Is the GeForce 4 Ti 4600 the ultimate Windows 98 graphics card?

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[@BoomBox02]

I had this exact card and sold it complete in the box for way less than what it was worth. At the same same time i sold another 2 Leadtek AGP cards. One was another Geforce 4 and the other being an FX 5950 ultra all complete in their original packaging. I only got something like $20 each and i have regretted selling them ever since.

[@ErnestPWorrell1984]

I remember saving up during college around 2002 and finally having enough money to buy my first real graphics card at the time which was a MSI GeForce 4 Ti 4200 128MB, I can honestly say that the card was worth every penny and then some it was just that good, I'll never forget taking out my old GeForce 2 MX 400 which was still a good card at the time and being completely blown away by the 4200 when I fired up Return to castle Wolfenstein. All of the settings jumped up from low/medium to high and the FPS just went through the roof, I pretty much spent the rest of that day trying out countless games and I loved it! Even though I no longer use the card I still have it in a drawer and won't part with it as it's got sentimental value to me.

[@philscomputerlab]

The 4200 offered tremendous value.

[@ErnestPWorrell1984]

@@philscomputerlab Definitely! I would have loved a 4600 back then but I just couldn't justify the price difference especially when I saw how small the performance difference was between them.

[@awhooley]

Thanks to your informative videos, I have built myself a plethora of different retro systems, all from old parts from my shed. I had no idea that this Winfast card shoved in an old dell in my shed was actually a geforce 4! Thanks for the great content

[@KARAOTI23]

Always nice to see a new video card review! Also glad to see some good games like FarCry, Half Life2 and NFS Underground that I also happened to be testing these days with my latest addition: the GeForce2 Ti 200.

[@bleachie]

Thanks for the review! My first computer was a 98 machine. I bought a TI 4200 back in the day but it was a refurb and started artifacting. I eventually got a 9800 Pro which eventually died from overheating. Watching these videos makes me want to pick up a 4200 again!

[@philscomputerlab]

Nice. Cooling can be an issue on these cards. This is the cooler I recommend, they are cheap on eBay and work super: kzbin.info/www/bejne/mKSadaVpmtNmsLc

[@robwebnoid5763]

I still have my 4600, which I bought in 2002. I researched the hell out of this back then & made sure I get the right video card for its price-performance ratio. And after all that research, I decided on the 4600 & never looked back. I got the MSI-branded version. I still use it to this day on one of my Win 98se rigs.

[@jopiebaksteen3856]

4400 and 4600 were too expensive for me back then, I purchased a 4200 64mb. I bought it at launch day and the guy at the local computer store told me I was the first person in town to own a 4200 (I was so proud). I found it on ebay couple of years ago and it is in my windows XP AMD athlon rig

[@EposVox]

Good info, thanks!

[@KeyToTime]

Great video Phil. Just to let you know I've bought a few things from Electromyne now and the service has been excellent. Postage to the United Kingdom was surprisingly quick and all the parts were nice and clean on arrival, thoroughly recommended. I'm building another retro system, this time from scratch here are the specs: 3.2GHz Pentium 4 HT Northwood XFX 6800 Ultra - AGP Gigabyte GA-8I865GME - Socket 478 Motherboard Sound Blaster Audigy 4 Pro - with external box Zalman CNPS7700-CU - all copper cooler 2 GB Corsair DDR 400mhz ram (2x1GB dual channel) 64GB SATA SSD IDE DVD drive IDE Floppy drive Corsair HX650W PSU Windows XP I'm just looking for a nice period case now. There seems to be a shortage of Beige cases all of a sudden. A few years ago there were tons of them about.

[@philscomputerlab]

That's great to hear! The thing is I've been buying parts from Electromyne for many years. I got most of my CPUs and video cards from them and often when browsing for something their articles would keep showing up. So I'm super glad that they agreed to work with me, a lot of the items I couldn't really afford, and I'm happy to recommend them. That is a very fine system you're building there. P4 needs more loving :D

[@KeyToTime]

Indeed, the P4 is very misunderstood and they are better than people remember. Do you have any more Intel vs AMD videos on the horizon? Would be great to pick up where you left off.

[@philscomputerlab]

KeyToTime Yea I want to, just finding the time is difficult.

[@user-ft4nj6bo8e]

Use cedarmill

[@davidmircea2050]

Got one from eBay, the dude stated it was sold "as it is", didn't test it. Unfortunately it lacked some SMD components, totally bricked. I cried. It was the card I dreamed of back in the days. Anyways, cool video. Phil, you deserve applause !

