Hello,

it really depends on which games you want to play from the Win98 era, if you want to have high fps (60+) and if you want to play multiplayer or even with bots. Below there are some suggestions.

The only thing I really suggest is to take a well-engineered motherboard with good BIOS support, none of those crappy boards with integrated GPU and/or just no, one or two BIOS updates available - their performance is mostly very poor compared to top boards of the time (even while having a good AGP video card installed).

If you want a really fast Win98(SE) PC for later games, you can go with the AMD Athlon 64 platform. Boards with VIA K8T800 Pro chipset still have full support for Win98(SE). You can take something like that for a really fast one:

• socket 939 with VIA K8T800 Pro (f.e. ABIT AV8(-3rd Eye))
• AMD Athlon 64 4000+ (San Diego), overclockable to 3000 MHz or more
• 2*256 or even 2*512 MB dual channel DDR400 RAM
• nVidia GeForce 6800 or ATI Radeon x800/x850 or ATI Radeon 9700/9800
• some good brand power supply with 350-450W
• some 7200 rpm IDE HDD with 80 or 120 GB, maybe two
• some generic DVD ODD

Not so fast, but obviously cheaper and with better backwards compatibility:

• some socket A board (f.e. ECS Elitegroup K7S5A or ASRock K7VT2)
• AMD Athlon XP
• 2*256 DDR RAM (dual channel if available)
• nVidia GeForce4 Ti 4200, GeForce FX 5700/5800 or ATI Radeon 8500/95x0/9600 (not SE)
• some good brand power supply with 300-400W
• some 7200 rpm IDE HDD with 40 to 120 GB
• some generic CD/DVD ODD

kind regards
soggi

Theres more than one option that is good. Start with a good motherboard that will give you the least amount of incompatibilities and trouble. ATX board with a 440BX chipset. Theres nothing wrong VIA, SIS or some overpowered option but the 440BX are just the most stable and bug free.

Hi, and welcome to the forum! To give the best recommendation if might help if you mention the games you want to play.

Are you aware of the glide api? How do you feel about glide emulation?

Do you have any ambitions to run DOS games?

Do you have any interest in later windows 98/XP era of games?

In addition to the other suggestions, I would add that:

Windows 98 is a really difficult OS to build for because there was a huge shift in system specs during that time for both CPUs and 3D accelerator cards.

I would start your journey by making a list of the games that most important for you to play, and then figuring out what the optimal hardware for those games will be.

I take good win 98 computer at face value and not trying to read anything into it. That means period correct hardware from 1998 to 1999.

Warlord wrote on 2021-05-21, 18:43:

I take good win 98 computer at face value and not trying to read anything into it. That means period correct hardware from 1998 to 1999.

But if he wants to play games from 2000 and above, this would be too slow. It really depends on what's the latest/newest game he wants to play.

BTW, I forgot HDD/ODD...will add it above.

kind regards
soggi

There are two main issues to consider when building a Win98 system: performance and compatibility. In short, the higher you go up the performance ladder, the worse your compatibility with older games gets.

If you intend to play DIrectX 5 games which rely on palletized textures and table fog, don't go above the GeForce FX series for your GPU. And if you also want to play DOS games on that machine, you'll have an easier time if your motherboard has ISA slots so that you can use a more compatible sound card.

CPU: Athlon XP (an unlocked Thoroughbred would be preferred)
Motherboard: one that has a VIA KT400/KT600 chipset (such as Asus V7V600-X)
RAM: 512 MB DDR400
VGA 1: GeForce 4Ti 4200
VGA2: Voodoo 2 (8 or 12 MB, doesn’t matter)
Sound 1: Sound Blaster Live 5.1
Sound 2 Yamaha YMF 724/744

Such a PC is one of the fastest/most flexible that you can get for DOS, Windows 98 and even some early XP - allowing you to play 15+ years worth of games. Depending on the games that you wish to play, you could discard the Voodoo 2 card (it’s the most expensive part in that list).

