I use a highly overpowered Win9x system to fully max out pre-2002 games at the 1600x1200 resolution with (forced) 16x Anisotropic Filtering and 4x Anti Aliasing while maintaining a locked 60 FPS. Here's the system where I usually play Win9x games in this manner, in case you're curious.

To clarify, some games (e.g. Thief 2, NFS4: High Stakes and Drakan) are quite demanding at those settings, and need something like a Radeon X800 series card for this to work properly. Other titles like Deus Ex need a really beefy CPU to run at a locked 60 FPS in demanding outdoor areas. I think an AthlonXP at around 2GHz is the minimum to achieve that, possibly even an Athlon64. And while you can play most of these games under WinXP using even more powerful hardware, some of them have issues with EAX when WDM drivers are used. Others sound best with A3D, which only works properly under Win9x. And of course, there are games which outright refuse to work under WinXP unless you use fan made fixes.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-06-24, 07:57:

And while you can play most of these games under WinXP using even more powerful hardware, some of them have issues with EAX when WDM drivers are used. Others sound best with A3D, which only works properly under Win9x.

Yeah, I think Aureal sound cards were notable examples of this.

There were a good amount of sound cards that could only be fully taken advantage of when using VxD drivers.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-06-24, 07:57:

And of course, there are games which outright refuse to work under WinXP unless you use fan made fixes.

Not just XP. I think some games and software were coded or built in a way that simply could not run in a WinNT kernel, be it NT4, 2000 or XP -- that dreaded "... is not a valid Win32 application" error message (or "Windows NT application" in case of NT4).

Maybe some of such cases can be fixed somehow, but I never tried...

I think Win9x nowadays is only relevant for specific use cases limited by these two issues above, which are nearly impossible to resolve. For others, I don't think it makes too much difference running them on Win2K/XP.

Win98 doesn't need an ISA slot, only reason people frequently mention that requirement is because they also want to do DOS. If you're running pure Win98 and aren't interested in DOS on that system, there's no need for it.

Personally I'd go for a faster system for Win98SE. Even though WIn2k was a thing, for gaming you were better off on Win98SE until end 2001, and that was AthlonXP/P4 Northwood era. Now, for max period correctness, a 2000-era P3-1000 is perfect, as most people end 2001 would have had that or slower, and newest games would have struggled under it, particularly when using positional audio (CPU hog). I for one don't want that much period correct - I want to be able to run everything at high settings without a slideshow, so I want relatively over-specced hardware (as your i5 is for XP).

Currently my main Win98 rig is a P3-1400S, which is already quite an upgrade from a P3-1000. Still I'm not happy with performance and am considering a late AthlonXP, early Athlon64 or maybe P4 system to cover anything that would run under Win98 with horsepower to spare. Shame I sold that nForce3 board a while back...

Win98/ME on a P4 is nice to see the bounds of certain old PCI 3d hardware that don't/can't have NT drivers. ISA sound cards are largely irrelevant for this, so it's no loss to me if I can't use a noisy ol Sound Blaster in there (and probably a lot more stable for not)

ux-3 wrote on 2024-06-24, 07:40:

I am interested in learning why people build fast Athlons and P4s without an ISA slot to run win98. […]
Show full quote

I am interested in learning why people build fast Athlons and P4s without an ISA slot to run win98.

I am owning a P3-1000 system with win98, ISA slots, Voodoo and GF4 graphics access. Next step up is an i5-3570 with XP and Win7 installations and a GTX-960.
This is obviously a large gap with several CPU/GPU generations omitted. Is there something in this gap that I can't cover at all or well enough?

Is there a special use-case for such a machine? If so, which would this be?

The question seems to contain a faulty assumption, that you need hardware to play DOS games but not Win98 games. In actual fact it's the other way round - most or all DOS game emulate fairly well, whereas there is a kind of "emu dead-zone" from around 1998 to 2003 where games can neither be emulated well, nor run well on modern windows typically (even winxp is too much for many).

So the answer is to play games from that era that emulation has so far failed to deliver on modern PCs. If I had to keep only one retro PC today, it would probably be my P4 simply because I know most other games can either be emulated, or from the XP era onwards, typically work directly on modern windows.

