Athlon 64 and socket 754 are a great match for windows 98.

Tomb Raider 1 has a million different version for graphics APIs, but the GLIDE tends to run the best. The best graphics card for windows 98 in my opini0n is a voodoo 3. It is good enough for 1024x768 resolution for gaming for any titles release on or before 2001 or so, which fits your criteria just fine.

The thing you need to watch out for, is the keying on the AGP slot. Older AGP graphics cards like the voodoo 3 use a 3.3v keying while "newer" AGP supporting motherboards use 1.5v keying. A voodoo 3 or similar 3.3v AGP card won't fit in the AGP slot of that motherboard. You can buy a more modern graphics card that supports 1.5v keying, you can get a PCI voodoo card, or you can look for a different motherbard with universal AGP keying (which you can tell by the lack of notches in the AGP slot).

https://www.google.com/search?q=universal+AGP … =2vH1v_yg37ANXM

A PCI voodoo 3 is a little harder to find and usually more expensive but not particularly "rare".

You can also try and find a socket 754 board with universal AGP (pretty rare), but I would recommend instead looking for socket 478 motherboards with universal AGP, or using something older like socket 370. Socket A is another option, but if you go that route I would buy a lower power CPU as it can be difficult to source a modern power supply with enough 5v amps to power that kind of platform.

If you go Nvidia or ATI, then the 9000 series of ATI cards and the FX 5000 series of Nvidia cards are as new as you would want to go. An Nvidia MX 460 or 440 is cheap, not hard to find, and has pretty good enough performance for windows 98. Something like an AGP FX 5200 or better is also a good option.

mothergoose729 wrote on 2020-12-14, 22:53:

Athlon 64 and socket 754 are a great match for windows 98.

Thanks.

A lot of people is discouraging me on the P4 and the socket 478 route because they say that the P4 runs too hot and it's unstable and should be avoided.

Another good point of that ASUS board I mentioned is that it's a miniITX format, and since I already have a miniITX case with one 5.25 slot (Fractal Design Core 500) that could be a great idea also to save space if possible. Can I do that?

So the only option to experience GLIDE would be a PCI Voodoo? Which model?
Can you help me decide the "main" GPU between the ATI or Nvidia you mentioned?

About the PSU, what wattage? Let's say that one day I will get a Vodoo 2 SLI (if it's possible), will the required wattage change?

And, do I need a floppy drive? The primary HDD has to be SATA -> IDE?

Sorry for the dumb questions and thanks for your time.

vinxi2 wrote on 2020-12-14, 23:07:

mothergoose729 wrote on 2020-12-14, 22:53:

Athlon 64 and socket 754 are a great match for windows 98.

Thanks.

A lot of people is discouraging me on the P4 and the socket 478 route because they say that the P4 runs too hot and it's unstable and should be avoided.

Many people consider P4 to be the best Win98 platform taking cost/availability into account. Northwood cpus do not run a hot as other P4s (prescotts) and are extremely stable with adequate cooling/ventilation. And unlike s754, you get complete driver support for Win98, AGP, single core CPUs which are all great for earlier games.

kolderman wrote on 2020-12-14, 23:24:

Many people consider P4 to be the best Win98 platform taking cost/availability into account. Northwood cpus do not run a hot as other P4s (prescotts)

Can you help me finding a good motherboard for the Northwood series? May be some model names, brand. Are those available in miniITX format?

vinxi2 wrote on 2020-12-14, 23:28:

kolderman wrote on 2020-12-14, 23:24:

Many people consider P4 to be the best Win98 platform taking cost/availability into account. Northwood cpus do not run a hot as other P4s (prescotts)

Can you help me finding a good motherboard for the Northwood series? May be some model names, brand. Are those available in miniITX format?

Don't know about miniITX, but uATX certainly. All the normal big brands made mobos for P4, the chipset to lookout for i865/i875.

Are you set on running games in our pure DOS mode? If not get a 4200ti or 5500FX and use dgVoodoo for glide games.