For budget Win98 machines, I still stand behind a socket 754 Athlon 64. They are at the higher end of CPU performance for Win98 games, but if you get a "Cool 'n Quiet" model they are multiplier unlocked and you can downclock them. But overall they are still very inexpensive versus other parts you could get.

CPU: Athlon 64 3000+/3200+ Cool 'n Quiet
Cooler: Any modern cooler that latches to AM4 will work, this is a feature I love about Socket 754
RAM: 512MB - You need 3rd party patches for Win98 to go 1GB+
Motherboard: Socket 754 with VIA KT800 Chipset (this is to support DOS mode audio with a PCI card)
VGA: Geforce FX 5500 - close in performance to a 4200Ti, but cheap and can be bought New Old stock very easily, I recommend using a GLIDE wrapper to start out, get a Voodoo 2 if you find games not working
Sound: Sound Blaster Audigy 1 - Pretty much the same price as an SB Live 5.1, but it's a slightly nicer card. Some people recommend Audigy 2s, but 1s work well.
Storage: SD2IDE Adapter - Many Socket 754 boards have SATA ports on them, but some of them are iffy on getting Win98 to boot from them. SD cards to dirt cheap and being able to eject the storage and copy files directly to it from a modern PC is very handy.
Floppy - Gotek Floppy emulator, you may need one to set things up. They are handy to have.
CDROM - Your choice

If you are going to play a lot of games in pure DOS mode a Yamaha YMF 744 card is recommended for its great DOS compatibility. However, if you are going to mainly play later gen DOS games as games were still releasing for DOS when Win98 was around. Then the Audigy might be fine for you if you run it from within Windows. The Audigy can emulator SB16 so you have 16 bit sound, and most later DOS games can use either MIDI or CD audio for music so the SB Live/Audigy's bad Adlib emulator isn't a problem.

There are lots of quite specific builds here with specific CPU recommendations and RAM. For a "good" Windows 98 PC you really don't need to be that specific because the recommendations we're giving are a generation or two newer than what was out during the Windows 98 era.

Here is an alternative cheap good Windows 98 gaming PC (because everyone has done an AMD one so far).

A Socket 478 motherboard by SIS - any will do but SIS chipsets allow for PCI soundcards to work better in DOS.

Literally any socket 478 Pentium 4 CPU is "good" enough for Windows 98 and fast enough (or faster) than the CPUs people were using at the time (up to 1.4GHz Pentium 3) (but make sure it is compatible with your board - buy the board first!). I would aim for 2GHz and up, and these are easier to find than the older slower ones.

Literally any DDR1 RAM. The speed doesn't matter because any DDR1 RAM is faster than what was "good" for Windows 98 (133MHz SDR RAM). Only use <512MB because that's what Windows 98 supports natively. Windows 98 games generally use a max of 256MB and I would be quite happy if my Windows 98 PC had 128 to be honest. You can patch Windows 98 to use more ram but the patch brings about issues of its own and considering that Windows 98 and its games don't need the RAM, I wouldn't bother with it at all.

Sound cards are tricky - yes you can spend lots of Yamaha PCI sound cards but a loved/hated Soundblaster Live (or Audigy1) will give you basic sound in DOS and good sound in Windows games. They're dirt cheap and readily available, but you might be waiting for a while for a Yamaha to crop up.

Video card - People are suggesting expensive high-end AGP cards that simply are not necessary for "good" Windows 98 gaming. An Nvidia MX4 440 or FX5500/5600 or ATI 9250 are more than fast enough for Windows 98 gaming (as in, they're as fast as or faster than high end cards available at the time).

This is on the basis that you want to play games from 1995 to 2000. If you would like to play later games, a Windows XP PC is a million times easier to build and use because you can use much cheaper, more reliable, quieter, cooler, more readily available, more powerful, energy efficient hardware like Socket 775 stuff.

It would help a lot if you could narrow down the time. That you want to capture with it. From when, until when?

At the top end, I would see the year 2003. That's when the DirectX 9 games started coming. DX9 had Win2K or WinXP as a prerequisite. There is an unofficial port of DX9 for Win98, but why not use WinXP for it?
On the lower end, it depends on whether you still want to play DOS games. If, no, it will be much easier here as well.