Thanks for the quick replies. I specified 'without ISA slot' to exclude all 'fastest pure DOS with authentic sound' use cases. The kind of build I am inquiring about obviously wants high speed AND Win98se.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-06-24, 07:57:

I use a highly overpowered Win9x system to fully max out pre-2002 games at the 1600x1200 resolution with (forced) 16x Anisotropic Filtering and 4x Anti Aliasing while maintaining a locked 60 FPS. Here's the system where I usually play Win9x games in this manner, in case you're curious.

Oh sure, I am interested. Personally, I wouldn't create a hyper-Win98 system for specific positional audio solutions though. If it runs on XP, it should work with X-Fi to some extend, shouldn't it?

LSS10999 wrote on 2024-06-24, 08:07:

I think some games and software were coded or built in a way that simply could not run in a WinNT kernel...
...
I think Win9x nowadays is only relevant for specific use cases limited by these two issues above, which are nearly impossible to resolve.

As far as positional audio is concerned, I am quite willing to live with whatever I get on an X-Fi with XP, as I can easily digitally feed that card into my full size surround stereo system. I don't have 5.1 analog input on my AV-receiver any longer.
Compatibility is another matter. Do we have a list of games that will work OK under Win98 but cease to function under XP? I have seen a few, that will run only if heavily (community) patched.

dionb wrote on 2024-06-24, 08:11:

Currently my main Win98 rig is a P3-1400S, which is already quite an upgrade from a P3-1000. Still I'm not happy with performance and am considering a late AthlonXP, early Athlon64 or maybe P4 system to cover anything that would run under Win98 with horsepower to spare.

I am also holding onto one box of stuff for this purpose. That would be a 865PE Conroe, AGP with C2D support. I still kept 3 cpus for it, a single core C2D celeron, a C2D Pentium and a C2D E4500. They can be clocked around 2200-2800 MHz. Cache is 512/1M/2M respectively. The CPUs should compete with an Athlon XP easily. Fastest AGP card I have is a Geforce 4 4200ti with a large added cooler, relatively quiet. I am just not sure if it has the right voltage. I remember another boundary for gForce drivers. For which I kept the GF4.
I just wonder for what I keep this fast option precisely: If I were to set it up, would it render the ISA P3 superfluous? Could a Pentium mmx and a fast Win98se span all in between? It would require the mmx to cover ALL of late pure DOS, while the fast machine would have to cover all of Win98se and windowed DOS. I never considered this option before, but now I start to wonder.

leileilol wrote on 2024-06-24, 09:48:

Win98/ME on a P4 is nice to see the bounds of certain old PCI 3d hardware that don't/can't have NT drivers.

So you imply that this fast system would love an Nvidia/AMD card with a Voodoo² SLI? Come to think about it, at least there are enough PCI slots present. The system would make a clear cut from true DOS and boot WIN98 right away.

kolderman wrote on 2024-06-24, 10:03:

So the answer is to play games from that era that emulation has so far failed to deliver on modern PCs. If I had to keep only one retro PC today, it would probably be my P4 simply because I know most other games can either be emulated, or from the XP era onwards, typically work directly on modern windows.

I get your point.

OK, so I guess my question has somewhat shifted after reading all the comments: Is a very fast non ISA Win98se machine capable to cover all of Windows 98? Or will it run into speed issues too? I know there will be ram issues with some games. 256MB should be OK for what I have seen so far.

The idea would be to use just 3 machines for retro: A pentium MMX 233 to cover most DOS from 1990 to 1998, a super fast win98 to cover all of windows 98 with glide and GF4, and a dual OS(xp/win7) i5-ivy to cover the remaining stuff to the end of retro gaming.

ux-3 wrote on 2024-06-24, 12:10:

Oh sure, I am interested. Personally, I wouldn't create a hyper-Win98 system for specific positional audio solutions though. If it runs on XP, it should work with X-Fi to some extend, shouldn't it?

