I have a p4 base windows 98 machine and it is (IMO) the best platform for a high performance 98 build. You can easily find quality motherboards from Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, ect for under 75$ (and often under 50$), and often complete with memory and a CPU as part of a bundle.

The 865PE chipset supports SATA 1.5 with IDE Emulation, USB 2.0, UDMA IDE, and 10/100/1000mbit ethernet, and proper chipset drivers - all with drivers for 98. A pentium IV with 800 FSB and low multiplier can actually be speed adjusted to some degree with throttle and by underclocking the bus. My 3.0ghz northwood model can go down to 1500mhz with a FSB adjustment, and down to the equivalent of 185mhz with a x8 throttle. This won't get you any dos speed reference points, but it will help with the handful of windows games that are speed sensitive. Speaking of northwood, these processors are just as good as the later prescott but have a much more reasonable 69 watt TDP.

I have paired mine with a FX quadro 2000 (geforce FX 5800 equivalent) and a Voodoo 3 2000 PCI. The quadro cards are pretty affordable, the voodoo 3 PCI not so much, but you can also get a voodoo 2 instead without breaking the bank. On my board you can switch between them in the bios, and windows 98 will let you install graphics drivers for both without much complaint.

Sleep mode works, SSE and MMX just work, and everything is stable and responsive. A good socket 478 board will have all the PCI slots you would ever need for additional sound cards (I have an Audigy 2 ZS, and Aureal Vortex 2 and a Yamaha YM744, and I am thinking about adding a voodoo 2 to complement my voodoo 3). A good p4 is also excellent for windows XP and would suite a multi boot environment.

If you are looking for a recommendation, I would go for the Asus P4P 800-E Deluxe. I nabbed mine for 38$ shipped with a CPU, memory, and cooler at auction.

mothergoose729 wrote:

I have a p4 base windows 98 machine and it is (IMO) the best platform for a high performance 98 build. You can easily find quali […]
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I have a p4 base windows 98 machine and it is (IMO) the best platform for a high performance 98 build. You can easily find quality motherboards from Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, ect for under 75$ (and often under 50$), and often complete with memory and a CPU as part of a bundle.

The 865PE chipset supports SATA 1.5 with IDE Emulation, USB 2.0, UDMA IDE, and 10/100/1000mbit ethernet, and proper chipset drivers - all with drivers for 98. A pentium IV with 800 FSB and low multiplier can actually be speed adjusted to some degree with throttle and by underclocking the bus. My 3.0ghz northwood model can go down to 1500mhz with a FSB adjustment, and down to the equivalent of 185mhz with a x8 throttle. This won't get you any dos speed reference points, but it will help with the handful of windows games that are speed sensitive. Speaking of northwood, these processors are just as good as the later prescott but have a much more reasonable 69 watt TDP.

I have paired mine with a FX quadro 2000 (geforce FX 5800 equivalent) and a Voodoo 3 2000 PCI. The quadro cards are pretty affordable, the voodoo 3 PCI not so much, but you can also get a voodoo 2 instead without breaking the bank. On my board you can switch between them in the bios, and windows 98 will let you install graphics drivers for both without much complaint.

Sleep mode works, SSE and MMX just work, and everything is stable and responsive. A good socket 478 board will have all the PCI slots you would ever need for additional sound card (I have an Audigy 2 ZS, and Aureal Vortex 2 and a Yamaha YM744). If you are looking for a recommendation, I would go for the Asus P4P 800-E Deluxe. I nabbed mine for 38$ shipped with a CPU, memory, and cooler at auction.

Cool, so what would you do with a second identical mobo? What more could you add to your roster? I hadn't thought of the Voodoo 3.

have a p4 base windows 98 machine and it is (IMO) the best platform for a high performance 98 build

Best would be Core 2 on a 865G/865PE board with ISA slots.
Without ISA slots, 875P boards give you more "ultimate" feel and they also usually have gigabit LAN.

The Serpent Rider wrote:

have a p4 base windows 98 machine and it is (IMO) the best platform for a high performance 98 build

Best would be Core 2 on a 865G/865PE board with ISA slots.

Yeah probably, but that is like big foot riding a unicorn rare . There are 865 chipset 775 boards, which aught to run 800fsb core2 processors that would be fun to experiment with. I have also heard good things about some later chipsets (965 I think?). My limited experience with Core2 and 98 is that things get a bit squirrely. When playing games before 2002, a 3.0ghz northwood and a core2duo are both way more than enough IMO, so I feel like the p4 machines are just more reliable and easier to work with in this case. Feel free to disagree 😀.

965 + C2D is IMO great for late XP era. I had it combined with HD3850 and it was reliable and powerful (for the price) build.
For some reason I never liked Pentium 4 (or more exactly socket 478). I preferred Athlons at that time. Not before nor after, just at he time of P4 😉

I tried a socket 754 board first with an Athlon 3400+ and it worked pretty well. I couldn't find drivers for anything though, so I had to rely on plug and play for USB and IDE. The SATA didn't work for me at all. No chipset drivers either.

I still have this one
https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/support/K8N_Neo_Platinum
with A64 3000+ and it runs fine. For SATA you have to install drivers from floppy during XP installation. Other drivers are on the CD and works as they should.

Got 3 478 OC's myself, who hasn't right? 😉 But I think they are kind of special and end of an era having AGP and IDE.

