I would recommend the MSI board first, the ASRock P4i945GC second, the Asrock P4S61 third, followed by the BioStar board, simply because these are from board manufacturers who are still around, so finding the drivers for them should be easier. While finding the via chipset drivers on archive.org or on http://download.viatech.com/en/support/driversSelect.jsp shouldn't be that difficult for the others, I would still go with one that the manufacturer is still around simply because they are probably still around because they made boards that were at least decent.

For windows 98 you are better of with AGP cards. Although they are a bit more expensive, they are so much more compatible and often better performing than PCIE cards, at least for windows 98.

Intel chipsets motherboards tend to be the most stable. My first choice for a high performance 98 machine would be a 845 chipset socket 478 with a 2.8ghz northwood.

I have a socket 754 board with an athlon 64 3000+ in my 98 machine. While I wouldn't say that it is better than a p4 setup, it is another option if you are looking for boards that have AGP, SATA, and USB 2.0, and is friendly with modern power supplies.

Another recommendation to stick with AGP. Windows 98SE and early XP was intended to be AGP based for top tier performance. You can still have boards with USB 2.0 and SATA.
MSI K8N Neo Platinum (Socket 754 nForce3)
Asus K8V SE Deluxe (Socket 754 K8T800)
Abit NF7-S V2.0 (Socket A nForce2 Ultra)
Asus P4P800-SE (Socket 478 865PE)

Heh, I totally forgot I had a Gigabyte GA-8I865GME-775-RH. That one ticks most bells (S755/AGP/Intel 845)

I've already set it up with a Q6600 (why not?) and a Gig of RAM.

I've installed Win98 SE and I'm currently in the process of installing XP to it.

Now... for a Choice of Graphics Card, i have these:

X800XT / GTO
Asus 7600GS/256
Radeon 9200SE
X1600 PRO
9500 PRO
Asus V3800M
Matrox G450 Dual Head
GeForce 2 MX200
Radeon 9550
GeForce FX5200

For Sound / DOS:
YMF724
FM801-AU
FM801-A1
Via HT24 Ensemble - Aureon 7.1 Universe
SB0220 (Live! 5.1 Digital)
SB0060 (Live!)
CT4830 (Live!)
CT4670 (Live!)
Creative SB PCI 128
Creative CT4810
Creative Audio PCI 3000 (Ensoniq)

So what would you use?

Maybe you should drop down to 512MB of RAM for DOS/Win9x.

Re cards: for DOS, VESA compatibility is key. Relatively early nVidia cards tick the boxes there. I'm not sure how the 7600 behaves, so for a safe bet, go with the FX5200 or Gf2MX200.

As for sound, does that board have SBLink (PC/PCI)?

If so the Yamaha wins hands-down. If not, it's probably still the best of that lot, it just needs a big tsr to emulate DOS resources.

I've installed a fx5200. I'm currently fighting with dual booting xp and 98 while making both oses have C: as their boot drive (but they're on different partitions).

I wonder if ATI GPUs are that bad for late dos / win9x games... I've bought a 9800 AIW from someone (lol) that I was planning on using in this machine 😀

From what I can see there is no SBLink on this motherboard 🙁

xeon3d wrote:

I've installed a fx5200. I'm currently fighting with dual booting xp and 98 while making both oses have C: as their boot drive (but they're on different partitions).

I wonder if ATI GPUs are that bad for late dos / win9x games... I've bought a 9800 AIW from someone (lol) that I was planning on using in this machine 😀

From what I can see there is no SBLink on this motherboard 🙁

It depends on the era of games you want to play mostly. A 9 series ATI card performs very well for AGP and would be ideal for 2000-2003 or so. If you go back to early windows games, you are more likely to run into driver issues and problems with ATI cards not supporting legacy features like table fog and 8 bit textures.

An FX 5200 is quite compatible and will run lots of games at good settings, but even a gerforce 3 ti card will get double the fps or more in a lot of titles. That might be fine for your needs though, and you already have it. if you want more performance, I would recommend neither an ATI card nor a PCI graphics card.

For your setup, the most compatible and performant card would be a FX AGP card. The Quadro 2000 and Quadro 3000 cards are pretty affordable, and can be configured to be recognized as a FX 5800 and FX 5800 ultra respectively with riva tuner. Another good option would be a ti 4200. The best performing card in windows 98 in most titles would be a TI 4600 or 4800se with nvidia 45.23 drivers, while the high end FX cards will perform better in XP and will match the gerforce 4 cards at higher resolutions and with AA and AF enabled.

The MSI K8T Neo V is socket 754 for Athlon64, not socket 478 for Pentium IV.

My mistake... It is a PT8 Neo-V.
I do not own any 754/939 board.

As the board I picked hasn't got the sblink header nor do I have a cable., I've since built another tower with the following:

- DFI CA-61
- Pentium III 1.0 GHz
- 512MB
- 40GB HDD (subject to change)
- Sound Blaster 16 CT2520? It's the ISA PnP one.
- nVidia FX5200

I'm going to play with this one while I disassemble the gigabyte board from the other one and attempt to solder a header on the sblink pads. The southbridge supposedly has support for it so hopefully it's just a matter of putting a header on it and make a cable.

xeon3d wrote:

I do not own any 754/939 board.

No worries. Athlon 64 boards are nice as they're not multiplier locked, but P4 boards are usually nice and stable, plus DOS support is often somewhat viable if you've got an 865 based chipset or older (a nice bonus).

I generally don't like using XP and 98 on the same machine as XP likes more RAM and 98 doesn't easily support larger pools of memory (without the patch or other tricks). However, ymmv.

xeon3d wrote:

... - DFI CA-61 - Pentium III 1.0 GHz - 512MB - 40GB HDD (subject to change) - Sound Blaster 16 CT2520? It's the ISA PnP one. […]
Show full quote

...
- DFI CA-61
- Pentium III 1.0 GHz
- 512MB
- 40GB HDD (subject to change)
- Sound Blaster 16 CT2520? It's the ISA PnP one.
- nVidia FX5200
...

So, it works, I installed Win98SE on it and sometimes it crashes (Locks up) with the speaker making noises when I move the mouse. Any ideas?

Dr. Robotnik's Lean Mean Win98/XP Machine

I managed to reinstall 98 to the Gigabyte GA-8I865 based machine (no XP), and it seems to be working nicely with 98SE now.
I did solder a 3x2 pin header to the sblink port, and made a couple of sblink cables (which i'll put up for sale on the other bay) since buying one is impossible.
As soon as I get the 98 setup as I want it, i'll have to ghost it and start fiddling with the dos part of it.

I recently sold a P4P800 ASUS based system with XP and 98 dual booted. It sold a lot faster than I thought.

Is it possible to limit how much RAM Win98 can see? If not, the PC will not really be suitable for later stuff which ran on XP only. In my XP days I started off with an Athlon XP 1.4 GHz T-Bred CPU and 512MB around 2001 iirc, ended up with an overclocked Athlon XP-M 2.4 GHz Barton CPU and 1.5GB of RAM in 2008 or so. Probably a platform I stayed with the longest. I don't remember what GPU I had in the end but for a long time it was a Radeon All-in-Wonder 9800 Pro 😀

And then I sold a Thinkcentre A50 - I think I will shift my sales focus to making P4 dual boot Windows 98SE/XP systems. 😁 It's in that spot of "not expensive to get parts for" and "good profit".

/Quark.