Well, EAX will work on WinXP (assuming the actual game can run there), but it may not sound as intended in some older games. This is because XP uses WDM drivers. Some of the older EAX titles were coded to expect VxD drivers (which cannot be used on WinXP) so you'll be missing certain effects here and there. Examples would be improper audio inside tunnels in Need for Speed 3/4, and missing occlusion effects in Baldur's Gate 1&2.

As for Aureal Vortex cards and A3D 2.0, that straight up won't work on anything other than Win95/98/ME. Which is a shame, because it provides very unique positional audio based on wavetracing.

I know there will be ram issues with some games. 256MB should be OK for what I have seen so far.

You're fine with 512 MB RAM on Win98/ME, the OS supports that amount out of the box. If you want more than that, you'll need to use a third-party patch, such as the one made by R. Loew. These work great up to 2 GB RAM. But going higher than that may cause weird performance issues, even with the patch installed. It might depend on the chipset used though.

ux-3 wrote on 2024-06-24, 12:10:

Oh sure, I am interested. Personally, I wouldn't create a hyper-Win98 system for specific positional audio solutions though. If it runs on XP, it should work with X-Fi to some extend, shouldn't it?

Aureal Vortex positional sound is only natively supported under Win 9x, and A3D 2.0 is only supported by Aureal Votext AU8830 chip.

For the full experience of positional audio you need both Win 98 and Windows XP.

OK, so I guess my question has somewhat shifted after reading all the comments: Is a very fast non ISA Win98se machine capable to cover all of Windows 98? Or will it run into speed issues too? I know there will be ram issues with some games. 256MB should be OK for what I have seen so far.

There are some speed sensitive Windows 9X games. There are also driver incompatibilities that can arise.

For example, Need for Speed: High Stakes doesn't work with the commonly used nVidia drivers 44.x and 45.x for GeForce cards. So you either need secondary graphics option like a Voodoo2 or an earlier nVidia driver.

The idea would be to use just 3 machines for retro: A pentium MMX 233 to cover most DOS from 1990 to 1998, a super fast win98 to cover all of windows 98 with glide and GF4, and a dual OS(xp/win7) i5-ivy to cover the remaining stuff to the end of retro gaming.

Those machines would give you broad coverage for the vast majority of DOS and Win 9x/XP era of gaming. Certain speed sensitive Win 9X games could also be covered by the Pentium MMX 233 if you dual boot that system.

ux-3 wrote on 2024-06-24, 12:10:

I get your point.

OK, so I guess my question has somewhat shifted after reading all the comments: Is a very fast non ISA Win98se machine capable to cover all of Windows 98? Or will it run into speed issues too? I know there will be ram issues with some games. 256MB should be OK for what I have seen so far.

The idea would be to use just 3 machines for retro: A pentium MMX 233 to cover most DOS from 1990 to 1998, a super fast win98 to cover all of windows 98 with glide and GF4, and a dual OS(xp/win7) i5-ivy to cover the remaining stuff to the end of retro gaming.

Your three machines is my current setup. I have a Voodoo 1 in the MMX 233 so that can do the Glide side of things, and run Win95 if necessary just in case there are any games the super fast system has issues with.

For the Win98 machine I have an Cool 'n Quiet Athlon 64, which has rudimentary speed stepping and you can downclock the CPU by lowering the multiplier down to 500Mhz which is faster than a Pentium 3 at that frequency. So there is a gap between the MM233 and downclocked 500Mhz Athlon 64. So I'm sure there some game which don't run well on the Pentium, but the Athlon is too fast. But so far I haven't run into any of them.

As for the need for ISA, I haven't found one, the only DOS games I play on the Win98 machine are later releases that support SVGA which struggle on the Pentium. These later games generally have a CD audio sound track or support MIDI. The Sound Blaster Audigy I have handles the SB/SB16 audio fine, and then I use either MIDI modules or SoundFonts for music. It's the Adlib/OPL music that struggles on PCI era sound cards.

