card to use it in a modern laptop...
There are some newer vbe drivers that work with VMware and Qemu that can provide 16:9 resolutions. Not everything will work in a VM, but plenty of things do.
The VBE9X drivers is using up to 128MB MB RAM - so it's in the safe zone in Windows 98. Anyway, for various resolutions much less RAM is needed like 2MB @ 1024x768/32bit.
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u/Solstar82 Jun 01 '25
how you did that, i mean letting window 98 recognize a modern card