[@MikeDragon]

Stuff like that is the reason why I never buy electronics from sellers who are unable to say for sure if the thing I' buying is in good working condition before I buy it. And I never buy stuff labeled as "as it is". Sorry to hear about your purchase, man. :(

[@striderx777]

I definitely think the geforce4ti series is one of, if not the best, cards to use for retro purposes. It has all the same features of the 3 but far faster, keeps a LOT of dos compatibility, has good early openGL drivers that ATI cards of the time were a bit lacking on, and yet is still new enough to have good DVI support across all the models of cards. Go any earlier you lose DVI and enough power to force multisample AA, go any later and you lose proper rendering support for some games. It really is a fantastic series. I use a 4400ti with SLI voodoo 2s in my Pentium 3 build.

[@the_kombinator]

I recently bought a Ti4600 128 Mb for like $10. Mint condition as well. I'm debating keeping it, but I need to move some PCs as they're starting to pile up in my kid's room :(

[@siniyden]

It`s really shitty series. r300 declassed it. 4ti series was overclocked 3 ti

[@kirbyswarp]

I already made a comment about it, but I got one of these in a bundle of a bunch of gpus for $5 :) and a 9800 Pro as well. Thanks for the video.

[@philscomputerlab]

Bargain, well done!

[@jameslewis2635]

I am very happy that this card turned out to be a good choice in this video because I recently bought one and I will be building a Windows 98 machine with it tomorrow. I would have held out for the Radeon 9800 pro or similar but I decided that I had to go for an Nvidia card for compatibility with earlier titles which is where the ATI cards struggle.

[@jameslewis2635]

It turns out that my model is the Winfast A280 which is the GeForce 4 Ti 4200 with 128mb DDR ram. I will try to overclock this to Ti 4600 levels when I have it installed and running properly. The cooler is very similar but only has a single fan. I may end up modifying the cooler by switching the fan for a 90mm one as I doubt that little one that comes attached will stay quiet for long. Otherwise I may just get a motherboard mounted one. I came upon these a few years ago and they just attach to the motherboard at the power header and allows you to direct its 80mm fan by bending a stalk that it is mounted on. I did take on the tip on cleaning mine out, no sign of the dust filters but the thermal grease looked in good condition although not very well applied. I cleaned it out and used some CoolerMaster branded thermal grease which should hopefully allow the heatsink to work as designed.

[@jonchapman6821]

Just scored a ti4600 a couple of days ago, picked up the whole machine for £6, Athlon XP 2400 on a gigabyte GA-7N400 Pro2 board 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻 the ti4600 was the icing on the cake, I’m super happy!

[@philscomputerlab]

Bargain! Well done :)

[@Trick-Framed]

This was such a magical era regarding the games. From Max Payne to Shenmue there were alot of great games across all platforms at this point. PC was the clear winner.

[@jopiebaksteen3856]

Man I owned the Leadtek ti 4200 64mb. I overclocked it using Rivatuner I believe. Loved this card. Playing GTA 3 and other classics, what an era. I purchased a Leadtek 4200 on ebay and still own it.

[@alexandreconfiant-latour2757]

Thanks for this video. This card is also available as Quadro version (Quadro4 980XGL) with same clock speeds, but tends to be hard to find as well. This era (1999-2002) was really a turning point regarding graphic hardware and APIs with rapid jumps from DX6 to DX9. Three years, especially at that time, was a very unreasonable amount of time to make hardware obsolete. Computers were still expensive and seen as "durable" goods. Like a TV or a washing machine. If you paid a lot of money for your Geforce256 in 1999, it would have been a big blow to drop its support only 2 years after. (Sorry for you Rage Furry Maxx owners) And it was the same for the few following GPU generations (GF 2,3,4, R100, R200). The adaptative rendering modes seen in games like HL2 and FarCry is really unique. Half life 2 supported DX7 to DX9 (even if DX7 support was removed later). That reflects the really fast evolution of 3D hardware at that time. (while software rendering was still a thing not long ago) I run HL2 on my Geforce256 SDR with a Pentium III. It's playable. Minimum resolution, minimum details. But playable, as i could complete a whole game chapter. Really interesting era. Radeon R300 started some kind of a "plateau" with DX9 support. Graphics APIs were stable again for a while. Next cards generations were just faster and had more shader processing units and more memory. That means that newer games were "technically" supported by old cards. Skyrim from 2011 could potentially run on a Radeon 9700 from 2002 (slideshow mode probably) Now, games don't need to support a lot of rendering modes to cover older cards. Graphic APIs evolution is much slower.

[@philscomputerlab]

Great post! Yes the performance growth in the early days was just mind boggling. I really like the "DX9 era" with so many awesome games. To me it was a really good time for PC Gaming.

[@GhostLinx]

Wow old games look pretty good !

[@thegoodtomking2804]

Yeah back then there was more competition in the video card market, so video cards and games advanced a lot faster. Nowadays everything has slowed way down in comparison and graphics are pretty pathetic these days in comparison to what they would be if we still had that same level of competition.

