ATI Radeon 9700

[gonz099]

I am running Windows 98SE

Would I be able to get the ATI Radeon 9700 card to function. I have a P4 1.5 chip with 256 DDR memory.

Thanks

[MonkeyBlitch]

Depends on your motherboard. Check the model and come back.

[gonz099]

I have a VIA P4X2-AV

[MonkeyBlitch]

Yeah your board supports a Radeon 9700. Heres the rest of the specs on your board, It is based on VIA Apollo P4X266 chipset and features AGP 4x, 6 PCI, 1 CNR, 3 DDR DIMM sockets, and AC'97; it supports UDMA 33/66/100 and up to 400MHz FSB.

[gonz099]

thanks for the info. I saw from the ATI website that it only supports ME, 2000 and XP so I wondered if there is any problem with Win 98

[glc]

From what I can find, the Catalyst 3.x drivers for WinME will work with 98, but there will be no "official" support from ATI. DirectX 8.1 or newer is *required*.

[TwoRails]

Yes, that is very interesting... I've been thinking about switching to ATI, but all my systems are Win 98.2. Sure would hate to make a $300 - 400 mistake..

TwoRails

[skeeter]

i am running a 9700 PRO on Win98SE. ATI's website has drivers for Win98-Catalyst 3.2s. They work fine for me although I am using a newer board than you.

[gonz099]

I got a reply back from ATI. They said that you can use the 9700 Pro with Win98 but you need the ME drivers and software. Thanks for all the replies and help!

[Blakhart]

No offense, but you are better off spending some money on XP rather than fooling around with 98.
If you want, you can try Server 2003 ( xp's server os, very similar to xp home and pro) you can get a 180 day copy to try by going to M$ and downloading it. That way you can try it and see how it will do for you.

[TwoRails]

This Win 98.2 / Driver thing is interesting... Since I was considering the AIW version of the 9700 Pro, I also contacted ATI. My reply from ATI said:

We are not aware of any reason why the AIW 9700 PRO card will not work in Windows 98 SE. To obtain the drivers for Windows 98 SE, go to the URL : http://www.ati.com/support/driver.html , select Windows 98 SE and AIW 9700 PRO. The drivers will be on the next page.

I went to that link, and they do have drivers listed for both the AIW and the regular 9700 Pro for Win 98.2.

HTH

TwoRails

[gonz099]

I went with the 9500 PRO which is working well. I tried to install the newest drivers and it went south on me. So I reinstalled the drivers that came with it and it is working ok again. The card runs Morrowind much better than my old GeForce 3 I had before. thanks again for all the replies.