You have the cards, try it yourself, it is part of the fun!

An let us know what the verdict is.

I tend to agree with Meljor. And it might be a good idea to actually see if all your parts are in working order before you start planning ahead too much.

Your 3 choices of graphics cards are roughly similar in performance compared to basically anything else that will work with your AGP slot, so I suppose the issues with your choice of graphics card might have more to do with nglide support (I never used nglide so I don't know the ins and outs of it).

Dunno if your Audigy 2 ZS is any good with older games, but it will probably work.

Just one question lilkuz2005, how experienced are you with building PCs? This might be handy for us to know so we have a better view of what we can expect as you go through your build and happen to encounter any problems.

What OS are you planning to use? This might be relevant in case you go 9x or any variant of NT (which basically includes 2k and XP)

Tetrium wrote:

I tend to agree with Meljor. And it might be a good idea to actually see if all your parts are in working order before you start […]
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I tend to agree with Meljor. And it might be a good idea to actually see if all your parts are in working order before you start planning ahead too much.

Your 3 choices of graphics cards are roughly similar in performance compared to basically anything else that will work with your AGP slot, so I suppose the issues with your choice of graphics card might have more to do with nglide support (I never used nglide so I don't know the ins and outs of it).

Dunno if your Audigy 2 ZS is any good with older games, but it will probably work.

Just one question lilkuz2005, how experienced are you with building PCs? This might be handy for us to know so we have a better view of what we can expect as you go through your build and happen to encounter any problems.

What OS are you planning to use? This might be relevant in case you go 9x or any variant of NT (which basically includes 2k and XP)

Windows 98Se is the OS i want to use, i have lots of experience when it comes to building computers, the issues i have questions about are systems from the windows 98 era, back in those days i was pretty young and my family really didn't get into computers until later. my first pc was pretty weak and lacked sound blaster support, i played doom for a year with just pc speaker sounds, i had no idea what the game sounded like until later, most of my pc building / repairing experience is from the early windows xp era, i never had the chance to use high end graphics cards and sound cards in windows 98, thats why im asking questions about it, i know the parts in my build are not from the windows 98 era but the motherboard is fully supported as well as my sound card choice, i really wasn't sure about the gpu, i want support for DoS games, nothing to old just games like DooM and Descent, but i also want to run games like quake 3, forsaken, expandable. i know that windows 98 is very finicky, and it can be broken pretty easily, so i really wanted to use the most compatible parts from my collection to get it stable, ill just put it together, install 98 and do some tests and ill make a video showing the results, i may forget about nglide and use a x850 pro because i have used that card in 98 and it does a damn good job of cranking out the fps

okay so i got home and started the build, i have a fresh install of windows 98 se, all the hardware is installed but i have an issue with my audigy 2 zs, i have installed the drivers via the cd, then when it was finished i used the utility to switch to the vxd drivers and after a reboot i went to device manager and noticed there wasn't any sb16 emulation, i then ran regedit and found the sb16 emulation option with a 0, i changed it to a 1 and rebooted the machine, when windows loaded it wanted me to point it to the driver, so i extracted the vxd driver to a folder on my C:\ drive and pointed the installer to it, it installed and rebooted again, i then opened device manager again and found the sb16 emulation has a problem, i right clicked to see the driver issue and got this error message "the mmdevldr.vxd device loader for this device could not start " it wants me to reinstall a driver, can anyone tell me how to get sb16 emulation in windows 98se with the audigy 2 zs?

I have no idea how to fix that particular error, but there's a reason why many people here prefer to use actual ISA sound cards instead of PCI ones.

I'd personally use an earlier sound card. First generation Audigy, a Live, a PCI Ensoniq, or an Aureal Vortex 1/2. The Audigy 2 I'd reserve for a Windows XP machine.

I'd concur; I've never had anything but heartache with the Audigy2 ZS in Windows pre-2000 (and it's also caused me headaches in Win7 and Win10 - OTOH, it's been absolutely flawless in Linux). For a 98SE machine that might actually run DOS games, look at an AWE64 if you can find one, or maybe a Yamaha Audician 32, or possibly anything with an ESS AudioDrive (1868 chipset, older ones are less capable).

