If you want to maximize compatibility, you don't want to go for something too fast. I think a Intel Pentium II 266MHz or 300MHz might be just what you need; you will have enough power to play games up to roughly 1999 and when disabling the caches in the BIOS you should be able to cripple the CPU enough to play the older speed sensitive DOS-games as well. 😀

I have a Asus CLUS2 motherboard with 1ghz. Pentium-3 coppermine version. Socket 370.
It runs Win98se just fine and I can browse the web with IE 6 web browser.

733mhz should be good enough. I just use at least 512mb. ram and a good video card.
try an Nvidia Geforce4 ti4200 AGP and a good fast quiet hard drive. 72,000rpm preferred.

http://www.cpu-upgrade.com/mb-AOpen/AX6BC.html
With Bios 2.47 it looks like that board will run up to the 850mhz coppermine. Note that all of the CPUs listed are 100mhz bus, so 133mhz may take overclocking or not be possible. Not a big deal unless you're REALLY trying to push that thing into running 2000s games. In my P3 rig (also 100mhz bus) I go back and forth between a 650mhz PIII and 800mhz PIII (the latter having a loud fan). With either I get a very smooth experience with win 98.

The first thing I would do is try to figure out the most demanding win 98 game you intend to play and work backwards from there. If it requires a top end Coppermine, then that's what you may want to consider. Otherwise you can get something slower.

Early CPU bound DOS games are going to run way too fast on anything you buy for Win 98 (without tweaking). Wing Commander is a popular example, without tweaking or patching you'll have a hard time playing this on anything beyond a 386. Jazz Jackrabbit breaks (but is patchable) above 233mhz. I could think of a few more. The BEST "all arounder" system I can think of is a Super Socket 7 board with an AMD K6-III in it, which is very easy to slow down for games as far back as the late 80s. Personally, I use two machines, the PIII and a 486, which covers the whole gamut of everything I care to play.

What I'm getting at is that you should build for what you intend to play. A lower end Coppermine PIII will probably be sufficient and cost you next to nothing on Ebay. For DOS titles that are problematic, well, you'll either have to play with dosbox or consider doing a straight dos build. There is no perfect answer.

I have the same board. Currently running the newest bios. It works fine with P3 CPUs (coppermine) up to 1GHz. Keep in mind that when you run a 133MHz FSB cpu on this board that the AGP slot is overclocked (88.8MHz vs 66MHz). I have found some video cards don't run with the AGP OC, though most of my cards work fine. I have tried a pre modded P3 tualatin (the ones sold on ebay) in this board and it doesn't work. At some point I'm going to try modding the slocket and CPU like is needed for my 840OR mobo.

Btw, you can use socket 370 cpus with this board and they are usually cheaper than the slot 1 cpus. I have a few MSI ms-6905 ver 2 slockets and they work fine.

BeginnerGuy wrote:

http://www.cpu-upgrade.com/mb-AOpen/AX6BC.html With Bios 2.47 it looks like that board will run up to the 850mhz coppermine. Not […]
Show full quote

http://www.cpu-upgrade.com/mb-AOpen/AX6BC.html
With Bios 2.47 it looks like that board will run up to the 850mhz coppermine. Note that all of the CPUs listed are 100mhz bus, so 133mhz may take overclocking or not be possible. Not a big deal unless you're REALLY trying to push that thing into running 2000s games. In my P3 rig (also 100mhz bus) I go back and forth between a 650mhz PIII and 800mhz PIII (the latter having a loud fan). With either I get a very smooth experience with win 98.

The first thing I would do is try to figure out the most demanding win 98 game you intend to play and work backwards from there. If it requires a top end Coppermine, then that's what you may want to consider. Otherwise you can get something slower.

Early CPU bound DOS games are going to run way too fast on anything you buy for Win 98 (without tweaking). Wing Commander is a popular example, without tweaking or patching you'll have a hard time playing this on anything beyond a 386. Jazz Jackrabbit breaks (but is patchable) above 233mhz. I could think of a few more. The BEST "all arounder" system I can think of is a Super Socket 7 board with an AMD K6-III in it, which is very easy to slow down for games as far back as the late 80s. Personally, I use two machines, the PIII and a 486, which covers the whole gamut of everything I care to play.