You will be best served with P4 or Athlon systems of 1800-3000 rating. Whereby the Athlon systems need power supplies with a lot of power on 3.3V or 5V. For P4 you can use cheap, current power supplies. Also, most Athlon boards have bad capacitors that need to be replaced.

The graphics card will be exciting again and possibly expensive. A Radeon 8500 / 9x00 (x=5...😎 / GF4 Ti / GF FX5900(XT) / GF5700Ultra would be my favorites regarding backwards compatibility.

For the sound card, it's easiest: Creative Audigy 2. But if you want to play DOS games you better choose an ISA card and a mainboard with an ISA Slot (expensive for Athlon or P4)

Best would be a P4 complete system where a cheap power supply would have to be swapped if necessary. Buy the graphics card of your choice and put the Audigy 2 in it.

Ahh one important thing: not more than 512MB RAM

SScorpio wrote on 2021-05-21, 21:09:

RAM: 512MB - You need 3rd party patches for Win98 to go 1GB+

This is not correct. You have to install Win98(SE) with max 512 MB RAM, but after that, you can put in a second 512 MB module after adding "MaxFileCache=524288" under [vcache] within the system.ini - maybe it's not unproblematic in all cases, but with most games it should work.

Nevertheless, 512 MB should be OK - i needed 1 GB back in the days because it was my daily machine also with Firefox (many tabs) and other programs.

Almoststew1990 wrote on 2021-05-21, 21:25:

Video card - People are suggesting expensive high-end AGP cards that simply are not necessary for "good" Windows 98 gaming. An Nvidia MX4 440 or FX5500/5600 or ATI 9250 are more than fast enough for Windows 98 gaming (as in, they're as fast as or faster than high end cards available at the time).

The ATI Radeon 9250 is not THE slowest, but it's very slow and just crap for 3D gaming (i have one), if someone can't afford a 9700/9800 then he/she should take a Radeon 95x0/9600 (but not SE, RV3x0 not RV2x0). The MX4 440 is ~OK, but the nVidia cards from this time I have seen are lacking singnal quality (esp. when using a CRT).

Almoststew1990 wrote on 2021-05-21, 21:25:

This is on the basis that you want to play games from 1995 to 2000. If you would like to play later games, a Windows XP PC is a million times easier to build and use because you can use much cheaper, more reliable, quieter, cooler, more readily available, more powerful, energy efficient hardware like Socket 775 stuff.

If I understood correctly, he wants to have a PC for everything what's possible to play on Win98(SE) - so it's for games from 199x-200x. It's hard to say and to decide - as always. I know.

PC-Engineer wrote on 2021-05-21, 21:40:

At the top end, I would see the year 2003. That's when the DirectX 9 games started coming. DX9 had Win2K or WinXP as a prerequisite. There is an unofficial port of DX9 for Win98, but why not use WinXP for it?

The year 2003 (+/-) is somehow correct, but the DX9 thing is wrong! ATI Radeon 95xx/96xx/9700/9800, GeForce FX and GeForce 6 have DirectX 9 support and are fully Win98(SE) compatible - the latest DirectX 9.0c redistributable from Microsoft for Win98/98SE/ME is "Dec 2006".

PC-Engineer wrote on 2021-05-21, 21:40:

Ahh one important thing: not more than 512MB RAM

As said above, 1 GB is possible and unproblematic in most cases.

kind regards
soggi

soggi wrote on 2021-05-21, 23:50:

The year 2003 (+/-) is somehow correct, but the DX9 thing is wrong! ATI Radeon 95xx/96xx/9700/9800, GeForce FX and GeForce 6 have DirectX 9 support and are fully Win98(SE) compatible - the latest DirectX 9.0c redistributable from Microsoft for Win98/98SE/ME is "Dec 2006".

The problem with DX9 cards is they dropped 8-bit palleted textures, and fog table support that older games use.