Now looks like the time to make the jump if you want to go this route. Looking at eBay listings, socket 754 motherboards are above the price a bundled board, CPU, and RAM used to be and will likely continue to go higher. If you do want to play DOS games in Win98, be aware of the chipset issue where the nicer NForce chipsets are missing features to allow the sound cards to work in DOS even from within Windows. That why I ended up with a VIA based mother board.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-06-24, 13:27:

For example, Need for Speed: High Stakes doesn't work with the commonly used nVidia drivers 44.x and 45.x for GeForce cards. So you either need secondary graphics option like a Voodoo2 or an earlier nVidia driver.

Nvidia's 56.64 drivers will also work fine with NFS4: High Stakes, which is good if you're using a GeForce FX 5700 or something similar.

BTW, with this fix even 45.23 drivers now work properly with NFS4. Same for Catalyst 6.2. And there's now a way to restore fog to NFS3 on non-Voodoo cards as well. 😀

You can never have too much power. Unless your game is speed sensitive. But that's much less of an issue for the W9x/late-DOS era than the early-mid-DOS era. Also a more modern hardware affords you a lot of flexibility in using modern parts or going for other form factors than uATX and full-ATX with an abundance of cheap parts.

If UX-3 was considering a 223 rig I would also throw in a voodoo 1 and make the main gpu a virge plus the sound card a awe64 , it would provide good compatibility in dos while allowing you to explore early 3D games , also some games make use of the awe64 for custom audio samples , I think croc was one of them. What I did was to have a separate install of dos and win95 so that they could respectively be optimised to run their native games with the best compatibility in mind.

Plus you can utilise the build further to explore proprietary apis other than glide by replacing the virge for a matrox mystique to run a unique version of destruction derby 2 or throwing in a powerVR card to play some exclusive games like ReVolte which acted as a tech demo shooter for the cards.

Its up to him of course but I think there's more bang for buck to be had the 233 is utilised as a hybrid dos and 95 system.

SScorpio wrote on 2024-06-24, 13:56:

I have a Voodoo 1 in the MMX 233 so that can do the Glide side of things

AppleSauce wrote on 2024-06-24, 16:00:

If UX-3 was considering a 223 rig I would also throw in a voodoo 1

I currently explore two Pentium MMX setups:
Socket 7 Pentium MMX project on regular ATX board.
Making choices for a (super) socket 7 for DOS - Win98SE. Only 3 cards can be installed!
I have both up and running more or less. Both have pros and cons. Both are planned with my Monster 3D Voodoo. Not decided yet, which project will return to boxes.

SScorpio wrote on 2024-06-24, 13:56:

Now looks like the time to make the jump if you want to go this route. Looking at eBay listings, socket 754 motherboards are above the price a bundled board, CPU, and RAM used to be and will likely continue to go higher. If you do want to play DOS games in Win98, be aware of the chipset issue where the nicer NForce chipsets are missing features to allow the sound cards to work in DOS even from within Windows. That why I ended up with a VIA based mother board.

I frankly admit that my years with Athlon XPs have made me biased against them. I never felt as if I could trust my machine. Later, when retro DOS was of interest, after experimenting with KT133A and ISA, I decided against the Athlon/VIA route and purged all remaining stuff. If I would build a fast Win98 machine, I'd try the Intel 865PE chipset with Core2Duo support and AGP. It is all in my house already.

AppleSauce wrote on 2024-06-24, 16:00:

Its up to him of course but I think there's more bang for buck to be had the 233 is utilised as a hybrid dos and 95 system.

I am using it as hybrid dos and win98 system. Basically, I boot to dos98 first.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-06-24, 13:27:

Those machines would give you broad coverage for the vast majority of DOS and Win 9x/XP era of gaming. Certain speed sensitive Win 9X games could also be covered by the Pentium MMX 233 if you dual boot that system.

After looking at your signature, it occured to me that you are basically having the same gap. Your DX/4-100 will take care of much DOS, and your ISA P4 can take care of the rest.
If I carry out this 865PE project, I will likely be without sound in pure DOS. My options are ESS Solo-1, Soundblaster Live 5.1 SBo100 and a Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS (OEM, so difficult to install). AFAIK, they are no longer supported by this chipset in real DOS. If I were to remain limited to a 1000 MHz P3, I could have two ISA soundcards, Voodoo2 SLI or Voodoo5, PCI sound support... hmm...

ux-3 wrote on 2024-06-24, 17:42:

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-06-24, 13:27:

Those machines would give you broad coverage for the vast majority of DOS and Win 9x/XP era of gaming. Certain speed sensitive Win 9X games could also be covered by the Pentium MMX 233 if you dual boot that system.

