Super Socket 7 with K6-III+ CPU (+ AGP on MB).
Unless you want later 98/XP era games to work with higher performance.

PS. Expect high prices, consider making it two seperate PCs which might be better overall for budget (and will cover more options).

Super socket 7 is not the first pick for compatibility with windows IMO. It's probably the second most flexible setup for both windows AND DOS, but it's not the best for either. It's just good at both.

If we are aiming strictly at 1997ish-2001ish era PC gaming, no DOS at all, and compatibility is the most important

Slot 1 440BX based motherboard.
If you can get a slotket adapter that would be nice, but a 600mhz katmai is plenty fast enough.
Voodoo 3 graphics card
A vortex 2 and SB live! for EAX 2.0 and A3D 2.0 respectively.
A wavetable expansion for the vortex 2 for better midi, but the vortex 2 does midi just fine already

There are a handful of games that are speed sensitive for windows, but it's pretty rare and people usually aren't very interested in those games. If you get your hands on a good slotket adapter (or upgrade to socket 370 with a VIA chipset) you can get VIA C3 processor. Nehemiah is way faster than Ezra-T because of it's SSE and better floating point capabilities, and for windows it's the Pentium ranges that you are trying to hit and not the 486 ranges. So for max capability (however marginally), the C3 nehemiah with a slotket on a 440bx chipset might be the best. An intel CPU will do anyone just fine though.

I'm ridiculously pleased with my KT133A system. It covers everything from 1992 with Ultima 7 to 2002 with GTA 3 and NFS: Hot Pursuit 2 for me. I can easily tune it from 300 to 1400 mhz, disable caches, etc.

Okay, Let figure out the CPU and Motherboard first.
I already have a few Socket 7 with AMD K6-III+
So I think I want to go with “Intel Socket 370” or “AMD and Duron 800” ?
I have a couple Pentium III Tualatin motherboards and AMD motherboards with AMD Duron 800.
The AMD I will be able to Down Clock using Setmul utility.

Win98SE was released in late 1999. Most games for the platform were released between then and 2001 (when XP came out). I'd go for an early 2001 build for it - so P3 Tualatin (or very late Coppermine) or Athlon Thunderbird. In fact that's exactly what I already did, with a P3-1400S. Just remember to install chipset drivers before GPU in any event.

Apart from that, no need for >512MB RAM, so 256MB is fine. SSD offers best performance, if run off a PCI SATA card with Win98SE support (think: Promise SATA150) - although you can get away with PATA-SATA adapters if latency is more important than throughput.

As for GPU, I personally like Matrox G400Max in this role, but probably an nVidia TNT2 or GeForce1-3 offers best compatibility.

Why on earth would you want to clock down a Duron 800 for Win98SE? It's only marginally faster than what would have been current in high end when Win98SE was released, and decidedly low-end by the time Win98SE was superseded.

I take my hand out of my pocket and raise it to my hat to give a warm greeting to the Vogonians. HELLO!!

I love this topic even though it has been talked about a lot. There are many different possibilities and formulas. But before recommending any part, it must be taken into account that to achieve good stability, you must have Windows 98 well configured.
sp3 updates can be dangerous. It is discouraged because the uncontrolled/disorganized installation itself creates problems. In my particular case, I have a semi-automatic Spanish update kit that installs the latest updates for me. In other languages ​​I don't know what tools exist. And this point is very important if you want stability.
It requires research and is something you will enjoy if you want to fully optimize your system.
If you want to get to the point quickly look for a sp2 or a 98toMe.

To choose the system with the best compatibility you should get an intel 440bx chipset. From there start building.

- CPU can go with tualatin/tualeron or with pentium 3 1ghz
- GPU option 1: geforce 3/4
- GPU option 2: voodoo 5500
- 512mb ram
-audigy 1/2 platinum
- awe 64 gold or an isa card of your choice.
- HDD 80GB ide (127GB max.)
- PCI usb 2.0 / PCI Lan

There are 2 ways to approach this matter, you can ask for help from the games you are interested in running. Or build a system and test which games don't work as they should. I am sure that game by game you can solve the details to be able to play.

This does not mean that the other platforms or brands are not good. It can be just as valid if in the end you manage to run the game that interests you. And the system remains strong, it is just as valid.

It is very gratifying to have a PC with these characteristics always available.

Good luck with your assembly and upload photos.

(edited translation errors)

My take on this subject is this Late 90s to early 2000s dos/win98se multipurpose retro? build.
It has been pretty much perfect for me these past few years and I have noticed that you can drop the speed of the cpu in bios enough that even dos games voodoo games work fine that dont recognize the voodoo 2 cards if you run at full speed. I can run pretty much anything on it from 90s and early 2000s. It is pretty much the retro pc that I use mostly for gaming.

