vinxi2 wrote on 2021-11-01, 00:34:

zapbuzz wrote on 2021-11-01, 00:30:

yes, there are 3rd party free altrnatives to replace scandisk and defrag but it would take a ton of time filling up a disk to slow microsoft defrag!

And you can replace even the scandisk that comes up automatically when Windows 98 has not been shutdown properly?

I saw in various guides that it’s recommended to change Windows 98 defrag with the ME one.

what comes up automatically in 98se dirty shutdown is chkdsk and there is no replacing that fortunately it can handle 250gb.
In millennium it is scandisk. if you want to change this i have to comment scandisk on 98se dirty shutdown scan is not much faster. (or on Me for that matter)

You can change defrag with Millennium version simply to have a baseline level of compatability
but a 3rd party alternative will have improved strategy and not adhere to microsofts limited defrag strategy

I use diskeeper on all my PCs, it's made by the same people that made the windows built-in defrag but diskeeper is more advanced and also provides automatic defragmentation at all times with just about no performance impact, so you don't even need to run it manually

As always you're helping me understanding other things but let's take a look at the prices:

2.5" 500GB 5200RPM - 42€,
2.5" 1TB 5200RPM - 45€
3.5" 500 GB 7200RPM - 34€
Crucial SSD 480 GB - 50€
Crucial SSD 240GB - 33€
Kingston A400 120 GB - 26€

Edit: I cut out all my useless thoughts 🤣

What's wrong with regular 3.5" 7200rpm HDDs anyways, I've been using those forever and I can't complain. Noise? Vibrations? Really now, in a decently built case (and silverstone does have good build quality) you cannot hear the HDD over the sound of the fans. Diskeeper's automatic defragmentation feature takes care of maintenance as well. Performance is plenty enough for old OSes, especially if you solely use the PC for gaming and not for any productivity work. The way I see it, SSD for retro gaming purposes only makes sense if cheap HDDs are no longer available, and they still are

For reference, even in my main PC, I have a 1tb wd velociraptor, a 512gb samsung 840 pro and 2tb samsung 850 pro, and intel 750 ssd 1.2tb as well as five seagate sshds of 4tb each for total of 20tb spinning storage... 21tb counting the velociraptor... only audible noise I can hear from this PC is from the airflow of the case fans, and mostly really the fans of the graphics card

velociraptor is a beast i always wanted to do a RAID of 4 of them but they are hot little things people try selling them without their heatsink bracket i'm like "noooo veloci-meme's!"

WDC WD1000DHTZ-60N21V0 (931,5 GB)

Current Temperature: 30 °C
Average Temperature (today): 30,25 °C
Maximum Temperature (today): 31 °C

...yeah, it's hot indeed 😀 Does have the heatsink tho... lets check the 36gb Raptor in my 2003 pc then, which has been on for a couple of hours now, as I'm currently retro gaming, that one doesn't have a heatsink:

WDC WD360GD-00FNA0 (34,5 GB)

Current Temperature: 35 °C
Average Temperature (today): 32,92 °C
Maximum Temperature (today): 39 °C

...mmmyeah, this thing gonna have a meltdown 😀

Just a little update guys.

I received the CPU but the eBay seller forgot to send me the 512MB DIMM. I contacted him of course and will see what he does.

I also contacted Noctua and they say that the 775 adapter would arrive fast but they need the proof of purchase, so I decided to go with an even cheaper cooler and upgrade to a Noctua one next month.

In the meanwhile I was too curious to see if what I had “worked” so I put the CPU and the cooler on the motherboard, made an “on the fly” connection with a PSU from another build and the motherboard gave the 3 beeps, but it was working and the cooler was spinning. YES!!! I hope that means the CPU is working.

I also ordered those new old stock 2 GB. They are CL3, but it’s really hard to find CL2.5 ones.

if the cpu is visually intact (no physical damage) theres really no reason why it shouldn't work. CPUs don't really die of overuse the way video cards tend to. You can find cpus that have been running overclocked and overvolted for 30 years now and still work fine. The only cpus I have found so far that did not work had broken pins or cracked silicone dies.

