Gamecollector wrote:

No DOS support for 9xx motherboards because ICH6 and later not have the compatibility mode (the emulation of 2 8259A, 2 8237, 8254 and 2 IDE channels at IRQs 14 and 15).

If thats the case i think Phil nailed it then he picked a 865 for the ultimate Win98/Dos machine. Can we say 8xx was is the most modern Intel chipsets we can use for a similar project? I think i keep some of the HP D530sff motherboards regardless of its shortcomings. Found a D530cmt so then i have a lot of spare boards for it 😊 They look nice and are cheap on eBay. Just keep in mind the ATX psu have a odd size. HP, i know...
Dell Optiplex GX270 that survived the badcaps mayhem is also an alternative for someone looking for a complete system.

Here's another reason perhaps? 😀

11. Compact build

If you grab yourself a shuttle computer running a P4 with integrated sound/network. You also have 1 AGP and 1 PCI slot for great graphics and a different sound card if you want. If you couple that small tiny machine with a classic small 486/386 tower you have all the classic DOS/Windows gaming you want and it doesn't take up much space! This is really challenging all my previous wants..

Scraphoarder wrote:

If thats the case i think Phil nailed it then he picked a 865 for the ultimate Win98/Dos machine. Can we say 8xx was is the most modern Intel chipsets we can use for a similar project? I think i keep some of the HP D530sff motherboards regardless of its shortcomings. Found a D530cmt so then i have a lot of spare boards for it 😊 They look nice and are cheap on eBay. Just keep in mind the ATX psu have a odd size. HP, i know...
Dell Optiplex GX270 that survived the badcaps mayhem is also an alternative for someone looking for a complete system.

Well... Not much so ultimate "Dos" about the build. Phil expressed that explicitly. Some Dos games will run, yet it dos not make it "ultimate".

Why stop at a socket 478 low end pentium 4? You can go higher. i865 AGP LGA 775 boards support higher clocked Prescott and Cedar Mill cpus, dual core pentium D cpus (not that dual core would make any diference in w98) and some i865 lga775 boards even support Core CPUs (actually all of them do if you can update the CPU microcode on the board's bios). Or you can go for a socket 754 / 939 build. ULi chipsets have extremely stable win98 drivers (even tough they're a little slower then the VIA counterparts). I built one such overkill multi-purpose rig (see my signature) and it's currently my main retro-rig. Just finishing up Quake 2 MP1 in glorious 1024x768 Glide OpenGL. Here's a link to the build thread (lots of pictures and some benchmarks): Win98 Socket 939 Voodoo 2 SLi Build! (a.k.a. Glide Overkill)

In my view, a 2GHz P4 is overkill for older win95 games, and too slow for some newer games like Doom 3. You could build a Chimera sistem that runs both DOS, Win98 and WinXP (and if you fancy it Windows 7). It will also run modern browsers unlike the venerable P4 due to SSE3 support.

Possible overkill hybrid DOS-Win98-XP builds:

1. Prescott / Cedar Mill / Presler build
- fast Cedar Mill Pentium 4 (like a 631 or a Pentium D 940)
- LGA775 intel i865 motherboard with AGP and DDR1
- X850XT or 6800 Ultra AGP card - these are the latest cards with win98 drivers. X1600 and X1900 series are rumored to have win98 modded drivers, but I could not find any to download and experiment.
- 1GB of DDR1 (you could go with 2GB, but I can't seem to get win98 to work correctly even after modding System.ini)
- IDE HDD (for better Win98 compatibility)
- Optional Voodoo 2 SLi for Glide Support

2. Cedar Mill / Presler / Conroe build
- P4 631 / Pentium D 940 / Core 2 Duo E6600
- LGA VIA P4M900 with either PCI-E or AGP (OR BOTH like on some upgrade boards), DDR1 or DDR2 (or both)
- X850XTX or 6800 Ultra AGP or PCI-Express cards
- 1GB of DDR2 (you could go with 2GB, but I can't seem to get win98 to work correctly even after modding System.ini)
- IDE HDD (for better Win98 compatibility)
- Optional Voodoo 2 SLi for Glide Support

3. Clawhammer / Newcastle / Venice socket 754 build
- the fastest socket 754 Athlon64 you can find - fastest one I could dig up is a 512kb 2400MHz 3500+, but if you look hard enough you might stumble on a 1MB 2.4GHz 3700+
- VIA K8T800 / VIA K8M890 / ULi (ALi) 689 motherboard - all have great win98 support. VIA boards are faster, but ULi boards have excellent win98 driver support. Stay away from nforce 3 boards - win98 drivers are available but they're a mess, and most of the time only chipset drivers are available.
- X850XTX or 6800 Ultra AGP or PCI-Express cards
- 1GB of DDR1 (you could go with 2GB, but I can't seem to get win98 to work correctly even after modding System.ini)
- IDE HDD (for better Win98 compatibility)
- Optional Voodoo 2 SLi for Glide Support

