Thanks everyone. Looking at the P5AD2-E motherboard, 7900GTX video card, and probably Creative X-Fi for sound right now. What do you think? Any suggestions?

X-Fi won't work under 98SE, unless it's Audigy based.

agent_x007 wrote:

X-Fi won't work under 98SE, unless it's Audigy based.

So you think I'm better going for a PCI than a PCI-E card?

I personally think the PCI-e systems should generally be avoided if you are running windows 98.

That seems to be the general point where windows 98 compatibility started being ignored.

For a pure windows 98SE experience, Intel chipset boards are best, but if you want to DOS sound card compatibility with PCI cards, I have had better luck with VIA and SIS boards.

However, if you are going for a true 2005/2006 experience, then very few builds at that time would support windows 98 at all anyway. We were well into XP days at that time.

TimWolf wrote:

agent_x007 wrote:

X-Fi won't work under 98SE, unless it's Audigy based.

So you think I'm better going for a PCI than a PCI-E card?

Most X-FI's are PCI though ?
PCIe isn't much problem for Windows 98. Getting drivers for devices, and making IRQ sorted out might present a problem (former one get's more complicated each time a device is required to work under WIn98).

If you want to drop 98, go for whatever you want.

Right, and I'm kind of thinking that way with 98 right now. It's not like I'm not a computer hoarder, it doesn't have to use 98. It just would be nice if it did. There are going to be better XP machines, and better 98 machines in my mess. Just want to get the most out of it I suppose, but I certainly do not want to cripple the XP experience as a result.

Last card that supports 98 is the Audigy 2 ZS, still a decent card for XP.
X-Fi are the last cards to support XP and even the later X-Fi cards drop XP support.

IMHO Win98 is more trouble then it's worth on hardware like this, I've got a slightly older Socket 478 P4 with 4GB Ram,
Not only does the 4GB Ram cause issues but so does the 256MB of the graphics card. In the end I got the RLOWE patch which solved all my problems but still end up booting into XP more then Win98 as its just so much more stable.

Anyway as your into RTS's the C&C decade patch improves the games in that bundle I consider it a necessary now and that needs XP, the rest of the Win9x era RTS's work under XP fine anyway from memory.

chinny22 wrote:

Last card that supports 98 is the Audigy 2 ZS, still a decent card for XP. X-Fi are the last cards to support XP and even the la […]
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Last card that supports 98 is the Audigy 2 ZS, still a decent card for XP.
X-Fi are the last cards to support XP and even the later X-Fi cards drop XP support.

IMHO Win98 is more trouble then it's worth on hardware like this, I've got a slightly older Socket 478 P4 with 4GB Ram,
Not only does the 4GB Ram cause issues but so does the 256MB of the graphics card. In the end I got the RLOWE patch which solved all my problems but still end up booting into XP more then Win98 as its just so much more stable.

Anyway as your into RTS's the C&C decade patch improves the games in that bundle I consider it a necessary now and that needs XP, the rest of the Win9x era RTS's work under XP fine anyway from memory.

Good suggestion. There are a few things I'd enjoy that front panel with the Audigy 2 ZS for. I like to use some sound/art creation programs in 98 since I did allot of that on the platform in the late 90s and it feels right. I'm just used to it.