Well for me I'm focusing far more on Windows games than DOS and tbh for the ones I'm more likely to play people would probably play more on XP usually anyway.
I suppose all I'm wondering is with my specs am I going to get better performance in the games I've listed in OP with 98 or 2000/XP?

Saidian wrote on 2022-06-11, 19:00:

Well for me I'm focusing far more on Windows games than DOS and tbh for the ones I'm more likely to play people would probably play more on XP usually anyway.
I suppose all I'm wondering is with my specs am I going to get better performance in the games I've listed in OP with 98 or 2000/XP?

I think you will probably trade some performance for having more stability if you run winXP instead of win98.
If your main thing is performance then win98 is better in that system.

I guess I'll try with Win98 first and only switch to XP if I constantly get issues

Saidian wrote on 2022-06-11, 19:00:

Well for me I'm focusing far more on Windows games than DOS and tbh for the ones I'm more likely to play people would probably play more on XP usually anyway.
I suppose all I'm wondering is with my specs am I going to get better performance in the games I've listed in OP with 98 or 2000/XP?

Personally, if the main intent is to play games from early to mid-2000's (per what you listed), I'd probably go with a beefier Windows XP build. This also highly depends on the screen setup and resolution you intend to play at.

Your specs are ideal for mid to late 90's Win98 build focusing on DOS/W95/W98 gaming. You can certainly run stuff rom early 2000's on it, though as other have suggested, you may have to accept some performance trade-offs.

Dual-booting is always an option.

Yeh just had a look at some examples of people running some of those later games with similar specs and I definitely don't want to be running XP unless i absolutely have to.
I guess I have my answer on this question then. Cheers to everyone for the knowledge imparted 😀

kitten.may.cry wrote on 2022-06-11, 12:22:

jheronimus wrote on 2022-06-11, 12:20:

Win2K is actually a good option, too. Supports a lot of the same stuff as XP, but lighter and smaller.

At least you didn't tell him to use WinME.

ME final release .iso actually works very well.

However, ME and dos aren’t the best of friends. So 98SE might be better in this case.

Xp is a pretty solid choice though on a range of hardware, hell, I run it on my dual pentium 1 233 mmx and it’s pretty snappy.

In general though if you want the fastest performance 9x usually beats out xp. Most of the retro 3dmark records are done on 9x I believe.

I think 98se checks the most boxes for you.

I think the MEs problems are:
Bad rep: back then a lot of people had issues with it.
Short time frame: When it came out 98SE was still relevant, 2000 was already out and XP was already on the horizon.

There aren't much to justify using it on an active build other than as a curiosity.

RandomStranger wrote on 2022-06-12, 05:59:

There aren't much to justify using it on an active build other than as a curiosity.

High mouse rate and USB storage are two reasons. There's also some support for later versions of DirectX 9. This P3's a strong candidate for a ME machine.

The ME shame is overplayed so much to the point, some had been outraged about the Win98 patchwork 'service packs' that change their OS's identity to ME. 🤣

leileilol wrote on 2022-06-12, 06:24:

RandomStranger wrote on 2022-06-12, 05:59:

There aren't much to justify using it on an active build other than as a curiosity.

High mouse rate and USB storage are two reasons. There's also some support for later versions of DirectX 9. This P3's a strong candidate for a ME machine.

I'd still rather go for 2K.

Saidian wrote on 2022-06-11, 11:48:

I have been wondering past few days if the system I'm building would be better served with having 98 or XP as the OS. […]
Show full quote

I have been wondering past few days if the system I'm building would be better served with having 98 or XP as the OS.

I still have a bunch of parts to get but I've nailed down the main 4:

Pentium iii 1ghz Coppermine
DFI CS61-EC Motherboard
512 PC133 SDRAM (Max the above supports)
Nvidia Geforce 4 Ti4200
Sound Blaster Live SB0220

I do have a few older pre 1995 DOS games I want to play but considering I can use Dosbox for those (right?) I'm wondering if XP would be a better fit than 98 considering the majority of my library playing games up to Freelancer, KOTOR and possibly World of Warcraft Vanilla. Will be running a good amount of console emulation too.

Will the higher requirements of XP have a negative impact or will it not really matter?

