Hey everyone, about a year ago I came with an idea to build affordable Windows 98 PC. So, after all of the shenanigans, I have the most stable configuration than the previous ones I've tried:

But I've noticed that this motherboard is painfully slow at USB booting. Although USB operates at 2.0 speeds in Win98 and WinXP, the speeds are at 1.1 level when booting from flash drive, for example, it takes ages to copy win98 folder or load modern Linux kernel. Also I want to gain some performance, although it's really unnecessary for such an old system as Win98. Also with 64-bit CPUs I get an ability to boot 64-bit LiveCDs and do other things with newer architecture. So I want to change the platform, I have some ideas:

1. Another Socket 478 motherboard from other vendor, for example, ASUS or ASRock. By far this is the cheapest variant, all except mobo stays the same, no gain in performance, but at least my USB issue would be fixed
2. ASUS P5PE-VM - one of the few Socket 775 + 865G chipset + AGP slot motherboards that allows Core 2 Duo processors to be installed. I have some supported CPUs for this platform, like Core 2 Duo E6300 or Pentium Dual-Core E2160, but I consider to buy something like E6600 or even X6800 to get more single-core performance. We have loads of these mobos and they're sold for quite a good price actually, so I consider actually going with this variant.
3. Socket 939 motherboard with AGP and preferably VIA chipset. They say this type of motherboards (like Asus A8V Deluxe or Abit AV8) is a pretty good choice for Windows 98 when talking about compatibility issues (say hello to Audigy) comparing to nForce ones. But for now our market is flooded with PCIe motherboards with nForce or Radeon chipsets. There are some motherboards with PCIe and VIA chipsets, but buying a rather old PCIe Win98-compatible graphics card will be somewhat a mess. I actually have a GeForce 6600 GT from MSI, but that's not a choice for near-ideal Win98 compatibility. For now we have only one Asus A8V (not deluxe) on the market for a very ridiculous price (I can buy a good 775 P35 instead of this old crap), so if something similar appears on the market, I'll more likely buy it and a single-core CPU like Athlon 64 3500+.

Again, the main goal is that the new platform should be able to boot USB 2.0 sticks with intended speed, but if there's some performance for cheap, why not?
If there are some nuances like further compatibility issues or there's something you can say about the hardware part, I would like to hear that too.