Win98 looks like better imo. Win98 was long dead when PCIE came so you are probably out of luck there. If the onboard audio has stable enough EAX drivers that should suffice for Win9x era games.

Anyways NFS U2 is a pure WinXP era game, from 2004 so running it in this machine makes less sense.

You wrote Crysis doesn't work, but again in the next line you wrote it does...I may have misinterpreted it. In any case vanilla Crysis has an open source executable
https://github.com/ccomrade/c1-launcher

In my view, the sweet spot for Win9x gaming is 1996-2001. Any game made from 2002 onward will run better on WinXP, using more powerful hardware. If you also want DOS game compatibility on your Win9x system, avoid nForce chipsets.

As for Win7, I've seen a few edge cases like BioShock which can use DirectX 10 for improved visuals (compared to WinXP), while having some problems on modern Windows versions.

According to the PC Gaming Wiki, BioShock has audio issues on Win8 and up. There's a similar problem with BioShock 2. Both of these have workarounds, though using them may result in slightly reduced audio/video quality. Such games are likely the exception though.

As Joseph put it, going beyond 20001 with 98SE for games is not a good option; the best platform for 98 is socket 370/423 if you have deep pockets/478 from Intel and socket 462 with VIA/AMD/SIS chipset/slot A from AMD.
Taking into account the rarity of socket 423/slot A and the price of socket 370 components I would say your best bet is to build a socket 478 platform with an Intel chipset which are known to be excellent performers and have very good compatibility or go with socket 462.
The Abit NF7-S 2.0 is one of the best socket 462 motherboards out there but I would not install 98Se on it, it is better suited for 2000/XP. Together with a Barton and 2gb of RAM this would be a very good early XP system. However be advised that geforce3 ti200 has very limited performance in XP era games - practically any game from 2002 forward - and even in 2001 games - it would provide average performance at best! A geforce 6600gt is cheap and destroys any game up to and including 2003.

If it helps clear up the first post a bit. My Win7 build gave way to Win10 because stuff from that era I want to run works in it. My WinXP build will handle everything that works for the DX8 / DX9 era games. For DX7 and earlier games (late 90s being high school age for me), and Glide, is what I'm considering a WIn98/AGP/DDR1 build for.

If the hot rod S462 stuff I have is overkill for Win98, then they don't serve me much purpose against my Haswell XP build, unless there's some compatibility things I'm missing.

I may have sourced an Intel D875PBZ board and CPU locally, so that might work for a 98 build as well if the Nforce chips aren't as stable. I'm kind of torn between trying for a 3dfx card or emulating Glide, or just using my GF3 or FX5500 in Win98 instead since they'll have more power than the attainable 3dfx options.

Voodoo Rufus wrote on 2023-10-31, 00:50:

If the hot rod S462 stuff I have is overkill for Win98, then they don't serve me much purpose against my Haswell XP build, unless there's some compatibility things I'm missing.

To clarify my previous post, you can use hardware made after 2001 for a Win98 build. Many components that shipped up to 2004-2005 did still include Win98 drivers, albeit with varying degrees of stability. I just don't see the point in playing games made after 2001 under Win98, instead of running them on a much more powerful WinXP system. From 2002 and onward, you start entering DX8 and EAX3 territory.

I may have sourced an Intel D875PBZ board and CPU locally, so that might work for a 98 build as well if the Nforce chips aren't as stable.

The nForce chipsets have known compatibility issues with DOS sound, especially with PCI sound cards which use emulation to achieve that. If you don't care about DOS gaming at all, you can use nForce, provided that the motherboard has Win98 drivers. I'm mentioning this because people usually want at least a modicum of DOS compatibility for playing Doom, Duke3D and such on their Win9x rigs.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-10-31, 05:53:

To clarify my previous post, you can use hardware made after 2001 for a Win98 build. Many components that shipped up to 2004-200 […]
Show full quote

Voodoo Rufus wrote on 2023-10-31, 00:50:

If the hot rod S462 stuff I have is overkill for Win98, then they don't serve me much purpose against my Haswell XP build, unless there's some compatibility things I'm missing.

To clarify my previous post, you can use hardware made after 2001 for a Win98 build. Many components that shipped up to 2004-2005 did still include Win98 drivers, albeit with varying degrees of stability. I just don't see the point in playing games made after 2001 under Win98, instead of running them on a much more powerful WinXP system. From 2002 and onward, you start entering DX8 and EAX3 territory.