[@prozac1127]

we are actually still seeing old games, thanks to shitty consoles and unnecessary hi res 4k trash

[@fu4ien]

2 months ago I found PNY GF4 Ti 4600 for 18 great british pounds and became a proud owner of it. I think it's quite a collectors card. But I even more exited about the next 2 things I got, iiyama vision master Pro 454 - a 19" CRT 1920*1440 85Hz monitor and Epox 8RDA+ motherboard, my first ever mb that I bought for my own money back in early 2000 together with Athlon 1800+, it's based on nForce2 chipset which is super friendly to overclockers. And shortly after I re-soldered all capacitors to Panasonic ones. I'm super exited.

[@licentioushowler3400]

That sounds like an unbelievably beastly CRT. And a lovely system that you seem to have put some great work in to to match it. : )

[@timdahl]

had this card and can confirm that it just played everything! I miss that computer.

[@HeyImGaminOverHere]

That WinFast cooler was a pain in the butt to maintain. The fans failed regularly in my experience. But I do think it looked pretty cool and unique at the time. What ever happened to WinFast anyways?

[@mp-tunerstechtips4518]

WinFast is FOXCONN....

[@yukisaitou5004]

joemygod1960 they're still around but they only use the brand in Asia now as far as I can tell.

[@antwanarmstrong5987]

joemygod1960. Leadtek still make gpus but they don't sell them in North America.

[@thecaptain2281]

I always took those dinky fans off and mounted an 80mm fan instead. Provided better cooling and they rarely wore out.

[@scottrich976]

Winfast are just releasing the Geforcing1079tit this week.

[@JAP917]

The Ti4600 was my first "high end" GPU back in 2004 or so. Finally got decent frame rates and shading in Halo. I epoxied a massive Pentium Pro passive aluminum heatsink on it, and it ran super cool. Took up three slots at that time but worked really well with just case airflow. Now I wish I still had it.

[@sonyericssoner]

Sometimes i think that Electromine has its main storage in my basement

[@TheMorc]

sonyericssoner lol, best comment 😂😂

[@megabojan1993]

Back in 2002 I could only afford the GeForce MX420 :(

[@sonyericssoner]

I finished Doom 3 on that card. There were ways to make the game faster. I had 768MB ram and a Duron 1100 cpu

[@samilsam]

I had mx 440 and still have mx 250

[@midnightshade32]

Ughh that sucks. That was the card that nvidia tricked a bunch of people by calling it geforce 4 when really it was geforce 2, no shaders and 64bit memory bus. It was better than software but it was no geforce 3/4. I had gone from voodoo 5500 to geforce 3 and skipped the 4 series. I got the 5700fx next which was OK but crap compared to the ati 9800. The next good geforce card series was the 6800 series. 6800 played oblivion on as well as so many other games. Doom 3 was amazing on that card.

[@megabojan1993]

@@midnightshade32 Yeah the MX420 was indeed a crappy card even for 2002 standards. I was stuck with it for whole 5 years (I was very poor back then)

[@phazonclash]

I had one, that I later replaced with the famous Radeon 9500 Pro. That was a nice little upgrade, until I got a 9800 Pro later ;)

[@jamesbond-yk1mb]

Great reminder. Still having my gainward GF4 4200ti 64mb DDR alive in basement together with Abit nf7s, Barton 2500+(1833mhz@2350mhz),zalman cu CPU cooler, 512mbram pc450, 19' Samsung 957nf.. screen ..need to take it out in future when time and location of living will allow me.

[@oisnowy5368]

Really enjoyed the Ti 4600 back in the day. Bought it mainly for Morrowind. Enjoyed it for years and then we had a lightning strike. RIP 4600.

[@EikeSwegat]

I'd like to thank you very much for this video. I'm currently building a Win98/XP mashine and thougt that this card, would be suiteable. Now I know for sure.

[@hartsickdisciple]

One of these with a pair of Voodoo 2 cards in SLI would be ideal for a Windows 98 setup.

[@DarkLordValmar]

X850 XT PE was the King for 98/ME

[@kirkmooneyham]

I had an AGP Ti 4400 and used that card for a long time until I got my first PCI-E motherboard. That Ti 4400 did way better than it should have for longer than it's specs would have suggested.

[@rovervitesse1985]

I had the 4200 TI 128mb. I replaced it with a ATI 9000PRO 64mb. After that i got the card that lasted me for years, right up till DOOM 3 (which it could still run at high settings). That card was the Radeon 9700 Pro 128mb. My 98 retro setup has a 3Dfx card. The XP retro setup has the 7900GS 512mb

[@Romerco77]

The only problem with those Ti4800 and Ti4600 is that they run HOT, are very noisy, and draw a lot of power from the AGP slot. I had one of those installed in a PIII 440BX motherboard and sometimes retro motherboards are not well prepared to support high drain from the AGP slot. The AGP VRM was getting way too hot to even slightly touch it, also the stock 200w power supply (non standard form factor, so i cannot just replace it) was getting really hot. I opted to switch to a Ti4200 for peace of mind at the expense of some performance, but for Win98 games a Ti4200, or even a good MX440 or 460, is well overpowered enough anyway.