BTW, forget CL2.5, the ideal ddr400 sticks will have CL2 timings... for example the corsair xms platinum kit in my 2003 pc that has 2-2-2-5 timings, tho thats 512mb sticks not 1 gig sticks

Try a agp pentium 4 motherboard with a willamette core cpu

That’s probably the fastest win 9x compatible setup you can find

Sphere478 wrote on 2021-11-07, 08:25:

Try a agp pentium 4 motherboard with a willamette core cpu

That’s probably the fastest win 9x compatible setup you can find

Wish you were simply being sarcastic. 🙄

dormcat wrote on 2021-11-07, 08:35:

Sphere478 wrote on 2021-11-07, 08:25:

Try a agp pentium 4 motherboard with a willamette core cpu

That’s probably the fastest win 9x compatible setup you can find

Wish you were simply being sarcastic. 🙄

I assume you are agreeing?

God Of Gaming wrote on 2021-11-07, 07:45:

BTW, forget CL2.5, the ideal ddr400 sticks will have CL2 timings... for example the corsair xms platinum kit in my 2003 pc that has 2-2-2-5 timings, tho thats 512mb sticks not 1 gig sticks

I'm pretty sure that your Corsairs are double sided and they are built using different chips (256 Mb) than 1 GB sticks (512 Mb).
512 Mb chips are completely different beasts. They usually achieve lower clocks and don't like low timings (comparing to 256 Mb chips).

I'm not sure if there was 2 x 1 GB 400 MHz CL2 set available on market, as something like 400 MHz 2-3-3 1T would require really good chips.

Of course you can still buy faster CL3 sticks (like Crucial Ballistix 500 MHz or Corsair XMS 550 MHz) and they *might* do 2-3-3 or even 2-3-2 1T / 400 MHz. But it won't be easy to get such sticks currently, they will be expensive and you won't get a big improvement in performance comparing to CL3 sticks.

@vinxi2
So... if you'd like to use your PC just for gaming, then buy any 400 MHz CL3 sticks and forget about them.
If you'd like to spend some time on memory overclocking, then go for 4x512 MB CL2 set instead. They will provide you much more fun than any 1 GB stick set. 😀

Sphere478 wrote on 2021-11-07, 10:02:

dormcat wrote on 2021-11-07, 08:35:

Sphere478 wrote on 2021-11-07, 08:25:

Try a agp pentium 4 motherboard with a willamette core cpu

That’s probably the fastest win 9x compatible setup you can find

Wish you were simply being sarcastic. 🙄

I assume you are agreeing?

Vinxi2 already got his 775i65G R2.0, one of the last few MB that officially support Win98SE (IIRC 775i65G R3.0 is THE last one), and the slowest processor it accepts is Celeron D 325J (2.53 GHz, 90 nm) released in September 22, 2004. That MB can accept a Core 2 Extreme QX6700 that runs faster than a Celeron G5905, the slowest new CPU one can buy retail today. OTOH the fastest and final Willamette processor is Pentium 4 2.0 GHz with 180 nm lithography released in August 27, 2001. Not to mention that early Willamette processors were slower than P3 / Athlon it sought to replace / defeat.

dormcat wrote on 2021-11-07, 12:26:

Sphere478 wrote on 2021-11-07, 10:02:

dormcat wrote on 2021-11-07, 08:35:

Wish you were simply being sarcastic. 🙄

I assume you are agreeing?

Vinxi2 already got his 775i65G R2.0, one of the last few MB that officially support Win98SE (IIRC 775i65G R3.0 is THE last one), and the slowest processor it accepts is Celeron D 325J (2.53 GHz, 90 nm) released in September 22, 2004. That MB can accept a Core 2 Extreme QX6700 that runs faster than a Celeron G5905, the slowest new CPU one can buy retail today. OTOH the fastest and final Willamette processor is Pentium 4 2.0 GHz with 180 nm lithography released in August 27, 2001. Not to mention that early Willamette processors were slower than P3 / Athlon it sought to replace / defeat.

It's about a 1.4Ghz Thunderbird or 1.2Ghz Palomino that takes the middle of the "give and take" on benchmarks* (Where some are faster and slower but it averages out to equal) and that's only if the willamette is on an i850 mobo, on 845 it's getting it's ass handed to it a lot earlier. The "P" rating on XPs was really a Thunderbird rating, if it was rated against the Willamette the highest palomino at 1733 would be a 2800+ instead of a 2100+

edit: * against the P4 2.0Ghz Willamette

God Of Gaming wrote on 2021-11-07, 07:45:

BTW, forget CL2.5, the ideal ddr400 sticks will have CL2 timings... for example the corsair xms platinum kit in my 2003 pc that has 2-2-2-5 timings, tho thats 512mb sticks not 1 gig sticks

@vinxi2
So... if you'd like to use your PC just for gaming, then buy any 400 MHz CL3 sticks and forget about them.
If you'd like to spend some time on memory overclocking, then go for 4x512 MB CL2 set instead. They will provide you much more fun than any 1 GB stick set. 😀

Thank you (again) guys. Yes, I will use the PC only for gaming. The problem was also that I couldn't find any CL lower then 3 shipped to Italy. There were just one DIMM or max 256/512MB. Same problem with decent priced GPUs.. 🙁

Anyway I'm happy to have found those new old stock 2GB. But Now I need to find a 512MB one to install Windows 98.

