GeForce4 MX 440 (Mentor, PCI) on AMD K6-2 500

I did a load of research (apparently not enough) to see what was the best
PCI card to buy for an old machine with an AMD K6-2 500 CPU with 512Mb RAM
that's dual-booting XP and Mandrakelinux 10.0. There were a few cards
whose minimum specs didn't include the K6, but I'm certain the GeForce4 MX
440 was fine and I picked one up (made by Mentor) on eBay.

Whilst the performance is good in both XP and Linux, in XP anything that
appears to use OpenGL (Anim8or, Operation Flashpoint, Star Wars Jedi
Outcast & an OpenGL benchmark utility) crashes with an Event Log entry
that refers to "nvoglnt.dll". I've downloaded from
ftp://download.nvidia.com/windows/ the 6 most recent versions of the
Detonator (?) drivers. Irrespective of the version installed, the apps all
crash with the same error.

In Linux, I see the nVidia logo on starting X, and whilst LBreakout2 plays
fine, ArmageTron simply doesn't start.

I've gone through the BIOS and disabled the onboard AGP card (ATI 3D Rage
Pro) and ensured that it was uninstalled in XP and removed the reference
to it on booting in Linux, but it made no difference.

Having flicked through the manual, I see that the K6 isn't listed in the
Minimum System CPUs -- yet I could have sworn that I saw plenty of
references online to say that the GeForce4 MX 440 would run fine with a
K6, e.g.
http://www.xfxforce.com/product_view.php?sku=PVT17KMA

Do you reckon that the CPU is the reason that anything that uses OpenGL
crashes or fails to run? And could it be that some manufacturer's GeForce4
MX 440s work fine with a K6 and some don't?

And if it's simply the case that this card won't work with this old PC,
can anyone recommend the best PCI card that will, and works in both OSes?

Thanks for any advice.

Aidan Whitehall wrote:
I did a load of research (apparently not enough) to see what was the best
PCI card to buy for an old machine with an AMD K6-2 500 CPU with 512Mb RAM
that's dual-booting XP and Mandrakelinux 10.0. There were a few cards
whose minimum specs didn't include the K6, but I'm certain the GeForce4 MX
440 was fine and I picked one up (made by Mentor) on eBay.

Whilst the performance is good in both XP and Linux, in XP anything that
appears to use OpenGL (Anim8or, Operation Flashpoint, Star Wars Jedi
Outcast & an OpenGL benchmark utility) crashes with an Event Log entry
that refers to "nvoglnt.dll". I've downloaded from
ftp://download.nvidia.com/windows/ the 6 most recent versions of the
Detonator (?) drivers. Irrespective of the version installed, the apps all
crash with the same error.

In Linux, I see the nVidia logo on starting X, and whilst LBreakout2 plays
fine, ArmageTron simply doesn't start.

I've gone through the BIOS and disabled the onboard AGP card (ATI 3D Rage
Pro) and ensured that it was uninstalled in XP and removed the reference
to it on booting in Linux, but it made no difference.

Having flicked through the manual, I see that the K6 isn't listed in the
Minimum System CPUs -- yet I could have sworn that I saw plenty of
references online to say that the GeForce4 MX 440 would run fine with a
K6, e.g.
http://www.xfxforce.com/product_view.php?sku=PVT17KMA

Do you reckon that the CPU is the reason that anything that uses OpenGL
crashes or fails to run? And could it be that some manufacturer's GeForce4
MX 440s work fine with a K6 and some don't?

And if it's simply the case that this card won't work with this old PC,
can anyone recommend the best PCI card that will, and works in both OSes?

Thanks for any advice.

I would say that with an old motherboard like that, it's more likely a
chipset driver issue. There wre some terribly cheap K6 boards out there
and many were incompatible with the graphics cards of that time, let
alone new GF4's. The BIOS may just be entirely incompatible with it.

It's strange that only OpenGL doesn't work however; definitely check to
make sure you've completely cleaned out old driver versions and have the
default NVidia OpenGL dll instead of an SGI or Mesa.

I think you should erase that disc and donate the computer to
your local elementary school. Build a new one for yourself.

Alex