Most XP era games need XP era hardware or you won't be happy with it. Limit your game choices to about year 2001 and you ought to be OK. NFS:HP2 ought to run fine, the other 2 games need better hardware to run fast. Underground needs much more CPU than you have to run smoothly, probably the same for UT03.

I have practically the same system: Athlon XP 2400, Epox board, 1 GB RAM, Radeon 9600 256 mb.
And I also noticed mediocre performance in stuff like Max Payne, whereas Q2 ran much better. Haven't tested the ones you mentioned.

I sort of suspect this is normal performance, to be honest. I used to have an even worse card and less RAM in this computer back in the day.
I'm keeping my eye on this thread in case you do discover a problem/solution.

ptr1ck wrote on 2023-02-14, 14:01:

Most XP era games need XP era hardware

This hardware is XP era though.

Aye, I also suspected that there may be some obscure BIOS setting or sth that's limiting the AGP bandwidth, but I can find no such thing 😖

feda wrote on 2023-02-14, 14:11:

I have practically the same system: Athlon XP 2400, Epox board, 1 GB RAM, Radeon 9600 256 mb. And I also noticed mediocre perfor […]
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I have practically the same system: Athlon XP 2400, Epox board, 1 GB RAM, Radeon 9600 256 mb.
And I also noticed mediocre performance in stuff like Max Payne, whereas Q2 ran much better. Haven't tested the ones you mentioned.

I sort of suspect this is normal performance, to be honest. I used to have an even worse card and less RAM in this computer back in the day.
I'm keeping my eye on this thread in case you do discover a problem/solution.

ptr1ck wrote on 2023-02-14, 14:01:

Most XP era games need XP era hardware

This hardware is XP era though.

True, but I meant a little later hardware. The CPU and GPU is from 2003, but the CPUs roots are much older. An Athlon 64 would be more appropriate for the performance desired. The GPU is just a mid-range part too. Expectations are just a bit high for what's provided.

revolstar wrote on 2023-02-14, 14:27:

Aye, I also suspected that there may be some obscure BIOS setting or sth that's limiting the AGP bandwidth, but I can find no such thing 😖

I doubt it's the AGP bandwidth. It shouldn't have much impact on performance and these games don't use that much bandwidth anyway.

ptr1ck wrote on 2023-02-14, 14:38:

The GPU is just a mid-range part too. Expectations are just a bit high for what's provided.

Yeah, you're probably right.

For what it's worth, I couldn't maintain 60fps on NFS:U with an Athlon XP @ 2.0ghz, 2gb of RAM and an X1950 Pro at 1024x768. The CPU was certainly the bottleneck.

I use dell precision 670 as overkill system , not quite finished yet my G80 gpu still not working, and Dell Optiplex 270 (works most 478 cpus on her) . (2x80gb ATA FAT32 and 1gb of ram usually). all for win98sec

Windows 98 and SLI.

I do remember some NFS Underground problems after I started playing on a dell laptop p3 , it run fine at first , but a few apps installed l8ter it lag-ed . (not sure why , never figured out) . BTW if you don't use net on system , use a striped down version of XP (legacy maybe) or 2k , should fly better on lower ram, can dual boot win98sec also. (so so many xp versions on archive web page).

OK, anybody running Win98SE on an Athlon 64 system with a GF FX 5000/Radeon 9000 series GPU care to chime in?

revolstar wrote on 2023-02-15, 07:43:

OK, anybody running Win98SE on an Athlon 64 system with a GF FX 5000/Radeon 9000 series GPU care to chime in?

I have such a system, see here for the full specs and some benchmarks. It's great for Win9x gaming up to around 2001. Anything from 2002 and later will have suboptimal performance, at least with the resolutions and settings that I use (most often 1280x1024 with Anisotropic Filtering cranked up).

You're better off with building a dedicated WinXP system without having to worry about Win9x compatibility. That way, you can use much more powerful hardware which will effortlessly run all games from 2002-2009.

P.S.

I noticed that your system has 1 GB of RAM. Windows 98 can natively handle only 512 MB of RAM and you need to apply third-party patches if you want to use more. Otherwise, you might experience system instability.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-02-15, 08:05:

I noticed that your system has 1 GB of RAM. Windows 98 can natively handle only 512 MB of RAM and you need to apply third-party patches if you want to use more. Otherwise, you might experience system instability.

Thanks for the tip, I have the unofficial SP3 and Revolutions Pack installed already 😉

Also, in the thread showcasing your build you mention some obscure problems with your motherboard that hampered 3d performance under Win98. This looks familiar.

revolstar wrote on 2023-02-15, 08:38:

Thanks for the tip, I have the unofficial SP3 and Revolutions Pack installed already 😉

I would advise against using that. Search the forum for the mention of this "unofficial service pack" and you'll find numerous examples of people experiencing various issues due to having that installed.

