My humble opinion, people use 98se for different reasons. Most the people around this forum use it for hardware compatibility, retro hardware, retro gaming. This is the 1st camp of people. The 2nd camp of people think 98se is the best operating system ever, and enjoy trying to take the OS as far as possible, and get a kick out of trying to use it on modern hardware and seeing if in 2019 it can be relevant as a daily driver.

So my 2 cents is these 2 camps are not using it for the same reasoning. Hope this helps you understand. So in reasoning if you only care about games then we can say within reason that windows XP can run 99% of the "windows" games out there and can be made to run them. Thus if your computer is fast enough to run XP or 2000 you should just run that. However if the games you are wanting to run run best on retro hardware than XP/2000 is not a option for you and you must run 98se. But people have different ideas about things so its a subjective question.

Anyways TLDR my humble opinion buck stops at Athlon, Pentium 4s single core, Tualatin, maybe Pentium M, Single core CPUs that are slow by todays standards. After this it becomes kinda rediculous. Overkill is any dual core or higher CPU even if its old like Pentium D which no one in their right mind should even use.

TimWolf wrote:

Often you see posts where the goal is the fastest hardware running Win98SE. IE: Some say they get a 7900 AGP with 512mb, Athlon 64 etc... But for the purposes of this post I"d like to nail down where it ends being maximized and starts to become overkill for the humble Win98SE platform. This is a hardware specific discussion, but with a software limitation aspect. I apologize if this type of post has already been done, but I did look around and only found people discussing how to get Win98SE running on bigger faster hardware, not where the point of diminishing returns occurs. So what are the concrete facts? Interested in both the modified Win98SE scene releases (yest even paid drivers) and unmodified official release limitations.

Thanks in advance for your participation in this discussion.

In my case I'm after it for software compatibility.

While I love building new pointlessly-overkill modern rigs as well, there are a number of older games that don't run correctly in some sense either at all (16-bit executables can't run on 64-bit Windows), or even through virtualization (XP or 98SE VM, or even the beloved DOSBox).

That all being said, my retro rig project (which has split into 2 machines since I picked up a mint condition Dell Optiplex GX150 for $20 recently) is aiming to dual boot both Windows 2000 for stability and driver support, as well as hopefully Me for compatibility with older titles that need more DOS-ish support than NT-based OS's provide. I actually tried getting Me set up on the Dell, but after installing Diamond's drivers for the Monster II (Aureal Vortex 2) card, it would just turn off immediately during bootup. 98SE is now up and running, seemingly stable so I might have to default to that for the dual-boot rig.

Everyone has their reasons though - ultimately whatever enjoyment you get out of doing this is justified so I say go for it whatever your motivation is.

A socket 478 pentium IV with a 2.4+ ghz clock speed, 512mb of memory, and a 120gb hard drive, ideally an SSD. Look for an int 865 or intel 865PE chipset, as these have modern conveniences like USB 2.0, gigabit LAN, and SATA 1.5.

As for graphics, I would say either a geforce 4200/4400/4600 ti or a Nvidia FX chip ideally 5600 ultra or better (alternatively, a Quadro FX 1000/2000/3000).

Anything faster than that not only doesn't make sense, it gets really hard to tame in windows 98.

I have a Asus P4P800-E Deluxe with a Northwood HT @ 3.0ghz, 2x256MB of DDR, and an Quadro FX 2000. I recommend the board in particular for the performance and driver support. They are not hard to find on ebay and are rather affordable. Quadro FX cards used to be really cheap but they have gone up in price recently. If you are looking for high end, I still think they are a pretty good value, but so are 4200ti and 4600ti cards.

Many people want the idealized experience. My first year at college, I participated in many Doom lan matches. My PC was a 486sx-33 with a Cirrus Logic vlb card. It didnt feel slow at the time, but in retrospect I was probably lucky to be getting 20fps. As we got older and standards evolved our gaming expectations have changed. I can relate to someone wanting to play "Generic-Game" on their Win98SE rig at 1080p >60fps.

From my experience I think an Athlon 1ghz / Geforce4 4200ti was the last PC that I ran Win98SE on and I think I was a bit of a hold out with that.

Most of the time i renjoy building the rigs, installing and setting it up, i play old games just little, there is a handful of old 9x games that i enjoy playing.
I have built a Socket 775 Pentium 4 prescott to run windows 98, i think it is a little bit on overkill, cause by the time that those parts existed, they would be probably on a windows xp build

Going over FX 5950 Ultra, is a a bit overkill (old table fog effects are lost, etc.).
Going over 512MB/768MB RAM = Overkill (no game program can use that much, unless do some optimisations).
Going newer than Core 2 Duo/Athlon 64 is WAY OVERKILL (drivers, IRQ settings, etc. need to be perfect for it work, rLowe patches may be needed).

