I installed Windows 98 SE on an ASUS P4R800-VM with a 3 GHz Pentium 4. ASUS does not offer Win98SE drivers for this board, but it turns out the ME drivers seem to work fine.
Pentium 4 Chipset Drivers for Windows 98

Not sure what else to say. It runs.

Sorry, should've elaborated. Cpu and graphics card the main components I'd like to know about. Just need some ideas for brainstorming.

The CPU would be a Pentium 4, made by Intel. 😜

And the graphics card would be something supported by Windows 98. There are many threads about those already.
best windows 98 agp card

Geforce 4 ti4200 would be my vote, or some geforce 6 series card. As far as cpu really anything will work depending on what you want to do with it. You may have to disable HT in the bios if you choose a ht chip. Anything past 3.0ghz i think of more as a XP or fast 2k machine.

I was leaning towards something in the 1.8 or 2.2ghz range, not too far past a P3.

What do you expect to achieve? Anything that will run on a 1.8 or 2.2 GHz CPU is not going to run any worse on a 3 GHz CPU.

I suppose it's easy enough to swap out a faster CPU for a slower one if you really want to.

I have one of these motherboards running a Win98SE install:
http://www.ascendtech.us/msi-ms-6577-s-478-53 … ims6577533.aspx

Honestly, when you go into the P4 world The motherboard choice will be so much more important the CPU. You want something with stable/fully compatible drivers for windows 98 even though most people had moved on by that time so later chipsets stopped supporting Windows9x or may have just had bad support. Your best off with a Socket 478 system over an intel chipset I believe. The CPU matters very little and there are lots of GPU choices. Any Geforce 4 or 6 would be a great choice.

May I suggest a basic intel 845 motherboard? DDR 266/333 memory is plenty fast, intel usually used good caps and everything just simply works. Usually max out at a 2.8/512/533 P4 which is plenty fast.

I had 3 such machines, two remain (maiboard on my 478 rig died - again).

So first off I have a willamette socket 423 rig - I got this because I'd never seen a 423 P4, or RDRAM before:

It's a Dell GX400. Neat little machine. I replaced the Rage 128 in it with a radeon 8500 and added a yamaha DS-XG - it makes for a great machine for 1997-2001 games. It can run most 1998 and 1999 games at pretty high resolutions. It has 512MB of ram and runs win98se.

Another of my P4 win98 rigs is this monstrosity:

This has an LGA775 3.6GHz pentium 4 660, 1GB of ram and a Abit AS8, a Radeon X800XT and an Audigy 2 ZS. It runs win98se as well. I use this machine when I want to get silly. It runs Black and White @ 1920x1080 with AA and AF, Homeworld and Cataclysm at 1600x1200 with AA and AF, and DK2 @ 1600x1200 with AF. Old games have never looked so good!

The third machine was a 3.2GHz prescott (socket 478) but so far it killed 3 boards - two Asus P4P800-X, and a P4P800 Deluxe. It had a Radeon 9800 PRO gfx card. Needless to say I won't be fixing it anytime soon.

To answer your questions, a P4 or fast Socket A rig could be used to run win9x 3d games like they have never been run before - as much eye candy as the game and video drivers permit.

Please note that sometimes an old 9X games won't work if in Win98/ME CPU frequency is 2,2-2,4GHz or higher (is rarely but present). You may try to use soft PLL programmers to downclock system bus for that games. For example 2,66GHz FSB533 CPU can be 2,0GHz FSB400. Or choose unlocked CPU.

The chipsets with 9X official support which I know:
- i845
- i865
- VIA PT880
You can feel pefomance difference these chipsets in WinXP only. In Win9X practically there is no.

buckeye wrote:

Not much luck finding a mobo for my 800mhz P3, at least for a reasonable amount of coin. So now want to put together an early P4 rig that runs win98. Anyone have such a system and would like share the specs please?

That is exactly why the P4 is so cool. It's cheap as chips, most people throw them away still. Whereas faster P3 stuff can be harder to find.

Well you have lots of options!

You can go with an older P4. Willamette core, 1.4 to 2.0 GHz. These can be had for Socket 478 also.

The other option is go with something newer.

There is no need to a high clock speed, any of these chips will get the job done.

As for GPU, something like a GeForce2, or 4 MX is a great start!

PARUS wrote:

Please note that sometimes an old 9X games won't work if in Win98/ME CPU frequency is 2,2-2,4GHz or higher (is rarely but present).

Do you have an example?

Jorpho wrote:

Do you have an example?

FIFA 2002.
NFS 5 (it works but uses worse models).

Jorpho wrote:

Do you have an example?

Viper Racing

If you don't mind to try hard and a little wait, it is possible to find resonable inexpensive i845 board with 2 or sometimes even 3 ISA slots. Be careful and don't get a GV version. Plug CPU 2,0GHz FSB400 and you'll get very fast and not too much fast 😀 perfect system for Win98. If you need boost for some late "hard" games use PLL programmers to get 133MHz bus. It will be 2,66GHz CPU FSB533. If your processor does not hold this frequency you may plug 2,66GHz model and make BSEL mod 100 for starting at frequency 2,0GHz. Over again for power boost - PLL command for 133MHz bus. But best decision for flexible speed is in unlocked CPU.

If you reach variable CPU speed you'll never talk about "too fast architecture for early games" and "too slow architecture for late games". It will not be your problem.
As for GPU I don't think that GeForce 2 or castrated 4 MX are a good options. Why not 4 Ti ???

http://www.ebay.com/itm/MSI-6551-MS-6571-Inte … TWFJOIPP8dCbJMA

http://www.ebay.com/itm/MS-6571-v-2-0-Intel-8 … cQAAOSwPYZU8Kx4

Inexpensively. These two links I found quickly during 3 minutes! Unfortunately only 1xISA but ISA riser with modded or home-made case can rescue. Who thinks he is a hard retromaniac he may to work with his hands and head, not only turn-screw. But I believe if wait and suffer it is possible to find with 2 slots (not for 400-700 euros).