SB Live or SB Audigy for sound. SD2IDE to storage and you have a great 98 era PC.

Thank you everyone. By now on eBay I found (at a decent price):

- Asus K8V-MX/S + Amd Athlon 64 2800+ 1800 Mhz and 1 GB RAM
- ASUS CUV4X-M + Intel Pentium III 800Mhz + 512MB RAM

Which one would you guys prefer? Should I keep searching?
Which one is more "reliable for the future" in terms of capacitors?

Thanks

SScorpio wrote on 2020-12-15, 03:09:

Are you set on running games in our pure DOS mode? If not get a 4200ti or 5500FX and use dgVoodoo for glide games.

SB Live or SB Audigy for sound. SD2IDE to storage and you have a great 98 era PC.

Do you mean a configuration like this on a Pentium 3 or Athlon 64?

vinxi2 wrote on 2020-12-15, 12:50:

Do you mean a configuration like this on a Pentium 3 or Athlon 64?

Either should work. My Win98 machine is an A64 3000+, 5500FX, Audigy, and Vortex 2 that pipes digitally into the Audigy.

SScorpio wrote on 2020-12-15, 13:01:

My Win98 machine is an A64 3000+, 5500FX, Audigy, and Vortex 2 that pipes digitally into the Audigy.

And for DOS games like Tomb Raider with GLIDE (dgVodoo as you said, right?) or an older Commander Keen how do you do?

Can you give me an advice for that board I found on eBay I mentioned in the previous post?

I haven't used that motherboard so I can't comment. But it does have a VIA chipset so it should work with pure DOS mode sound. Other chipsets like the NForce can't do pure DOS mode sound with most PCI sound cards.

I ran GLIDE Tombraider just fine on my Win98 machine with dgVoodoo. You just run it from with Windows and need to load the dgVoodoo server app that intercepts the DOS GLIDE calls and renders them to DirectX. For really old DOS games I have a 486 as well as ao486 on my MiSTer.

You may want to verify the A64 CPU you get has cool n' quiet support. Those processors are multiplier unlocked and my 3000+ can be down clocked to 5X which lowers to ~1Ghz. A Voodoo 3 also isn't a good card for DOS GLIDE games. Some DOS games only want to work with a V2 or lower and some only work with a V1.

You mention wanting a release of 3DFX, those PCs were more Pentium era and starting to move into Pentium II. But there is no perfect machine that will play all games. Prices around here A64s are very cheap along with the 5500 FX. That machine should be a good starting point to let you try out the games you want to play, and you could always save up and buy more expensive slower parts if it doesn't work the way you want.

Nglide also works on win98, you just need dx9 installed and a d3d9 graphics card with win98 drivers such as nvidia fx 5900. Benefit of going that route vs real 3dfx cards is the performance, you can run glide games at 1600x1200 with 32bit color and high fps, not even voodoo5 5500 can manage that usually. But how well that works kinda depends on individual game basis, for example NFS 3 Hot Pursuit doesn't seem to work with nglide under win98/win2k and need at least winXP, but NFS 2 SE and NFS 4 do work with nglide under win98 just fine. For NFS 3 you can probably use dgvoodoo instead.

Benefit of going for athlon 64 of pentium 4 is the mobo will have an extra 4-pin 12v connector near cpu socket that will allow you to use a modern power supply, otherwise you gonna need an old unit with strong 5v rail ( I recommend enermax eg series for that), benefit of going for a pentium 3 or amd k6 system would be you can find motherboard with ISA slots useful for adding good sound cards for DOS games

Thank you everyone.

In case I go for a the Athlon 64 route, can I use this power supply for a gaming build?

https://www.amazon.it/Fonte-alimentazione-Gam … 878&s=pc&sr=1-1

Does Windows 98 need a floppy drive?

Does the primary HDD have to be IDE to install Windows 98?

Thanks

PSU should be fine.