[@danijel-ch2gk]

I volonteer at a workshop where we get old PCs from either individuals or companies/institutions. We get lots of C2D PCs that we fix (if needed), load with our modified Linux distro and give away to people on welfare. But ... We also get tons of oddware that doesn't fit the requirements but is too good to be just thrown away. ZIP drives, tapes, a few G3 Macs, Pentium 2, and so on. We're very low on space and yet we don't want to throw anything away. We were glad, though, to discard Pentium 4 systems once C2Ds started coming in sufficient numbers circa 2016. Yesterday I found a strange AGP card with a Zalman cooler ... No indications of what it could be other than the NVidia logo and an "IBM FRU 59P4991" sticker. Turns out we have a Quadro4 980XGL! Prices on eBay are stunning! I really hope it works ... I also hope the ASRock 775i65G works. A C2D E6600 is waiting. I already have a working windows 98 SE system with Athlon 64 3000+ (newer, Venice E6 core). But want to try this one as well. Fingers crossed.

[@TheRetroCave]

It’s a great Card. The best one for that Era is the FX 5950 Ultra with 256MB. It can do everything this one can, it’s just much faster. After FX series was a compatibility jump though. So the 6000 series is by far not so good for Win98 anymore

[@asakopako86]

I love it. I am building a retro PC with the best hardware and you already have.

[@alexkindl861]

I also loved that Mobil 1 rally back in the day, so much so that I went through a couple of cheap driving wheels for it and NFS underground 2.

[@segoiii]

GF4 TI4600 was the king until Radeon 9700PRO came out. Especially because you could tweak the normal, cheap 9500 with L-memory(=256bit width) design so that it unlocked all 8 pixel pipelines. With some OC, you could get 9700PRO performance for the money of a normal 9500 card. This was amazing.

[@prozzac85]

It is a good card, but for W98 I'll awlays stick to the Voodoo 3 or 4/5. Any game that needs anything faster works fine in XP so I just run them on my XP rig. But if you only have the one retro computer, then it will work fine for most W98 games. As I said, it's a good card :)

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

Only thing is to afford a Voodoo, they have gone up in price in the last months and I see no end to that. It goes as far that you'll pay over 100 for a pair of V2's and a V3 3500 with box and accessories is very cheap for less than 150.

[@prozzac85]

That's true, but if you keep your eyes out for it you can still get if for cheap. Most if my old computer stuff was completley free. I put out feelers to everyone that i know that I'm interrested in anything from back then, and once in a while they'll find some old stuff in the attic that i can take. :) Patience is also needed, I waited almost 10 years to get a nice 486 for cheap. Only got it a couple months ago.

[@soylentgreenb]

That's not quite true for me. Aureal A3D is not officially supported in WinXP and that's a big reason for having a win98SE PC. I can't be without AF in games that use texture filtering (straight bilinear is worse than nearest like Doom, which is a shimmering soup in the distance but at least it's sharp) and I do want AA when available but the resolution doesn't need to be extreme (e.g. Half-life doesn't have enough detail to look good in 800x600 to 1024x768). For the later games that still support A3D there's no choice but using XP with hacky drivers or building a very fast win98 PC. Of course it then ends up *way* to fast for some games and sound support if you drop down to DOS isn't good. So you end up with an extra machine if you do this. I think it's worth it; A3D is a key reason for even having a 98 machine; there's nothing else like it before or since.

[@metallurgico]

Love those green heatsinks

[@daehawk9585]

I got a ti4200 when the 4200, 4400, and 4600 came out. The 4400 died off quickly being a middle of the road. The 4600 was over priced considering you could get a much cheaper 4200 and overclock it to near 4600 speeds. I may still have mine around here. It had a blue orb type cooler on it. I remember I used it so long the fan died and I simply bought a blue orb to replace it with. That heatsink was glued on so well I had to leave it and simply replace the fan in it. EDIT: Yep was a Visiontek Xtasy GeForce4 Ti 4200 (128MB). Used thermal glue.

[@amras94]

I've always liked that gray cooler style on leadtek cards. It just looks so clean

[@ATomRileyA]

Loved my 4600 Ti i went from a geforce 2 to the 4600 and it was a big difference in performance, i remember getting it to play Morrowind as my computer was not up to it at the time, played on a barco projector and was so immersive on the big screen probably why Morrowind is one of my favorite games. I also had it water cooled and still have the waterblock somewhere for it, was pretty cool setup also had a watercooled cpu as well so it ran cool and quiet with a big radiator. I keep meaning to build a retro computer as i never throw anything out and am a bit of a hoarder haha, so have everything from that era including the water cooling kit.

