So, everything is up and running, I installed Windows XP (SP3) and got everything set up the way I like.

By the way I should mention the specs at this point. They were in the ebay listing but some of them turned out to be wrong (in a good way) and that listing won't be around forever. So.

First the processor. It's a Pentium 4 which was sold as being 2ghz... turns out its actually 2.80! I don't know if that's overclocked or its natural speed (is there a way to find out?)

Least, I think its a Pentium 4. That's what the listing said, is there a way to be sure though? If it turns out I actually have a dual-core I may wanna trick this beast out a bit.

It came with 512 ram (2x256 sticks) loaded. I've looked up what kind of ram this board needs and thought of upgrading--apparently it maxes out at 2gb and can't detect higher. But I'm not sure if I need that power.

Of course, the graphics card is the Geforce ti4200 (AGP) and the sound card is a PCI Soundblaster Audigy 2 which may or may not be a ZS.

I've got two of those Audigies by the way, and I'm not sure what to do with the second one. Probably save it for a later comp because apparently the Audigy 2 was still a good sound card even well into last year. Oddly, neither Audigy has a joystick bracket--there's a spot marked for them but its got just a lot of holes, most of which look like they were filled in somehow? I tried to take a pic but I need a new cam, and.... I dunno how to upload pics to this forum either.

I'm not sure what other specs I should mention.

... So last night I tried to play Doom 3 on this thing. After installing the latest patch, the game ran okay-ish at the Medium settings at 800x600. At some points it felt like it would stutter (like if I load up the multiplayer deathmatch map with that spinning reactor thing and am in the room with it when it starts up).

It leaves me debating: Should I upgrade the RAM and video card and trick this board out, or should I keep its current hardware and use it as an early-XP/late-Win98SE dual-boot machine, and let "the ultimate Doom 3 machine" be a future project? For the moment I'm leaning towards the latter.

The only question left is, what to do about the case? Actual Dell cases seem like they're unsatisfactory--I'm very concerned about making sure my comps don't overheat (the first comp I ever had for myself developed problems for this very reason) so I'm thinking of buying a Thermaltake case and using sodder, bolt cutters, and ritual sacrifices to fit the motherboard in that. If you guys have any suggestions though, I'm open to them.

quick google seems to suggest the motherboard will work in a standard case, You'll just need to mess round with the front panel connectors a bit.
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=39330

I suppose the way to be 100% sure of your CPU is to remove the heatsink and see what's printed on the CPU itself. Could be a good time to apply new thermal paste anyway.

At the moment it's probably the perfect duel boot configuration with everything supporting Win98 -512MB ram, ti4200, Audigy 2, P4 (Just make sure Hyper threading is disabled)

but it's only ever going to be a mid Doom3 rated PC
https://techreport.com/review/7200/doom-3-mid … age-gfx-comparo

Personally I'd save WinXP for a socket 775 or higher if you want to max everything out.

Oh and if you google the SB number printed on your sound cards it should tell if its a ZS or not, or you can always ask here 😀

Well, I ran into a slight hitch with Windows 98.

EDIT: For clarification, Windows XP works perfectly, so I decided to test out how this motherboard works with Windows 98, with my sights on potentially setting up a dual-boot comp.

I found a spare hard drive, partitioned 30gb on it, installed Windows 98se then shut down so I could boot a Linux liveCD so I could use a USB drive to transfer some drivers over.

Then when I restarted windows, it told me that my display adapter is having a resource conflict.

Specifically it seems like it wants to use the same "Memory Range" or I/O or something as the "ACPI BIOS," which just going by other references to it in the device manager... seems like its referring to the power button?

I'm not sure what to do about this, if its something in the BIOS I have to tweak or if there's something I have to physically remove from the comp itself. I'm worried that I might simply need a different way of activating the comp--the thing I'm using now is a... well its a pair of little green boards connected by wires (which I think Dad said he pulled from an actual Dell PC) that in addition to the power switch also includes things like front-mounted USB and a speaker port.

