1995-1999 Win 9x

AMD K6-2 450 barebone, overclock to 500 if you can.
SBLive PCI card (or perhaps the AWE64)
Two Voodoo2 cards
A less powerhungry video card than the GF4 Ti4400 like a Geforce 2 MX 400.
64-256MB memory depending on the motherboards cacheable range.

1992 - 1997 DOS

Pentium 166
SB AWE32 CT2760
Yamaha SW60XG
A less powerhungry video card than the GF4 Ti4400
64MB memory

Demos and stuff

Celeron 300a
A Gravis Ultrasound
A less powerhungry video card than the GF4 Ti4400
64MB memory.

If your motherboard lets you overclock the Celeron 300A to 450 and it's stable then use the K6-2 for Demos and the Celeron for Win 9x.

If you want to play games from year 2000 you need to get a faster Slot-1 CPU and use that system.

Are you looking mostly for capability or do you want systems that are fairly period correct?

gdjacobs wrote:

Are you looking mostly for capability or do you want systems that are fairly period correct?

Capability. The experience is more important than the specific hardware.

you can get great performance and compatibility with some pentium 4 and Athlon XP boards...

as for period accurate, I would personally go with Pentium 3 or Athlon/Duron.
from your hardware I would go with the Celeron 300A @ 450, awe64, Ti 4400 I think, obviously if you need glide is good to have the V2 along

I've used 98SE as my secondary gaming OS on my main PC until early in 2003 with a Northwood P4 and Geforce 4 MX, it was pretty good, it used to run BF1942 better than XP due to my PC only having 256mb of RDRAM

keenerb wrote:

Here's what I've got to work with that I reasonably remember from that era: […]
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Here's what I've got to work with that I reasonably remember from that era:

A pile of SB32 2760 cards non-pnp
Two PNP SB Awe32
Awe64 gold
Two SBLive PCI cards
Ultrasound Max + two Ultrasound PNP Pro
Two Geforce 4400ti
Two Voodoo2 cards
AMD K6-2 450 barebones
Pentium 166 barebones
Celeron 300a barebones
Yamaha SWX60G midi card
More old RAM than anyone should legally be allowed to hoard.

Out of this stockpile, what's your suggestion for the best WIndows 9x gaming system? It's been far too long since I tinkered with anything in that era.

I just assume that you want playing Windows 9x games mostly (1997-2001?) and maybe some late DOS games?

I don't know what kind of a motherboard do you have for it, but I would start with your Celeron 300a. Pentium 166 is not a good choice for W9x in my opinion and AMD K6 has nothing to offer a PIII class CPU can't (well, apart from being able to work at very low speeds if desired for complete old-DOS compatibility). Besides, PIII class motherboards will be easer to work with (in general) when compared to K6 boards.

256MB is nicely overkill for everything, but you can go for 512MB just for the fun of it if you want, but anything more than that might become a liability for some situations (might need some tweaks to even just work).

I would choose Geforce 4400Ti and of course the Voodoo2 card (both Voodoo2 cards, if they are ok to work in SLI configuration) for a nice level of overkill.

AWE64 would be my choice for DOS compatibility but if this is not important for you, than SB Live might be a better choice (depending on which specific model you have). I don't have much idea about it, but you probably would like to have your Yamaha card in the system, too, for those late DOS games with nice MIDI music.

The parts listed here have a lot of potential. It'd be good to know if you've got any 2D cards on hand and whether you'd be interested in shopping for some additional components to build a P4 or Socket A system for instance.

The K6-2 will be able to handle titles designed for 386DX chips all the way to DirectX 6 and 7 titles (at low resolution). If you want to focus mainly on DOS titles, I'd equip it with an ISA sound card such as one of the CT2760s (confirm it has proper OPL3 support) and a MIDI interface. Ideally it should be equipped with a fast 2D card such as an S3 card and perhaps a Voodoo 1 (due to some Glide for DOS titles being hard coded for the V1). You can also throw in the GUS in case you have a title that supports it's wavetable capabilities or you want to mess with mod files.

The Celeron 300a is just asking to be OCd to 450 and equipped with the SLI Voodoos and a PCI sound card. It would make an excellent early Win98 gaming system. Couple the Voodoos with a 2D card with decent image quality. To me, PII and beyond just isn't great for DOS gaming. It's either really fast or really slow where K6-2 and Pentium MMX chips tend to provide a nice spread of performance options using cache and multiplier settings.

As there's some performance overlap between the K6-2 and the Celery, you may only need one of the builds to do what you want.

The Geforce 4400 will be severely CPU limited on any of the platforms you've listed here. It should be installed on a high clocked P3 or better.

I have a working Pentium III 700mhz and a half-dozen P4 boards/processors of unknown functionality, as well as any number of Duron/early Athlon mobo/cpus.

I have one or two S3 Trio64 cards, some S3 Virge of various makes/models, some random Number Nine video card i can't remember (Imagine 128?), and a Riva 128zx. Pretty sure ther'es a matrox millenium in there somewhere as well, but I haven't seen it for a little while.

I already have a DOS retro PC setup around an old 386DX40 system. That's more of a hobby project considering how well DOSBox runs, but this I'm hoping to get more regular use out of for my vast library of late 90's/early 2000's games, many of which run VERY poorly on Windows 8/10...

Those 2760 cards, are sweet in non-pnp systems (386 and 486).
And well.... If you have more than 3 cards, they go for a nice and good price.
Or just keep them in order to have spare parts.

I would say to build two or three systems. 486/P1, K6-II/K6-III and a high end Athlon.
Then investigate the potentials of you'r cards and decide what to use in what.

For win98 games I use an Athlon64 3800+ with a Geforce 6800 because I can max everything out and play at silly big resolutions, but for most win98 games, played at period correct resolutions / settings, a fast pentium III or slow athlon XP will do just fine. For wavetable music in win98 I use a Yamaha DS-1 - it's PCI and the on board synth is amazing.

keenerb wrote:

I already have a DOS retro PC setup around an old 386DX40 system. That's more of a hobby project considering how well DOSBox runs, but this I'm hoping to get more regular use out of for my vast library of late 90's/early 2000's games, many of which run VERY poorly on Windows 8/10...

Considering what you've got already and what you want to run, I'd build a Socket A system running Win98 with the GF 4400 and a fast mobo and CPU. If you like, you can also build a K6-2 system for late DOS era gaming. That should have you pretty well covered.