anything above a ti4xxx gpu gets a bit icky in win98, especially for the 6xxx cards. also late era dos support which is what win98 should cover begins to get murky due to sound card issues, although SBEMU has started to make good ground here. i'd go for 2 or 3 separate builds, 136-in-1 DOS build + picogus, win 98 voodoo 2sli/3/ti4xxx build, vortex2/ymf74x (preferably on athlon xp via kt266/333 platform) and stable rocketship xp build. These are my personal end game builds that aren't screwy and pretty stable

gmaverick2k wrote on 2025-07-13, 20:14:

anything above a ti4xxx gpu gets a bit icky in win98, especially for the 6xxx cards. also late era dos support which is what win98 should cover begins to get murky due to sound card issues, although SBEMU has started to make good ground here. i'd go for 2 or 3 separate builds, 136-in-1 DOS build + picogus, win 98 voodoo 2sli/3/ti4xxx build, vortex2/ymf74x (preferably on athlon xp via kt266/333 platform) and stable rocketship xp build. These are my personal end game builds that aren't screwy and pretty stable

FX series cards are great in 9x.

This was one hell of a lucky search find https://youtu.be/iMyK-NJkSoo?si=UCj439uAFYlsFa2_ The 7000 series takes some persuading, but it can be done

pete8475 wrote on 2025-07-13, 20:39:

gmaverick2k wrote on 2025-07-13, 20:14:

anything above a ti4xxx gpu gets a bit icky in win98, especially for the 6xxx cards. also late era dos support which is what win98 should cover begins to get murky due to sound card issues, although SBEMU has started to make good ground here. i'd go for 2 or 3 separate builds, 136-in-1 DOS build + picogus, win 98 voodoo 2sli/3/ti4xxx build, vortex2/ymf74x (preferably on athlon xp via kt266/333 platform) and stable rocketship xp build. These are my personal end game builds that aren't screwy and pretty stable

FX series cards are great in 9x.

not had that much of a great experience with fx series card, (fx5900xt). only thing it offers is nglide use but have to install dx9 to get that, would rather have winxp cover that feature. ti4xxx works with the game SiN for example without showing issues in win98. I prefer the voodoo3 in win98 build as the late era dos games take advantage of its features and some early 98 games look pretty nice on it. for late win98 era games which need framrate and resolutions to be cranked up, rocket winxp build can cover that, e.g. serious sam, max payne, unreal tournament, quake 3 team arena etc

RibbitKingXP wrote on 2025-07-13, 19:33:

Would those parts be compatible with Windows 98? Do you have any improvements?

First, welcome to VOGONS!

Before making any recommendations it would be helpful to know what era of gaming are you looking to cover? Any specific games you want to run?

As mentioned about, you'll run into compatibility trade-offs with the 6800 series under Win9x. Generally dual-boot 9x/XP is trading off performance versus compatibility.

Geforce 7600GT works with Win9x and XP, it also has bluray and h264 playback support in hardware (XP at least). Faster dualcore is all that you need for Win9x/XP dualboot and if its only Win9x (then singlecore). No need for QuadCore CPU, E8400,E8500, E8600 would be my pick if S775 and G31 + up to XP OS it is. ATi Radeon x8xx is also one GPU option.

Win9x likes GPU-s up to 256MB without any tweak and ram up to 1GB (512MB recommended). Possible to have more ram and vram with patches.

gmaverick2k wrote on 2025-07-13, 21:54:

pete8475 wrote on 2025-07-13, 20:39:

gmaverick2k wrote on 2025-07-13, 20:14:

anything above a ti4xxx gpu gets a bit icky in win98, especially for the 6xxx cards. also late era dos support which is what win98 should cover begins to get murky due to sound card issues, although SBEMU has started to make good ground here. i'd go for 2 or 3 separate builds, 136-in-1 DOS build + picogus, win 98 voodoo 2sli/3/ti4xxx build, vortex2/ymf74x (preferably on athlon xp via kt266/333 platform) and stable rocketship xp build. These are my personal end game builds that aren't screwy and pretty stable

FX series cards are great in 9x.

not had that much of a great experience with fx series card, (fx5900xt). only thing it offers is nglide use but have to install dx9 to get that, would rather have winxp cover that feature. ti4xxx works with the game SiN for example without showing issues in win98. I prefer the voodoo3 in win98 build as the late era dos games take advantage of its features and some early 98 games look pretty nice on it. for late win98 era games which need framrate and resolutions to be cranked up, rocket winxp build can cover that, e.g. serious sam, max payne, unreal tournament, quake 3 team arena etc

I own a wide variety of FX cards the highest end being a Quadro FX3000 (pretty much the same as FX5900 Ultra). Sin has no graphical issues on those cards. UT 2003 flies on the high end FX cards, even Doom 3 is playable with the 98 compatibility patch (28.5 fps in the built-in timedemo benchmark, 1024x768 medium quality). EDIT - 32.3fps when I overclock the Quadro to FX5950 speed.

