What drivers were you using with your 4200ti? It's surprising to hear you say you were having issues with old games, but the Radeon 9600XT was handling them. A P4, SB Live, and 4200ti should be a solid 98 machine that supports graphics features deprecated in later cards.

As for the SSD in XP. With modern SSDs, if you are worried, don't partition the entire drive. Leave some slack space and the control will balance things out. The drives handle garage collection themselves so the lack of OS level trim support isn't a huge concern. I like XP over Vista or 7 for the final support of hardware accelerated sound which was dropped in Vista. And while there's a small handful of things that have issues in 10/11 that Vista/7/8 will run. The number of things that run in XP that have issues with newer is much larger.

But as long as what you are doing is working for you, have a blast. There's no right or wrong answers. But IMO two machines for 98 and XP makes the most sense. As the final hardware that supports 98 generally drops some legacy features, while under performing in mid to later XP era games.

Personally I'm not interested in an XP retro machine. But if I were, I wouldn't try to compromise with Win98SE on same build unless I could avoid it.

Win98SE reqs:
- max Intel 8-series chipset w AGP, or nForce3
- max GeForce 6/7 series or HD4xxx series
- max 512MB RAM
- clunky old FAT32 filesystem, not very SSD-friendly

Now, that sounds a lot like my 2004-era WinXP system. But... given the disappointment with Vista, the XP era ran on until 2009. And basically the ultimate WinXP performance question is: "will it run Crysis?" This system would be the absolute minimum to run it, but it won't be pretty or smooth. Even though I first installed XP on a P2-400 with 192MB RAM, I'd not go for less for an XP build than a Core2Duo and GeForce 8800GT with 2GB of RAM.

The problem with dual booting 98 and XP, is the requirement for 98 support limits some parts which would be better for XP. R Loew's patch can help with running 98 with a more XP appropriate amount of RAM, but later XP compatible GPUs don't have 98 drivers

SScorpio wrote on 2025-04-20, 22:52:

What drivers were you using with your 4200ti? It's surprising to hear you say you were having issues with old games, but the Radeon 9600XT was handling them. A P4, SB Live, and 4200ti should be a solid 98 machine that supports graphics features deprecated in later cards.

As for the SSD in XP. With modern SSDs, if you are worried, don't partition the entire drive. Leave some slack space and the control will balance things out. The drives handle garage collection themselves so the lack of OS level trim support isn't a huge concern. I like XP over Vista or 7 for the final support of hardware accelerated sound which was dropped in Vista. And while there's a small handful of things that have issues in 10/11 that Vista/7/8 will run. The number of things that run in XP that have issues with newer is much larger.

But as long as what you are doing is working for you, have a blast. There's no right or wrong answers. But IMO two machines for 98 and XP makes the most sense. As the final hardware that supports 98 generally drops some legacy features, while under performing in mid to later XP era games.

i was using 45.23 drivers (most recommended for ti 4200), and they work fine, but early win 95 titles like "pitfall: mayan adventure", "Lomax" and "toy story" refused to work properly no matter what i do (even on the FX cards), in windowed mode, it struggles under 30fps with screen tearing, in full screen mode it performs much better but exiting back to window mode, it turns the screen black with endless music loop and forces me to restart the pc. in Lomax case the frame rates was under 30fps and gets much worse when the screen gets busy. it took me a while to figure out why it's happening, first i thought the system (board) was too new, too much ram, Direct X 8 ( i know DX 9 breaks some compatibility in win 98), sound card problems, nope. Apparently Nvidia hates palette changes and freaks out when jumping from low resolution to high resolution, and it screws up in the transition, i even deliberately lower the desktop resolution to match the game to see if there's any change, nope, the same thing. i did try different drives all the same no matter what i use.

and with the changes in the Nvidia control settings, i always change AGP to 4x because on default setting (8x) a lot of older titles will not work and even changing the resolution to 1024x768 in some games the performance takes a serious hit (which doesn't make much sense, half of them i was kinda stuck in 800x600), even with disabling V-sync (which make things much worse visually). maybe im doing something wrong but i did follow some guide line and it didn't work in my favor, the card itself was in great condition, i even changed the heatsink to much bigger one, due to being very power hungry card. it's still a great card but didn't work for me. The Radeon 9600XT didn't give me any problems at all, runs very smoothly in 1024x768, manages to run the certain games pitfall, lomax and toy story with no frame dips or crashes, going from windowed to full screen and back, very smooth performance. games like "Shogo" and "Heretic II" plays great in 1024x768 (geforce 4 ti 4200 was struggling in these settings), Using ATI Catalyst 4.2 drivers and they work great with win 98, the ATI Catalyst 6.2 drivers were very unstable under win 98 (at least for me).