Depending on what you want this PC to do, you may be in any of the above.
I'm mostly in third group : LINK

PS. CompactFlash is fine, same goes for SSDs.

Warlord wrote:

Overkill is any dual core or higher CPU even if its old like Pentium D which no one in their right mind should even use.

Seconded.
DOS and DOS-based Windows are inherently uniprocessor, using them on anything multicore/hyperthreaded is a mistake.

Back in the day i can distinctly remember ditching 98SE at the earliest opportunity. I was running the RTM build of Windows 2000 as soon as it was available. And that was despite it seriously hurting performance on what was my main gaming PC at the time, as the Win2K drivers were pretty crap to begin with, due to the way they targetted the OS at the business market. I was probably still running a K6-3 at that point, as i swapped from the K6-3 to a Duron 900, and those werent released till 6 months or so after Win2K RTM.

Win2k was a revelation of stability compared with the 9x series. Most of my mates who were into max performance stuck with 98, or switched to ME as it was faster than 2k, but i can remember lan parties and my box just worked, whereas theirs were somewhat unstable.

So i guess for me, its really about software. If the software will run on 2k/XP, then i wouldnt see the point of sticking with 98. The Athlon box i'm building is going to dual boot 98 and 2K, so i've the option of running older tricker stuff in 98 and then 2k for everything else.

But i guess at the same time, if you want '98 and want to use a later machine like a P4 or whatever, then sure. Some will want multiple machines, others will be happy with one later machine that can run as much as possible.

Well, I can definitely relate to this topic, as I'm part of the problem by building ridiculously overkill rig running Win 98. So why I build it? Well, mainly because I wanted to see on my own eyes, that it is really possible. When I started building that machine, I set for XP system of course, but during build, I found out, that Win 98 should be possible on that machine, so I adjust selection of PC parts to that. And at the end, it worked 😎 And it's definitely funny to be able to see such an old system running on such an modern PC, with parts running at almost infinitely more speed, then it was designed to.

Would I be recommending to build system like it to others? Definitely not! There are several reasons for it. First, I still want to be part of this community and don't get banned 🤣 And second, you really have to pick quite specific parts to get this system working fully, and in my case, there were several roadblocks, which I hit during the process. And there are even some things, which just cannot be avoided and you'll have to live with them.

So yeah, building overkill machines for Win 98 is definitely possible, sometimes fun, sometimes torture, but mostly unnecessary.

Oh, and to answer the question of topic, I would say, that HW is overkill, when it exceeds, what was OS mostly designed for. So, more then one core, more then 1GB RAM, PCIe GPUs and that kind of stuff (yeah, I'm guilty of doing most of that 😁 ).

Aragorn wrote:

Back in the day i can distinctly remember ditching 98SE at the earliest opportunity. I was running the RTM build of Windows 2000 […]
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Back in the day i can distinctly remember ditching 98SE at the earliest opportunity. I was running the RTM build of Windows 2000 as soon as it was available. And that was despite it seriously hurting performance on what was my main gaming PC at the time, as the Win2K drivers were pretty crap to begin with, due to the way they targetted the OS at the business market. I was probably still running a K6-3 at that point, as i swapped from the K6-3 to a Duron 900, and those werent released till 6 months or so after Win2K RTM.

Win2k was a revelation of stability compared with the 9x series. Most of my mates who were into max performance stuck with 98, or switched to ME as it was faster than 2k, but i can remember lan parties and my box just worked, whereas theirs were somewhat unstable.

So i guess for me, its really about software. If the software will run on 2k/XP, then i wouldnt see the point of sticking with 98. The Athlon box i'm building is going to dual boot 98 and 2K, so i've the option of running older tricker stuff in 98 and then 2k for everything else.

But i guess at the same time, if you want '98 and want to use a later machine like a P4 or whatever, then sure. Some will want multiple machines, others will be happy with one later machine that can run as much as possible.

I can vouch for the iffyness of Windows Me... tried to install it on a Dell workstation I picked up recently (came with W2k). It seemed fine but once I installed the sound card drivers and rebooted, it never would load again - as soon as Windows began loading the machine would just shut off.

Windows 98SE on it seems to work just fine...