No, but it can make things much easier. I recommend a Gotek Floppy Emulator rather than a real floppy drive. It lets you put floppy images on a USB drive and is seen as a real floppy drive. They are under $20 USD.

Win98 can use SATA, but some chipsets work others won't be bootable under Win98. IDE will mainly just work and like I said above I recommend using an SD2IDE adapter. For installing Win98 you can copy the installation CD into a directory on the HDD you are installing to. So if you use the Gotek to boot a Win98 boot disk to partition, format, and add the DOS files to boot. You can then just install right on the HDD, I ended up needing to install Win98 multiple times as I was messing with different patches and pieces of HDD trying to find the best configuration. Installing from and to the SD card cut the installation time down to 15 minutes or so which made it much less painful.

vinxi2 wrote on 2020-12-14, 23:07:

Thanks. […]
Show full quote

mothergoose729 wrote on 2020-12-14, 22:53:

Athlon 64 and socket 754 are a great match for windows 98.

Thanks.

A lot of people is discouraging me on the P4 and the socket 478 route because they say that the P4 runs too hot and it's unstable and should be avoided.

Another good point of that ASUS board I mentioned is that it's a miniITX format, and since I already have a miniITX case with one 5.25 slot (Fractal Design Core 500) that could be a great idea also to save space if possible. Can I do that?

So the only option to experience GLIDE would be a PCI Voodoo? Which model?
Can you help me decide the "main" GPU between the ATI or Nvidia you mentioned?

About the PSU, what wattage? Let's say that one day I will get a Vodoo 2 SLI (if it's possible), will the required wattage change?

And, do I need a floppy drive? The primary HDD has to be SATA -> IDE?

Sorry for the dumb questions and thanks for your time.

The P4 chipsets are the most stable chipsets for windows 98 period. I own a p865 board and it works better than my 440bx slot 1 chipset. Whoever told you than p4 is unstable doesn't know what they are talking about.

P4 is definitely hot, but you can manage the heat. Just get a 2.4 or 2.6ghz p4 models - they run at a much lower TDP. I would also recommend that you look for a northwood core CPU, ideally one that is rated to run at an 800fsb, as they run cooler than prescott and offer very similar performance. The 800fsb is nice because you can get more memory bandwidth, and why not.

You can run an ATI or Nvidia card as the primary display and use something like a voodoo 2 PCI for GLIDE, but that is definitely the most expensive route. A voodoo 2 generally goes for 130+ dollars on ebay (in the US) which is actually more expensive than a Voodoo 3 PCI card typically is. I would still recommend a voodoo 3 as the go to windows 98 graphics card, but you can also get a 1.5v compatiable AGP card of which there are lots to choose from. The FX series and Geforce 4 ti cards are the fastest, and I would say something like a Geforce 4 mmx 440 or 460 are among the easiest to find and most affordable.

My windows 98 machine uses a P4 3.06ghz northwood processor with an Asus P4P 800-E Delux motherboard, I have a Quadro FX card that I configure as an FX 5800 Geforce with rivatuner, and a PCI v00d00 3 2000 which I flashed to a vood00 3 3000 bios. Getting some of the drivers installed was a pain, but it runs very fast and is as stable as any windows 98 machine can be.

As for PSU wattage, that only gets complicated on socket A, basically. Old school PSUs had the majority of their power on the 5v rails, while newer stuff uses 12v rails. If you have a power hungry 5v system than a modern power supply might not have enough 5v power to get the job done. If you get a slot 1 motherboard or socket 370, they are so low power typically that the 5v/12v difference doesn't matter. It is only the higher end CPUs on socket A in particular that pull a lot of juice and us 5v to do it. Even if you get socket A, you can get a lower power duron and avoid any issues with modern power supply's.

A floppy drive is nice to have, but I wouldn't say you need it. For windows 98 I typically use a CD ROM to install USB drivers, and then everything else I do through USB.