I may have sourced an Intel D875PBZ board and CPU locally, so that might work for a 98 build as well if the Nforce chips aren't as stable.

The nForce chipsets have known compatibility issues with DOS sound, especially with PCI sound cards which use emulation to achieve that. If you don't care about DOS gaming at all, you can use nForce, provided that the motherboard has Win98 drivers. I'm mentioning this because people usually want at least a modicum of DOS compatibility for playing Doom, Duke3D and such on their Win9x rigs.

From 2002 and onward, you start entering DX8 and EAX3 territory.

Dx8 is win98 territory. I start games on XP from 2003 onwards. 2002 still best on win98 for compat.

kolderman wrote on 2023-10-31, 06:11:

Dx8 is win98 territory. I start games on XP from 2003 onwards. 2002 still best on win98 for compat.

I agree that the cutoff point is a bit subjective, and may vary depending on which games one plays.

Personally, I wouldn't run demanding 2002 titles like Morrowind and Neverwinter Nights on a Win98 system, but to each their own.

Neverwinter Nights runs better on 98 than XP in my experience on a Pentium III PC with 512 MB of RAM, simply because XP takes too much memory for NWN to be run at its best. The difference can be small, however. On 256 MB or lower, 98SE will give you more frames with this game.

xcomcmdr wrote on 2023-10-31, 09:21:

Neverwinter Nights runs better on 98 than XP in my experience on a Pentium III PC with 512 MB of RAM, simply because XP takes too much memory for NWN to be run at its best. The difference can be small, however. On 256 MB or lower, 98SE will give you more frames with this game.

Yup, you do have more memory left over on Win98 compared to XP. If playing on period correct (2002) hardware and using the retail version of the game (no expansions or latest patch) I can see the advantage.

However, I like to fully max out games like Morrowind and NWN. Meaning, all the expansions and latest official patches applied, and running the games at 1600x1200 with cranked up AA and AF. At those settings, a WinXP rig with 4 GB RAM and a powerful CPU+GPU will give you much better performance than any hardware that is officially supported under Win98.

I'm not so concerned with "period correct" as things ran so slow on that hardware. I would rather run any Win98 games of interest really fast using hardware that still had drivers made for the older OS. Anything I would play in DOS (old Star Wars games) have been ported to Steam, so that's also a non issue. It feels like the Win98 era has somewhat limited utility outside of DOS games and those that won't work in XP, but that list seems pretty short.

I remember starting out in college with my first Athlon T-Bird 1400 build on Windows 2000 and a Kyro 2, and jumped to WinXP soon thereafter on an Athon Barton XP-M 2500+. I distinctly remember the various shader model differences when trying to maximize Halo PC performance. I think I ran K6-2 500 and Voodoo 3 2000 PCI in high school.

I did find my FX-5500 in my stash last night. On paper it looks technically faster than my GF3 Ti200, which is faster than the V5 5500 (don't have one). Both should smash Win98 games pretty well, correct?

You will never find a definite dream PC for 98 at least within a reasonable price. It's best to experiment with different boards and cards. You could even use one of those weird Celeron integrated Mini-ITX boards with an SiS chipset which would be great for 98. I personally recommend Socket 462 if you don't mind using PCI/SBEMU for DOS sound compatibility, Slot 1/Socket 370 is a little bit overpriced right now. PCIe and Windows 98 works on a blue moon, I would recommend staying away from it.

XP and 7 builds are a bundle of fun. Lots of different platforms and possibilities. My particular favorite for XP is LGA 775 Core 2, and LGA 1150 is fun with 7 to get things like NVMe or UEFI working.

Why don't you install 98Se on that NF7-S 2.0 to see how it performs? If you already have the board and the CPU I would say this is a very good start! Put only 512mb of RAM in it, the geforce3 card and run some benchmarks and games so you can asses the system. FX 5500 is a very weak card but you can still run some tests to compare it against the geforce3 . The advantage for FX should be the DVI output and more RAM.

Thanks, I think that's what I'm going to do for now. It's the cheapest option to see if I like it. I did grab an Audigy 2 ZS off ebay yesterday to fill out the audio section. Both the FX and GF3 have 64MB of memory and DVI, and the FX does AGP 8x as well. It appears only weaker in the Texel fill rate with half the TMUs of the GF3.