I'd go for WinME on this particular mobo. It doesn't seem to have any ISA slots and you already have several older machines that can already take the DOS role.
WinXP will work on a Coppermine 1000MHz. Mine had anywhere between 256MB to 512MB SDRAM (not more because i815 chipset) and even with just SP1 it always seemed to run somewhat sluiggishly. 1000MHz Coppermine running WinME ran great in comparison.

I reckon you could give Win2k a try, but I have little personal experience with that OS. It might be interesting for you to experiment with perhaps?

But WinME should run pretty great on a Coppermine 1000MHz. It's fairly trivial to add 256MB RAM to it, which would be more than enough for WinME.

RandomStranger wrote on 2022-06-12, 05:59:

I think the MEs problems are: Bad rep: back then a lot of people had issues with it. Short time frame: When it came out 98SE was […]
Show full quote

I think the MEs problems are:
Bad rep: back then a lot of people had issues with it.
Short time frame: When it came out 98SE was still relevant, 2000 was already out and XP was already on the horizon.

There aren't much to justify using it on an active build other than as a curiosity.

Those are problems from back then: these don't apply anymore.
The "Oh ha ha ME suXx!!111" jokes have been dead here for at least 10 years now. Still seeing this dogma pop up now and again is, if anything at all, just kinda disappointing really. There's lots of clever and interested people here on Vogons but sometimes there's this one individual popping up who apparently doesn't know any better, spamming a decades old meme again as though it's waiting for the round of applause from the echo chamber after having delivered to us this 'original' and ingenious but dogmatic punchline. Oh well.

Anyway, a Coppermine without any ISA slots is actually an excellent pick for an ME rig! 🙂
98SE on such hardware has no real advantages over ME anymore as its real strong point compared to ME is the native DOS support. And even then most more recent DOS games can be run from within Windows relatively fine even if the sound may not be the best. Windows XP on such configurations will typically be somewhat slow even if you NLited the install media to work more snappily on older systems.

ME loads faster and shuts down faster, has native ZIP support and native USB support and has better out-of-the-box support for contemporary hardware (though tbf these days this advantage isn't as essential as it was back when ME was still fairly new but it's an advantage nontheless), just to name a few of its advantages.
It's in a way Windows 98TE more centered on Windows instead of DOS. It having the same GUI as Win2k can also be seen as an advantage. Personally I like the ME/2k GUI 🙂
It's not inherently unstable (or at least not as far as any 9x can be considered stable) if you set it up properly, but setting it up correctly is definitely a new challenge since it requires a somewhat different approach from earlier versions of 9x Windows. But it's definitely not a difficult challenge once you know what to do and definitely not as tedious as NLiting XP is (or at least not for me but testing the XP install media in VPC got tedious after a while).
Also anecdotal evidence from several people here on Vogons suggest that ME may actually run more stable than 98SE on relatively new contemporary hardware (think s370, netburst and sA).

I think ME is a great pick for anything with, say, 400MHz and 128MB RAM and up, up to when WinXP starts to become a serious pick (which is anything that can run XP well without it feeling sluggish, usually from >=512MB RAM + (Northwood or AXP) and up and many people favor XP on much higher specced hardware than that even) and it's a great pick for a system that isn't centered around DOS.

I almost forgot to point out one more important aspect of OS picks (especially a Windows based one) and that is that, to a large degree, it's about personal preference. There is often no one pick of OS that completely negates all other versions of Windows as valid picks.
Some people will run WinXP quite happily on a dual Pentium 1 like mentioned in this very thread and some people may apparently loathe using XP on anything that predates Core2 and DDR3.
I mean I ran XP on Coppermine systems and it ran somewhat sluggishly even with 512MB SDRAM but other than that it ran perfectly fine! 😀
Sure, ME ran less sluggishly on the same hardware but if someone wants to go and install XP on such a rig, go ahead and put XP on there and enjoy the experience 🙂
Neither pick is invalid or anything. All these OSs were made for a wide range of system specs.

So go ahead and (try to) put Windows 95 OSR 1 on an Intel I11 GTX Extreme Edition or feel free to try running XP on a CPU running within the KHz range 😜
But do let us know so we all can learn from it 😀

Tetrium wrote on 2022-06-12, 09:41:

I think ME is a great pick for anything with, say, 400MHz and 128MB RAM and up, up to when WinXP starts to become a serious pick (which is anything that can run XP well without it feeling sluggish, usually from >=512MB RAM + (Northwood or AXP) and up and many people favor XP on much higher specced hardware than that even) and it's a great pick for a system that isn't centered around DOS.