[@philscomputerlab]

It's such memories that drive this hobby 😁

[@Gooberslot]

A Ti 4200 is what I have in my Win98 box. It's a 128MB Gainward model that has the ram clocked to 64MB levels. I'd recommend the 30.82 or 45.23 drivers. The Geforce4 is the only one of the pre-DX9 Geforce cards I'd recommend. All the previous ones had a nasty texture compression bug. I'm curious what CPU you were using during these benchmarks. One correction about the video though. You state at the beginning that Halo is running with shader model 1.4 but the Geforce 4 only supports SM 1.3.

[@philscomputerlab]

A bugger, yes so Halo switches to SM 1.1 not 1.4 then.

[@armorgeddon]

Which nasty texture compression bug?

[@damasterpiece08]

even though i've only played like 2 games out of the list, i really enjoyed the video. keep up the good work

[@cesaru3619]

No Phil the ultimate is the GeForce 7900 GTX with the unofficial patch of course and maybe a G/P31 Mobo.

[@fuzzycat7313]

I still have this card somewhere it was my first real video card

[@Oliver-md8yp]

Very nice and informatic retro review . many thanks for this fantastic video ;)

[@TOMWIS]

Hi, Phil, great video. In shop in links , they have prices from outerspace, for some parts rarity builds price but not that absurdal level.

[@philscomputerlab]

Feel free to sell your rare items for cheap :) But on a more serious note, this is just how things are with some of the rarer items, they are even higher on eBay. However Electromyne have a lot of items at cheap and fair prices, obviously if something is too expensive for you, just don't buy it, simple as that. But they are a business with wages to pay and offering good service, that all costs something.

[@lepidotos]

It certainly makes for the best Mac OS 9 card, no contest. eBay sellers have been sure to hammer that fact in with their pricing.

[@feieralarm]

I've had the Leadtek Ti4400. I loved that card!

[@chrll]

How good it is for DOS games? Because, in a Windows 98 retro PC, being able to also play DOS games is a nice feature.

[@wimmetje]

Good old memories, I had an GF4 ti4200 back in the day, coming from an GF2 TI this card was an nice performer. And to answer the question "Is this the ultimate windows 98 card?" oh yes i think so because it compatible and runs well with all the games that you want to play from that era .

[@philscomputerlab]

Wim Zandstra :(

[@wimmetje]

Sorry ;) i was to enthusiastic typing my comment during the video, so missed the part that you already tested the 8X versions of the card :D

[@franckcalais188]

Nice Phil. Really expensive GPU on ebay, I keep my GeForce 4 :(

[@sdr262]

I had the Ti 4200 64Mb and @ 1024x768 I played all these games and more it was the ideal graphics card from that era for games. I had some decent overclocks too which smoothed out games like Need For Speed Underground II on those old 60 Hz CRTs.

[@buffhorses]

Just got one brand new in the box for 60 bucks!

[@ers-tj4to]

When graphics cards were actually cards and not the power-hungry bricks they are like today.

[@Laykun9000]

The Halo PC footage looks wrong, it appears to be running in DX7/Fixed Function mode. If you want to force shader model 1.4 you need to use the command line parameter -ps14. You can also force 1.1 pixel shaders with -ps11. I believe -ff forces fixed function but you can tell this is in fixed function mode as it's using vertex lighting ONLY. I believe The Geforce 4 is directX 8.0a and doesn't support shader model 1.4 so you'll need to use -ps11 instead.

[@philscomputerlab]

Yea I got it wrong, it does indeed use Shader Model 1.1, not 1.4 the GeForce 4 Ti can't do 1.4.

[@Laykun9000]

Ah, it's -useff -use14 -use11 as listed here hce.halomaps.org/hek/index.html?start=references/general/console_commands.html

[@datadyne112]

Great vid phil my first vga card G4 MX 440-T

[@MasticinaAkicta]

Such good cards, I remember them, good times. Big CRT monitor and a Pentium 4, Geforce 4 and off you go.

[@the_kombinator]

Or two CRTs - I had a Mitsubishi DiamondScan 21 and some other 20 inch CRT - both on BNC's. My cheap ikea desk was bowed from the weight on it.

[@Nesseris]

Great vid, Phil - as always. Love your way of reviewing

[@philscomputerlab]

Thank you!

[@djuroue]

Great video. I have this card in my W9x rig alongside tualatin celeron 1200mhz and asus tusl2-c .... pretty nice performance those guys can achieve :)

[@muckymcfly]

I had a ti4600 from sparkle, had a crowd around at a lan party playing Morrowind. They were gobsmacked at the shading on the water, it was a hell of a card but very pricey.

[@Fender178]

I remember these cards but never owned one. I remember reading through posts and how good OverClockers these cards are. I remember reading Internet posting complete with pictures of someone Volt-modding one of these GF4 ti 4xxx series cards and got a great Overclock out of it. I think that you should make a video with one of these cards Overclocked.

