Getting that card to work under Win9x requires modding the drivers a bit and there is no guide here how to do that but some people have done it. As for dos support there are good reasons why people use older cards that are much more period correct as compatibility and features are certain to work with dos. After Geforce 5 FX generation a lot of dos and win9x era features got stripped out.

For Dos and Win9x you would be looking at something like a Pentium 3 rig with a 3DFX card along with a proper ISA sound card and a slow down utility for speed sensitive dos games.

nforce4max wrote:

Getting that card to work under Win9x requires modding the drivers a bit and there is no guide here how to do that but some people have done it. As for dos support there are good reasons why people use older cards that are much more period correct as compatibility and features are certain to work with dos. After Geforce 5 FX generation a lot of dos and win9x era features got stripped out.

For Dos and Win9x you would be looking at something like a Pentium 3 rig with a 3DFX card along with a proper ISA sound card and a slow down utility for speed sensitive dos games.

Thank you. Is there a particular card that you would say was the best?

Also, I might be using a board without a ISA slot (I'm trying to use newer hardware if possible to avoid capacitor issues), which I know isn't ideal. I read somewhere that I could use two different PCI soundcards, for different types of audio, to best support DOS. Is this right?

Schmidt wrote:

nforce4max wrote:

Getting that card to work under Win9x requires modding the drivers a bit and there is no guide here how to do that but some people have done it. As for dos support there are good reasons why people use older cards that are much more period correct as compatibility and features are certain to work with dos. After Geforce 5 FX generation a lot of dos and win9x era features got stripped out.

For Dos and Win9x you would be looking at something like a Pentium 3 rig with a 3DFX card along with a proper ISA sound card and a slow down utility for speed sensitive dos games.

Thank you. Is there a particular card that you would say was the best?

Also, I might be using a board without a ISA slot (I'm trying to use newer hardware if possible to avoid capacitor issues), which I know isn't ideal. I read somewhere that I could use two different PCI soundcards, for different types of audio, to best support DOS. Is this right?

There really isn't the "best card" as there is a lot of good ones but they are all older cards, as for sound it needs to be isa as they are the easiest to get working and some are very affordable. There are some pci sound cards that are dos compatible but they require some effort to get working and you may need a board with SB Link for ISA dma so that dos games work correctly. There are some yamaha pci sound cards with sb link but they are not cheap anymore (very sad panda), there is one other but I don't know much about it other than it is cheap and yamaha based but was relabled under a different brand.

Don't rush to build a rig for economic reasons but going with a socket 370 or a early socket A with at least one ISA slot is the way to go, a number of Geforce 4 and older agp cards offer good dos support as well excellent Win9x performance. Socket 370 and socket A boards can still be had on the NA and EU eBay pretty cheaply if you search around well enough, the graphics card can be so so as supplies tend to go through short droughts, the sound card if you go around the bottom to mid range are still reasonably cheap but prices having slowly been on the rise for many years. High end ISA card prices are scary to say the least while yamaha pci sound cards can be massively overpriced at times.

On the cheap look for a 3DFX Voodoo 3 series card (under $20) or a Nvidia Voodoo 4 4x00 Ti
The sound card is likely to be around $20 to 30 (search for cards that have the ymf262 chip for opl 3)
The board will likely be around $20 to 40 depending how good it is and if it comes with cpu, ram, and cooler ect
PSU especially if you go with a socket A build needs to have a very strong +5v rail and for isa support needs to have a -5v rail. Beware re-capping is very common for these units but worth it and worth the risk of buying one that might need work as modern units often have a very weak +5v rail and no -5v rail at all.
Cooling is pretty much the same between socket 370 and socket a.

Other options, you can search around for slot 1 (pentium 2/3) and socket 7 (amd k6,pentium,pentium mmx) boards that come with a cpu as the sellers often put these up for next to nothing. Slot 2 Xeon and Socket A are pretty cool but they don't show up often.

Thank you for all this very useful information. I'll let you know how I get on.

stick with GeforceFX/Radeon 8500 or older video.

Or better yet, have two GPU's for different usages.
I have a MX440 and a 6600GT, I wanted to throw the MX440 away, but I'm not going to anymore 😀
Ti4xxx series are VERY good (if not the best?) for 98SE, as many users here said in the past.

MrMateczko wrote:

Or better yet, have two GPU's for different usages.
I have a MX440 and a 6600GT, I wanted to throw the MX440 away, but I'm not going to anymore 😀
Ti4xxx series are VERY good (if not the best?) for 98SE, as many users here said in the past.

Nah considering the Ti 4400 and FX support DirectX on hardware down to 3, id go with the FX 5950 Ultra for the ultimate DX9 card, i think Radeon 9xxx supports down to DX6

candle_86 wrote:

MrMateczko wrote:

Or better yet, have two GPU's for different usages.
I have a MX440 and a 6600GT, I wanted to throw the MX440 away, but I'm not going to anymore 😀
Ti4xxx series are VERY good (if not the best?) for 98SE, as many users here said in the past.

Nah considering the Ti 4400 and FX support DirectX on hardware down to 3, id go with the FX 5950 Ultra for the ultimate DX9 card, i think Radeon 9xxx supports down to DX6

5950 "ultimate dx9" I have to disagree there 😒
There is a Lot of much stronger DX9 cards out there like the X1950xtx ect.

I have had not had any problems running Radeon9600 and 9800, using Dx7. On the other hand, I am not running that many games.
Mostly Dx7 and sometimes Dx8 games. When I am in nVidia land, I tend not to go higher than Gf4-ti series.
The FX-5xxx series gives me too many problems in Dx7 games. UT99 is missing textures and renders with error's.
NFS-2000 is simply unplayable on FX-5xxx series, as menu-text's are eighter rendered wrong (blurry) or simply missing.
Using GF4 with AAx2 (at least) makes NFS-2000 useable, just not the same as on a GF2, TNT2, Matrox-G400 or V3-3000/3500.

GF-7900 are missing technology (old-school features) and are missing native driversupport. I would only use them for XP.
Personally I go for Radeon-9600 or 9800 cards as the fastest Win98 cards, and TNT2-Ultra/Voodoo3/G400 as the slowest ones.

brostenen wrote:

Mostly Dx7 and sometimes Dx8 games. When I am in nVidia land, I tend not to go higher than Gf4-ti series.

Were there noticed compatibility advantages of GF3 compared to GF4 Ti in Win9x or DOS ?

Tertz wrote:

brostenen wrote:

Mostly Dx7 and sometimes Dx8 games. When I am in nVidia land, I tend not to go higher than Gf4-ti series.

Were there noticed compatibility advantages of GF3 compared to GF4 Ti in Win9x or DOS ?

From my knowledge there isn't much a difference between GF3 and GF4 Ti dos wise but after that features in both dos and win9x drop off starting with the GF5 FX generation.