4. Clawhammer / Venice / Toledo socket 939 build
- the fastest socket 939 Athlon64 you can find - I put a 2.4Ghz 3800+ venice single core in my overkill Glide build and it's pretty fast. Of course you coud go with a 939 athlon X2 (toledo) but those are harder to find, clocked lower and you won't be seeing any benefit in 99% of games. If you really want dual core, go for a pentium D. Those are clocked much higher so the performance penalty in single threaded apps should be lower.
- VIA K8T800 / VIA K8M890 / ULi (ALi) 689 motherboard - all have great win98 support. VIA boards are faster, but ULi boards have excellent win98 driver support. Again, stay away from nforce 3 boards - win98 drivers are available but they're a mess, and most of the time only chipset drivers are available.
- X850XTX or 6800 Ultra AGP or PCI-Express cards
- 1GB of DDR1 (you could go with 2GB, but I can't seem to get win98 to work correctly even after modding System.ini)
- IDE HDD (for better Win98 compatibility)
- Optional Voodoo 2 SLi for Glide Support

All configurations mentioned above will work great in win98. Via chipsets need a little more fiddling under win98 - see this thread for what drivers you shroud use for the best performance and stability: Win98 Socket 939 Voodoo 2 SLi Build! (a.k.a. Glide Overkill)

I personally tested an LGA775 i865 / E6600 (/w modded bios) / x800xt AGP, a socket 754 ULi 689 / A65 3500+ / 6800LE AGP and socket 939 A64 3800+ / K8T800 / 6800XT builds, and had no issues under windows 98.

The main advantage of using one of the four configurations listed above is that you can sometimes get the parts for free or close to nothing (setting aside the high end 3800+, opterons and video cards). You don't even have to get a high end video card - a lowly 128 bit 128mb 6200 will do just fine. So will an x600 - and you might be able to pick those up for free as well.

"The Beast" was shurely overkill for most old games. Some would just skip forward inside the game.
Sort of a reverse lag effect I might add. 🤣 So well... I stuffed a Radeon9600 into it instead.

I have read somewere, that NFS-2K tend to run slower on a 2.1ghz than a 2.0ghz.
If this is true, then there might be other games that suffers from this.
I even remember people talking about FS-2004 running bad on PCI-X native cards compared to AGP-Native.

Can someone confirm this, or have someone seen these kind of issues before?

kanecvr wrote:

Why stop at a socket 478 low end pentium 4? You can go higher.

Of course, we all know that 😀

Doom 3, XP, Windows 7, all of that is not the point of this project.

This of this project as a Pentium III Tualatin alternative with some bonus features thrown in.

brostenen wrote:

"The Beast" was shurely overkill for most old games. Some would just skip forward inside the game. Sort of a reverse lag effect […]
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"The Beast" was shurely overkill for most old games. Some would just skip forward inside the game.
Sort of a reverse lag effect I might add. 🤣 So well... I stuffed a Radeon9600 into it instead.

I have read somewere, that NFS-2K tend to run slower on a 2.1ghz than a 2.0ghz.
If this is true, then there might be other games that suffers from this.
I even remember people talking about FS-2004 running bad on PCI-X native cards compared to AGP-Native.

Can someone confirm this, or have someone seen these kind of issues before?

No issues whatsoever with NFS 2k. I was even able to run it at 1920x1080 (the game has native widescreen and high resolution support). I got the game running at 1920x1080 with 8x AF on my X850 agp card and completed the evolution game mode (all eras). It looks stunning and runs great. No slowdowns or skipping whatsoever. Using my 6800 was a different story whatsoever. For some reason, the game will not run widescreen resolutions higher then 1280x800. Setting resolution higher then that causes the game to display a black screen. I did manage to get it running correctly under windows XP with one of the 82.xx forceware drivers.