[@gamewizard1760]

It's not the "ultimate" Windows 98 video card. Windows 98 supports DX 9, the GeForce 4 Ti doesn't. You need a DX 9 supporting video card before you can start saying that one is the "ultimate" Windows 98 card. Just on a guess, I would have to say that the Radeon X800/850 cards are probably the best Windows 98 supporting cards out there. They generally run faster than the GeForce 6 cards, and Nvidia started cutting out some support for legacy features that are required by some older games to run when they released the GeForce 6.

[@steva7159]

I was just looking at old pc world magazine, and somewhere i found prices for these cards, 395EUR for GF4600Ti Ultra,430EUR for Radeon 9700 Pro and 135EUR for MX440. That issue of pc world is from november of 2002 so almost 15 years ago. :D i.imgur.com/9OYsBfS.jpg

[@philscomputerlab]

That's awesome, thank you!

[@Imgema]

Funny how, originally, they pushed the Geforce 3 as the DOOM 3 card and in the end, not even the flagship Geforce 4 can run it good enough.

[@ShadowsBehindU]

Phil, I guess you noticed that Halo ran on the dx7 renderpath fallback.

[@n.ludemann9199]

Video revisited after 6 years ;) 2023 perspective: Get a Geforce 4 ti 4200... the lowest price for a quadro 4 XGL or ti 4600 I could find was 175EUR. One gets a tested ti4200 for 35EUR - the massive extra premium isn't worth it. Radeon 8500 (LE) is much to expensive in 10/2023, roundabout 100EUR, while a 9800 XL is 50EUR. Parhelia 650 are out there for 35EUR, the full version 80EUR... I only take cards into consideration which cost less than 50EUR... My favorites, AGP, maximum 50EUR: DX6 - Elsa Synergy II, 32MB or Elsa Erazor III (Pro, Pro ViVo or Vivo) ( 32MB versions of the TNT2, 128bit bus; I prefer the Pro with the bigger fan) - 25 - 50 EUR Rage 128 pro with DVI - for everyday gaming purposes I prefer those with a DVI-Port, hooks up to CRT and modern HDMI Monitors well.. 25-35EUR Matrox G400 32MB - 10 - 15EUR [(or a G550 for 5-10, even it has some T&Lish stuff and a vertex shader ;) - DX6 with DVI...)] DX7 - Geforce4 MX 440 or 460, Radeon 7500; as above, I like the DVI versions... 10 -25EUR (with DVI) DX8 - Geforce4 Ti 4200, same for everyday gaming: pick one with DVI, 35EUR DX9 - Radeon 9800 XL, 50EU or 9600 TX, for 25EUR Radeon x800 non/pro/GT/GTO - sometimes available for under 50EUR Radeon X700 non/pro - sometimes available for under 35EUR DX10 - Radeon HD 3650 - 25 - 35EUR (Remember, I checked for AGP-Cards, not PCIe!)

[@philscomputerlab]

Great comment, and thank you for writing some prices. I have not been following the market but yes, the top model always commands a large premium, no way around it. My personal favourites are some of the GeForce4 MX cards, for Windows 98 they have a good balance of price and performance. 9600 XT is also very nice, but needs a newer AGP motherboard, unlike the older Radeon cards.

[@n.ludemann9199]

@@philscomputerlab the 9600 TX (not XT!) is a 9700 pro (8Pixelpipelines, 4 Vertexshaders) and it has the old linear memory layout (128bit) of some 9500pro cards and it can also be used older boards. It lacks the power of the 256bit interface, but I think it's fast enough for a 25EUR-Card... it is an OEM card like the 9800XL, but most of them have only 2xVGA, no DVI-I. I have a GF4 MX460, but only with 2 VGA, the prices were to high back then. As you say, those MX4somethings are great if one wants GF2 GTS/Ti power without the price

[@philscomputerlab]

Interesting, haven't heard of that one. Maybe it's one of these Europan Medion type cards? They are usually not available here in Australia, like that 9800 XL... @@n.ludemann9199

[@n.ludemann9199]

@@philscomputerlab I think it was Medion and manufactured by Microstar/MSI - they made many OEM cards, eg GF2MXes, GF4MXes, GF4 ti 4200 etc. Most of those cards were cut down in a way, like no DVI. I am not sure if the GF 6700XL was a Medion/MSI card too. Dell had many OEM cards too, GF GTX 645 and 745 es far as I remember, they were something inbetweenish GTs and GTXes. I also remember OEM Radeon HD 1700 and some/much/enormous generation-relabeling during the later Radeon HD 3xxx to R5/7/9 times (HD 3670 -> HD4570 and so on...) - and mobile GPUs which are not what their name suggests... *sigh* late 2000/early 2010s GPU chaos...

[@BEXYSPC]

Still have my winfast Ti4400 in its box :) great old card haven't picked up a 4600 yet :(

[@BEXYSPC]

Old post but I have since pickup up a Winfast Ti 4600 like in this video :)

[@pistolasex]

thanks for the videos, they are very well done, if possible I would like to suggest that you also include older games in your tests, such as duke nukem, hexen, doom and games from around 1994-1995 to see how these graphics cards behave in terms compatibility, thanks in advance!