Srandista wrote:

Well, I can definitely relate to this topic, as I'm part of the problem of building ridiculously overkill rig running Win 98. So […]
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Well, I can definitely relate to this topic, as I'm part of the problem of building ridiculously overkill rig running Win 98. So why I build it? Well, mainly because I wanted to see on my own eyes, that it is really possible. When I started building that machine, I set for XP system of course, but during build, I found out, that Win 98 should be possible on that machine, so I adjust selection of PC parts to that. And at the end, it worked 😎 And it's definitely funny to be able to see such an old system running on such an modern PC, with parts sunning at almost infinitely more speed, then it was designed to.

Would I be recommending to build system like it to others? Definitely not! There are several reasons for it. First, I still want to be part of this community and don't get banned 🤣 And second, you really have to pick quite specific parts to get this system working fully, and in my case, there were several roadblocks, which I hit during the process. And there are even some things, which just cannot be avoided and you'll have to live with them.

So yeah, building overkill machines for Win 98 is definitely possible, sometimes fun, sometimes torture, but mostly unnecessary.

Oh, and to answer the question of topic, I would say, that HW is overkill, when it exceeds, what was OS mostly designed for. So, more then one core, more then 1GB RAM, PCIe GPUs and that kind of stuff (yeah, I'm guilty of doing most of that 😁 ).

Keep in mind that 9x can't even see more than 1 core/thread so although we can run it on newer systems, the benefit is primarily from higher clock speed; getting it to run in a 2/4 core chip doesn't help exponentially the way it can with W2k, XP etc.

That all being said, I initially set out to build the 'best possible PC of late 2000' since that was when I built my first all-new PC but have decided to instead go for more of a 'best hardware that has mainstream Windows 98SE support', to allow dual-booting 9x/2000 (going to run 2000 Professional as my primary OS, but default to 98SE or Me when necessary for better DOS support).

98SE just felt so much faster than XP on period correct machines, especially with speed-up trickery. I held on to 98SE until LAN parties forced me to move to XP, as some of the network issues were stopping me from joining certain games. I reluctantly moved and my Duron 700 felt sluggish and underpowered after that. Loading times increased etc. I'm sure service packs and minor hardware upgrades fixed it in time, but I would say 98SE for a mid range P3 machine (733Mhz or there-abouts) with a TNT2 or MX400.

Also 98SE for a VooDoo 2 SLI build, again with a decent but not overkill CPU such as a P3-733.

I think XP makes sense for a wide span of hardware, but probably starts at a 1Ghz CPU and a Geforce 2 Ultra / Radeon 8500.

Purely from a compatibility point of view I would add to some comments.

Grzyb wrote:

Warlord wrote:

Overkill is any dual core or higher CPU even if its old like Pentium D which no one in their right mind should even use.

Seconded.
DOS and DOS-based Windows are inherently uniprocessor, using them on anything multicore/hyperthreaded is a mistake.

Agreed that running a Pentium D would be a mistake, for many reasons. For Win98 there's no increase in performance from the second glued on Pentium 4; and in general, the heat from two Pentium 4s!
I would add that multicore isn't inherently a problem for DOS/Win98. All things being equal, it just ignores additional cores.

agent_x007 wrote:

Going over FX 5950 Ultra, is a a bit overkill (old table fog effects are lost, etc.). Going over 512MB/768MB RAM = Overkill (no […]
Show full quote

Going over FX 5950 Ultra, is a a bit overkill (old table fog effects are lost, etc.).
Going over 512MB/768MB RAM = Overkill (no game program can use that much, unless do some optimisations).
Going newer than Core 2 Duo/Athlon 64 is WAY OVERKILL (drivers, IRQ settings, etc. need to be perfect for it work, rLowe patches may be needed).
...
PS. CompactFlash is fine, same goes for SSDs.

Bang on with the FX 5950 series being the cutoff for stability and compatibility while still being overkill for almost any situation.

512MB appears to be the guaranteed safe point for RAM. There are some who patch their systems to potentially get more from new software but from a compatibility point of view, old software which won't run on W2K and above won't use the extra RAM so I question why you would add it in the first place; unless you just really love Windows 98 rather than old games and applications.

