Sounds like you should take a step back and figure out what you are trying to build and why. For starts - why would you need a Win95 AND a Win98 build? Even a DOS build is not really necessary (Win98 SE takes care of that), unless you want to have a basic DOS machine and a more powerful Win98 machine (and don't want to mess with slowdowns).

Win98 should also handle any card that Win95 will handle and more. For Win98 games you can already get some benefits from PCI cards. Like with DOS and ISA cards, you will probably not find an "absolute best" here. For XP, ISA makes no sense, since there is no DOS mode to cater to (unless you are building a crazy multi-boot system). 😀

Win95 = AWE32/64s, FMs, and lots of competing wavetable cards. Some games had explicit and special AWE support with special midi soundtracks for special soundfonts. Some games used it for spatialization.
Win98 = the big rise of A3D and EAX in PCI sound cards. To be hip meant to hear something muffled behind you. AudioPCI was common among OEMs. MIDI pretty much died as a music format for big commercial games (with DirectMusic at best)
WinXP = Creative's monopoly on audio technologies, proprietary vendor lock-ins and music being boring compressed streams 🙁 at least A3D support was wide and mainstream by this point on a lot of common board chipsets (except actual Aureal cards of course rip aureal).

Win95 AWE is probably a good match as mostly its a dos based system.
Win98-XP Audigy 2 ZS, Easy to find, can be hacked to work in dos mode, drivers bit more refined then the Live! series
High spec XP, X-Fi final card with XP support (excluding the Titanium HD)

Special mention Aureal Vortex 2 for WIn98, if you have the cash

walterg74 wrote:

Hi folks, as I am learning about, and gathering parts for, different builds, I am trying to determine the best *general variety/ […]
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Hi folks, as I am learning about, and gathering parts for, different builds, I am trying to determine the best *general variety/models* of sound cards for each windows version and/or eras.

I have pretty much come to realize that one should not go over things like SB16 type cards (or ISA cards in general) for DOS gaming.

Now what about Windows games? From all the different AWE 32/64, SB Live, SB 128, 512, Audigy etc. lines what would you say would be the best ones to use for builds where the games are windows games for:

Windows 95 (Thinking Probably 486/P1 machines here? - yes could be dual boot with DOS)
Windows 98 (PII / PIII ?)
Windows XP (PIV)

Thanks!

Skip Win95. There is nothing Windows 95 does that 98 cannot. And if speed is an issue, 98lite to the rescue.
As for the rest, are your intentions to build 1 ? or more machines?
The Aureal Vortex 2 is a great card but has no XP drivers supporting any of its advanced features, and DOS support is far from perfect.

If you're going for a single DOS/98/XP machine, Id' suggest an SB16 ISA pnp (so you can disable it in windows to save ressources) with Yamaha OPL3 for DOS and a PCI SB Audigy 2 for Win9x/XP. This should cover all your bases.

Sorry, I think I should have stated some background first...

My intention is not to have all Windows as a goal, but rather I want to build/have one computer of each type, just because. So a 286, a 386, a 486, and a PI, PII and PIII.

That being the case, came the question in best windows for each case, as well as best/supported sound cards.

walterg74 wrote:

Sorry, I think I should have stated some background first...

My intention is not to have akl Windows as a goal, but rather I want to build/have one computer of each type, just because. So a 286, a 386, a 486, and a PI, PII and PIII.

That being the case, came the question in best windows for each case, as well as best/supported sound cards.

That changes everything.
Although my opinion on Windows 95 still stands. Skip it.

DOS 386: Sound Blaster Pro 2.0
DOS 486: Sound Blaster 16/AWE32 with Yamaha OPL3
P1: Live! or Aureal Vortex 2 for Win98SE
P2: Aureal Vortex 2 or Live! or Audigy or Audigy 2 (ZS) for Win98SE
P3: Audigy 2 (ZS) for 98SE and/or XP

tpowell.ca wrote:

Skip Win95. There is nothing Windows 95 does that 98 cannot.

There are GUS Classic drivers, that run on Win95 A/B/C, but they do not on Win98.

tpowell.ca wrote:

Skip Win95. There is nothing Windows 95 does that 98 cannot. And if speed is an issue, 98lite to the rescue.