One is my "ultimate Win98 build" GF6800 Ultra, Audigy 2 ZS Duel Win98/XP build
The other 2 are flexible enough to make up numbers in lan gaming, dos, Win9x, WinXP games all on 1 PC

I ran Voodoo 2 SLI for a bit without any trouble but unless you already have them you can probably get away with a decent AGP card and nglide as a P4 is so overpowered for any Win9x games anyway.
Sound wise, its not all bad Aureal Vortex, YMF, or SB Live! or better will work in all 3 OS's

I'm not a S478 fan for several reasons:

- Socket 478 is too small and doesn't lock the CPU well enough to support any large and/or heavy coolers. I now have several experiences where during removing the cooler the CPU could be pulled out of the socket without even unlocking it. The sticky thermal paste between the cooler and CPU is part of this problem.
- Socket 478 CPU have very fragile pins
- Most socket 478 CPU's are not really energy efficient
- Underclocking S478 CPU's for DOS games is out of the question
- Socket 478 boards with ISA slots are pretty much not available
- Most socket 478 motherboards are of dubious quality

Still, it's not all bad, because the low prices, the availability of parts, the pretty well designed OEM systems, AGP 8x, USB 2.0, UDMA and SATA are certainly advantages. That having said; socket 370 parts are not exactly rare nor expensive in my area either.

SpectriaForce wrote:

I'm not a S478 fan for several reasons: […]
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I'm not a S478 fan for several reasons:

- Socket 478 is too small and doesn't lock the CPU well enough to support any large and/or heavy coolers. I now have several experiences where during removing the cooler the CPU could be pulled out of the socket without even unlocking it. The sticky thermal paste between the cooler and CPU is part of this problem.
- Socket 478 CPU have very fragile pins
- Most socket 478 CPU's are not really energy efficient
- Underclocking S478 CPU's for DOS games is out of the question
- Socket 478 boards with ISA slots are pretty much not available
- Most socket 478 motherboards are of dubious quality

Still, it's not all bad, because the low prices, the availability of parts, the pretty well designed OEM systems, AGP 8x, USB 2.0, UDMA and SATA are certainly advantages. That having said; socket 370 parts are not exactly rare nor expensive in my area either.

The biggest advantage socket 478 has over socket 370 is performance. The CPUs are faster and the I/O is better. You can find boards with ISA slots more easily on socket 370, but you are aren't going to hit many reference speed points for DOS on a fast pentium III either. Finding a board with an ISA slot and tualatin support can also be a bit challenging, and usually means either trying to find the rare and expensive 440bx boards that happen to work, or going with the (IMO) inferior VIA chipsets. Each platform has it's pros and cons. Personally, I chose to build a dedicated DOS PC and a windows 98 PC, rather than try and build one computer to do both.

- Socket 478 is too small and doesn't lock the CPU well enough to support any large and/or heavy coolers

Nonsense.

Socket 478 CPU have very fragile pins

That applies to any socketed CPU after Socket 423.

- Most socket 478 CPU's are not really energy efficient

I don't see any problem to get energy efficient model or undervolt the one at your possession. Northwoods are overall efficient CPUs.

Underclocking S478 CPU's for DOS games is out of the question

Actually it's more efficient than Pentium 2 or 3, because you can throttle CPU directly.

- Most socket 478 motherboards are of dubious quality

Most of X motherboards are of dubious quality. Applies to any popular cheap consumer platform.

Finding a board with an ISA slot and tualatin support can also be a bit challenging

They're not that hard to find and also can work really well with VIA C3 CPUs. So if you're not bothered to switch CPUs every so often*, it's great and relatively cheap solution for a Win9x system.

*Late Coppermine, Tualatin and C3 don't have an exposed core, so there's no risk involved.

The Serpent Rider wrote:

Nonsense.

I have several experiences with bad S478 CPU sockets and none of such experiences with socket 370 or 462.

The Serpent Rider wrote:

I don't see any problem to get energy efficient model or undervolt the one at your possession. Northwoods are overall efficient CPUs.

The Pentium 4 with Northwood core consumes 2x as much power compared to a fast Pentium III, which means that you need a larger cooler, which can be a problem for the tiny and fragile socket 478.

The Serpent Rider wrote:

Actually it's more efficient than Pentium 2 or 3, because you can throttle CPU directly.

What do you mean with 'throttle directly'? You can adjust the FSB if I remember correctly, but that doesn't get you well under 1GHz. Maybe you can deactivate the L2 cache, but I am not sure. *Little update: yes, you can deactivate the L1 & L2 cache on some motherboards which will give you a 386 speed CPU.* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqCPnO97Vl0

The Serpent Rider wrote:

Most of X motherboards are of dubious quality. Applies to any popular cheap consumer platform.

Socket 478 motherboards are from the capacitor plague era 2000-2005 (and so are S462 boards).

buy me stuff instead please

I have several experiences with bad S478 CPU sockets and none of such experiences with socket 370 or 462.

Socket 478 with a backplate (late ASUS boards for example) or a custom mounting has zero problems even with ludicrous coolers like Big Typhoon or Scythe Zipang. Very few Socket A boards allow custom mounting.

The Pentium 4 with Northwood core consumes 2x as much power compared to a fast Pentium III

Pentium 4 Northwood with a comparable to late Pentium 3 performance does not consume twice as much power.

Socket 478 motherboards are from the capacitor plague era 2000-2005 (and so are S462 boards).

Capacitor plague era includes many Pentium 3 boards.