Core 2 Duo needs no patches or OCD on configuration for stability, just a motherboard which has proper Windows 98 support and an AGP slot. Install procedure differing only in starting the install with setup /p j to enable ACPI, although this is chipset specific rather than CPU. Attention to detail and the right drivers will improve any Win98 build though and Intel chipsets are usually the best for sanity. Perhaps you might limit clockspeed to 2.4Ghz for absolute stability in DOS edge cases but is still beating the pants off anything else in the compatibility bracket and very speed sensitive DOS games are an issue for most systems past the 486.
The Core2Duo CPU design is very close to the Pentium 3 but is wider, with more cache, a newer manufacturing process which allows higher clocks and a few more instructions which don't impact Win98. It erased the mistakes of the Pentium 4 after Intel realised how well the Pentium 3 based Pentium M systems turned out. Still massive overkill but doesn't have to be a sacrifice on compatibility. The main argument against using one would be for people who wouldn't accept anything other than ISA soundcards in DOS.
EDIT: should probably mention that the 865 chipset "only" really supports 800mhz bus CPUs without penalty of dropping bus speed and running RAM asynchronously which makes the 45nm Pentium Dual-Core variant a good (and currently very cheap) choice.

Oh yeah also, SATA SSDs FTW.

This is what i think a top WIN98se build should be...

Pentium3 1400S Tualatin / Asus Tusl2-c / 256mb pc133 cl2 / Seagate 20gb 7200rpm / GeForce3 Ti500 64mb / SB Live! 5.1 / dvdrom / 3.5'' floppy / Enermax 550w 20pin

By all means, this would not be considered overkill, but just right when it comes to gaming and performance, so my oppinion of overkill would be a Pentium4 of at least 2.4ghz and GF4 to GF6 series video cards.... leave those kind of systems that take better advantage of WinXP.

Bige4u wrote:

This is what i think a top WIN98se build should be...

Pentium3 1400S Tualatin / Asus Tusl2-c / 256mb pc133 cl2 / Seagate 20gb 7200rpm / GeForce3 Ti500 64mb / SB Live! 5.1 / dvdrom / 3.5'' floppy / Enermax 550w 20pin

By all means, this would not be considered overkill, but just right when it comes to gaming and performance, so my oppinion of overkill would be a Pentium4 of at least 2.4ghz and GF4 to GF6 series video cards.... leave those kind of systems that take better advantage of WinXP.

That's a great setup for windows 98 😀. Tualatin builds are really cool.

My Current Win98 Rig:

Pentium 4 3.4Ghz, ASRock 775VM800 (https://www.asrock.com/mb/VIA/775VM800/), 512MB Ram DDR?, 1X 120 GB SSD, 2X 120GB HDD, Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB/Geforce 5950 Ultra, Voodoo 2 PCI, Soundblaster PCI, DVD-R/W, 1.44MB Floppy, 650 Watt EVGA Something.

To me it's the perfect Win98 machine to push period games to 1920x1080, or simply max out 1024x768 and not worry about power. The voodoo 2 is great to have as well when I want to play something from that period on authentic hardware. I would call it overkill but not when the goal is ultimate gaming performance.

Agreed that running a Pentium D would be a mistake, for many reasons.

Pentium 4+ platforms are rarely used strictly for WIn98.

kalm_traveler wrote:

Keep in mind that 9x can't even see more than 1 core/thread so although we can run it on newer systems, the benefit is primarily from higher clock speed; getting it to run in a 2/4 core chip doesn't help exponentially the way it can with W2k, XP etc.

Yeah I know, but 98 isn't incompatible with more then 1 core CPUs. It's just ignoring anything above that one core, which is totally fine with me. I don't even have to disable that core(s) in BIOS. But as I said, system was mainly build for XP gaming, 98 support it's just kind of pleasant surprise 😀

When I got my first i7 920, I got an Asus P6T motherboard for it. There were still options in the BIOS related to Windows 98. Not sure if they're still there after the latest BIOS update. Might be a fun build though, even if only one core is available.

When I got my first p4 rig, the first thing I installed was 98se, but after experiencing a few limitations, decided to go for XP.

Another reason to run anachronistic hardware with older software though:

There are also a number of people out there that need PCs that can run 98, DOS, etc, because of software compatibility issues (real or perceived) with new operating systems and hardware. There are a number of applications; industrial, testing machines, CNC, mixing consoles, that when the accompanying PC dies, the owners are suddenly scrambling to replace. I think that's why when you see these "retro" PCs on eBay, usually p4 Dells, they'll all say "ReTr0 DOS gaming rig w0w / serious industrial work PC" to try and pander to all markets.

But using newer (than what was originally available) hardware that can run the old OSes and software (good enough for their particular application) can be helpful, because it's a lot easier and cheaper to find, acquire, and swap out PCs.