Hi everyone,
I really like playing old games from the 90's era. But I am asking anyone for my ideas for an ultimate windows 98 gaming pc that would like to be built. I would love to play old games from the early 90's-mid 2000's, including MS-DOS games. I'm asking for help.
So any parts list would really be appreciated.
My "ultimate win98 PC" has these specs:
Athlon 64 4000+ (single core) ADA4000DKA5CF (socket 939)
ECS KV2 Extreme (VIA K8T800 PRO)
Leadtek Geforce 6800 AGP
512MB DDR400 (2x256MB)
Yamaha DS-XG YMF744
It blows trough any win98 game and some XP games @ 1600x1200, but will only play some, late 90's dos games.
Building a good Windows 98 gaming pc
What should I know about building my first ever Windows 98 Retro Gaming PC?
Here is my "ultimate" setup.
VIA C3 "Nehemiah" 1.2ghz + MSI Slotket Adapter
Intel Slot 1 Gigabyte GA-6BXC (440BX)
Nvidia FX Quadro 1000
Creative Voodoo 2 12MB SLI
Orpheus Sound Card
Aureal Vortex 2
Sound Blaster Audigy 2ZS
Last iteration of my ultimate 98 machine was a Tbred at 175x14, DDR@350 on an AMD 761 board (very specific "recipe" for CMOS settings needed) with a GF-4200 Ti running 4600+ clocks, couple of those 80GB Western Digital BBs with the large cache in RAID 0, in 3DMark 2001SE was scoring around 20,000. Ran that until about 7 years ago, then caps seemed to be going weak on the motherboard. It's just been sitting waiting to get around to looking at it, recapping it or whatever....
Funny thing is, it wasn't supposed to be my ultimate 98 machine... before I built that, 2 years prior I spent near a thousand on "good" parts KT333 board, two clicks down from highest speed CPU (Typically best bang for buck and typically overclock okay) an 1800+, best HSF around, GF3 Ti with a "futureproof" 128MB of RAM, and oh lordy was that thing a pile of problems, mostly because Gigabyte can't implement AGP to save their life. Even all stock it was flakey. Anyhoo, couple of years later I've got a hundred bucks or so, and go to what might have been the last good computer fair ever in these parts, I think I'll pick up some parts to have some fun with, $10 case, $10 motherboard, both new believe it or not, used and grimy looking 4200 for $20, tbred 1600 CPU for $50, think I grabbed a spare 40GB drive at the same time, but it got my good ones when it turned out it was going to be a little ripper.
Edit: Oh yah, after I got that machine going I got a junk price used K7S5A and put all the parts from the previous machine in that for my wife, and THAT ran quicker, smoother and more trouble free than the Gigabytch 7VRX v1.1
Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.
How important is dos games?
Dos really wants an ISA sound card which will restrict how far you can push the Win98 side of things.
Some PCI cards do exist the Yamaha been a common option but it does have it's limitations, Even with ISA we don't have 1 single card that can do it all.
Early 90s- mid 2000's I'd go with P3 Slot 1, faster the CPU the better.
Dos side of things it has ISA, BUT P3's aren't very good at downclocking if you have any speed sensitive games
https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/List_of_ … sensitive_games
Windows side of things My P3 600 can play anything that doesn't run on XP just fine, faster CPU's mean faster load times.
BX motherboard has the benefit of having rock stable drivers.
Graphics for "Ultimate" title you have a few options for D3D side of things
GeForce 4Ti or FX are the fastest while keeping backwards compatibility. Good match for the P3
GeForce 6 or 7 with modified drivers are the fastest outright but has compatibility issues with some games.
For the 3DFX/Glide side you can either,
You can get a couple of Voodoo 2 cards in SLI and pair with your D3D card from above
Sacrifice D3D performance and get a Voodoo 3 or 5. ($$$) A Voodoo 2 SLI setup performs about the same as a V3 2000.
Below link shows how compatible these cards are in dos gaming.
https://gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS/
Windows Sound you have 2 main formats.
Creative EAX, Audigy 2 ZS is top card in this list
Aureal A3D 2.0. Your only option is cards with the AU8830 chip, typically the Vortex 2
Both of these have dos drivers if you do go with a PCI only system the Aural beating Creatives, both are pretty bad though
ISA Dos sound is a topic in itself.
Over the years I've found I do most gaming on
I have a 486 for dos but just about everything works on the P3
The P3 does jsut about all my dos gaming and gets me as far as lets say GTA3
My 775 based XP build picks up at GTA3 and can play all the more demanding 9x games the P3 struggles at.
Ultimate in what way?
What I think of is generally:
Other than these things can vary. Maybe you want real Glide support (instead of the nGlide the Geforce FX offers), then you can add a Voodoo/Voodoo2(SLI).
Maybe you want better DOS support so you can add an ISA sound card.
Maybe you want A3D on top of EAX and add a Vorted2 sound card as well.
Windows 9x was a long era, close to a decade overlapping with late DOS one end and early XP on the other and things were still less standardized with a lot more competing manufacturers than in the XP era.