Anyway I would say use either a Geforce 4 or Geforce FX in 9X whichever you have on hand or can afford to buy and you'll have a good experience. Obviously the low-end stuff like a 5200 with 64bit memory is going to be kind of crap. 5700 and up are all excellent.

You wrote "anything above a ti4xxx gpu gets a bit icky in win98" and I think you need to revise that to be anything above an FX series card because there are simply no "icky" issues with the FX cards.

First of all IMO the CPU is not a good choice. 4 cores are not useful, single core performance is important and something like C2D E8400/8500/8600 would be better. As others mentioned.

Apart from that my opinion - for you to like the results you have to understand what period of games you are targeting. No, the fact you can run 98 and XP does not meant you can run all the games from 98 and XP.

This build, IMO, has 2 limitations:

- It is too new for 98. PCI-e will create issues, too much RAM will create issues, too fast CPU may create issues, GPU will create issues with older games. In general 98 will not be a good experience on this hardware - you'll have to mess with it a bunch to even make it work and it will break compatibility with many games.

- It is too old for XP. This GPU simply will not be sufficient for many XP games from 2004-2005 and later, not with good settings/performance.

So what this will work for would be - late 98 + early XP. And IMO for that there are better platforms, which will create less compatibility issues.

You could try to do one thing - use much later GPU, like GTX750, for XP. And use a PCI card, like FX5500, for 98. That will improve compatibility in 98 somewhat and allow you to run pretty much any XP game...

Archer57 wrote on 2025-07-14, 00:36:

It is too new for 98. It is too old for XP

This was how I felt with my Socket 478 P4, GF 6800 Ultra build.

Win98 era games were just fine on my P3 with a GF4 Ti
Anything that didn't work on that system works fine in XP, problem is the CPU and moreso the GF6 was holding back performance for games like GTA SA.

That said if your limited to just 1 PC and NEED both WIn98 and XP then this may be the best compromise, does depend on your budget, part availability, and personal taste.

But If you just want to run Win98 on the latest hardware, that's still a valid reason though In which case you can upgrade the soundcard up to an Audigy 2 ZS which was the Creative card to support Win98

pete8475 wrote on 2025-07-13, 22:27:

I own a wide variety of FX cards the highest end being a Quadro FX3000 (pretty much the same as FX5900 Ultra). Sin has no graph […]
Show full quote

gmaverick2k wrote on 2025-07-13, 21:54:

pete8475 wrote on 2025-07-13, 20:39:

FX series cards are great in 9x.

not had that much of a great experience with fx series card, (fx5900xt). only thing it offers is nglide use but have to install dx9 to get that, would rather have winxp cover that feature. ti4xxx works with the game SiN for example without showing issues in win98. I prefer the voodoo3 in win98 build as the late era dos games take advantage of its features and some early 98 games look pretty nice on it. for late win98 era games which need framrate and resolutions to be cranked up, rocket winxp build can cover that, e.g. serious sam, max payne, unreal tournament, quake 3 team arena etc

I own a wide variety of FX cards the highest end being a Quadro FX3000 (pretty much the same as FX5900 Ultra). Sin has no graphical issues on those cards. UT 2003 flies on the high end FX cards, even Doom 3 is playable with the 98 compatibility patch (28.5 fps in the built-in timedemo benchmark, 1024x768 medium quality). EDIT - 32.3fps when I overclock the Quadro to FX5950 speed.

Anyway I would say use either a Geforce 4 or Geforce FX in 9X whichever you have on hand or can afford to buy and you'll have a good experience. Obviously the low-end stuff like a 5200 with 64bit memory is going to be kind of crap. 5700 and up are all excellent.

You wrote "anything above a ti4xxx gpu gets a bit icky in win98" and I think you need to revise that to be anything above an FX series card because there are simply no "icky" issues with the FX cards.