A IDE to SATA adapter is one solution for storage. I wouldn't buy old hard drives. My P4 board natively supports SATA 1.5 with built in IDE emulation and I just use that and it is very fast with my SSD hard drive.

mATX boards like your asus aren't hard to find. If it has the ports and features you need then I say go for it. I prefer full ATX personally because I tend to fill up my computers with stuff.

mothergoose729 wrote on 2020-12-16, 00:58:

The P4 chipsets are the most stable chipsets for windows 98 period. I own a p865 board and it works better than my 440bx slot 1 […]
Show full quote

vinxi2 wrote on 2020-12-14, 23:07:

Thanks. […]
Show full quote

mothergoose729 wrote on 2020-12-14, 22:53:

Athlon 64 and socket 754 are a great match for windows 98.

Thanks.

A lot of people is discouraging me on the P4 and the socket 478 route because they say that the P4 runs too hot and it's unstable and should be avoided.

Another good point of that ASUS board I mentioned is that it's a miniITX format, and since I already have a miniITX case with one 5.25 slot (Fractal Design Core 500) that could be a great idea also to save space if possible. Can I do that?

So the only option to experience GLIDE would be a PCI Voodoo? Which model?
Can you help me decide the "main" GPU between the ATI or Nvidia you mentioned?

About the PSU, what wattage? Let's say that one day I will get a Vodoo 2 SLI (if it's possible), will the required wattage change?

And, do I need a floppy drive? The primary HDD has to be SATA -> IDE?

Sorry for the dumb questions and thanks for your time.

The P4 chipsets are the most stable chipsets for windows 98 period. I own a p865 board and it works better than my 440bx slot 1 chipset. Whoever told you than p4 is unstable doesn't know what they are talking about.

P4 is definitely hot, but you can manage the heat. Just get a 2.4 or 2.6ghz p4 models - they run at a much lower TDP. I would also recommend that you look for a northwood core CPU, ideally one that is rated to run at an 800fsb, as they run cooler than prescott and offer very similar performance. The 800fsb is nice because you can get more memory bandwidth, and why not.

You can run an ATI or Nvidia card as the primary display and use something like a voodoo 2 PCI for GLIDE, but that is definitely the most expensive route. A voodoo 2 generally goes for 130+ dollars on ebay (in the US) which is actually more expensive than a Voodoo 3 PCI card typically is. I would still recommend a voodoo 3 as the go to windows 98 graphics card, but you can also get a 1.5v compatiable AGP card of which there are lots to choose from. The FX series and Geforce 4 ti cards are the fastest, and I would say something like a Geforce 4 mmx 440 or 460 are among the easiest to find and most affordable.

My windows 98 machine uses a P4 3.06ghz northwood processor with an Asus P4P 800-E Delux motherboard, I have a Quadro FX card that I configure as an FX 5800 Geforce with rivatuner, and a PCI v00d00 3 2000 which I flashed to a vood00 3 3000 bios. Getting some of the drivers installed was a pain, but it runs very fast and is as stable as any windows 98 machine can be.

As for PSU wattage, that only gets complicated on socket A, basically. Old school PSUs had the majority of their power on the 5v rails, while newer stuff uses 12v rails. If you have a power hungry 5v system than a modern power supply might not have enough 5v power to get the job done. If you get a slot 1 motherboard or socket 370, they are so low power typically that the 5v/12v difference doesn't matter. It is only the higher end CPUs on socket A in particular that pull a lot of juice and us 5v to do it. Even if you get socket A, you can get a lower power duron and avoid any issues with modern power supply's.

A floppy drive is nice to have, but I wouldn't say you need it. For windows 98 I typically use a CD ROM to install USB drivers, and then everything else I do through USB.

A IDE to SATA adapter is one solution for storage. I wouldn't buy old hard drives. My P4 board natively supports SATA 1.5 with built in IDE emulation and I just use that and it is very fast with my SSD hard drive.

mATX boards like your asus aren't hard to find. If it has the ports and features you need then I say go for it. I prefer full ATX personally because I tend to fill up my computers with stuff.

I just want to say what he said ^