Warlord wrote on 2021-07-09, 16:19:

Try actually running the game the cofig screen always looks like that I don't think u actually tested it just looked at the config 🤣

You assume too much. As if I would go through the trouble of installing a game and then not actually start it.

For the record, I loaded a save, played through a few battles and it all worked fine. And bloodem already stated that he played FF7 several times on his FX5900 using 45.23 drivers.

Also, I specifically asked you for a FF7 test case, and you said it would only use software rendering unless older drivers are installed. That is clearly wrong, which is why I posted that screenshot, as it shows that Direct3D Hardware Acceleration is enabled.

Warlord wrote on 2021-07-09, 16:19:

Try actually running the game the cofig screen always looks like that I don't think u actually tested it just looked at the config 🤣

In case you've missed it:

bloodem wrote on 2021-07-09, 15:08:

And I can confirm that it works perfectly with the same official patch 1.02 on GeForce FX 5900 (driver version 45.23), I've played it many times on my Windows 98 overkill builds.

Now, I'm not sure why we're arguing about this. 😀 There WILL be a few games that don't work properly or don't work at all (even if FF7 is not one of them). But the main point remains: MOST of the games will work fine with an FX, as long as you're not using one of the very late 6x.xx / 7x.xx / 8x.xx drivers.

appiah4 wrote on 2021-07-09, 07:48:

Be more specific about what games you want to run with it. There are Win9x games where the Voodoo 3 won't cut it and there are […]
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Scoob wrote on 2021-07-03, 11:54:

I want to build a PC and be done with it, so it would be nice if it run a lot of games with no issues or crashes to the desktop, […]
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I want to build a PC and be done with it, so it would be nice if it run a lot of games with no issues or crashes to the desktop, because I never know what I might want to try.
I am aiming at maximum game compatibility and system stability for the win9x era.
For what I gather it seems that a 440BX is the most solid base for this project. Also Windows 98 SE.
My initial thoughts are a Voodoo 3 and a Creative AWE 64, but I was hoping for advice, not only regarding the hardware, but also drivers, directX and that kind of stuff.
Thank you.

Be more specific about what games you want to run with it. There are Win9x games where the Voodoo 3 won't cut it and there are games where a PCI card could enhance the experience significantly. If you really want an all rounder then I would say:

Intel 440BX
700MHz+ Pentium III CPU
512MB RAM
GeForce 4 Ti
Voodoo 2 SLI
Sound Blaster Pro compatible ISA sound card (this is a rabbit's hole in and of itself but I would advise an ESS ES1868 for being cheap and all around very good at everything)
3D enhanced PCI sound card (I like CS4624/CS4630 cards but Aureal Vortex 2/Advantage or SB Audigy/2/ZS would also work - stay clear of Live!)

I can only support this recommendation!

If necessary, I would add the following supplementary note

• Mainboard: if possible choose a board with S370, the higher clocked CPUs are much cheaper than for Slot1. The i815 chipset is also compatible and stable and allows 133MHz FSB (cheaper, faster CPUs). In any case take care to check the capacitors and change it, if necessary.
• CPU: for uncompromising 2001 gaming I would go towards 933MHz + and 133MHz FSB
• Graphics card: Voodoo 3 / 4 / 5 or GF2, GF3 and GF FX would also be suitable for the CPU class and largely compatible with the target SW until 2001. Same for ATI Radeon series (75oo and 8500), but you lose palettized textures for some pre 1999 games. You can compensate it with a Voodoo 2 AddOn card.
• Soundcard: the Audigy 2 is cheap stable and compatible with good gaming experience (EAX3). You have a second system for DOS gaming, so eventually you don‘t need an ISA sound card

I've already mentioned some of the games that I'm definitely going to play, like tomb raider, quake, serious sam and max payne, mafia, return to castle wolfenstein, red faction. Other games will be pod, carmaggedon 2, colin mcrae 2, half-life, mdk 2, dungeon keeper 2, thief... also want to try interstate 76. I like games where I can shoot, destroy stuff, fight and beat up characters, drive fast and destroy the cars... But the point is I don't want to have to make changes in the pc when I discover a game that I like and want to play.