Vinxi2 already got his 775i65G R2.0, one of the last few MB that officially support Win98SE (IIRC 775i65G R3.0 is THE last one), and the slowest processor it accepts is Celeron D 325J (2.53 GHz, 90 nm) released in September 22, 2004. That MB can accept a Core 2 Extreme QX6700

About the CPU support of this motherboard, I saw people using modded BIOS and mount a E5800 but I'm really worried about the stability and "longevity" of the motherboard. I just want a stable and long-life system. Same goes for FSB 1066Mhz CPUs that (if I understood it with my little knowledge) is tecnically considered as an overclock by the motherboard. So I choosed the E4700 that is the most powerful 800 Mhz FSB CPU included in the official supported list that should be plenty for Windows 98 (and good for a Windows XP dual boot).

The next problem here right now is finding a 5900XT at a decent price.

The E4700 is a great choice, pretty much the fastest stock supported dual core you can find. 98 won't use more than one core anyway, and there are few XP "optimized" games, that need a quad and have issues on more recent systems.
By the time games made good use of quad cores, you start going into DX10/11/12 games that often require 64-bit Windows and more than 4 GB RAM anyway. Plus the dual cores are dirt cheap anyway, since anybody who still has a LGA775 as an active system is hunting for the fast quad cores. (4 GHz oc are pretty much a given on 45nm once one is accustomed to the platform and the quirks of the board and CPU)

The Celeron 400 series is also not bad. They're single core, but also based on Conroe, so you still get that Core 2 level efficiency. And since they're considered pretty much low-end for the LGA775 platform, they can be found for basically nothing.
(I have a Celeron 440 and could get it from it's stock 2.0 GHz all the way to 3.5, at which point it runs past pretty much any Pentium 4 you can get. (Pentium D obviously not included as they're dual core) Even at stock it runs circles around most of them)

For RAM totally stick to "mainstream" stuff, you will have a hard time noticing the difference and it only comes in handy if you want to oc. DDR-400 CL4 is plenty fast.

For storage, last year I saw some 128 GB SanDisk SSDs for around 20€, that might've changed by now, but for that system grabbing some 128 GB 7200 RPM hard drives should be plenty anyway. A pair of those should have enough room for basically all the games you might want to run on the system. SSDs aren't necessary.

For defrag, back in my XP days I used JKDefrag (later MyDefrag) which I by now is discontinued (last update from 2010), but should still be fine for older software on older OSes on older hardware. Can be set up to run as screensaver and allows for different "sorting strategies"

Cooling, anything works, a lower end dual core on stock clocks runs absolutely fine with the stock cooler, but even beefier stuff like the Hyper 212 Evo is supported.

If you can't find a 5900XT you can always look for a 5700 card, depending on how much of a compromise you're willing to make. If you want to do DX9 games, going Radeon 9000 (9600/9500/9700/9800) series might be nice as well, stuff Like Half Life 2 or Oblivion.

Pretty much no real new info but I'm looking forward too see how everything runs in the end. Building a really, really, really late 98 setup is something not seem that often.

vinxi2 wrote on 2021-10-31, 16:50:

Anyway since I'm targeting a 5900XT here (at a decent price when I'll get old) I'm also starting to think that the old and trusty config that I'm going to replace "soon", i7 4700K + GTX 770, could be the "ultimate" miniITX Windows XP build, and so leave this as Windows 98 alone.

You'd run into driver issues with the 80 series chipset there, but if you go back to 60/70 series and a 2nd or 3rd gen Core i it'll run fine. The GPU is supported and among the fastest you can get drivers for XP, and you could even dual boot XP/7 for all those SecuROM games that don't run under 10.

lordmogul wrote on 2021-11-07, 18:46:

If you can't find a 5900XT you can always look for a 5700 card, depending on how much of a compromise you're willing to make. If you want to do DX9 games, going Radeon 9000 (9600/9500/9700/9800) series might be nice as well, stuff Like Half Life 2 or Oblivion.