What I'm trying to do right now is just download and install a lot of the Chipset Drivers for this motherboard and hope one of them will just magically clear things up. I usually don't bother with chipset drivers for motherboards because I don't see a point if I'm not using onboard sound or video anyway, but it can't hurt to give them a try.

Just in case that doesn't work though, anyone have other things I could try?

EDIT: I found a mention of someone else having similar trouble here and he apparently partially resolved it by... downgrading the BIOS? But then he links to a post explaining the method but... said link is to a post that no longer exists apparently. If anyone knows or can guess what this guy did, let me know.

Running something like CPUID or AIDA32 will identify the processor.

ACPI or Advanced Configuration and Power Interface in REALLY simple terms is the ATX type features like the computer turning itself off when going shutdown.
Which is why it seems to be the power button.

Chipset drivers are a good thing to try.
Otherwise if you can try to disable anything along the lines of Advanced power features in BIOS as well as PnP
or finally when installing windows 98 type:
setup /p i
which overrides windows detection and will disable ACPI/PnP

I'll try setup /p i.

Chipset drivers didn't work, nor did upgrading the bios (I already had an earlier version and upgraded to A06, no difference).

Good news,

Setup /p i solved the issue! I've now got Windows 98se running with a Geforce and an Audigy 2!

There's only one niggling thing, its minor and the solution probably already exists somewhere:

When I booted up Unreal Tournament (my go-to game as of late)... okay you know how the intro cinematic is supposed to have that voice-over explaining about how the corporations established the tournament? Well, on Windows 98 with the Audigy 2 that speech is either not there or is just garbled static.

This does not happen on Windows XP.

Now, the only thing I can think of is.... I watched the Phil's Computer Lab video about the SB Live and he claimed this can happen if you install WDM drivers instead of VxD (yes the video was about the live but he briefly mentioned it happening with the Audigy too). Well, the method I found to get Audigy 2 drivers installed used WDM drivers by default (it didn't even give me the option for VxD--the option existed but was greyed out--for the curious I used a program on the driver CD called ctzapxx, its in Audio/Drivers)

I thought it would be easy to force VxD drivers but it turns out... it might not be. I tried going to Device Manager and picking "Update Driver" but it won't even let me point at the vxd.cab file which exists on the CD. If all else fails, I might even reinstall windows from an on-HD cab directory, but with said vxd.cab placed in that on-HD cab directory.

But other than that, all is well.

EDIT: Got it fixed. Turns out the Driver CD on Vogons own driver database (specifically The Audigy 2 "Installation and Applications CD" ) had a different version of CTZAPXX which let me pick VxD right out of the gate. This did, indeed, fix the sound in Unreal Tournament.

The only other thing that happened was briefly I only got sound out of one speaker but when I rebooted the system, this fixed itself... the comp seems to overheat more in Windows 98se than it did in XP so I may have to trick out the heatsink/cooling features.

clean the fan(s) and redo the thermal paste

K, got the cooling situation fixed. My dad had a working fan for this model (he used to get a lot of parts from old comps, most of which he got rid of eventually but some he kept) and when I put it on, the processor stopped overheating.

So far this thing is up, running, and is a perfectly capable gaming PC for both 98SE and XP. I'm still debating whether to max out the RAM or not (I know about the vcache setting in Win98 so it won't choke on more than 512mb)... its mostly just a question of how overkill is too much overkill.

The only thing left is to get or modify a case for this thing. Since they tend to be pricey, I'm probably gonna either wait until next month or else sell a bunch of old games and such which I don't want anymore (possibly a bit of both). I'm wondering: If I removed the metal back-plating would this fit in a standard ATX case? Cuz then I would just get something from Thermaltake and call it a day. I could always experiment I guess.

On a less serious note... now that this thing is up and running, what should I throw at it? I've watched some anime and youtube vids (transferred over using USB), played a bit of the fangame Mega Man Unlimited, and I mentioned Doom 3 earlier.... so like.... what all should I throw at it now? I'm thinking of some first-person adventure games or RPGs but names elude me.