This system might be close to universal for Win98, as K8 cpus can be downclocked. Probably the best option will be an X800 Pro. I don't believe there's any downside to using one relative to the 9700 Pro, except maybe power draw. A lot will depend on what titles you choose to run.

My super socket 7 is mostly set up for dos games with dos compatible sound card, so I would use the athlon64 for late win98 games and games that would take advantage of eax or a3d support in sound card. Also games that would look better considering the 16bit rendering limitation of voodoo 3 2000 in my super socket 7 system.

I have Radeon 9600XT under Win98 and have some issues with DirectX. Some games would not run at all (i.e., THPS2, Project IGI) and after attempting to launch these problematic titles the PC would then require a restart to be able to play any other DirectX game. Tried different drivers and DirectX versions while reinstalling W98 each time and have yet to find a solution. Even tried WinXP but that didnt help either. But most games should run fine I guess.

So if it was me, I would go team green next time with either a middle-age card such as Geforce4Ti for better backwards compatibility (or so I heard) or something much faster that could handle newer titles such as GTA3 at 1024x768 at more than 30-60FPS that I got with 9600XT. On the other hand, the 9600XT was too fast for some games, i.e. Commandos Behind Enemy Lines, where the game is considerably sped up with higher FPS. GOG version has a frame lock to fix this on modern machines but I generally do not use modern executables on older machines because original releases are, well, original.

duga3 wrote:

I have Radeon 9600XT under Win98 and have some issues with DirectX. Some games would not run at all (i.e., THPS2, Project IGI) and after attempting to launch these problematic titles the PC would then require a restart to be able to play any other DirectX game. Tried different drivers and DirectX versions while reinstalling W98 each time and have yet to find a solution. Even tried WinXP but that didnt help either. But most games should run fine I guess.

So if it was me, I would go team green next time with either a middle-age card such as Geforce4Ti for better backwards compatibility (or so I heard) or something much faster that could handle newer titles such as GTA3 at 1024x768 at more than 30-60FPS that I got with 9600XT. On the other hand, the 9600XT was too fast for some games, i.e. Commandos Behind Enemy Lines, where the game is considerably sped up with higher FPS. GOG version has a frame lock to fix this on modern machines but I generally do not use modern executables on older machines because original releases are, well, original.

The games that would be too fast would probably work fine in my super socket 7 system. Not sure if I want to spend any money on the athlon64 system because it is generally bit too new for my taste (2.6Ghz doesn't sound retro 😜), so if I have to get geforce card, I have to wait until I get one for free or for 2 euros. There is someone around here who sells all graphics cards he gets for 2 euros each.

But it becomes more retro if you downclock it to 800 mhz. 😀

I chose the matrox g400 for my for-late-90s athlon 64 system. Good compatibility and good image fidelity. I just optimize my requirements for resolution and detail settings.

I didn't find the geforces as compatible, as they had various image corruptions in the games of that era. Nvidia was quick to break backwards compatibility in their drivers. I didn't trial any radeons.

vvbee wrote:

I chose the matrox g400 for my for-late-90s athlon 64 system. Good compatibility and good image fidelity. I just optimize my requirements for resolution and detail settings.

I didn't find the geforces as compatible, as they had various image corruptions in the games of that era. Nvidia was quick to break backwards compatibility in their drivers. I didn't trial any radeons.

First Athlon 64 was released in late 2003 as far as I know. Perhaps yours was normal athlon instead of Athlon 64?

Went with a Radeon 9600 Pro for a while, but had isues with some older games. Later got a GF 3 Ti 200 and everything is running fine since then.
So depending on how late you want to go, keep the card reasonable aged.

While the 7800 GS might be faster, the 9700 Pro will have better support. (There is an update package that also allows to use Catalys 6.3 with the 9000 series cards under 98 SE)

I would even suggest go for a 98 SE / XP dual boot. The Athlon 64 should be fast enough for games up until around 2004-2005.
Only remember that 98 has issues with more than 512 MB of RAM. There are some tricks to get it to run with more (mainly by telling it to ignore the rest) so 1 GB should make XP run fine.
And with C'n'Q downclocking should be easy.
For everything olderm there is stil the SS7 build 😁

While the X800 Pro and the 7800 GS might be faster, support unter 98 SE might be limited to nonexistend, but both would make fine cards for a nice late single core era build with the A64.

Baoran wrote:

vvbee wrote:

I chose the matrox g400 for my for-late-90s athlon 64 system.

First Athlon 64 was released in late 2003 as far as I know. Perhaps yours was normal athlon instead of Athlon 64?

It's a system for late 90s games. Also early 00s. Underclocked to perform at p3 1.2~1.4 ghz level while drawing few watts.

lordmogul wrote:

While the X800 Pro and the 7800 GS might be faster, support unter 98 SE might be limited to nonexistend, but both would make fine cards for a nice late single core era build with the A64.

Not sure what you're saying here. The X800 is definitely supported under Win SE.

lordmogul wrote:

Went with a Radeon 9600 Pro for a while, but had isues with some older games. Later got a GF 3 Ti 200 and everything is running […]
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Went with a Radeon 9600 Pro for a while, but had isues with some older games. Later got a GF 3 Ti 200 and everything is running fine since then.
So depending on how late you want to go, keep the card reasonable aged.

While the 7800 GS might be faster, the 9700 Pro will have better support. (There is an update package that also allows to use Catalys 6.3 with the 9000 series cards under 98 SE)

I would even suggest go for a 98 SE / XP dual boot. The Athlon 64 should be fast enough for games up until around 2004-2005.
Only remember that 98 has issues with more than 512 MB of RAM. There are some tricks to get it to run with more (mainly by telling it to ignore the rest) so 1 GB should make XP run fine.
And with C'n'Q downclocking should be easy.
For everything olderm there is stil the SS7 build 😁

While the X800 Pro and the 7800 GS might be faster, support unter 98 SE might be limited to nonexistend, but both would make fine cards for a nice late single core era build with the A64.

Where you can download that catalyst 6.3 that works in win98se? I wasn't able to find it myself.
I am sure it would work fine in windows xp because it even has 2 cores. It just is fastest I can build while having windows 98 drivers for all the devices. I can build much faster systems if I want to build a system for windows xp. I could downclock it to 1Ghz. (800Mhz doesn't seem to post.) if I would come across a win98 game that would have trouble at full speed.