For me the whole point of this rig is to play old games with as much eye candy as possible and w/o bugs instability / crashes inherent to modern operating systems. So far I got the following games running prefectly:

- Homeworld @ 1440x900, 8xAF - gets around 60 fps, drops to 30-35 when there's a lot of action
- NFS 2000: Porsche @ 1920x1080 8xAF - between 40-50 fps, very fluid
- Quake 2 default opengl @ 1920x1080, 2xAA - about 200-250 fps so I enabled vertical sync
- Quake 2 3DFX opengl @ 1024x768 AA enabled - over 50 fps
- GLQuake @ 1024x768 AA enabled - over 150 fps. Requires the latest official version of GLQuake.
- Black and White (1) @ 1920x1080, graphical patch applied, nlips disabled, maximum detail settings - 30-35 fps with occasional framedrops inherent to the game.
- Dungeon Keeper II @ 1920x1080 (registry hack) - up to 100 fps - drops to 25-30 when there's lots of stuff going on.
- Unreal Gold openGL @ 1920x1080 - not very stable but very fast
- Unreal Gold Glide @ 1024x768 with AA enabled - 30-60 fps, very stable
- Giants: Citizen Kabuto - 1920x1080, 8xAF using the GOG version. Forcing AA of any kind makes the game freeze.
- 3dFX Descent II
- 3dFX Carmageddon

Planning to test heretic II and hexen II as well as Dark Reign 2 and HW: Cataclysm.

philscomputerlab wrote:

Of course, we all know that :) […]
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kanecvr wrote:

Why stop at a socket 478 low end pentium 4? You can go higher.

Of course, we all know that 😀

Doom 3, XP, Windows 7, all of that is not the point of this project.

This of this project as a Pentium III Tualatin alternative with some bonus features thrown in.

At fist I didn't even consider a Tualatin build, but I wanted some Tualatin CPUs for my collection. Those things are rather scarce in these parts and when you do find a CPU there's no motherboard to run it in apart from server boards with no AGP slot and custom form-factors (at least this is the case in my neck of the woods). I did manage to get a PIII-S 1400 and a 1.2GHz tualeron from a small shop that sells old business computers, and got them to work on one of my VIA boards - a Soltek Apollo Pro slot 1 board - after pin-modding the CPUs and buying several slotket adapters until I found one that actually works. Performance was... less then expected*. I then tried the same thing on a slot 1 i440 board made by asus (Asus P3B). CPU score rose while AGP performance dropped slightly compared to the soltek, and the asus doesn't let me drop vcore under 1.55v witch causes some instability on the 1.4GHz P3-S. The afformentioned PIII does score ~50% more in FPS tests then a PIII coppermine at 1GHz, but so does a 1.2GHz Duron**, and those things are everywhere. On a decent board you can even force the duron to run at 266MHz if you find a good sample.

The point here is it's much easier to find a socket A machine with 3.3v universal AGP support that's not too fast or too slow for win98. I have a 1333MHz Athlon on a KT133A + Voodoo 3 3000 for just such a purpose. Payed 5 euro for the motherboard and CPU combo. I also built an Athlon XP 2600+ / VIA KT333 / Voodoo 3 3500TV rig just to see how far I can push a voodoo 3 😀

* I was expecting a 1.4Ghz Tualatin to be faster then a 1400MHz athlon XP due to the P3's larger 512K cache - but it's not. While it does take the lead in some tests, I found that the Athlon is quite a bit faster in games due to a better FPU and doubled bus frequency. Still, a tualatin rig is a sweet thing to own.
** 1.4 GHz PIII-S scores higher in FPU Julia (due to higher clockrate) but lower in FPU VP8 and and Quake 2 Timedemo (Demo1.dm2).

Yeah.... About that speed issue. It seems like I am not the only one that has seen much of old games running too fast.
On the other hand. I have not had v-sync enabled on my Beast, so this might explain why R9800XXL was a bit overkill.

Perhaps Sempron/Athlon 2.0ghz (Socket754) and P4 3.0ghz (Socket478) really are too fast for Win98 gaming.
Unless of course, all those glorious "highend" gfx cards are swapped for some "bottle-neck'ing" 🤣

Naaa....
It just seems as when you have all the power that are required for max performance. Going faster than that.
Simply just makes Win98 games behave in an odd way or another.
Wich P4's (Socket-478) cruches the exact same numbers as an P3 1.2 to 1.4 socket 370?

Well, the Pentium III is faster clock for clock. You can get a 1.4 GHz Pentium 4, but not Northwood AFAIK. I would say a Pentium III-s 1.4 can handle itself well against a 1.6 or maybe even a 1.8 Pentium 4.

So I chose a 2.0 GHz model to make sure it's not too fast. Incoming benchmark for example doesn't display the results correctly on 2.2 or faster (negative numbers).

kanecvr wrote:

At fist I didn't even consider a Tualatin build, but I wanted some Tualatin CPUs for my collection. Those things are rather scarce in these parts and when you do find a CPU there's no motherboard to run it in apart from server boards with no AGP slot and custom form-factors (at least this is the case in my neck of the woods).

Spot on what this project is trying to achieve 😀

philscomputerlab wrote:

Well, the Pentium III is faster clock for clock. You can get a 1.4 GHz Pentium 4, but not Northwood AFAIK. I would say a Pentium III-s 1.4 can handle itself well against a 1.6 or maybe even a 1.8 Pentium 4.