GF-6xxx cards are not adviseable for Win98. Too many driver issues.
I found that something like an Radeon-9600 will do it better.

If you are still hooked on Geforce, then try and source a GF4-ti4200.

jade_angel wrote:

I'd concur; I've never had anything but heartache with the Audigy2 ZS in Windows pre-2000 (and it's also caused me headaches in Win7 and Win10 - OTOH, it's been absolutely flawless in Linux). For a 98SE machine that might actually run DOS games, look at an AWE64 if you can find one, or maybe a Yamaha Audician 32, or possibly anything with an ESS AudioDrive (1868 chipset, older ones are less capable).

I don't think that he has any ISA slots in that machine. If he has, it is eighter a rare P4 board or an expensive industrial one.

Rhuwyn wrote:

I'd personally use an earlier sound card. First generation Audigy, a Live, a PCI Ensoniq, or an Aureal Vortex 1/2. The Audigy 2 I'd reserve for a Windows XP machine.

Vortex2 or YMF-724 get's my vote.

brostenen wrote:

jade_angel wrote:

I'd concur; I've never had anything but heartache with the Audigy2 ZS in Windows pre-2000 (and it's also caused me headaches in Win7 and Win10 - OTOH, it's been absolutely flawless in Linux). For a 98SE machine that might actually run DOS games, look at an AWE64 if you can find one, or maybe a Yamaha Audician 32, or possibly anything with an ESS AudioDrive (1868 chipset, older ones are less capable).

I don't think that he has any ISA slots in that machine. If he has, it is eighter a rare P4 board or an expensive industrial one.

Oh, oops. Misread as P3 - mea culpa!

lilkuz2005 wrote:

okay so i got home and started the build, i have a fresh install of windows 98 se, all the hardware is installed but i have an issue with my audigy 2 zs, i have installed the drivers via the cd, then when it was finished i used the utility to switch to the vxd drivers and after a reboot i went to device manager and noticed there wasn't any sb16 emulation, i then ran regedit and found the sb16 emulation option with a 0, i changed it to a 1 and rebooted the machine, when windows loaded it wanted me to point it to the driver, so i extracted the vxd driver to a folder on my C:\ drive and pointed the installer to it, it installed and rebooted again, i then opened device manager again and found the sb16 emulation has a problem, i right clicked to see the driver issue and got this error message "the mmdevldr.vxd device loader for this device could not start " it wants me to reinstall a driver, can anyone tell me how to get sb16 emulation in windows 98se with the audigy 2 zs?

I didn't get SB16 emulation to work in Windows 98SE with the Audigy 2 ZS either. One thing that has been more succsessful is using it in pure DOS. Download this file and read the included "README.!!!" to the end.

I'm in the process of a similar machine and had a bit of trouble.
Firstly had a lot of trouble installing my 6800 Ultra, think this was more due to the amount of VRAM but drivers would not install of blue screen the PC either during or after first boot.
I also had trouble installing the Audigy 2 ZS, something I've had little trouble in the past doing on other PC's. Including a P4 with onboard Intel graphics. does seem to like a full install more then a custom though.
On this PC though it just didn't like it. In the end I gave up and got the Rlowe patch and everything worked fine on next install.

Not saying that's the only way to get round your problems, just my experience.

Just some thoughts on this project 😀

The Audigy 2 ZS under Windows 98 blew me away. It is one really lovely sounding card. If you got it working, good on you. I wouldn't worry about the Sound Blaster 16 Emulation and just write that off. It's a great Windows card, so enjoy it.

Other great sounding cards are the Vortex 2 and the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz. The Vortex has the best A3D implementation and I believe also the best DOS compatibility out of the bunch. The drivers can be confusing, there are different INF files depending on what you need. The Turtle Beach drivers are by far the easiest to install and use. But I believe it's not that great under DOS, although it works with a few games I tried. Both have a wavetable header which is awesome.

Now for the graphics card, with a fast CPU and a FX 5950 you're going to get nGlide performance beyond that of a Voodoo 5 5500. That means 1600 x 1200 gaming in Unreal at 60+ FPS with that butter smoothness. There are more drivers to choose from for the FX, so that's what I would recommend. A decent FX 58xx or FX59xx.