about Win XP maybe i would build a nice project, but the real reason i did win 7 build, because my other old gaming pc (was once the family pc running win 10 32-bit) that became my pc after my family bought much better pc, i spent months setting it up (trying to clean as much as possible for storage space on my ssd) with many games up during COVID lockdowns, full of games, was starting to fail and i wanted a fresh windows install on a different board, different SSDs, Operating system like win 7 that's a never has problems with unlike win 10. More organized, clean, less bloat and garbage. Purely a semi-retro gaming pc with more advantage with modern features that's compatible with 32-bit. And on win 7 i can run some much older games without any patches, it took me by surprise.

I've done both.

My all-in-one Pentium 4 build includes Windows 98 and XP. I have it hooked up to a CRT so anything I run on a CRT specifically, I use this build. It's convenient having a single system that can cover a variety of operating systems.

Whereas my Ultimate XP build runs an i7-3770k and uses a 1920x1200 LCD. It's more for mid-to-late XP era gaming in high resolutions including widescreen.

I have two retro systems. One with DOS and Win 98, and the other with XP and Windows 7. I am lucky in that both systems have features and driver support for their respective OSs. I find there is a natural split between those systems.

I have a DOS/Win98 Pentium 3 PC and an XP/10 i5 PC alongside my main Win11 Ryzen 9 PC.

vintageonthemoon wrote on 2025-04-21, 00:41:

i was using 45.23 drivers (most recommended for ti 4200), and they work fine, but early win 95 titles like "pitfall: mayan adventure", "Lomax" and "toy story" refused to work properly no matter what i do (even on the FX cards), in windowed mode, it struggles under 30fps with screen tearing, in full screen mode it performs much better but exiting back to window mode, it turns the screen black with endless music loop and forces me to restart the pc. in Lomax case the frame rates was under 30fps and gets much worse when the screen gets busy. it took me a while to figure out why it's happening, first i thought the system (board) was too new, too much ram, Direct X 8 ( i know DX 9 breaks some compatibility in win 98), sound card problems, nope. Apparently Nvidia hates palette changes and freaks out when jumping from low resolution to high resolution, and it screws up in the transition, i even deliberately lower the desktop resolution to match the game to see if there's any change, nope, the same thing. i did try different drives all the same no matter what i use.

and with the changes in the Nvidia control settings, i always change AGP to 4x because on default setting (8x) a lot of older titles will not work and even changing the resolution to 1024x768 in some games the performance takes a serious hit (which doesn't make much sense, half of them i was kinda stuck in 800x600), even with disabling V-sync (which make things much worse visually). maybe im doing something wrong but i did follow some guide line and it didn't work in my favor, the card itself was in great condition, i even changed the heatsink to much bigger one, due to being very power hungry card. it's still a great card but didn't work for me. The Radeon 9600XT didn't give me any problems at all, runs very smoothly in 1024x768, manages to run the certain games pitfall, lomax and toy story with no frame dips or crashes, going from windowed to full screen and back, very smooth performance. games like "Shogo" and "Heretic II" plays great in 1024x768 (geforce 4 ti 4200 was struggling in these settings), Using ATI Catalyst 4.2 drivers and they work great with win 98, the ATI Catalyst 6.2 drivers were very unstable under win 98 (at least for me).

about Win XP maybe i would build a nice project, but the real reason i did win 7 build, because my other old gaming pc (was once the family pc running win 10 32-bit) that became my pc after my family bought much better pc, i spent months setting it up (trying to clean as much as possible for storage space on my ssd) with many games up during COVID lockdowns, full of games, was starting to fail and i wanted a fresh windows install on a different board, different SSDs, Operating system like win 7 that's a never has problems with unlike win 10. More organized, clean, less bloat and garbage. Purely a semi-retro gaming pc with more advantage with modern features that's compatible with 32-bit. And on win 7 i can run some much older games without any patches, it took me by surprise.

That's a pretty late drivers for the 4200ti, they do give you DirectX 9. But IMO DX9 is best left to XP. Try the 30.82 drivers to see if you get better legacy support. Though your comments about needing to run AGP 4X is odd. Along with the comments about running slow in Shogo and Heretic II.

Did you have a fresh install of 98 when you tried the Nvidia cards, or did you have a Radeon in there first? 98 had odd issues with old drivers, and running a cleaner when switching brands fix many odd issues. It could also be your 4200ti has some going on with it, but it would be really weird for an FX to have similar behavior.

