Element81 wrote on 2020-05-12, 16:44:

Long time lurker here and officially a new member. I've been collecting retro hardware for many years and I frequent this site f […]
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Long time lurker here and officially a new member. I've been collecting retro hardware for many years and I frequent this site for general information. I've been PC gaming since 1993 and building systems since 1999, so I have a bit of experience under my belt.

I'm looking to build a new Windows 98SE computer and I'd like to hear some opinions on what chipset I should use as the foundation. I've decided to do an Athlon XP build because I don't have a functional Athlon system currently. I'm considering either the VIA KT600 or 400A, or the nForce2 and I'd pair it with a mid-range Athlon XP CPU. The reason I'm looking at these chipsets is because I'd like the following features: SATA, USB 2.0, and the 12V CPU power connector. As far as I'm aware, this combination of features is only available on the later Athlon XP chipsets. I'm not planning to use any Voodoo cards, so I'm not concerned with the lack of 3.3V AGP. I'd most likely use a Geforce FX 5900 as the GPU. Lastly, I will probably dual boot Windows XP on this machine.

I've got experience with the nForce2 chipset and it's never given me any trouble, but I'm looking at the VIA KT400A or KT600 because I've never done a build with VIA before. Is there any particular reason I should stay away from VIA for a Windows 98SE build and just stick with the tried and true nForce2?

I appreciate the input.

Hi, welcome aboard! 😁

One thing I can say is that the early VIA chipsets having support for SATA often had trouble with SATA2 devices, which was fixed only with the VT8237 Plus chipset (the non-Plus chipsetted ones had this bug). It basically prevented SATA2 harddrives from being recognized by the BIOS.
I don't remember if this was perhaps fixed later as I either used larger IDE drives or lucked out and got VIA chipsetted boards which had the chipsets with the Plus.

But anyway, this is one of those things which you might want to keep in mind when building a rig from this era 😀

I'm not as familiar with NF chipsets of the era, except that these were apparently more power hungry, so make sure these chips are cooled well. But you mention you already have sufficient experience with the NF chipsets, so I probably don't need to tell you anything about them? 😜
But anyway, I have build quite a bit of rigs using the VIA chipsets and even though they may have some weird quirks, they have served me well over the years 😀

I'd say, give it a try and feel free to report your findings to us 😜

You'd almost certainly find that nforce2 feels snappier in Windows in general. For some reason I always find VIA has a significant GUI performance deficit. But late VIA chipsets are pretty solid and game speed will be similar.

The VIA SATA 2 incompatibility problem can be worked around by jumpering the drive to SATA 1. Assuming the drive has a jumper setting for it.

Nforce2 with SATA was a late development and uncommon. SATA was not an important feature at that time.

It might be a good idea to look at Nforce3 and VIA K8T8x0 instead and go Athlon 64. You'll get a more stable and faster platform, and not really lose anything. The VIA chipsets will still have the SATA2 problem though because you're using same southbridges.

I find via more stable under 9x than Nforce2, I'd look for the kt880 boards though, they are the final chipset, stable, and though it makes little difference dual channel. If you plan to use sata I'd advise a separate SATA controller though, modern sata drives don't have the sata 1 jumper anymore and you will have issues otherwise. Easiest solution is a Sata to ide adapter

many kt880 boards also have a 4pin 12v connector for the cpu socket, which should solve the main issue with socket A builds - the need for an old PSU with strong 5v rail, I believe any modern PSU should do fine for a kt880 board that does have the 12v 4pin. Of course its not just kt880, also many nforce2 boards have it as well. Sadly not my a7n8x deluxe 🙁

Some late socket A boards with VIA chipsets and integrated graphics had ATX12V connectors.

Element81 wrote on 2020-05-12, 16:44:

Long time lurker here and officially a new member. I've been collecting retro hardware for many years and I frequent this site f […]
Show full quote

Long time lurker here and officially a new member. I've been collecting retro hardware for many years and I frequent this site for general information. I've been PC gaming since 1993 and building systems since 1999, so I have a bit of experience under my belt.

I'm looking to build a new Windows 98SE computer and I'd like to hear some opinions on what chipset I should use as the foundation. I've decided to do an Athlon XP build because I don't have a functional Athlon system currently. I'm considering either the VIA KT600 or 400A, or the nForce2 and I'd pair it with a mid-range Athlon XP CPU. The reason I'm looking at these chipsets is because I'd like the following features: SATA, USB 2.0, and the 12V CPU power connector. As far as I'm aware, this combination of features is only available on the later Athlon XP chipsets. I'm not planning to use any Voodoo cards, so I'm not concerned with the lack of 3.3V AGP. I'd most likely use a Geforce FX 5900 as the GPU. Lastly, I will probably dual boot Windows XP on this machine.

I've got experience with the nForce2 chipset and it's never given me any trouble, but I'm looking at the VIA KT400A or KT600 because I've never done a build with VIA before. Is there any particular reason I should stay away from VIA for a Windows 98SE build and just stick with the tried and true nForce2?

I appreciate the input.

Too new, all of it. Windows 98 SE likes to live in the pre-Pentium 4, pre-Athlon XP era boxes. Something like Intel's 440BX or i820 chipset - or VIA KT133 if you go that way. It's just that once you're up there, you're quickly hitting the limits of what Windows 98 SE supports. You'll be turning off damn near every fancy feature on your motherboard to get Windows 98 to run. I might be spitballing a little bit, but think about it, though. Windows XP will be better on that hardware.

Wat. Late Win98 builds are entirety happy on P4/AthlonXP. WinXP came out in late 2001.

Of you don't care about ISA cards P4 are easily the best value Win98 builds you can get. If you want to max out a v5 a fast AthlonXP build on kt333 is ideal

Better not tell 98se about my Athlon 64 based system then, neither!

kolderman wrote on 2020-05-20, 21:57:

Wat. Late Win98 builds are entirety happy on P4/AthlonXP. WinXP came out in late 2001.

Of you don't care about ISA cards P4 are easily the best value Win98 builds you can get. If you want to max out a v5 a fast AthlonXP build on kt333 is ideal

Well, someone has to make the opposite case. I'm not saying you CAN'T. I'm saying it's a bad idea. I had an Athlon XP 2200+ on an ASUS A7V333 motherboard, in the ballpark of what the OP suggests he (she... it?) is looking for and I had to turn off everything in the BIOS. APIC, advanced this, cool that - and Windows 98 SE was still having heart attacks on it. What I'm saying is that this is at the edge of supported hardware for a relic of an OS and that if for some reason you want Win 95/98, you'll do better on stuff that's a little older since you won't have to Frankenstein around the inherent limitations in the OS.

Heck, even Windows XP will want a floppy drive if you didn't slipstream SATA drivers into the installer.

But going with the OP's case, I'd probably pick the nForce2 - just because driver support for the VIA line of chipsets on Windows was always terrible back then. My rig had no problem running Linux, but even Windows XP was quite terrible on it.