I though this would be easier, but I confess I'm more confused now: 440BX i815 i845 i865 KT600 KT800 Windows XP Geforce 2, Geforce 4 Ti, FX series, isa cards, no isa cards, SB Live! Audigy ESS1898, I mean, isn't it possible to reach a consensus about a general guideline?... sorry to insist on this. Maybe what I'm asking can't be done.

Today a friend, older than me, found out I was building a pc (I don't know that I am) and gifted me a socket 462 motherboard, it has a chipset from nVidia, the NF2. Don't really know what to do, maybe I'll keep the KT266/duron/tnt2 pc that I already have and pray .

For me it's been Windows 98 SE with all the updates applied to it installed on anything 500MHz or less with 384MB of RAM or less. This is coming from a guy who used this as his primary setup between 2003-2006.

That old GEM would run anything.....there was a time I almost got out of vintage PC's at that time because I was actually getting a pretty authentic experience out of having 98 SE with a NVIDIA MX4000 and a SoundBlaster 16 PCI - right on down to a 17" CRT monitor so yellowed it matched the GEM's yellowed late Full-AT era chassis. Northgate OmniKey 102 keyboard and a PC-TRAC Serial trackball, and Microsoft Sidewinder Gamepads. The best of both worlds in one box.

Scoob wrote on 2021-07-09, 22:58:

But the point is I don't want to have to make changes in the pc when I discover a game that I like and want to play.

That's your problem if you aren't aware of what Marvin is. Folks in Marvin are fond of "experiencing" builds, they love to make changes, trying out different combination of CPUs, motherboards, GPUs and sound cards to get the "feel" of the system.

Scoob wrote on 2021-07-09, 22:58:

...games that I'm definitely going to play, like tomb raider, quake, serious sam and max payne, mafia, return to castle wolfenstein, red faction. Other games will be pod, carmaggedon 2, colin mcrae 2, half-life, mdk 2, dungeon keeper 2, thief... also want to try interstate 76.

If you were told to believe that you need to build an old or period correct PC to play those games from the past 20 years or so, then whoever told you so was just outright outdated in his understanding. You can't blame them as most of them will insist the mindset of the past and have probably little exposure to what happen today on the bleeding edge of modern virtualization.

I've been testing multiple configurations for windows 98 and here are my thoughts:
- P3 on Bx440 is very nice and DOS compatible, but the cpu and AGP 2x limits the performance heavily
- P3 on S370 or tualatin - nice and stable, but since you have no isa in 99% cases why not to go higher
- P4 always gave me trouble - motherboards were failing constantly - no matter the brand - and cpu cooler mounting system makes is hard to find anything besides stock
- Core Duo / C2D - maybe hard to find a mobo with win98 compatible chipset - but not that hard, and seems to be more reliable than p4, easier to find cooler

Note that also PCI-Express cards work on win 98 if mobo chipset has drivers for this system

For sound cards I was able to run Audigy 2 ZS but with issues when I wanted it to be DOS compatible. Sound Blaster live is more compatible - just the sound quality is worse.

For graphis cards I find Nvidia Geforce 2/3/4 the most compatible. I had some issues with Radeons and some DOS games under windows. I was also able to successfully run FX cards, but some of them required latest tweaked driver to work - like 6850 from what I remember.

Most of the games mentioned will also work under Windows XP - so maybe it's worth to reconsider the operating system - because for windows XP, the obvious choice for me is Core 2 duo / Core quad + DDR2/DDR3 and PCI-Express GPU - all of those very cheap to buy and pretty stable.

