98SE.. For compatibility with most things minus glide, a GeForce FX 5950 would be best but generally go for a nice sum.

A Quadro FX 3000 is basically the Quadro variant.

Nothing past the FX line supports 8-bit palletized textures and is plenty fast for anything 98SE when paired with a fast enough CPU.

If not worried about DOS games, you can skip having a motherboard with an ISA slot and that opens you up to whatever you can find with an AGP slot, which the fastest would be an LGA775 board with probably an Intel QX6850. You will only be using one core in 98SE, but the unlocked CPU will give you some ability to overclock if you want.

The GeForce FX5950 is CPU limited up until 3.2-3.3Ghz with a QX6850 in 98SE.

For the soundcard, you can go with a Sound Blaster Audigy 2 (not value) as you want the hardware acceleration.

You will also probably want a 3dfx voodoo 3 or 5 for Glide games, but not super necessary unless you really want to play Glide games natively.

For the updates for 98SE, DO NOT use the unofficial SP3, just get the Microsoft 2004 update CD from vogonsdrivers and use that. The SP3, in its current form, going back at least 2-3 years can cause all sorts of problems and is not worth it.

What is your budget? What part of the world do you live in?

Canonical setup for "fast but DOS support" would be a:
Pentium III
Somewhere between 128MB and 512MB RAM
440BX-based Motherboard with at least one ISA slot
ISA sound card based on ESS or Aztech chip

You'll run into "low-density" vs "high-density" PC100 SDRAM (you want low), something to be aware of if you're aiming to max out the RAM

Harder for me to advise on video card. AGP is faster, but the standard kept changing voltages/etc., so the end-of-the-line cards for Win98SE are going to be PCI
I'm not sure what video card will meet your needs. Perhaps start with a cheap starter card until you find something that does what you want. It's possible you'll be recommended a Matrox rather than an ATI/Nvidia if you won't be making use of 3D anyway.

It's unlikely any DOS game will let you set a resolution like that; a modern-ish video card might under Windows.

To add to my first reply, if you don't care about the absolute fastest GeForce FX card, you can look into the PCIe variants, the PCX 5300 (like an FX 5200.. bleh), the PCX 5750, and the PCX 5900.

That opens you up to at least 9th Gen Intel - i9-9980x being the top for insane performance in 98SE.... Absolutely overkill but it does work just fine with at least some of the ASUS boards.

If you don't care about palletized textures, you can go up to a GeForce 7900GTX but that is not necessarily the most compatible and some people report issues.

Regarding screen resolution, 960x720 is not a typical video resolution for PC. For 1994 to 1999 and specifically for gaming standard resolutions include 320x200, 640x480, 800x600 and 1024x768.

For late 90's Window gaming with period correct hardware, 640x480 and 800x600 were the most common.

For hardware for such a build, I'd probably go with a Pentium 4 era system (either Northwood or Cedar Mill). You're more likely to find such systems available more cheaply than Pentium III hardware, especially since the Pentium 4 has a mixed reputation. But with the right combo of motherboard chipset and processor it can make for a rock solid Win98 setup.

I agree with the P4 being a good choice for a fast and compatible Win98SE machine. AGP video cards have become expensive, but a P4-system can often be bought for about 30 dollar equivalent. You forego on DOS games as you leave the ISA era, but as you've stepped into the hobby, it's just more fun creating your dedicated DOS system.

cyclone3d wrote on 2025-04-02, 02:50:

What is your budget? What part of the world do you live in?

In the USA. Preferably not something over $500, but I don't really know what is considered reasonable for a 98 build.

ToriGale wrote on 2025-04-02, 20:14:

In the USA. Preferably not something over $500, but I don't really know what is considered reasonable for a 98 build.

It really depends on the specific hardware you target.

Early-to-mid 2000's hardware (i.e. Pentium 4, Athlon XP) can run Windows 98 and such systems should be generally available in thrift shops. So you might be able to get something for very little money.

But if you are targeting more specific hardware, particularly Pentium III era stuff, expect things to cost a bit more.

flupke11 wrote on 2025-04-02, 07:50:

I agree with the P4 being a good choice for a fast and compatible Win98SE machine. AGP video cards have become expensive, but a P4-system can often be bought for about 30 dollar equivalent. You forego on DOS games as you leave the ISA era, but as you've stepped into the hobby, it's just more fun creating your dedicated DOS system.

Not necessarily. There are plenty of P4 boards with fully functional ISA slots, the best being with the i865 chipset.

I have quite the collection of these types of boards and just purchased an i845P based board for $75. It is one of the boards I had been wanting, but didn't feel it was worth anywhere near the price I see them normally go for.

ToriGale wrote on 2025-04-02, 20:14:

cyclone3d wrote on 2025-04-02, 02:50:

What is your budget? What part of the world do you live in?

In the USA. Preferably not something over $500, but I don't really know what is considered reasonable for a 98 build.

Ok, that is a pretty good budget. Do you want ISA slots or not?

Looks like the most recent GPU support for 98 is the Geforce 6 series and the AMD Radeon 9000 series (driver has beta support for X300, 550, 600, 800, 850 series if you want to live dangerously with 98 on PCIE), you may want specific older cards if you want certain features like table fog that became obsolete.

Of course, if you want retro for a good price, then you need to avoid the most in demand things, such as 3DFX.

If you can run a nice retro on hardware that is classified as "old junk", rather than "highly sought after classic", then you get much better value.

If you want ISA slots for best DOS soundcard compatibility, then that severely limits your range of choice... it's quite easy to find a Socket 370 (Pentium 3) motherboard with AGP and ISA, I had a Socket A/423 AMD Athlon motherboard with ISA but later chipset ones tended to dispense with ISA.
Without ISA, Pentium 4 is an easier option, and while you can even get a Core 2 supporting LGA775 motherboard with AGP, they are rare and expensive compared to the ones that only support P4. SB Live PCI soundcards support DOS with a rather large TSR driver that also requires EMM368, making it incompatible with DOS games that disagree with EMM386

cyclone3d wrote on 2025-04-02, 21:58:

Ok, that is a pretty good budget. Do you want ISA slots or not?

The post below yours mentions that ISA is primarily used by soundcards in this context, right? And that there are PCI soundcards. Are there many DOS games from the mid-to-late 90s that don't like PCI soundcards? That would be a factor about whether I feel like I should have ISA slots or not.

PCI sound cards are not going to have the level of compatibility that ISA does with DOS games, especially once you get past a certain point as far ashardware goes though with modifications, you can run ISA on much newer systems but those wouldn't have AGP.

The only real exception is using a motherboard and soundcard that have the PC-PCI / SB-Link interface as those will essentially be an ISA card in a PCI slot. There are very few Pentium 4 boards that have this interface. See here for more info:
List of motherboards with SB-link (PC/PCI) header

For a faster system, you could always use SBEMU and if you want wavetable for the music, you could always use softmpu along with MPU-232 from serdashop for the midi port.

There is another way to get ISA support https://youtu.be/putHMSzu5og?si=0Vs0bo2TPZaRXO-M
You'd probably need to be mounting a mATX board in a full ATX case to make room for it

True, would also need to have a board that has a "legacy" (BIOS) boot mode option.