I'm not quite sure what your asking. If its just what games will work on what systems then.

Basically Dos gaming will work on anything with an ISA slot as PCI soundcards have pretty bad dos support.

Win9x gaming is more dependent on Video card. If the game supports Glide, you'll want a Voodoo card
If its Direct X/D3D then ATI or Nvidia cards are what your after.

Of course you always get the exception to the rules. Here is a list of games that demand specific hardware.
https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/List_of_ … sensitive_games

Oh, sure, I have the means already to tell what game runs better in DOS versus 98SE. What I would want to test is the performance of the various processors. What I think I am asking is whether I can build one machine that will span multiple generations of hardware in an historically accurate way. I think I've seen one youtuber who claims to have gotten a Super Socket 7 board to work as a 386, 486, K6-2+ and K6-3 system, mostly with down clocking I think. I might go for that if it legitimately runs at the speed of a 386, which I will be able to test once I've finished troubleshooting my 386 machine. Then if I can determine whether that machine can be upgraded to a 486DX I'd really be in business for benchmark comparisons.

Anyway, i'm just offering it up for discussion, I've already got tons to read and research on my lonesome but would love to add to the stack based on solid recommendations around here.

For a minor update on the older PC troubleshooting, I've made progress. The new PSU came in but not the AT adapter cables. I've ruled the P4 A-bit IS7 motherboard dead. It won't post or even cause the speaker to beep with nothing hooked up. My good ole Asus P2B 440BX board is still going strong, as are both my Slot 1 CPUs. Using a PCI SATA controller I've installed Win98SE on the Samsung SATA drive that was left in this computer.

My Promise SATA300 TX2, Fastrack TX2300, and Sil3114 all have problems loading drivers in 98SE though. I'm hoping I won't have to track down something more expensive for this adapter.

My goal for this machine will be to see if I can underclock either my Celeron 300A or PII 400 to 100mhz and get reasonable gaming results comparable to an actual P1. I also intend to use it for my ATI AiW 7500, as I recall that card having superior video capture compatibility with Composite game console outputs.

-edit-

A couple of reinstalls of Win98SE later I was able to get the Sil3114 working with the drivers available here on Vogons, thanks all!

I wouldn't rule the abit a board a lost cause just yet. Considering it was made during the capacitor plague era, it might need a full recap.

Yeah, I won't be tossing it. But I won't be recapping a full motherboard until I manage to spring for a desoldering unit. I've got a Jaguar CD Developer unit, a Sega CD Model 1 and a Game Gear ahead in line besides.

I've got three Slot 1 based Win98SE cloned Maxtor drives running finally. The good ole P3B-F kept the PIII 800e, Matrox Mystique, m3D and Monster 3D Voodoo1 selectable. I swapped out the GeForce 256 and put in the 3D Prophet 4500 Kyro II instead. Benchmark results in Quake 3 Arena, Final Reality, 3dmark99Max, 3dmark 2000 and 3dmark2k1 have been run already with no errors. Results will be collated and posted later, but overall this is very comparable to the GeForce 256 with the added plus of environment bump mapping support.

Try as I did, for days, I could not get my new to me Guillemot Maxi Gamer Phoenix 16MB 3DFx Banshee AGP card to play with my original Asus P2B board. With the same cloned install of 98SE as the P3B-F system I could install a TNT 2 Ultra or the Geforce256, but this Banshee would freeze whenever I attempted to install drivers for it, or access the hard drive in My Computer or Explorer. This, of course, was after clearing all motherboard and video card drivers in safe mode and letting everything reinstall. So, the P2B gets to have a PII 400 and the GeForce 256 instead. So far I am shocked at how CPU dependant the 256 actually is. On the PII 400 its performance drops well below the Kyro II it formerly trounced in some areas with a PIII 500 system. As it is, a PII 400 Mhz and GeForce 256 would represent quite the out of reach financial burdon to my college spending budget back in 1999, so this will be the redubbed 99Box. Technically the PIII 800e and Geforce 256 represent the peak of 1999's PC hardware performance, but pragmatism wins then and it wins now.

Finally, a new to me slot one system with a generic motherboard got the third Maxtor clone Win98SE treatment. This one had the Geforce256 long enough to have all my benchmarks run and is now running the Banshee just fine. Oddly, this system crashed with the Kyro II, so each system basically chose its card for compatibility reasons. Again, all old motherboard, video card, audio, etc drivers were painstakingly removed in safe mode before reinstalling all motherboard drivers. This system has the "benefit" of on board sound, which I disabled. So the GeForce 256 and Banshee will have the benefit of all benchmarks taken with no audio allegedly affecting performance. Then I'll install my spare Awe64 ISA card for some 3DFX Voodoo 2 era gaming.

Finally, another one of my recent acquired PCs happened to be an Athlon XP 2600+ with a Radeon 7500 already installed, a simple Windows XP cleanup job and swap with my All in Wonder 7500 restored to me the single best video capture solution I have ever tested for S-Video or Composite signals.