Scoob wrote on 2021-07-09, 22:58:

I've already mentioned some of the games that I'm definitely going to play, like tomb raider, quake, serious sam and max payne, mafia, return to castle wolfenstein, red faction. Other games will be pod, carmaggedon 2, colin mcrae 2, half-life, mdk 2, dungeon keeper 2, thief... also want to try interstate 76. I like games where I can shoot, destroy stuff, fight and beat up characters, drive fast and destroy the cars... But the point is I don't want to have to make changes in the pc when I discover a game that I like and want to play.

I though this would be easier, but I confess I'm more confused now: 440BX i815 i845 i865 KT600 KT800 Windows XP Geforce 2, Geforce 4 Ti, FX series, isa cards, no isa cards, SB Live! Audigy ESS1898, I mean, isn't it possible to reach a consensus about a general guideline?... sorry to insist on this. Maybe what I'm asking can't be done.

Today a friend, older than me, found out I was building a pc (I don't know that I am) and gifted me a socket 462 motherboard, it has a chipset from nVidia, the NF2. Don't really know what to do, maybe I'll keep the KT266/duron/tnt2 pc that I already have and pray .

The most demanding game from your list is Mafia from 2002. Here you already have DX8 support, which means that graphics cards from the GF3 / GF4 / GF FX or Radeon 8500 / 9x00 (x>=5) series fit best.
Tomb Raider marks the lower limit. Here you need an additional graphics card that is supported by the game with a proprietary API (Voodoo 1/2 or even better - because no loop cable needed and therefore DVI is possible - a PowerVR PCX 1/2). Considering the prices for these cards, I would just play Tomb Raider in SW mode. You will certainly have the CPU power for smooth SVGA. You'll only lose support for bilinear filtering and a few lighting effects.
For Mafia it will be difficult with a Coppermine PIII.

You can continue to use your PC with S462 based on the KT266 for this. I would put a smaller Athlon XP in it and replace the capacitors (one reason for stability problems). The TNT2 (DX6) becomes a bottleneck for games from mid-2000.
You definitely don't need an ISA sound card for your listing.
Your power supply should provide at least 30A each on the 3.3V and 5V rails.

PC-Engineer wrote on 2021-07-09, 21:22:

Soundcard: the Audigy 2 is cheap stable and compatible with good gaming experience (EAX3).

As far as I know, no EAX3 capable games were released before 2002.

And anything made from 2002 onward is best played on WinXP.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2021-07-10, 04:26:

PC-Engineer wrote on 2021-07-09, 21:22:

Soundcard: the Audigy 2 is cheap stable and compatible with good gaming experience (EAX3).

As far as I know, no EAX3 capable games were released before 2002.

And anything made from 2002 onward is best played on WinXP.

The reason to use the audigy 2ZS IMO is it sounds so good. The audio is really clean, even with analog out, and it has SPDIF out as standard. If you can mix it into a XP/windows 98 hybrid all the better.

mothergoose729 wrote on 2021-07-10, 04:42:

it has SPDIF out as standard.

You mean the digital out minijack connector? Later SBLive models have that as well, at least my SB0100 does.

And no one is disputing the Audigy's improved signal clarity, just the usefulness of EAX3 (or rather lack thereof) for Win9x gaming.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2021-07-10, 04:52:

mothergoose729 wrote on 2021-07-10, 04:42:

it has SPDIF out as standard.

You mean the digital out minijack connector? Later SBLive models have that as well, at least my SB0100 does.

And no one is disputing the Audigy's improved signal clarity, just the usefulness of EAX3 (or rather lack thereof) for Win9x gaming.

Yes I agree, EAX 3 isn't very important for windows 98. Don't buy it for that, buy it because it sounds so good.

Audigy 2 ZS has way cleaner output than the Live! cards.

Although, what I did before I had an Audigy was mod the Audigy driver set to work with my Live! card. It did make the output better.

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-07-10, 05:10:

Audigy 2 ZS has way cleaner output than the Live! cards.