What I'm getting at is that you should build for what you intend to play. A lower end Coppermine PIII will probably be sufficient and cost you next to nothing on Ebay. For DOS titles that are problematic, well, you'll either have to play with dosbox or consider doing a straight dos build. There is no perfect answer.

I was gonna try out a 386 or 486 build after this one is done.

Side note: I don't know which games to build around for these retro build. I wasn't as much of a PC gamer back then, and I've never even looked at 386/486 systems. There's no nostalgia for me; I'm just doing this to experience these older games in a more native environment than DOSBox

Gazirra wrote:

BeginnerGuy wrote:

http://www.cpu-upgrade.com/mb-AOpen/AX6BC.html

I was gonna try out a 386 or 486 build after this one is done.

Side note: I don't know which games to build around for these retro build. I wasn't as much of a PC gamer back then, and I've never even looked at 386/486 systems. There's no nostalgia for me; I'm just doing this to experience these older games in a more native environment than DOSBox

Ah I see! Then I would suggest easily just hunting for the cheapest Coppermine based Pentium III with 100 mhz bus you can find so you get the best Windows 98 experience you can given the board you have in your possession already. I think I paid around $7 for my 600mhz PIII.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_P … microprocessors -- List of all P3 processors incase you aren't sure what I mean with coppermine. You'll probably want to pick one with 100 for the FSB.

Do you have a graphics card selected for the 98 rig?

After you wet your toes with that system and you're ready you can start reading about building an older ISA and/or VLB based machine like a 386 or 486 to play the super oldies. Probably the best route to go IMO.

BeginnerGuy wrote:

Ah I see! Then I would suggest easily just hunting for the cheapest Coppermine based Pentium III with 100 mhz bus you can find s […]
Show full quote

Gazirra wrote:

BeginnerGuy wrote:

http://www.cpu-upgrade.com/mb-AOpen/AX6BC.html

I was gonna try out a 386 or 486 build after this one is done.

Side note: I don't know which games to build around for these retro build. I wasn't as much of a PC gamer back then, and I've never even looked at 386/486 systems. There's no nostalgia for me; I'm just doing this to experience these older games in a more native environment than DOSBox

Ah I see! Then I would suggest easily just hunting for the cheapest Coppermine based Pentium III with 100 mhz bus you can find so you get the best Windows 98 experience you can given the board you have in your possession already. I think I paid around $7 for my 600mhz PIII.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_P … microprocessors -- List of all P3 processors incase you aren't sure what I mean with coppermine. You'll probably want to pick one with 100 for the FSB.

Do you have a graphics card selected for the 98 rig?

After you wet your toes with that system and you're ready you can start reading about building an older ISA and/or VLB based machine like a 386 or 486 to play the super oldies. Probably the best route to go IMO.

I'm currently eyeing a Voodoo 3 2000 16 MB card. If I can get something just as good but cheaper, then I could make due with that. The build I'm doing is loosely based on a Phil's Computer Lab build intended to play Win98 3D games

BeginnerGuy wrote:

The BEST "all arounder" system I can think of is a Super Socket 7 board with an AMD K6-III in it, which is very easy to slow down for games as far back as the late 80s.

Even better all-rounder in my opinion is a plain regular Pentium 3 450-700 Mhz, which you can slow down using the Throttle.exe util (which triggers the chipset to send a special signal to one of the processor's pins, causing it to skip cycles) to play games from EARLY 80s. I wonder if Phil will ever mention that in a video, because this "K6-2 good for slowdown, Pentium 3 bad" myth seems to be very strong around these parts 😀

I don't understand why everyone is recommending Pentium III rather than Pentium II, which probably means I'm wrong. Anyways, if you want to maximize compatibility in both DOS and Windows, you really don't want to take anything too fast. Like, if you disable the caches on a Pentium II, it would make a great DOS-machine, while in regular mode it will make a great Windows PC. Please explain what about my explanation is wrong. 😊

Strahssis, I don't think your statement is wrong, that was a good advice actually. In terms of stock megaherz count and performance with caches disabled, Pentium II (especially those first 333 Mhz ones with unlocked multiplier) is a great option. But compatibility at the high-end is also compatibility, and Pentium III historically has more of it.

And both the PII and PIII can beat the Super Socket 7 in terms of game compatibility in the right hands (and on an ISA-capable chipset, of course) 😀

Revolter, that is definitely true, thank you for explaining. 😀