ChrisNonyminus wrote on 2023-09-10, 03:24:

Please provide feedback.

• CPU: If you can't find an S754 Athlon64 for a good price then even a Sempron would be more than enough for Win98SE; I use a Sempron 3100+.
• GPU: Em, why pick two PCI cards? This MB has AGP 8x and you should use it. Yes, I know that top AGP 8x cards like GF4Ti or R9700 are in high demand and might not be available within your budget, but there are cheaper alternatives if you are willing to settle with "good enough" graphics. I'm using a Gigabyte GV-R96P256D in this rig, and I've got five more AGP cards compatible with Win9x just in case.
• Sound: SB Live! is fine, cheap, and plenty; grab an Audigy if a cheap one is available. AudioPCI is okay for office environment but it's not a card built for gaming.
• Optical drive: Not 100% necessary but still recommended as you might have old games on CD; any working PATA CD/DVD drive should be fine. Of course if you spot a Made-in-Japan Plextor CD-RW with a reasonable price, grab it!
• PSU: 200W is a bit low if you have a good GPU, especially if it requires external power input; 300W should put your mind at ease.

An additional suggestion: I'd rather not use SATA device under Win9x and I've disabled SATA support in BIOS on my K8V-MX. If you really can't find a working PATA storage device then I'd suggest using a converter on the drive instead of activating SATA on your Win9x rig.

Oh, and my main rig is i7-8700 (without K). 😉

VivienM wrote on 2023-09-10, 03:41:

Okay, I'm going to focus on the XP machine:

IMHO there's a difference between "building a decent XP gaming rig with minimal budget" and "building an ultimate XP gaming rig." My current XP rig was a hand-me-down from a friend plus a few budget items:

• MB + CPU + RAM: Hand-me-down Gigabyte GA-P31-ES3G + C2D E7400 + DDR2 800 4GB (2x2) = NT$1000 (US$31.25) [Note: the combo also includes an X-Fi but I'd reserve it for another system; the friend gave me the combo for free at first but I insisted paying him as the rig was well-kept and worth the price]
• GPU: E-waste Asus EAH5670/DI/1GD5 (Radeon HD 5670) = NT$150 (US$4.69)
• SSD: New Lite-On MU3 PH6 120GB = NT$500 (US$15.63)
• Sound: E-waste SB Live! 5.1 = NT$100 (US$3.13) [Probably will be upgraded with a spare Audigy in near future]
• PSU + case: New B.Friend TRUST500 550W 80 Plus Bronze with a generic ATX case = ~NT$1490 (US$46.56) [Note: I bought this combo as an emergency spare just in case the PSU of my main rig has troubles, not just for this XP rig]

As you can see this budget build is far from great or "ultimate," yet it can handle any XP game in my collection with ease. Any game that needs a beefier rig would be the job of my main rig.

The most powerful GPU I've got with native XP support is a Gigabyte GV-N960WF2OC-4GD (rev. 1.0) but I have installed it to my Dad's i5-4460, although he's not into gaming. 😅 On the other hand, he'd be amused and even excited watching me playing Fishing Planet (but I'm not into fishing or fishing simulator games) by giving me verbal instructions. 😅

dormcat wrote on 2023-09-10, 05:00:

Of course if you spot a Made-in-Japan Plextor CD-RW with a reasonable price, grab it!

I have read this a couple of times, what's so good about them? I have one of these, but did not want to use it in any retro build, it's loud and not particularly good looking.

asdf53 wrote on 2023-09-10, 05:11:

dormcat wrote on 2023-09-10, 05:00:

Of course if you spot a Made-in-Japan Plextor CD-RW with a reasonable price, grab it!

I have read this a couple of times, what's so good about them? I have one of these, but did not want to use it in any retro build, it's loud and not particularly good looking.

From my personal experience, they function normally even after two decades, and they have higher successful rate reading CD-R than other brands of optical drives.

dormcat wrote on 2023-09-10, 05:00:

An additional suggestion: I'd rather not use SATA device under Win9x and I've disabled SATA support in BIOS on my K8V-MX.

SATA works fine on my K8V-MX under Win98. For this, it's necessary to set the SATA controller to RAID mode in the BIOS and install the relevant VIA RAID drivers under Win98.

This does reduce the amount of available conventional memory though, so it's not a great idea if the intent is to run games in pure DOS.

Ok, thanks for the feedback guys. What should I focus on building first -- the 98SE PC or the XP one?

EDIT: Also, yeah, I should probably choose a better GPU for both the 98SE and XP builds. Though $20 PCI 6200 is extremely enticing 😜

For the XP PC, does a Intel DP43BF make for a good motherboard?

ChrisNonyminus wrote on 2023-09-10, 03:50:

1) What boards would you recommend?
2) I think quad-core might be a bit too new for my tastes. For reference, the CPU on my main gaming PC is an i7-8700K with 6 dual threaded cores. 4 (single threaded albeit) cores is closer to that than 2 cores or 1 core.

1) Whatever boards you can find that have the feature set you need? Probably safest to stick with the big players out of Taiwan - Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, etc.
2) That speaks more about the general stagnation of Intel in the 2010s. The quad-cores are not that much newer; the first C2Qs only came out six months after the first C2Ds.
More interestingly, the first Intel dual-core CPU (Pentium D) came out in May 2005. First C2Q in January 2007. So the world went from single-core to quad-core in less than two years. And aggressively-priced quad cores less than a year after that. (Note: I believe the AMD X2s preceded the Pentium D by a few months, but Wikipedia says otherwise)

ChrisNonyminus wrote on 2023-09-10, 10:23:

For the XP PC, does a Intel DP43BF make for a good motherboard?

I've always liked Intel boards. They tend to have zero overclocking ability but are otherwise quite good...

That being said... I wouldn't go for an Intel board for a retro project:
1) They seem to have removed all drivers for it from their web site. Meanwhile, the Asus and Gigabytes of the world still have drivers for 20 year old boards on theirs.
2) I would just worry that the Intel board is going to have less retro-friendliness, less ability to customize things, turn things off, potential BIOS mods, etc. XP was so current when the P43 chipset came out that that probably doesn't matter as much, but...