I multi-boot on my retro rocket, but I swap components (the GPU and SSD specifically) between OS's. That works pretty well for me. Here are the base specs:

Motherboard: Asus Prime H310 Plus
Processor: i7-9700k
Sound 1: Creative X-Fi Titanium
Sound 2: Creative Audigy 2 ZS
Networking: Realtek RTL8169
USB: Via PCI USB 2.0 Card

When I want to run Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7, I drop a GTX 980 Ti in the x16 slot. I use a GTX 480 for Windows 2000. I swap out the GPU with a Radeon x800 XL for Windows 98 and Me. Each OS gets it's own SSD. Windows 7 64-bit gets the place of honor in the board's NVMe port.

This system works great (for now). I'm considering getting a Z370 board, though, to get a bit more performance out of the CPU (especially in Windows 2000).

Windows 98 and XP deserve separate systems as they have vastly different hardware requirements:
- for Windows 98 you want to focus on DirextX 7/8 compatibility, max 512MB RAM (or Lowe's patch), usually paired with GeForce 4 or FX. The hardware is insufficient for Windows XP. It is often a good idea to use it for DOS as well.
- Windows XP lifetime was much longer and you can easily build a dual boot Windows XP / Windows 7 system. 4 core CPU, 16GB RAM, GeForce GTX 780/980 Ti, SATA SSD will work great for both.

Trying to squeeze Windows 98 and XP into one system will be very challenging with major compromises.

When it comes to good quality games for Windows 98 and XP, I have much fewer games on Windows 98 than XP. If you can afford only one system due to limited space then focus on Windows XP / 7 instead of Windows 98.

I'd dispute Win98SE hardware being good for DOS too. Yes, it's possible, but you hit similar compromises - DOS audio wants ISA which limits you to older slower hardware - or obscure industrial solutions. DOS VESA support limits GPU choices, more than 16MB RAM causes memory detection issues in some games and speed sensitivity means the end result will run too fast for many older games anyway.

Of course if you have limited space, budget or just attention bandwidth for so many systems you need to compromise somewhere and it is possible to combine DOS and Win98, but I'd sooner combine Win98 and XP than Win98 and DOS. Then again, that is probably my DOS bias talking here. If 'DOS' just means being able to run Doom, Quake and Duke Nukem3D (so not for example getting 1992-era Origin games running, or wanting multiple specific sound card combos) a Win98 box will be fine 😉

Matth79 wrote on 2025-04-20, 23:14:

The problem with dual booting 98 and XP, is the requirement for 98 support limits some parts which would be better for XP. R Loew's patch can help with running 98 with a more XP appropriate amount of RAM, but later XP compatible GPUs don't have 98 drivers

agree, that's a challenge, and overkill win 98 but okay-ish win xp support til maybe 2005-06 for graphics card with official win98 drivers, aside from patching the ram, that in win 98 it only see 1gb or less and the entire 4gb of ram in xp. there's a complicated way to get much faster Geforce cards to work under 98 with unofficial drivers, like the 7xxxx series til 9xxxx series, but it requires R Loew's patch for cards with 512mb of vram (since 256mb of vram is the limit 98 supports without being unstable) anything higher then 512mb is almost impossible to get working even with patch and some trial and error. i think the Radeon 800x series (with 256mb vram) both agp and pci-e is the final series that has official drivers for win 98. and more stable then Nvidia the last official drivers for geforce cards.

AlexZ wrote on 2025-04-21, 08:06:

Trying to squeeze Windows 98 and XP into one system will be very challenging with major compromises.

A Pentium 4 based system w/ a GeForce 4 or FX can easily run both 98 and XP. The compromise is the upper limit of XP-era performance which will be limited to about ~2003-2004 gaming or so.

dionb wrote on 2025-04-21, 09:20:

I'd dispute Win98SE hardware being good for DOS too. Yes, it's possible, but you hit similar compromises - DOS audio wants ISA which limits you to older slower hardware - or obscure industrial solutions. DOS VESA support limits GPU choices, more than 16MB RAM causes memory detection issues in some games and speed sensitivity means the end result will run too fast for many older games anyway.

Of course if you have limited space, budget or just attention bandwidth for so many systems you need to compromise somewhere and it is possible to combine DOS and Win98, but I'd sooner combine Win98 and XP than Win98 and DOS. Then again, that is probably my DOS bias talking here. If 'DOS' just means being able to run Doom, Quake and Duke Nukem3D (so not for example getting 1992-era Origin games running, or wanting multiple specific sound card combos) a Win98 box will be fine 😉

DOS vesa support? ..everything from nvidia from the TnT2 up to the Geforce 6 series all had the same Vesa 2/3 core so were all just fine for DOS, ATI IIRC also had a similar setup but their cards had other compatibility issues but nVidia had no such trouble.

