Reply 100 of 135, by dormcat
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A bit late for the party. 😅 Others have already provided many excellent opinions, so here's my two cents after reading the following paragraphs from the thread starter:
theiceman085 wrote on 2023-05-15, 09:47:The thing I am mostly interested in is Win 98 gaming at the moment. So I will focus on windows 98 rig only before things are getting to complicated.
theiceman085 wrote on 2023-05-16, 17:24:I am into vast array of games. Want to play Real time strategy games, like Age of Empires, Warcraft 2, 3, Dune 2000 for example,) some racing games like the Need for Speed, Bleißfuß (I think in the English-speaking world the series is called screamer or something like that) I believe ), fps games ( Quake 2, Quake Arena, Half Life, HL Oposing Force, Blue Shift), Thief 1, 2, Deus Ex, System Shock2 and also curious about trying out the console ports of Resident Evil. Just RE 2 and Re 3 though and Dino Crisis too.
Looks like we've got many favorite games in common. 😸 With the exception of Warcraft 2, those were Win9x games with most of them required a decent GPU for fullest game experience, so I'd say focus on mid- to late-Win9x games instead of DOS ones (you could still run most of them under DOS mode). IMHO a budget system 3-5 years later than your games would probably give you better experience than a "period correct" premium system. Therefore I'd suggest a 2004-5 system that could support Win9x.
Premium choices if you're willing to spend some money:
MB: Socket 939 with AGP 8X and dual-channel memory support; be sure to check if the chipet supports Win9x [1]
CPU: Athlon64 with 90 nm lithography and SSE3 support [1]
RAM: 2 x 256 MB DDR400 [2]
GPU: GF4 Ti or Radeon R300 (9700, 9500, or 9800 series) [3]
Sound: Creative SB Audigy (EAX) or Aureal Vortex 2 [4]
HDD: Any working 7200 rpm model with IDE interface [5] and LESS than 120 GB capacity [6]
ODD: Any working CD-RW with IDE interface [5]
Notes:
[1] 90 nm, AGP 8X, and DDR marked the last combinations of Win9x system. Sure, there are methods to run Win9x on 65 nm, PCIe graphics, and DDR2, but they usually require hacking and workarounds. For starters, compatibility outweighs performance. Contemporary Pentium 4 with NetBurst structure had a poor reputation due to high energy consumption with minimal performance advantages.
[2] Native Win9x don't like more than 512 MB RAM; sure there are workarounds but few games need that much RAM anyway.
[3] Like many have said, GF4 Ti was the last batch of Nvidia chips with Win9x in mind, with more features than ATI competitors while cooler than GF5/FX . Radeon R300 had less features but still more efficient than GF5/FX.
[4] Choose your pick with what your games support.
[5] Win9x had rather rudimentary SATA support while IDE support was mature and built-in.
[6] Win9x and some BIOS have the 128 Gib / 137 GB limitations; avoid this hassle as Win9x rarely need that much capacity anyway.
Alternatively, you can pick budget choices in order to save both money and time (for being easier to find in used markets):
MB: Any MB with Socket 939 or 754 and AGP 8X; P4 boards are acceptable if you can have one for free
CPU: Any with 90 nm lithography that your MB supports
RAM: As long as they add up to 256 or 512 MB
GPU: GF3 Ti, Radeon R200 or RV300
Sound: Creative SB Live!
HDD and ODD: Same as above
This combination should reduce the price while increase availability significantly.
If, by any chance, that you really want native DOS gaming, you might need something like this:
MB: Socket 370 with Intel or VIA chipset; support for Tualatin CPU would be a bonus
CPU: P3 Coppermine or Tualatin with 1 GHz or more
RAM: SDRAM 256 or 512 MB
GPU: GF3 Ti, Radeon R200 or RV200 (as AGP 8X was not yet available)
Sound: Creative SB AWE32 or AWE64 (check this thread for more details)
HDD and ODD: Same as above
Just remember that this build might have some difficulties with late 2000's games.