It should work just fine and because of the VIA south bridge you can put a ESS Solo 1 ( TDMA mode ) and have some good DOS support and decent sound in Win98 , also the onboard graphics can be used ( it's not great for win98 but has a decent DOS compatibility ) . Because it's missing dual channel support and a lower V-Link speed , it should be more stable / more easy to set up then a PT8x0 but with the impact on performance . Some P4m800 motherboards are unstable at 1066 mhz fsb ( E6400 which is the fastest cpu from the list ) and stable at 800 mhz fsb ( E4500 ) , this you can find out only by trial and error , both cpus should be very cheap to buy .

Thanks so much for your suggestions.

By "E6400 - the fastest cpu from the list", do you also consider the Windows 98 (No HT - No multiple cores) ? Because it seems it has only a 2.10 GHZ frequency speed, and there are faster CPUs in the list -in terms of frequency speed-, AND till now, I really thought that the base frequency matters most, when it comes to single core performance.. Am I wrong?

It's not always a matter of mhzs , the technology behind the core is important also . Here you have a comparison between Intel D945 3.4 ghz / 800 fsb / 4 mb chache ( you don't have it on the list but its a higher clocked 925 ) and E2140 1.6 ghz / 800 fsb / 1 mb cache https://www.cpu-world.com/Compare/307/Intel_P … Core_E2140.html . The ratio is 1.07 in favor of the D945 in single core with the E2140 being more energy efficient and thus cooler . The E6400 will beat the D945 in real case single core performance . https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/939vs112 … l-Pentium-D-950 , 1024 samples of E6400 vs 878 samples of D950 . The main difference between D9x0 and D9x5 series is that D9x0 has support for intel VT-x .

Really interesting and very informative details, thank you very much. Learned a lot!

Then, would you suggest this board:
https://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/775i65G%20R2. … dex.asp?cat=CPU

with C2 Duo E4700 CPU, or the mobo above with E4500? (Focusing on stability, 3DMark01 performance and overall system performance)

(I'll be using a Creative SBlaster Live PCI and AGP 8x vga card)

Best wishes.

C2D is greater than any P4 even by 1GHz difference go with fastest C2D supported on this board.

Cheers,

The AsRock board with E6700 ( Conroe core ) 2.66 Ghz is better . Be careful when you buy the cpu , there is a E6700 ( Wolfdale core ) 3.2 Ghz and that's not supported on the R2 rev of that board .

Thank you both.

E6700 2.66 Ghz Conroe seems it has 1066 Mhz FSB.
But the motherboard only supports DDR-400 Mhz.

I've been reading somewhere here in the forum, that, a 800 Mhz FSB with DDR-400 would be better and much stable, instead of having 2:1 with a 1066 FSB and DDR 400.

Perhaps RAM would bottleneck?

Any idea on that, as well?

Thanks.

The AsRock board has the Intel 865 chipset which if the board is ok (has dual channel support also) , should be rock solid and outperform the p4m800 . The only main advantage of the via chipset it's the ability to work with the pci ESS sound card in real dos so you can have a decent sound blaster sound/compatibility ( the south bridge from the AsRock board does not allow that ). If your aim is win 98 only , the E6700 will work fine with the AsRock one , if you have decent ram modules . If you look at the cpu support list the E6700 was validated on that board on a bios version older then the top E4X00 were . And also let's consider the scenario that you have crappy ram modules , you can still use the E6700 with a 800 FSB until you find better ram .

Thank you. What do you technically mean by "crappy RAM" modules? Low speed? Would the BIOS auto-recognize if the RAM modules are crappy or not?

Just wanted to inform you that I've recently seen an ASUS P5PE-VM for sale.

1- https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/asus-p5pe-vm
2- https://www.asus.com/supportonly/p5pevm/helpdesk_cpu/

I think it doesn't differ much with Asrock one (or at all).

I'll go with this one, together with E6700 CPU. I have Creative Sound Blaster Live! PCI (CT4670) to use under real DOS and Windows 98, do you think this board neither, would not let it work under real DOS, as you stated above?

By 'crappy ram' i mean low speed , high latency modules , unstable at their rated specs or little above that , not a particular brand . No , the bios wont do that for you . You have to test that or pay somebody to do it for you .
ASUS P5PE-VM has no official core 2 quad support , so technically is worse then the AsRock 775i65G R2.0 . Never used it ( ASUS P5PE-VM ) , so beside that , i cant help you more .
The support for MS-DOS of that sound card is pretty poor , but exists . So again , if you are mainly focused on win98 it's a good choice . The better alternatives are the Audigy and the Audigy 2 (ZS) .