[@philscomputerlab]

I believe these are DOS games not for windows...

[@pistolasex]

@@philscomputerlab Yes, obviously they work very well in DOS, but they were compatible with Windows 95 and 98, as in the case of Duke Nukem and Doom, which was even in their technical specifications at the time... so it is not something exclusive to MS-DOS, if If you could test it someday I would be grateful, I'm trying to build a retrogamer PC, and thanks for the great video content!

[@alexkindl861]

For the keyboard locking issue, I've found issues in the past (too long ago to quote specifics) that required mapping keys to different places on the keyboard to avoid having the same keys pulsed at the same time. Try mapping the accelerate key to something further away. Or use a gamepad!

[@philscomputerlab]

I will try this game on future projects to see what happens. But it's the only game that's given me keyboard issues really odd. The graphics are mint though, so I do want to see it running once :)

[@eurigas]

your videos are pleasing to listen to

[@Nevakonaza.]

What a beasty looking graphics card,Ive been tempted to do a bit of wall art with some of these old retro cards on a board,as i just love the looks of the PCB.

[@blakedmc1989RaveHD]

besides tha Voodoo5, diz GeForce 4 ti 4600 is what i wished i had back in tha day

[@AtariBorn]

Found an Albatron Medusa GeForce 4 TI 4680 for cheap. It's a TI 4200 on a 4600 8-layer PCB with AGP 8x. I haven't had a chance to try it out yet but I've read, in several places, that they overclock to TI 4600 speeds. Most of the reviews I've found complain about its deceptive naming scheme but as far as I can tell, it's the best 4200 you can get and was considerably cheaper than a 4600 (AGP 4x).

[@philscomputerlab]

Nice.

[@AtariBorn]

@@philscomputerlab Just an update. It seems I got ahold of a runt. I'm only able to get 295 mhz on the core and 558 mhz on the memory. Sounds nice but the card's stock clocks are 250/550 (I think the stock 4200 is 250/500), so nowhere near some of the performance I've read in older reviews. Some cards were getting 320/620 but not this one. Maybe I'll have better luck with my Albatron Medusa TI 4800 SE, once it arrives.

[@philscomputerlab]

@@AtariBorn Hey at least it works, that's the main thing :)

[@AtariBorn]

@@philscomputerlab Agreed. It's a backup now as my Albatron TI 4800SE is getting much better clocks (327/644)

[@AtariBorn]

By the way, in this video, you're showing off Half-Life 2 in Windows 98? How did you pull that off? I've hex edited the Doom 3 executable to run in 98 but Half-life 2, even my retail copies, insist on installing Steam, which we all know doesn't run on Windows 98 anymore.

[@stephenkennedy6358]

the radeon 9700 pro wipes the floor with the geforce and the next generation nvidia card

[@D4RKBRU73]

The last ultimate DX9 card was the ATI X800 which came waaaay later than the GF4

[@philscomputerlab]

No table fog support, so not that suitable for windows 98. But yes, it is a faster card.

[@erebos007]

@@philscomputerlab It seems that only a handful of games use table fog, right ? Does it worth it ?

[@NightSprinter]

I need to get my Quadro 900XL recapped. I think that's why a lot of cards stop working. Heard it's surprisingly-good.

[@stestewart1119]

My problem is i can always find the graphic cards but then realise the mobo has the wrong slots etc

[@vmirv0games14]

really good card for this age

[@GTFour]

One can often overclock a Ti 4200 to 4600 speeds, ultimately the entire Geforce 4 Ti range is the same chipset just binned for clock speed.

[@JonProietti]

I like the outro. A little nostalgia pron :D

[@InfiniteClouds]

I still have my MSI Ti4200 -- it's a great card. I noticed though, that when using it in DOS on a high-powered Windows 98 machine (like a Pentium 4 or Athlon) that it does not play well with Build Engine games at higher resolutions. I had the same issue in Build with the FX series. Dropping down to a Geforce 3 made a noticeable improvement. I've been trying to figure out what graphics card you used in your 2015 "10 Reasons for a P4.." machine as you seemed to have no issues with Duke3D at 1024x768. This was just Build engine, by the way. In general I think G4s and even FX have good DOS compatibility.

[@philscomputerlab]

That video is from a while ago, if I don't mention the GPU I'm using, I'm afraid I don't remember. But all you got to do is try out a few cards and you should quickly find something that works well.

[@LuisMercadoorg]

InfiniteClouds are Build games even accelerated? I thought they only use software rendering

[@InfiniteClouds]

They are only software... but either the engine or the VESA modes they use are finicky with later graphics cards, it seems.

