Hi again, requesting public discussion of what "the ultimate retro gaming rig" means to YOU for any of the above configurations (DOS, Win 3.11, Win95, Win98se, WinME too if desired) with the following goal:

"Play the games that emulation (DOSBOX) and modern PC's (7/XP gaming/newer cards) either CANNOT, or play it in a higher quality than the 'newer' PC's are capable of."

AKA a "fill in the gaps" retro gaming rig, instead of general purpose being the primary goal, since for most of us loading up something on a modern PC will normally give the best possible qualities. Topic includes both hardware AND software AND the games it's optimized for, since all three work together.

I'm hoping that we can exchange notes on what we think is "the best" and improve one another's suggestions. Discussion of XP IS okay IF it is the best way to play specific "win 9x games" with for instance user patches after the fact... there you're highlighting a software workaround which may not be common knowledge. The main topic i'm seeking to avoid are games which run straight on XP/7 with max quality out of the box since... well thats an easy answer isn't it?

Need not only be one config. (you can list 3 agp cards all in the running)

Here's my following example (and i've no clue if it's feasible just what I have sketched out):

ASRock Dual 775 VSTA motherboard - this is a core 2 duo motherboard (65nm era) which actually can run win98 drivers apparently. Although only 1 core is used in win98, because the c2d is almost twice the speed clock for clock as any older system, a 3.0ghz overclocked c2d is almost like a 6ghz Pentium 4, plus it runs cooler. It also has IDE/SATA, AGP 8x/PCIe 4x(but 16x physical)/PCI, and DDR1/DDR2 so it uses anything you plug into it. It can also run Mac OSX and newer Windows up to Vista at least and i'm pretty sure 7 as well. This is the core of any build I design up just with different cards. (if you know of any other comparable motherboard i'm interested though to have options)

PRIMARY VIDEO OPTIONS: Nvidia 7900gt era in PCIe slot. This seems to be the last card to support the old Nvidia 3d stereo drivers for sure, although the 8800gt can be used in 2d with beta drivers apparently. This matters because games playable on the old Wicked 3D based system were removed in late 2007/none of them play on a modern Nvidia 3D system.
- ATI X850 - because these were the last ATI cards with win98 drivers, and because the 6xAA mode was apparently superior to Nvidia's options. Unsure of 3d support. (iZ3D and Tridef DDD wont work for the older games this PC is being built for so are pointless, may be too new for Wicked3D)
- ATI 8500 128mb in AGP - this would be the option for playing TruForm games at top quality.

- Matrox Triplehead2Go added on, to support triple monitors off the dual card output for games like Elder Scrolls 3 Morrowind.

SECOND VIDEO: Old 3d accelerators were PCI so why not a PowerVR SGL card for the few games that used it? :)

AUDIO: Multiple audio cards to run each in max quality!
- AWE64 - because certain games used this directly for max quality in ways possibly not used otherwise
- Aureal Vortex SQ2500 - to run A3D 2.0/3.0 games, because it was so much better than Soundblaster.
- Sensaura card - haven't decided which but another unique sound option supported by some games, far more accurate in 3d positioning than Soundblaster and supported some features A3D did not like MacroFX and ZoomFX.
(I am not aware of any QSound only games, or games in which QSound gave superior quality to either Sensaura or A3D, but comments invited if so including hardware recommendation if i'm wrong)

OS: Win98se running the 98lite mods for the win95 shell was my favorite at the time. KernelEx 4.5 to run some XP only games or software just for the heck of it.

CONFIG: The heck with SSD's, how about configuring alot of that extra ram to serve as a ramdisk for your games? Decompress one of several game drives to ramdisk each with a game install setup so it doesn't even need to touch the hard drive in normal use. GLIDOS for playing DOS GLIDE games with improved quality like Tomb Raider 1.

I personally am not aware of many DOS games which are not perfectly played by DOSBOX, the only possibility seems to be sound cards of the era which may give higher quality. (Adlib Gold w/surround in Dune and KGB, needing ISA slot so wont work on this setup - whatever boards were the last to have ISA slots would be 'best' for that, any Pentium should exceed what it can use easily) If there are any please inform, otherwise plan to run DOSBOX perhaps while running XP for them.

I am not aware of any Win 3.11 only games requiring hardware beyond this, pretty sure it all ran on win95 just fine so it should cover that.

Can anyone improve this setup or comment on "even better" ways to play old games in my neverending pursuit for ultra quality/best possible experience for the era?