I think this may depend on the particular SBLive model. Comparing my SBLive 5.1 (SB0100) to my Audigy2 ZS (SB0350) I do notice a difference in favor of the Audigy, but it's not huge. Then again, maybe my ears just aren't that sensitive.

Although, what I did before I had an Audigy was mod the Audigy driver set to work with my Live! card. It did make the output better.

You can straight up install the Audigy2 ZS drivers on any SBLive card, no modifications needed.

Ah, ok. It was years and years ago. I thought I had to do something with the Audigy driver set to make it work on the Live!

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2021-07-10, 04:26:

PC-Engineer wrote on 2021-07-09, 21:22:

Soundcard: the Audigy 2 is cheap stable and compatible with good gaming experience (EAX3).

As far as I know, no EAX3 capable games were released before 2002.

And anything made from 2002 onward is best played on WinXP.

You missunderstood - EAX3 is just a fact for the Audigy2 and means also backwards compatibility to EAX/EAX2. And how does this discussion now help the thread creator?

But you are right - for 2001+ Gaming WinXP/Win2k fits better than Win9x.

Short version: Thank you guys, I'll get a P4 based on intel chiset and a Geforce of some kind, and a plain pci audio card or even use the onboard if it behaves.

Regarding the sound I'm not picky at all. I'd be happy to use the ESS if I had an ISA slot if that would mean to be trouble free, my initial thought was the awe 64... because it seems to be very common 1997 onwards. I'm thinking one of thouse yamaha pci cards or even a creative one based on the ensoniq chips

I want to thank you all for the knowledge sharing.
With all this new information I'm set on, in this order:

- give my windows 10 laptop a try (this would be the most convenient, but i'm not too confident)
- IF NOT THEN fresh win98 install on my duron machine and new drivers (I discovered putting the ram module on other slot apparently resolves the instability issues, and also on the other slot it does not boot at all )
- IF NOT THEN do a couple upgrades, like an athlon and a better graphics card (by the way the tnt2 is M64, so I'll expect it to be soon)
- IF NOT THEN go for an intel chipset and PIII or P4 with a geforce and run older titles in software mode / if I fell the need get a 3dfx addon

Have fun. And remember DON'T PANIC! if things go airy...😉

Scoob wrote on 2021-07-10, 15:02:

Short version: Thank you guys, I'll get a P4 based on intel chiset and a Geforce of some kind, and a plain pci audio card or eve […]
Show full quote

Short version: Thank you guys, I'll get a P4 based on intel chiset and a Geforce of some kind, and a plain pci audio card or even use the onboard if it behaves.

Regarding the sound I'm not picky at all. I'd be happy to use the ESS if I had an ISA slot if that would mean to be trouble free, my initial thought was the awe 64... because it seems to be very common 1997 onwards. I'm thinking one of thouse yamaha pci cards or even a creative one based on the ensoniq chips

I want to thank you all for the knowledge sharing.
With all this new information I'm set on, in this order:

- give my windows 10 laptop a try (this would be the most convenient, but i'm not too confident)
- IF NOT THEN fresh win98 install on my duron machine and new drivers (I discovered putting the ram module on other slot apparently resolves the instability issues, and also on the other slot it does not boot at all )
- IF NOT THEN do a couple upgrades, like an athlon and a better graphics card (by the way the tnt2 is M64, so I'll expect it to be soon)
- IF NOT THEN go for an intel chipset and PIII or P4 with a geforce and run older titles in software mode / if I fell the need get a 3dfx addon

Sounds sweet! We are here to help when you get everything setup.

There is really no reason not to get a sb live! or a audigy 2zs. An ESS is good for DOS, but this is a windows machine. Also, you probably won't find a P4 board with an ISA slot anyway.

IMO, asking what is the Most stable and compatible win9x configuration, is kind of like going to a car collectors forum and asking "What is the best motor oil."