The GeForce FX series has support for all the old D3D features but its DX9 support is very bad. GeForce 6 cards run DX9 much better than the FX series but the legacy D3D features aren't supported. I'm not sure which Radeons support what.

WinXP will run any of the DX9 games and the support for much newer hardware will make them run much better.

I believe your expertise on that (I really don't know myself, f.e. @8-bit palleted textures), but the point on that (the part of my post you quoted) was that Win98(SE) supports up to DirectX 9.0c (and some corresponding video cards) - which was denied by PC-Engineer.

kind regards
soggi

batmansquarepants wrote on 2021-05-21, 18:14:

Hi,

What I really want to do is relive my childhood and build a really good Windows 98 gaming pc.

We should assume that his childhood was actually in 1998. And to relive that would mean play games of that era. On hardware of that era. Seems cut and dry to me. Further explanation would be helpful but I don't think its needed.

Really most of these suggestions are fine suggestions and will work with some tinkering if you don't mind compatibility issues. Some of the suggestions are a bit crazy to me like voodoo 2 SLI. Video cards from 2003 and things of that nature.

Bro.
What you really want is a geforce 2 with an older driver like 12.XX for a video card. That compatibility will play the vast swath of titles from early D3D 5 stuff up to early DX 7 Titles that pretty much encompass everything That I think a good 9x machine will play. Later on if you have the money you could add voodoos but I dont think they are necessary for most the 9x era games.

Pentium 4 with a sis chipset was a pretty good suggestions, or a Pentium 4 with a PCI/PCI connection. I wouldn't recommend a P4 board without pci/pci or in the sis case I beleive they retained DDMA but thats still not as good as a PCI/PCI

Id go for a 440bx bassed motherboard with a slot 1 CPU a 600MHZ to a 800mhz with 100mhz fsb somwhere in there is the sweet spot for 1998 1999 gaming.

256 MB of Ram is more than enough. You can go 512 but its basically unnecessary unless you want to dual boot like win 2000 with it as no games of that era really use that much ram.

IF your BX board has PCI/PCI yamaha XGs are a pretty decent option for a PCI card otherwise get a ISA sound card. AWE64 Value is a good value.

If you were really patient and bought things low as possible, Its probably possible to build such a system for around 100 dollars minus the case and power supply. case and power supply is the problem becasue you have to pay shippings on those or you could just try and find one locally on craigs list or marketplace drive and get it. Thats what I would do.

I was actually wrong. The ATI Radeon no longer have support for D3D5 faetures (fog table, paltettized textures). From this point of view, the FX5900 would be first choice. If you want to stay with DX7 then the GF2 GTS/TI/Ultra or GF4MX 440/460 would be the best choice.
You could compensate for the lack of these features with an add-on card from 3dfx, but it will be expensive.

What I still stand by: not installing DX9 on Win98. It is meant for Win2k/XP and can be problematic on Win98.

Re: Windows 98 DirectX 9
https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/ATI#R200

Thanks everyone for getting back to me so fast and for all the info, it really helps.

Bit more info is that I'd like to run games from half life, Dino crisis, tomb raider but also a lot of dos games like Duke nukem, redneck rampage and, Sierra and Lucas arts titles.

Would like to build something that can handle later games nicely but still play dos games.

mothergoose729 wrote on 2021-05-21, 18:42:

Hi, and welcome to the forum! To give the best recommendation if might help if you mention the games you want to play. […]
Show full quote

Hi, and welcome to the forum! To give the best recommendation if might help if you mention the games you want to play.

Are you aware of the glide api? How do you feel about glide emulation?

Do you have any ambitions to run DOS games?

Do you have any interest in later windows 98/XP era of games?

Hi, I've not heard of glide.

There are a lot of dos games I want to play too like Sierra titles and Lucas arts adventures, and FPS of the time. Also some of the more demanding games like half life and some into the early 2000s if possible?

I looked into first at building a Windows XP gaming machine but as far as I've read it's then harder to run older games in the DOS era.

It's not really possible on real hardware. If you care about real hardware, build both a dos and Win98 pc. If not, just use emulation for the dos games on a modern pc.