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Just some thoughts on this project :) […]
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Just some thoughts on this project 😀

The Audigy 2 ZS under Windows 98 blew me away. It is one really lovely sounding card. If you got it working, good on you. I wouldn't worry about the Sound Blaster 16 Emulation and just write that off. It's a great Windows card, so enjoy it.

Other great sounding cards are the Vortex 2 and the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz. The Vortex has the best A3D implementation and I believe also the best DOS compatibility out of the bunch. The drivers can be confusing, there are different INF files depending on what you need. The Turtle Beach drivers are by far the easiest to install and use. But I believe it's not that great under DOS, although it works with a few games I tried. Both have a wavetable header which is awesome.

Now for the graphics card, with a fast CPU and a FX 5950 you're going to get nGlide performance beyond that of a Voodoo 5 5500. That means 1600 x 1200 gaming in Unreal at 60+ FPS with that butter smoothness. There are more drivers to choose from for the FX, so that's what I would recommend. A decent FX 58xx or FX59xx.

Hey Phil, looking on ebay I didn't find any fx 5950 cards. Would my radeon 9800xt or radeon x850 perform as well just not nglide supported? I was able to install the geforce 6800gs oc, I had to track down an unofficial driver but it's working now. For some reason the force ware drivers from nvidia will not install. It gets the error no nvidia card found. I'm have used the 6800gs oc in the past and was able to install halo and a few other titles and play them in windows 98se

chinny22 wrote:

I'm in the process of a similar machine and had a bit of trouble. Firstly had a lot of trouble installing my 6800 Ultra, think t […]
Show full quote

I'm in the process of a similar machine and had a bit of trouble.
Firstly had a lot of trouble installing my 6800 Ultra, think this was more due to the amount of VRAM but drivers would not install of blue screen the PC either during or after first boot.
I also had trouble installing the Audigy 2 ZS, something I've had little trouble in the past doing on other PC's. Including a P4 with onboard Intel graphics. does seem to like a full install more then a custom though.
On this PC though it just didn't like it. In the end I gave up and got the Rlowe patch and everything worked fine on next install.

Not saying that's the only way to get round your problems, just my experience.

Can you tell me what the rlowe patch is and is it for Windows 98 sb16 emulation support or is it a pure DoS patch?

for sound cards i own a few, all of them are PCI cards though, im looking for a sound blaster awe64 for my old pentium 2 build, my sound cards are
sound blaster live! ct4780 i think its a value card from dell, not sure though,
sound blaster audigy
sound blaster audigy 2 zs
turtle beach montego II
turtle beach santa cruz
i have used all of these cards in windows 98se and the only card that i couldn't get sb16 emulation in windows was the audigy 2 zs, the old audigy i had to do the regedit trick to add sb16 emu support, but it did work, i watched phils video on the audigy 2 zs and the performance charts from games tested looked to be the quickest sound card out of the bunch, thats why i purchased it, i dont have to have sb16 support, i just wanted it, i have a pII build thats running dos games really well, im using the turtle beach montego II in that build and it sounds awesome, i want to say thanks for all the help on this issue guys, i think ill just stick to windows games with the p4 build and play my older dos games on the pII, so no descent 2 on the p4 build

I would go with the live! and 6800gs if it is working fine. Audigy and higher are great for XP.

Some cards from the geforce 6 series are native pci-e and became agp by using a bridge chip. These versions can be a pain to install or can be instable in 98se.
This is also true for the 6600 series also which are native pci-e.

NV40 is native agp and cards based on that chip should be trouble free. My 6800 ultra agp is nv40 and runs fine in 98se. i don't know which chip is on your 6800GS.

My second choice would be the x850, but even the 9800 would be fast enough for the 2,66ghz p4.

lilkuz2005 wrote:

Can you tell me what the rlowe patch is and is it for Windows 98 sb16 emulation support or is it a pure DoS patch?

It's a patch to allow Win98 to support large amount of RAM. I installed the demo and everything installed fine so purchased the full version.
http://rloew.x10host.com/Programs/Patchm.htm

I also have a 2nd P4 kicking round that I may turn into a Win9x/XP duel boot and now toying with the idea of a socket 775 build so for me the $20 was worth the freedom