DirectX and Windows 98

[Van Cleve]

Has anyone else seen their DirectX performance fall tragically after installing Win98? I'm using the Forsaken DirectX benchmark from MaximumPC magazine, and using Win95 with either a Riva or a Voodoo and DirectX 6.1, I get excellent framerates pegged to the test monitor's 72Hz refresh rate. The moment I upgrade to Win98 framerates drop to the teens or worse. As soon as I "uninstall" back to Win95 the good framerates return. This is absolutely repeatable and misbehaves with both Upgrade and OEM version, both Intel and AMD CPUs, both ASUS and Amptron boards, and any 3D card I've tried except the Voodoo Banshee in some configurations. Glide and OpenGL performance are not affected. If someone out there has a clue what is going on here, I would really appreciate a hint.
--Van

[mayhemm]

Do you have active desktop enabled? If so, you might want to disable it. Active desktop and viewing your desktop as a web page uses a lot of system resources. That might be the cause of slower framerates.

[Van Cleve]

Thanks for the reply.
No, I've never been fond of that feature, so I always stamp it out whenever it rears its ugly head. This happens on a fresh load of Windows, so its not some setting acquired along the way, either. Also the poor performance can be predicted from the way the benchmark displays its loading screen, even before there is any display. If it appears to "hang" for a while loading #3, it always performs badly.
One exception is my Banshee card, which produced framerates in the 70s until I used its configuration utility to stop synchonizing to the refresh rate. Although this should be faster, it makes the board slow to a crawl like the others. Performance is restored when I remove the setting.
Very mysterious. It makes me feel that there is just some obscure setting somewhere that I'm missing. Oh well, I can always go back to Win95.

[dmm]

I am writing a program to remove IE from Win98. Should be done in about 3-4 weeks. But for now, I have a prog. that will allow you to use the Win95 shell in Win98. You will loose quicklaunch in the taskbar, but you can place shortcuts in the start menu if you like. Moves win98 like 95, and everything else works fine. And uses far less of your machines resourses. Email me or respond here and I'll send it to ya.
dmm

[Eli]

I thought that there already was a program to remove IE from W98. W98lite, or something like that.

[dmm]

Yea Eli I heard about 98lite from a friend about a month after I started mine. Not to be a smart ***, but it dosent remove half of what mine does. And it costs $30.00. Mine will be free.
dmm

[Van Cleve]

Thanks DMM. I'd like to try out your program to see if solves this particular problem. The address is vancleve@ix.netcom.com. I'll give you prompt feedback. Thanks again.

[Ricardo]

I've had the same problem and I could solve changing Directx 6.1 to Directx 5.0. All my games returns to run normally and no hang ups anymore. Configuration:
AMD K6-2 300 O'clocked to 400Mhz
Diamond Stealth 64 4mb Vram
Monster 3D2 with 8Mb
Mpeg Board that comes with Creative DVD 5X
64 Mb Sdram (not PC100)
Chipset of MoBo MVP3
the other pieces don't change the video specs(modem, sound board, etc...).

[Van Cleve]

Thanks, Ricardo, I'll give it a try. The benchmark was written to 5.0, so it makes sense.

In view of DMM's earlier suggestion, I tried removing Windows98 components using the Windows Setup from Add/Remove Software, and I found something strange on one system.
If I remove Accessibility Options and Internet Tools, but then DO NOT restart the system as asked, the benchmark will run at the proper speed twice. It reverts to 1/10 speed on the third program execution. I can reliably reproduce this effect (on only one system), but this is no way to run games.
I don't know how to put DirectX 6.1 back to version 5.0, so I'll try your suggestion on a fresh load.