So I chose a 2.0 GHz model to make sure it's not too fast. Incoming benchmark for example doesn't display the results correctly on 2.2 or faster (negative numbers).

So...
To lure out those conflicting reports, on early Win98 games running slower on +2.1ghz. Then one should actually choose a 1.8 to 1.9ghz CPU right?
And the machine would actually not be too fast nor too slow, when wanting a replacement for the 1.4ghz P3. On the other hand. So many people are not running any 1.4ghz P3. They are running something like P3 500 to 1.0 Slot1. Taking that in, I would actually choose a 1.6 to 1.8ghz P4, if I had to recommend something for someone that had P3 back in the day's and just wanted to play what he or she was used
to play stuff like Diablo-II, Carmageddon-II and NFS2-SE on. Just a matter of choosing the right GFX for it then.
Perhaps something like an old TNT2-Ultra or GF2-GTS, just to match somewhat what they used to play around with.

I am thinking in terms of what to recommend someone that wants to re-live what they grew up on, and not just the fastest Win9X of them all.
Thinking of taking slightly newer hardware than P3's, something nobody (not even Vogon users) wants. Wich are more cheap and more avaliable.

This might be an interesting topic for a video. A face off PIII vs P4 at 1.4 GHz 😀

One problem is however chipset and memory. 865 and DDR is quite new. SDRAM boards will likely perform worse, and I've never played around with RAMBUS, but that should be quite fast.

philscomputerlab wrote:

This might be an interesting topic for a video. A face off PIII vs P4 at 1.4 GHz 😀

One problem is however chipset and memory. 865 and DDR is quite new. SDRAM boards will likely perform worse, and I've never played around with RAMBUS, but that should be quite fast.

Yes and no re: RAMBUS. Bandwidth was good, but latency was absolutely brutal.

I would also be interested in hearing about some Athlon XP builds as an alternative to the P4 line.

Also, is there anything to worry about if you find a P4 board with PCIe?

gdjacobs wrote:

Yes and no re: RAMBUS. Bandwidth was good, but latency was absolutely brutal.

It's probably marketing for the most part similar to DPI for mice. Where can you actually feel difference between slower and faster latency? Only in benchmarks?

Thraka wrote:

I would also be interested in hearing about some Athlon XP builds as an alternative to the P4 line.

Also, is there anything to worry about if you find a P4 board with PCIe?

I believe with Intel 915 chipset is the last one to support 98. I'm not sure about Athlon 64, but I think they are supported too. Athlon XP should work just as well, it's just that I didn't have much AMD gear when I did the video and Pentium 4 parts are just everywhere on eBay, so I went with the "easiest" option so to speak.

Personally I don't see much point in going with newer and faster gear. There are no Windows 98 games that "need" a 3 GHz CPU. Slow is better IMO and I like to use a lower clocked 2 GHz or so processor. Loading times do improve on a fast CPU though, so that is a plus.

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Thraka wrote:

I would also be interested in hearing about some Athlon XP builds as an alternative to the P4 line.

Also, is there anything to worry about if you find a P4 board with PCIe?

I believe with Intel 915 chipset is the last one to support XP. I'm not sure about Athlon 64, but I think they are supported too. Athlon XP should work just as well, it's just that I didn't have much AMD gear when I did the video and Pentium 4 parts are just everywhere on eBay, so I went with the "easiest" option so to speak.

Personally I don't see much point in going with newer and faster gear. There are no Windows 98 games that "need" a 3 GHz CPU. Slow is better IMO and I like to use a lower clocked 2 GHz or so processor. Loading times do improve on a fast CPU though, so that is a plus.

Might want to check over your information about win xp support and intel chipsets as some people are saying that Ivy Bridge was the last officially supported generation for XP support. There is some limited support for Win9x and Me for the 915 chipset.

Never tried these drivers but it might allow for win9x pcie builds. https://de.msi.com/Motherboard/support/915GM_ … driver&Win%2098

Sorry, I meant Windows 98 of course!

Question about that 2GHz mark :
Can it be... bypassed (?), by an underclocked Core 2 Duo (they all have unlocked lower multipliers down to x6) ?

Dreamer_of_the_past wrote:

gdjacobs wrote:

Yes and no re: RAMBUS. Bandwidth was good, but latency was absolutely brutal.

It's probably marketing for the most part similar to DPI for mice. Where can you actually feel difference between slower and faster latency? Only in benchmarks?

It's an issue with branchy code and segmented read patterns. Outside of games or encoding with highly predictable memory access patterns, latency can be a big issue.

Does the Vortex 2 do MIDI out under DOS? That's the one thing a Live! or Audigy fails for me- and since my iPad can emulate SC-88 it's a great way to get good midi music.