After looking at your signature, it occured to me that you are basically having the same gap. Your DX/4-100 will take care of much DOS, and your ISA P4 can take care of the rest.

Oh, I have a lot more builds than just what is in my signature (including my in-progress annual gaming rigs from 1993 to 2000).

My main dedicated setups are:

• Pentium 4 industrial MB system - intended to cover late 80s DOS to early 2000s XP
• i7-3770k - dedicated Windows XP machine for 2000 to ~2008 or so
• 486 DX-33 - late 80s / early 90s DOS gaming with an emphasis on various sound hardware

The DX4-100 is more of an experimental build, but it's not really a daily driver for me.

If I carry out this 865PE project, I will likely be without sound in pure DOS. My options are ESS Solo-1, Soundblaster Live 5.1 SBo100 and a Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS (OEM, so difficult to install). AFAIK, they are no longer supported by this chipset in real DOS. If I were to remain limited to a 1000 MHz P3, I could have two ISA soundcards, Voodoo2 SLI or Voodoo5, PCI sound support... hmm...

If you go the P4 industrial motherboard route, that does open the doors to have ISA sound card support in DOS.

IMHO you "need" 3 PC's to cover 95% of retro gaming

Pure dos, Something around Pentium mark
Win9x, Your P3 fits this era perfect.
WinXP, Your i5 is more than enough for this.

As you say a P3 with an ISA card can also be used for the more demanding dos games.
and the more demanding 9x games will typically work fine and be covered in XP.

So I don't see the need for a fast Win98 PC with ISA, In fact I don't really see a need for a P4 based Win98 build without ISA apart from hardware which is cheaper.
Of course if you want a fast Win98 build or have a build with different hardware, ie 1 EAX build and 1 A3D build then that's totally fine!

ux-3 wrote on 2024-06-24, 12:10:

OK, so I guess my question has somewhat shifted after reading all the comments: Is a very fast non ISA Win98se machine capable to cover all of Windows 98? Or will it run into speed issues too? I know there will be ram issues with some games. 256MB should be OK for what I have seen so far.

The list of speed sensitive Win98 games is very short, and not typically games you want to play anyway, and can probably be categorized as Win95 games anyway. Are you looking to cover Win95/98 or just 98?

chinny22 wrote on 2024-06-25, 01:07:

and the more demanding 9x games will typically work fine and be covered in XP.

I think the number of Win98 games that don't work *perfectly* on WinXP is larger than people believe. XP is not the successor to Win98, it is the successor to Win2k and NT, closer to the Win10 machine you are reading this on now.

Also -- another good reason for that fast Win98 PC -- it will be the last build that supports outdated DirectX features (fog table, paletted textures) -- something a WinXP PC will not support. That's why for me the golden fast Win98 build is a Northwood 3.2Ghz + FX5900 + Audigy2 ZS.

kolderman wrote on 2024-06-25, 01:54:

chinny22 wrote on 2024-06-25, 01:07:

and the more demanding 9x games will typically work fine and be covered in XP.

I think the number of Win98 games that don't work *perfectly* on WinXP is larger than people believe. XP is not the successor to Win98, it is the successor to Win2k and NT, closer to the Win10 machine you are reading this on now.

Also -- another good reason for that fast Win98 PC -- it will be the last build that supports outdated DirectX features (fog table, paletted textures) -- something a WinXP PC will not support. That's why for me the golden fast Win98 build is a Northwood 3.2Ghz + FX5900 + Audigy2 ZS.

Not disagreeing, however Windows 98 / XP shared a good few years' crossover period so the later (and typically more demanding) games were developed to run on both OS's.
and games that were made in Win98's peak would consider a P3 1Ghz / GF4 setup quite powerful.
But yes if your wanting to run these troublesome games especially at modern resolutions we only dreamed of 20 years ago then something more powerful is needed.