You could do what I did and try making a swiss army knife pc to try and cover as many graphic apis and sound options as possible but also improve on it:

AGP :
Canopus Spectra 256DDR for Direct3d and OpenGL -you could swap this for a Geforce 2 or later

PCI:
Matrox Mystique 4mb for MSI - you could swap this for a Rendition Verite
Diamond Monster MX300 for Aureal 3D
Sound Blaster Live for EAX
3DFX Voodoo2's in SLI for Glide
Creative DXR2 DVD decoder card - you could swap this for a NEC powerVR

My CPU is only a Pentium 3 450mhz , but you could go for something close to 1GHZ to stretch your legs a bit further.

And you need a motherboard with like 6 pci slots , I used an abit bf6 , but maybe an Asus p3b-f is also an option and I'm sure there's others.

That should let you play alot of different titles with different requirements.

What CPU speed is best for playing Win98 games ?

Mega hertz :
300
400
500
600
700
800
900
1ghz
1.1ghz
1.2gb
1.3ghz
1.4ghz
?????

Mobile Socket A can do all of that on a KT133 board. FWIW, I leave mine on 1200mhz most of the time. I have few bat files handy to bump it to 1400 or drop it to 400 while I'm in Windows if I feel the need. For DOS, I just default it to 400mhz in my Autoexec.bat.

I'm trying to do a PC with the same target. For now I choose:

PSU: Enermax modu82+ 425W CPU: Pentium 3 Tualatin 1.4 Ghz MB: Asus TUV4X (but i read that the TUSL 2-C is better) RAM: 1,5 Gb Ki […]
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PSU: Enermax modu82+ 425W
CPU: Pentium 3 Tualatin 1.4 Ghz
MB: Asus TUV4X (but i read that the TUSL 2-C is better)
RAM: 1,5 Gb Kingston PC133 SDRAM (not necessary so much)
AUDIO: Sound Blaster Live! CT 4830
HDD: 40 GB UDMA 100 (I hoped for UDMA 133 but cannot find a motherboard)
VIDEO CARD: i had more options - Vodoo3 3000 AGP, ASUS V7700 Ti, GeForce2 Ultra (no ASUS brand), Ati Radeon 9700 Pro
SPEAKER: Sound Blaster SBS250

It's not a real "old school Windows 98 machine" but I think it could be a good build (I still have to finish and see if everything works.. 🤣)

I do not understand one thing. Why is everybody swearing on the V3? I Mean take a GF2. its faster, its cheaper and runs all the games which v3 also does. and the v3 also doesnt run older dos glide games. and most win98 games support also d3d. the there shouldnt be any game which a d3d wouldnt run

atom1kk wrote on 2022-09-28, 07:26:

I do not understand one thing. Why is everybody swearing on the V3? I Mean take a GF2. its faster, its cheaper and runs all the games which v3 also does. and the v3 also doesnt run older dos glide games. and most win98 games support also d3d. the there shouldnt be any game which a d3d wouldnt run

Well it runs all the latter glide games that v2 runs, and has excellent 2d quality. It's a good card.

atom1kk wrote on 2022-09-28, 07:26:

I do not understand one thing. Why is everybody swearing on the V3? I Mean take a GF2. its faster, its cheaper and runs all the games which v3 also does. and the v3 also doesnt run older dos glide games. and most win98 games support also d3d. the there shouldnt be any game which a d3d wouldnt run

There are some games which look better in Glide mode, despite also supporting D3D and/or OpenGL. Unreal is probably the most notable example, with Diablo 2 and Carmageddon 2 following close behind. I vaguely remember some flight sims from '98 also having better visuals with Glide, but I don't really play those.

Personally, I don't think this is a big deal, and I'd rather take the extra power of a GeForce2 (or even better a GeForce4 Ti) as those cards open up higher resolutions and the ability to use AA/AF (in moderation). The Voodoo3 pretty much becomes underpowered for anything made after the year 2000, and is limited to 256x256 textures (compared to 2048x2048 on a GeForce) which can result in blurrier visuals when playing newer titles.

kolderman wrote on 2022-09-28, 07:41:

atom1kk wrote on 2022-09-28, 07:26:

I do not understand one thing. Why is everybody swearing on the V3? I Mean take a GF2. its faster, its cheaper and runs all the games which v3 also does. and the v3 also doesnt run older dos glide games. and most win98 games support also d3d. the there shouldnt be any game which a d3d wouldnt run

Well it runs all the latter glide games that v2 runs, and has excellent 2d quality. It's a good card.

But GF also runs all the V2 games, but better

atom1kk wrote on 2022-09-28, 08:40:

kolderman wrote on 2022-09-28, 07:41:

atom1kk wrote on 2022-09-28, 07:26:

I do not understand one thing. Why is everybody swearing on the V3? I Mean take a GF2. its faster, its cheaper and runs all the games which v3 also does. and the v3 also doesnt run older dos glide games. and most win98 games support also d3d. the there shouldnt be any game which a d3d wouldnt run

Well it runs all the latter glide games that v2 runs, and has excellent 2d quality. It's a good card.

But GF also runs all the V2 games, but better

There are games that work better in glide mode. Descent 3D for example. I prefer to play that on V3.

I can't take this topic seriously when started by a user with 4437 posts

Win 98se vs. ME vs. Win 2000 vs. XP
Win95c vs. Win98se for gaming ?