800PIII and 8500le Driver

Petezee · Jan 11, 2003, 12:30 PM

I finally dumped my voodoo3000, hard to do, it was a great card but I could no longer play the new demos. The 8500le 64mb was my choice mostly based on price ($79). When I installed the card I went with the catalyst 2.5 as recommended for win98se on ati web site. Almost all my games woulld either freeze system on game start or a few minutes into the game the video would freeze with vertical stripes. I uninstalled and then went with the install disk I got with card and wound up with 4.13.9013 drivers.
Only have minor problems with 1 or 2 games now. nolf2 demo runs great, mafia crashes to desktop once in awhile, graphics are super compared to voodoo. My question is, What is the latest drivers that run the best with win98se for my low end system? Am I expecting to much and be happy with these old drivers? Thanks in advance. Pete

I plan on getting a new system but am playing the waiting game with the dx9 stuff.

800mhz PIII
crucial448cas2 100mhz
soyo 440bx mb
win 98se
40gb maxtor
soundblaster live value

digitalwanderer · Jan 11, 2003, 12:35 PM

Your rig looks familar...

No, you should NOT be content with the 9013 driver set! I'd recomend you either go to ATI's site and download the NEW cat3.0 drivers & control panel for 9x/me. I just installed 'em yesterday and like 'em.

If you're really interested in just getting everything working well, I'd recomend you download Omegadrive's latest for 9x/me. You don't have to un-install your current drivers, just install Omegadrive's right on top of 'em and you should be good to go.

(BTW-Have you tried overclocking your PIII800? Mine is stable as a rock at 928, I only push it to 944 when I game.

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Petezee · Jan 11, 2003, 12:52 PM

I will try what you suggested and see what happens, otherwise I have seen that the omega drivers are highly recommended. I have the retail version cpu with intel fan. I know the soye is easy to overclock but am concerned about overheating. I am married to a accountant and she would kill me if I fried my cpu. lol. She is savvy enough about pc's that I would have a hard time explaining why I did that. lol. Thanks again, Pete

digitalwanderer · Jan 11, 2003, 01:40 PM

...you try raising it by 12%? Set your FSB to 112 in your BIOS and see how it runs. 112Mhz is me rule of thumb in OCing since it was the only weird divider I had on an old crap mobo, but I've found it to be a real mild one heat-wise while still giving a nice zippy performance boost.

Anything much beyond that and you'll probably want to increase your cooling, but the stock intel cooling really is pretty good and shouldn't have a problem with it. (Usual disclaimers about me not being responsible for you mucking up your rig based on me suggestions, but I feel pretty comfortable recomending ya try it.

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BTW- On drivers? Go with the Omegadrive's first, they're a welcome breath of fresh air after some driver problems.

Some people have a problem with the idea of a custom tweaked driver set is the only reason I recomended the ATI one's over his. For stability & image quality, I still think Omegadrive can't be beat. (I haven't played around enough with these new cats yet to recomend them over the O-man's even though they look good so far.)

Redstone · Jan 14, 2003, 07:30 PM

Quote:

try raising it by 12%? Set your FSB to 112 in your BIOS and see how it runs. 112Mhz is me rule of thumb in OCing since it was the only weird divider I had on an old crap mobo, but I've found it to be a real mild one heat-wise while still giving a nice zippy performance boost

I agree, 112mhz is every easy on PIII's. Stable with minumal heat. You shouldn't have to mess with raising the voltage. If you not ready to make the leap to CAT3.0, I have had better luck with Cat2.3 over 2.5.