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Like guys know, I'm an old games lover, like Jane's USAF, Mig Alley, B-17 the Mighty 8th, and Jane's F/A-18. And yes, I'm STILL using a Voodoo5 5500. However, I'm rather disappointed for its frame rate when doing 4xFSAA in 1024x768.

Since a Voodoo5 6000 is apparently beyond my grasp (unless the day I'm rich enough to order a costum-made Voodoo5 with EIGHT VSA-100 processors. MUAHAHA!), I guess I'm gonna' try GeForce 6800.

The questions are:

(1) Can 6800 run old games well? I hear a lot of myths that new nVidia cards like 6800 or FX is incompatible with old games. Or cannot run them well. Or playing them with lesser image quality. Is that true? But I read on SimHQ 6800 runs Falcon 4.0 with 4XFSAA, 8XAF, in 1600x1200 with about 50fps frame rate!!


(2) Which is the lowest DirectX version still compatible with 6800?


(3) I'm sticking with DirectX 7, but I guess I have to move to DX9 for GeForce 6800. Can older DirectX games (like European Air War) play well on DX9?

(4) How about Windows 98? Since most the games I'm playing are Win98, I think I'm gonna stick with the OS. Can geForce 6800 run well with Windows 98?

Thanks!

1)Dunno, I stick with ATI generally
2)I'm sure NVIDIA has that information on their website
3)I use Directx 9 something and play older games fine. Dang... Rome Total War is pretty much my only new game...
4)Most hardware/cards are compatable with 98 still. But again, just check NVIDIA's website. They sometimes have that information.

Terr Fangbite wrote:1)Dunno, I stick with ATI generally
2)I'm sure NVIDIA has that information on their website
3)I use Directx 9 something and play older games fine. Dang... Rome Total War is pretty much my only new game...
4)Most hardware/cards are compatable with 98 still. But again, just check NVIDIA's website. They sometimes have that information.

Thanks! By the way:

(1) What old games are you playing? Is there something with DirectX version lower than 7? (like European Air War, for instance)

(2) Does FSAA work in your titles? (or on what titles FSAA does work)

(3) How about Anisotropic Filtering?




Anyway, I just noticed a thing:

I tried European Air War (unmodded version) in my notebook. The video card is ATI Mobility Radeon 7000 IGP. When I activated FSAA on ATI Control Panel, it simply did NOT work! Yes, in 640x480 (the EAW is unmodded) it is clearly visible that there was no FSAA.

I suspect this is because DirectX 9, because when we're running dxdiag, it only test DX8 and DX7 instruction sets, but not DX6 and below. Is that correct?

Or is it the problem with ATI itself?

In case it's a problem with DirectX9, can we run newer cards like GeForce 6800 or Radeon X800 on, say, DirectX8 or even DirectX7?

Thanks,

Well, the problem shouldn't be with DirectX, at least. It's 100 % backwards compatible (supposed to be anyway, since MS isn't allowed to change anything they've already released, only add new features). I use the DX5.0 SDK to make stuff on my old computer and I can still use them on my new one which has DX9.0c and a GeForce 6800 Ultra.

That kind of thing is usually down to the drivers.

nVidia's drivers are really good at forcing AA on games that don't support it.

Vendetta wrote:That kind of thing is usually down to the drivers.

nVidia's drivers are really good at forcing AA on games that don't support it.

Really? I guess I'm happier now. All these times I thought only Voodoos can force FSAA to games doesn't support it. Being T-Buffer enabled, Voodoo boasted that their FSAA is software-independent.

I really, really hope the same could be said about nVidia.

How about GeForce Ti400 in older DirectX games? People keep telling me it's the best nVidia for backward compatibility.

yes, I know I seem to be living in a cave in regards of video cards, but I'm an old game lover.

My 6800 GT works great in X-Wing: Alliance, and that's a DX6 game. It also works quite well (with 8xAA and 16xAF, to boot) in Jedi Knight and Mysteries of the Sith, both DX5 games.

Executor32 wrote:My 6800 GT works great in X-Wing: Alliance, and that's a DX6 game. It also works quite well (with 8xAA and 16xAF, to boot) in Jedi Knight and Mysteries of the Sith, both DX5 games.

Screenshots?

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:Really? I guess I'm happier now. All these times I thought only Voodoos can force FSAA to games doesn't support it. Being T-Buffer enabled, Voodoo boasted that their FSAA is software-independent.

I really, really hope the same could be said about nVidia.

How about GeForce Ti400 in older DirectX games? People keep telling me it's the best nVidia for backward compatibility.

yes, I know I seem to be living in a cave in regards of video cards, but I'm an old game lover.

There was no Ti400. Perhaps you meant a Ti4200?

And I think you really should consider putting together a second system, having one that handles all of your old games and another that handles the newer games, because eventually you're going to hit a wall somewhere and have to abandon some of those old games.

Uraniun235 wrote:There was no Ti400. Perhaps you meant a Ti4200?

I meant Ti 4600. Damn typo!

Uraniun235 wrote:And I think you really should consider putting together a second system, having one that handles all of your old games and another that handles the newer games, because eventually you're going to hit a wall somewhere and have to abandon some of those old games.

That's why I keep my V5 5500 for DOS games, especially Glide games; and for Windows Glide games which resolution is limited to 800x600 and below. FSAA works really nice for such things.

My worries are those "not-really-old" games (mostly DirectX 6?) like Jane's USAF or Jane's F/A-18. 4xFSAA in 1024x768 is pretty choppy for Voodoo5 5500. I hope nVidia could give better result, as well as keeping compatibility (especially when enabling FSAA) in those games.

IIRC ATI has many problems with compatibilitis. I read somewhere that even old 8500 has strange artifacts when enabling FSAA in Jane's USAF.

But I guess it's time to drop my 3dfx fanwankerry and start accepting new ways of nVidia. I just worry about its compatiiblity with DirectX 6 games and such, but I also heard nVidia is better than ATI when it goes to old games. Is that true?

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote: How about GeForce Ti400 in older DirectX games? People keep telling me it's the best nVidia for backward compatibility.

yes, I know I seem to be living in a cave in regards of video cards, but I'm an old game lover.

I've got a Ti4600, haven't updated in ages, and everything runs fine, old games generally included.