This is the crucial thing of the build because all I can find are 5200, 5500, 5700 but "LE" or "VE", or overpriced 5900XT. Right now, about old parts, I was very lucky to find new old stock ones (Motherboard, RAM). The CPU is the only used part right now and beside GPU and sound card everything else will be new “modern” parts. I really hope to “extend” the lifetime with that, also the “late” model of the motherboard was choosen with the same hope.

I’m also looking for a "meanwhile GPU" (meanwhile I can find a decent priced 5900XT) and I saw a fanless FX5200 128MB that *should* be the 128Bit version. I know, it's definitely not ideal for XP but I'm really starting to see that "crossing line" you guys told me in the beginning between building an Win98 and WinXP system. At least right now. If a 128bit FX5200 is able to run late Win98 games I could really consider it as that "meanwhile GPU".

About Radeon the problem is that they shouldn't support table fog and 8bit palleted texture for older Win98 games.

Pretty much no real new info but I'm looking forward too see how everything runs in the end. Building a really, really, really late 98 setup is something not seem that often.

Everyone gave me new infos in every post, and I can't thank you all enough.
If anyone can find a 5900XT from someone who is willing to send to Italy, please contact me.

vinxi2 wrote on 2021-10-31, 16:50:

You'd run into driver issues with the 80 series chipset there, but if you go back to 60/70 series and a 2nd or 3rd gen Core i it'll run fine. The GPU is supported and among the fastest you can get drivers for XP, and you could even dual boot XP/7 for all those SecuROM games that don't run under 10.

Right now the motherboard is a Gigabyte Z97N-Wifi because I later "upgraded" the motherboard to a miniITX one and I’m hoping to keep that format (don’t have much space). So it's a 90 series, but I read of some people installing Windows XP on it.

vinxi2 wrote on 2021-11-07, 18:36:

Anyway I'm happy to have found those new old stock 2GB. But Now I need to find a 512MB one to install Windows 98.

Actually you don't. Sure, having a 512mb stick may make things a bit more straightforward and easier, but theres ways to do it with 2 gigs installed too. You start the win98 install, for its first half things go fine. At some point the install reboots the PC, and after the reboot you get an error that you cant continue because of too much ram or whatever (dont remember the exact message but you will know it when you see it).

Now, when you reach this point, what you can do is, move on to install winXP on the other partition, and when you're done installing XP, open the win98 partition from XP, install himemx.exe and set it up to limit the ram on win98 to under 512mb, and then you can reboot back to win98 and complete the win98 installation. Im guessing doing it with the r.loew patch should work the same way too (havent tried that yet)

P.S. if you have HDD larger than 120gb, the moment you install himemx.exe before completing the win98 setup, is the perfect point to also install the bhdd31.zip patch to allow win98 to work fine on the large hdd and not result in any data corruption

vinxi2 wrote on 2021-11-07, 19:04:

About Radeon the problem is that they shouldn't support table fog and 8bit palleted texture for older Win98 games.

Was looking at a list of features on vintage cards the other week and it seemed like very few "in the day" supported that either, so IDK if it's something I would ever miss much personally.

dormcat wrote on 2021-11-07, 12:26:

Sphere478 wrote on 2021-11-07, 10:02:

dormcat wrote on 2021-11-07, 08:35:

Wish you were simply being sarcastic. 🙄

I assume you are agreeing?

Vinxi2 already got his 775i65G R2.0, one of the last few MB that officially support Win98SE (IIRC 775i65G R3.0 is THE last one), and the slowest processor it accepts is Celeron D 325J (2.53 GHz, 90 nm) released in September 22, 2004. That MB can accept a Core 2 Extreme QX6700 that runs faster than a Celeron G5905, the slowest new CPU one can buy retail today. OTOH the fastest and final Willamette processor is Pentium 4 2.0 GHz with 180 nm lithography released in August 27, 2001. Not to mention that early Willamette processors were slower than P3 / Athlon it sought to replace / defeat.

Dang, didn’t realize that support went that far

I had mispoke, i meant to say northwood. (That was the one befoee prescott yeah?

I guess I was figuring x64 and ht might cause issues. I know ht is able to be disabled on the northwood. People able to run prescotts with windows 98 is a pleasant surprise.