Sure, let's all load Windows 98SE on 3-4 different retro systems just because there's no point in using 95! After all, I'm sure we won't get tired of using the same OS on a dozen different systems from the same era 🙄. But seriously, some of us have different ideas of nostalgia, for some of you savage gamers it's nothing more than being able to play your favorite retro games regardless of yourselves ending up with the same damn OS on multiple systems just because you neglect to pay attention to the history of Windows, for some of us, it's exploring the history of Windows even by means of loading the different Windows versions that most of you neglect to see a purpose for (i.e. 3.x, 95, ME, NT, 2000, Vista, 8.x) on our spare rigs. And as for 98lite, not everybody wants to spend money on a fat-reducing add-on for an old operating system that can literally be downloaded for free these days.

tpowell.ca wrote:

DOS 386: Sound Blaster Pro 2.0 DOS 486: Sound Blaster 16/AWE32 with Yamaha OPL3 P1: Live! or Aureal Vortex 2 for Win98SE P2: Aur […]
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DOS 386: Sound Blaster Pro 2.0
DOS 486: Sound Blaster 16/AWE32 with Yamaha OPL3
P1: Live! or Aureal Vortex 2 for Win98SE
P2: Aureal Vortex 2 or Live! or Audigy or Audigy 2 (ZS) for Win98SE
P3: Audigy 2 (ZS) for 98SE and/or XP

I wouldn't even bother with using a PCI sound card on a Pentium 1 (even if you plan on running Windows 9x), unless you either have a dozen or so SB Live! cards laying around in your parts bin or are in an unlucky situation where you're dealing with a Socket 7 board with only PCI slots, I would save the SB Live! or Aureal Vortex 2 for a newer system where ISA is not an option. Use a Yamaha YMF-71x card (if OPL3 is important to you) or a Sound Blaster 16/AWE32/AWE64 instead if you have ISA. After all, it's better to use your ISA slots than waste them, especially if you want to play the later DOS games where a 486 simply isn't enough.

Here's my answer to the OP's question:

Native MS-DOS: Anything with a genuine OPL3 chip would be preferable, which would include up to a Sound Blaster 16/Early AWE32 or a Yamaha YMF-71x/OPL3-SAx.
Windows 95 and (early) 98: Sound Blaster 16/AWE32/AWE64 and similar cards of the same era.
Windows 98 (later): Sound Blaster PCI/Live!/Audigy 1/2, Aureal Vortex 2, or Yamaha YMF-7x4.
Windows XP: Sound Blaster Audigy 1/2 or X-Fi.

KCompRoom2000 wrote:

Sure, let's all load Windows 98SE on 3-4 different retro systems just because there's no point in using 95! After all, I'm sure we won't get tired of using the same OS on a dozen different systems from the same era 🙄

To each their own, but I'd rather have a solid OS as a base (as much so as a non NT-based OS permits), and as much commonality as possible to minimize headaches when debugging, benchmarking, finding patches and work-arounds, etc...

As for soundcards, I disagree about the Live!, its a great card, and he only needs one, not a dozen for his P1 🤣 although you did raise a great point, those pesky demanding DOS games.
For that I would suggest a Live! or Aureal Vortex 2 and an AWE32/64.
Why am I so hell bent on a Live! or Vortex card? Simply because the Sound Blaster ISA cards support at most 44100Hz playback, and I have discovered some games that annoyingly use DVD/MPEG video segments that don't work with those cards properly (eg: Wing Commander IV DVD).
With my AWE32 I get choppy video, crap-tastic sound on DVD material, and I tried every setting I could find to fix the problem*. I added a Vortex2 to my setup, and BAM, perfect everything thanks to its support of 48kHz.

* The built-in resampler in windows (quality settings), ffdshow resampler (resample if >44100), AC3 plugin... nothing worked.

A Pentium, Win95(OSR2) and an AWE64 is a cool classic combo. Lots of DOS games were still being released for these Win95 systems in 1995-1997. Perfect for the original Voodoo Graphics generation of DOS games. Should you need it, these systems will have enough ISA slots for a dedicated OPL3 card for older stuff and alternate MIDI (interface), maybe even a GUS.

Pentium II and III, I'd do Aureal (Diamond MX300, Aureal SQ2500, etc.) and leave EAX compatibility for XP. Both types could go into the same machine, but it's too much trouble for my tastes. The Aureal cards can employ some high end General MIDI via a wavetable daughterboard.

For XP, it's Audigy 2 ZS all the way esp. for EAX 3.0-4.0. Newer Creative models might be fine, too.

Unless you want 3D sound, you can use something like an AWE64 for all windows versions, providing it has driver support.

Creative's ISA cards don't compare fantastically well in the late Win9x environment. The sound quality is quite audibly worse than the big PCI cards, besides the situation with DirectX extensions and EAX/A3D. The line-in is so bad that the AWE64's loopback was measured at only 43 dB SNR against 65 dB (MX300) and 71 dB (Live! 5.1).