My current 98 machine is a K6-III+ 450 with a single Voodoo 2. I'm considering making an XP machine, and I was wondering if it was worth it to make sure all the parts were Windows 98 compatible? Or would any game buggy under XP would play reasonably well with my current computer?
Half Life springs to mind, especially on high resolutions and using HD models.
Win98 was still supported by most mainstream games until around 2005 so you'll have plenty to answer for that. UT2004 with mods can get a bit heavy.
wrote:Win98 was still supported by most mainstream games until around 2005 so you'll have plenty to answer for that. UT2004 with mods can get a bit heavy.
I meant games that don't also run fine on XP.
Half-Life did have a modern upgrade, so I'm not sure it should still be considered?
This stuff is very poorly mapped out, so you let us know what you come across. There's a vast amount of these games, but most of the problem ones are indie as late major titles at least got XP compatibility hacks made for re-releases. I would guess your system is pretty safe.
Maybe focus on games that were released around the time of, or just prior to Windows XP. Games like Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Max Payne, Clive Barker's Undying, and IL-2 Sturmovik.
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If your XP systems lack A3D and Glide, you might want more power than the K6-III+ 450 to max out all of those games.
For me, the most HW demanding win98-only game is this one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobil_1_Rally_Championship It works on XP but I've experienced some sound related issues.
To play it at decent framerate (60+) at maximum possible image quality it needs rather strong CPU and GPU as well. GeForce4 Ti 4600 was able to deliver 50+ fps at 1600x1200 max details, 4x AF, 2xAA. So this is not bad but could be even better with faster GPU (maxed AA and AF). The catch is GeForce FX and later drivers are more CPU heavy (overhead), therefore fast CPU is a must have. Last time I was using P4 3GHz and it was ok with GF4... I'm planning to build socket 604 based Xeon rig for this game later - I can try how different GPUs and drivers work.
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I'd try some flight simulators... Flight Simulator and X-Plane can hog on resources, specially when used with custom scenery and planes.
Also, Doom 3 had some hidden settings that needed high performance computers.
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Viper Racing has a patch that works great on XP
There aren't that many games that can't be made to run well on XP, I've only come across one show stopper so far in all the games I've tried - Mortimer and the Riddles of the Medallion (an old LucasArts edutainment title), which has a kernel32.dll error I've not been able to get around: "The procedure entry point SUnMapLS_IP_EBP_12 could not be located in the dynamic link library KERNEL32.dll"
I believe there are a couple other titles with this issue but again most of them were patched. I think generally speaking any game late enough to need high performance hardware is quite likely to have been patched for XP. Mortimer's system requirements were for a 486
IIRC, Flanker 2.0 is Win98 only. There was an updated Flanker 2.5, but that might be flakey in WinXP using Win98 Compatibility Mode.
"Modern" audio solutions is something I admittedly know almost nothing about. The world of EAX etc is daunting. I barely managed to gather enough knowledge to settle on a DOS sound card.
Aren't there wrappers to do whatever these cards did, in software? Like Alchemy, or that Russian A3D one?I don't know how they compare to the real thing.
wrote:"Modern" audio solutions is something I admittedly know almost nothing about. The world of EAX etc is daunting. I barely managed to gather enough knowledge to settle on a DOS sound card.
Aren't there wrappers to do whatever these cards did, in software? Like Alchemy, or that Russian A3D one?I don't know how they compare to the real thing.
For the most part you can lay out EAX by year:
1998: EAX 1.0 (can't remember which card)
1999: EAX 2.0 (Sound blaster LIVE)
2001: EAX 3.0 (Sound blaster Audigy)
2003: EAX 4.0 (Sound blaster Audigy2)
2005: EAX 5.0 (Sound blaster X-Fi)
For A3D just stick to any Vortex based card, Diamond Monster Sounds are pretty popular although I cant say what advantage they would have over the much more common and cheap generic Vortex2 cards.
I'm currently running a LIVE Value (CT4670) in my Late 99' Windows 98 machine and an Audigy Platinum EX (SB0090) or Audigy2ZS Platinum depending on need in my XP machine.
Windows audio is much simpler than DOS.
My experience with alchemy with a X-Fi Pro was horrible. The effects were completely messed up in the Jedi Knight games and Battlefront II. I can't speak for the A3D wrapper however.
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It's not officially supports 98 but it works on 98.
I know there was a Star Fleet game which wasn't compatible with some OS's like 98SE, but was with ME. Dunno if it would work in XP though.
Besides Vortex, another possible solution to narrow down your search, could be to specifically check games for their XP incompatibility from game companies that seized to exist just before XP came out. Otoh, there may even be 3rd party patches out not made by the original game companies.
wrote:I know there was a Star Fleet game which wasn't compatible with some OS's like 98SE, but was with ME. Dunno if it would work in XP though.
Besides Vortex, another possible solution to narrow down your search, could be to specifically check games for their XP incompatibility from game companies that seized to exist just before XP came out. Otoh, there may even be 3rd party patches out not made by the original game companies.
I think you are talking about Starfleet Academy? Did you recall this one with Kirk and Sulu in the intro? There was also a Chekov's Lost Missions expansion. This was one game I had to tone down the P3-700Mhz to a slower setting because the game actually played a bit too fast. I haven't tested this one on XP to tell you if it was compatible or not. But I don't think particular title was that demanding for 98.
Sega Rally 2 is broken on XP, the music doesn't play without a patch, the game needs to be started in compatibility mode and hardware acceleration seems to be hit or miss.
According to https://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Sega_Rally_2, the recommended CPU is an AMD K6-2/K7 300 MHz or Intel Pentium 2/3 300 MHz. It seems what they really want is a 300MHz processor, but we know a K6 and P3 don't behave the same at the same speed. My K6 computer is currently dead so I couldn't test it.
I wonder if later SEGA games have similar problems.