[@Toomkee]

i still have a WinFast Titanium 200 TDH in a 98se system. seems to be very rare at ebay since i cant find many listings. there are quite expensive too

[@F2FTech]

My roommate at the time had a Ti 4200 which was a very nice card. Needless to say, I still enjoyed spanking him with my 9500 Pro 😜. Anyway, great video 👍

[@hyperdriverr]

I had the keys stick on my winME pc with an mx440. Didn't happen on xp though. Odd trick to get the keys unstuck was ejecting the cd tray would unstick the keys. IDK old computers were weird lol.

[@AnthonDev]

Just a suggestion... As a question I asked last time regarding 9700 Pro performance, it was indeed my CPU bottlenecking it. So it really would be useful if you can include the full system setup (CPU, RAM, etc.)... And possibly AGP BIOS settings as well.

[@philscomputerlab]

It's the same machine I use for all my GPU reviews: kzbin.info/www/bejne/eqm4fWZ9Yt5-lac

[@AnthonDev]

PhilsComputerLab Ah sorry I missed that. I'll take a look at that! Thanks.

[@rhysholdaway]

I have one of these cards paired with a Dual CPU Intel Pentium III Slot 1 1000Mhz 100FSB 1.7v SL4KL.

[@raresmacovei8382]

Real missed opportunity in this review: not testing Splinter Cell 1 and Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow. The shadow engine in those games only ran properly and natively under GeForce 3/4/5 series. Not a problem nowadays given you can use a DirectX11 wrapper with a performance overhead to properly emulate shadows correctly, but still.

[@rhuwyn]

I would really like to see a comparison to the Radeon 9800 Pro or maybe a 9700 or 9600. I personally felt that ATI had a leg up during this time, although if your wanting to run splinter cell GF4 is definitely the way to go.

[@philscomputerlab]

Are the notifications not working? I just did a huge video on the 9700 Pro but you didn't comment on it. It includes the 4600 and how the 9700Pro was a lot faster: kzbin.info/www/bejne/sJbNfJ2jpbqnjcU

[@rhuwyn]

I missed that video, but went back and watched it now. I guess what I'm saying is I disagree with it being the ultimate Windows 98 graphics card when you have an alternative that performs so much better. It is a great video though. Thanks and look forward to many more.

[@philscomputerlab]

I guess ultimate means something different to everyone. If you go on speed alone, sure, a GeForce 6800 is faster, but because I work with so many different parts I value the "it just works" factor very high, so I see the GeForce 4 as the better overall package.

[@CSIG1001]

I have a question , will this video card work with DOS games? Also what is the best video card for DOS? I heard from watching LGR that certain video cards can cause incorrect colors or glitches with in DOS games

[@armorgeddon]

This is the biggest and best compatibility overview: gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS/ Greets!

[@jonathanthompson4296]

How the heck are you getting 159fps on Quake 3 with this card? I have two GeForce 4 ti 4600 cards running on Pentium 4 systems at 3ghz. However, no matter what driver I use etc 1600x1200 max settings always results in around 75 fps.....v-sync is already turned off...WHAT GIVES?

[@armorgeddon]

16 vs. 32 bit color rendering setting maybe?

[@Trancelistic]

I had back then a GF4 TI 4200SE volt modded by some 1. It was a bit better then a 4600, or so he said.. But I loved that card.

[@novinovic298]

How did you get so much better performance in Halo compared to other youtubers? They show how game struggles alot on ti 4600 in same resolution even with lower details.

[@joestradamus75]

I have the GeForce 4 Ti 4600 128mb agp and a GeForce FX 5200 256mb 8agp? The GeForce 4's fan is broken. It's been broken for years. It still spins but it's incredible loud. I' tried cleaning it, but it still sounds like a jet engine. I bought the FX card (without fan)thinking it was so much better than the 4600ti. I still have my Dell Pentium3 and CTX AMD-k6 90's pc, which I'd like to get up and running to play old games. My Pentium3 has a Voodoo 3 card in it. As far as FX 5200, I have that in a XP Pentium4 machine, which does play win9x games maxed out (15inch monitor), at least the games I have. I haven't tried the FX card on my Pentium 3 pc yet. I was just going to use an XP machine with the FX card to play Win9x games and use DOSBox for dos games.

[@dan167]

this is super late but that keyboard issues typically happens due to drivers causing the gpu to underclock then quickly try to catch up, happens on my 3090 atm and I have to use an xoc vbois to force it to always run at full speed to fix it.

[@RanieroSupremo]

Can I find issues when I play DOS games?

[@troglodude980]

I feel a 9800 xt would be the best option for windows 98 no?

[@adoniscmj3212]

What CPU are you running with this set up? I have an old Pentium 166 MHz chip that I plan on selling. I also have an old I5 sandy bridge 2600 , I am still using it. That old CPU does cancer research 24/7 and when I am not using my X99 set up it is crunching numbers for cancer research as well.

[@Goldman1156_]

Good job man