As for Audio Win98 ran just fine with ISA PnP sound cards and non PnP as long as they were setup correctly, you could also run dual sound card with a ISA for DOS and PCI for 98 with no issues.

About the only issue as you have pointed out is the Ram issue with some DOS programs not liking more than 16mb but that's not an insurmountable problem and its a pretty limited set of programs with this issue.

CPU speed is also a problem you can get around if you plan ahead and use a motherboard/CPU that works well with one of the many CPU speed throttling programs.

So a DOS/98 setup is ok, if you want uhhh archaic pre DOS 5 then may I suggest a museum 286/386 build, I mean asteroids and pong were games .. right.

98/XP can work if you set you expectation to early XP programs and build a seperate system for late XP/Win 7

I maintain the following:

P133 for dos, also has win98 for the few odd experiences I want to have on it with windows and the banshee.

X3230 for win 98, also has Xp installed for the few games I want to run with the voodoo 2s or compat reasons.

X5690 for Xp, also has win 10 installed.

I9 12900 for win 11 and modern software.

Shagittarius wrote on 2025-04-21, 15:09:

I maintain the following: […]
Show full quote

I maintain the following:

P133 for dos, also has win98 for the few odd experiences I want to have on it with windows and the banshee.

X3230 for win 98, also has Xp installed for the few games I want to run with the voodoo 2s or compat reasons.

X5690 for Xp, also has win 10 installed.

I9 12900 for win 11 and modern software.

Wrong CPU... oops

Should have been the X5470 ...

Shponglefan wrote on 2025-04-21, 12:49:

A Pentium 4 based system w/ a GeForce 4 or FX can easily run both 98 and XP. The compromise is the upper limit of XP-era performance which will be limited to about ~2003-2004 gaming or so.

This is a quite major compromise. A GeForce 4 or FX is no match for 9800 GT or even better GTX 780 Ti. An XP system good only for 2003-2004 will be of very limited use.

If space is a limit then it's better to focus on Windows XP / 7 dual boot as DOS can be emulated and some Windows 98 games can be run with patches. If space isn't an issue then dedicated systems work best.

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-04-21, 14:18:

CPU speed is also a problem you can get around if you plan ahead and use a motherboard/CPU that works well with one of the many CPU speed throttling programs.

Very easily solved for specific games with 86Box or DosBox-X. One can have the same sound card and hard drive configured for multiple DOS systems. Latest CPUs can handle emulation up to about 300-400Mhz Pentium II and the slowest 486 (16Mhz) can be used to play speed sensitive games. We could also ask for a 8Mhz / 200Mhz 486 just to have greater range for late boards supporting larger drive size.

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-04-21, 14:18:

[...]

DOS vesa support? ..everything from nvidia from the TnT2 up to the Geforce 6 series all had the same Vesa 2/3 core so were all just fine for DOS, ATI IIRC also had a similar setup but their cards had other compatibility issues but nVidia had no such trouble.

NVPatch for UniVBE only works up to the FX series.

As for Audio Win98 ran just fine with ISA PnP sound cards and non PnP as long as they were setup correctly, you could also run dual sound card with a ISA for DOS and PCI for 98 with no issues.

ISA sound cards work fine for Win98 (or you can just ignore them and use PCI audio when booted to Win98), the problem is the limitations of motherboards with ISA. Native support is only present up to early SoA and late So370, DMA support using PCI-ISA bridges can go further (max ICH5) but then you're in the realm of obscure (and expensive) industrial boards.

About the only issue as you have pointed out is the Ram issue with some DOS programs not liking more than 16mb but that's not an insurmountable problem and its a pretty limited set of programs with this issue.

CPU speed is also a problem you can get around if you plan ahead and use a motherboard/CPU that works well with one of the many CPU speed throttling programs.

Disagree. You just can't get a fast P4 down to XT speeds.

So a DOS/98 setup is ok, if you want uhhh archaic pre DOS 5 then may I suggest a museum 286/386 build, I mean asteroids and pong were games .. right.

A 486-33MHz system with turbo button is pretty much the sweet spot, as you can just press the button to get down to that sort of speeds, and at full speed it's spot on for Ultima 7, Wing Commander and that sort of challenges.

98/XP can work if you set you expectation to early XP programs and build a seperate system for late XP/Win 7

Or just run the late stuff on a modern build.

dionb wrote on 2025-04-21, 15:57:

Disagree. You just can't get a fast P4 down to XT speeds.

I've had my 3.4GHz Pentium 4 down to 286 speeds. Haven't tried to target XT speeds specifically, but it can go slower, so likely is possible.