That's where I normally use 2K. I have a service PC with an 433MHz Celeron and 256MB RAM running that. Though it's not for games.

kitten.may.cry wrote on 2022-06-11, 12:22:

At least you didn't tell him to use WinME.

Nah, 2K SP4 was very solid — just like any Windows in its final form. I actually ran it instead of XP on my P4 in the early 2000s. It was faster, more stable and I'd be hard-pressed to remember any features that I missed compared to XP (well, except for the Luna interface).

Baoran wrote on 2022-06-11, 16:47:

I think windows xp works fine in that. Not everything has to be "ultimate" or whatever that means.
I think it would be better to choose the OS based on what you want to do with the computer. For KOTOR and freelancer windows xp would be better.

yes, some enthusiasts really overemphasize the performance 'cost' of XP

there is a cost so its not untrue to note it, but in practice its marginal especially around the 1ghz and above provided there is >256mb ram, preferably 512+

RandomStranger wrote on 2022-06-12, 13:49:

Tetrium wrote on 2022-06-12, 09:41:

I think ME is a great pick for anything with, say, 400MHz and 128MB RAM and up, up to when WinXP starts to become a serious pick (which is anything that can run XP well without it feeling sluggish, usually from >=512MB RAM + (Northwood or AXP) and up and many people favor XP on much higher specced hardware than that even) and it's a great pick for a system that isn't centered around DOS.

That's where I normally use 2K. I have a service PC with an 433MHz Celeron and 256MB RAM running that. Though it's not for games.

2k is definitely an OS I should give another go! 😀
Thus far I've tried it only once on a rig of mine (and perhaps a few times on some university computer or something). I've always used either 95, ME or XP and didn't feel the need to use anything in between.

Was playing with Me this week and I’m pretty impressed. I’ve got a 64mb, Celeron 550 and it’s running really well on it, love the boot speed. So far DOS audio over WDM SB emulation is a mixed bag, but this is a laptop and I don’t have much of a choice - 98 would be a similar experience I take it so why not go for Me which it has a license sticker for. Some DOS games that have working audio are Jazz Jackrabbit and Chex Quest. Skyroads is sound Fx only.

One thing I just found out about that I’m pretty pleased with. With networking (so I can map SMB shares), and Client for Microsoft Networks as default, Me appears to bypass the login prompt getting you to the desktop that much faster. I know this can be automated with tweakui on 98/95 but it still adds to boot time.

XP should have at least 1GB RAM. 512MB is perfect for Win98SE.

Tetrium wrote on 2022-06-12, 09:41:

98SE on such hardware has no real advantages over ME anymore as its real strong point compared to ME is the native DOS support. And even then most more recent DOS games can be run from within Windows relatively fine even if the sound may not be the best. Windows XP on such configurations will typically be somewhat slow even if you NLited the install media to work more snappily on older systems.

ME loads faster and shuts down faster, has native ZIP support and native USB support and has better out-of-the-box support for contemporary hardware (though tbf these days this advantage isn't as essential as it was back when ME was still

but what about Win98 unofficial SP? https://www.htasoft.com/u98sesp/ or https://www.creopard.de/projekte/windows-98-s … ervice-pack.htm ? there are several patches like those from rloew for Win98SE. is ME really the better choice since those patches are available?

GokuSS4 wrote on 2022-06-14, 12:39:

Tetrium wrote on 2022-06-12, 09:41:

98SE on such hardware has no real advantages over ME anymore as its real strong point compared to ME is the native DOS support. And even then most more recent DOS games can be run from within Windows relatively fine even if the sound may not be the best. Windows XP on such configurations will typically be somewhat slow even if you NLited the install media to work more snappily on older systems.

ME loads faster and shuts down faster, has native ZIP support and native USB support and has better out-of-the-box support for contemporary hardware (though tbf these days this advantage isn't as essential as it was back when ME was still

but what about Win98 unofficial SP? https://www.htasoft.com/u98sesp/ or https://www.creopard.de/projekte/windows-98-s … ervice-pack.htm ? there are several patches like those from rloew for Win98SE. is ME really the better choice since those patches are available?

Some of these patches and unofficial service packs actually port some ME stuff over to 98SE. Might as well install ME from the get go then 😜