There are other small quality of life issues with menu artefacting eg free space 2 or need for speed Porsche which gets annoying, hence"Icky".
Text corruption in certain games on a GeForce FX 5900XT
Geforce 4 4200 ti vs Geforce Fx 5500 for 1997 to late 2001 gaming
Also 30fps for a 3d game would push me to use winxp with much beefier hardware. Even though I loved playing series sam for example on integrated ati rage 128 back in the day, those rose tinted glasses don't hold up, even for a voodoo3. >60fps 1600x1200 it is on winxp

chinny22 wrote on 2025-07-14, 06:33:

This was how I felt with my Socket 478 P4, GF 6800 Ultra build.

And that build wold probably perform very similarly to OP's planned one, despite very different CPU. GPU will limit later games.

Also i personally highly dislike trying to run OS on too new hardware where multiple unofficial patches/workarounds/hacks are needed to make it work. Like 98 on LGA775 or XP on LGA1150 for example. It just is not an enjoyable experience and honestly - emulation can be a better option. To each their own though.

Archer57 wrote on 2025-07-14, 07:21:

Also i personally highly dislike trying to run OS on too new hardware where multiple unofficial patches/workarounds/hacks are needed to make it work. Like 98 on LGA775 or XP on LGA1150 for example.

Not sure about LGA1150, but I own a LGA1155 motherboard (MSI Z77A-G43) which still has official WinXP 32-bit drivers on the manufacturer's website. No hacks or tweaks needed there.

As for the GPU, the GTX 970 and GTX 980 (non-Ti) are the last officially supported Nvidia cards under WinXP, though you have to hunt down the older 344.11 driver for that. Again, no modifications necessary.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-07-14, 07:38:

Not sure about LGA1150, but I own a LGA1155 motherboard (MSI Z77A-G43) which still has official WinXP 32-bit drivers on the manufacturer's website. No hacks or tweaks needed there.

As for the GPU, the GTX 970 and GTX 980 (non-Ti) are the last officially supported Nvidia cards under WinXP, though you have to hunt down the older 344.11 driver for that. Again, no modifications necessary.

Yeah, LGA1155 is still great for XP. Some problems do start to crop up, like no floppy controller and no built-in AHCI driver in XP, but they are solvable. It is the last supported platform though, newer than that there are no drivers and it becomes a pain. Which is why i mentioned LGA1150. It is still doable, but as i said - does not seem to be worth doing.

gmaverick2k wrote on 2025-07-14, 06:54:

There are other small quality of life issues with menu artefacting eg free space 2 or need for speed Porsche which gets annoying […]
Show full quote

There are other small quality of life issues with menu artefacting eg free space 2 or need for speed Porsche which gets annoying, hence"Icky".
Text corruption in certain games on a GeForce FX 5900XT
Geforce 4 4200 ti vs Geforce Fx 5500 for 1997 to late 2001 gaming
Also 30fps for a 3d game would push me to use winxp with much beefier hardware. Even though I loved playing series sam for example on integrated ati rage 128 back in the day, those rose tinted glasses don't hold up, even for a voodoo3. >60fps 1600x1200 it is on winxp

I feel like you're reaching to try and justify your point, I don't have either of those games but in the thread about Porshce Unleashed there's a fix listed by DoZator.

Anyway I'm done polluting this guys thread with off topic discussions.

To the original poster I would say get something with an AGP slot and a Geforce 4 (NOT MX) or Geforce FX card (5700 or better) and have fun.

EDIT - One last comment, I went and got Freespace 2 and there are no menu artifacting issues.

Archer57 wrote on 2025-07-14, 07:21:

Also i personally highly dislike trying to run OS on too new hardware where multiple unofficial patches/workarounds/hacks are needed to make it work. Like 98 on LGA775 or XP on LGA1150 for example.

In my experience this more contingent on specific chipsets, processors, and driver availability, along with RAM and drive size considerations.

Intel's 865 chipset and a Pentium 4 makes for a rock-solid Windows 98 setup. I don't recall needing any special patches or mods to make it work.

Shponglefan wrote on 2025-07-14, 13:50:

In my experience this more contingent on specific chipsets, processors, and driver availability, along with RAM and drive size considerations.
Intel's 865 chipset and a Pentium 4 makes for a rock-solid Windows 98 setup. I don't recall needing any special patches or mods to make it work.

Intel 865 is good choise, but at the same time SocketA/socket754/socket939 and so on works for Windows 98. Chipset is curcial to choose the right one. I had some trouble with VIA chipets mostly, but i still use them. We should use what we have and not make more e-waste and squeeze max life out of what we have.I may not play old Win9x games and very old Dos games and then Nvidia gf6600/gf6800/gf7600 or ATi x600/x700/x800 PCIE card may also be ok for dualboot needs.