Also, in the thread showcasing your build you mention some obscure problems with your motherboard that hampered 3d performance under Win98. This looks familiar.

Yeah, that issue does pop up on motherboards with certain VIA chipsets. An easy way to test this is to compare the performance of 3DMark 2001 under Win98 and WinXP. If the difference is greater than 10% in favor of WinXP, then your motherboard might be affected.

I forgot to add that the 9600series have big issues not having a good contact of GPU to heatsink , you may need to pull heatsink apart and remove the metal circle surrounding the RV3xx / RV360 GPU , so when you remount the heatsink it will contact the GPU perfectly and reduce any GPU downclock.

you can use the 2nd pach if not working that one for you ,it use to be on softpedia

Joseph_Joestar , it can handle 1gb ram , you don't need patches just a simple file AUTOEXEC.BAT if i remember correctly. more here : Your Experiences with Running Windows 98 [SE] on 1GB of RAM

(I tested win98sec with 4gb of ram ,no issues, true it's useless to have more than 1.5 gb ; and Tested Phenom 2 955 black quad core & win2k with success).

ediflorianUS wrote on 2023-02-15, 12:34:

Joseph_Joestar , it can handle 1gb ram , you don't need patches just a simple file AUTOEXEC.BAT if i remember correctly. more here : Your Experiences with Running Windows 98 [SE] on 1GB of RAM

(I tested win98sec with 4gb of ram ,no issues, true it's useless to have more than 1.5 gb ; and Tested Phenom 2 955 black quad core & win2k with success).

Note that HIMEMX, which was mentioned in the thread that you linked, is a third-party program as well.

But yeah, you can use that to fix the > 512 MB RAM issue as well.

ediflorianUS wrote on 2023-02-15, 12:34:

I forgot to add that the 9600series have big issues not having a good contact of GPU to heatsink , you may need to pull heatsink apart and remove the metal circle surrounding the RV3xx / RV360 GPU , so when you remount the heatsink it will contact the GPU perfectly and reduce any GPU downclock.

I know what you mean, I've seen Phil from PhilsComputerLab remove that washer thing in one of his videos 😀 My Radeon 9600 Pro had no such issue, I just replaced the thermal compound and it's as cool as a cucumber.

As for the >512 MB RAM thing, even before I installed the Revolutions Pack, SP3 and the RAM patch you guys mentioned, my copy of Win98SE had had no issue with that and recognized the whole 1 GB of RAM from the get go, with no apps crashing and even DOS games working pretty well (I've tested NFS, Redneck Rampage and Sensible World of Soccer 98 so far. The only problem I've encountered was the video playback resolution bug in NFS 1 and Tomb Raider 1, but this has nothing to do with RAM I believe?).

revolstar wrote on 2023-02-15, 13:08:

As for the >512 MB RAM thing, even before I installed the Revolutions Pack, SP3 and the RAM patch you guys mentioned, my copy of Win98SE had no issue with that and recognized the whole 1 GB of RAM from the get go, with no apps crashing and even DOS games working pretty well (I've tested NFS, Redneck Rampage and Sensible World of Soccer 98 so far. The only problem I've encountered was the video playback resolution bug in NFS 1 and Tomb Raider 1, but this has nothing to do with RAM I believe?).

Windows 98 will install and run with 1 GB but you will encounter stability issues without using one of the third-party patches or utilities.

If you want to learn more about why this occurs, read the PATCHMEM documentation by R. Loew.

Hey.
1GB RAM in win98 = avoid.
If you want to play UT2004 and NFS:U on high settings on that hardware you need something beefy like a X850 or 6800GT.
If Win98 compatibility is not an issue, any dumpster core2duo system with GeForce 9-serie card will do the job.

From my experience, most Windows games are coded with some future proofing in mind. Current generation hardware rarely will be able to push a game to it's limits. This is why your 2003 hardware runs the 2003 games like crap.

Bruno128 wrote on 2023-02-15, 16:40:

Hey. 1GB RAM in win98 = avoid. If you want to play UT2004 and NFS:U on high settings on that hardware you need something beefy l […]
Show full quote

Hey.
1GB RAM in win98 = avoid.
If you want to play UT2004 and NFS:U on high settings on that hardware you need something beefy like a X850 or 6800GT.
If Win98 compatibility is not an issue, any dumpster core2duo system with GeForce 9-serie card will do the job.

Nonsense NFSU played well on a fresh install of win2k on a stock Pentium 3 800 I think or 1ghz something like that > Dell latitude D610 PP01L w/ stock GPU ,( don't remember what it was , nvidia I believe? ) anyways played NFSU1 no lag with some minimal software tweak's. So it should run even better on win98sec.

I've come across another quirk. I've been trying to run Jane's WWII Fighters all day today to no avail, as the executable would crash a few seconds after launch. I've tried to manually edit the .ini file to change the 3d renderer device between the Voodoo2 and Radeon 9600 PRO, with different resolutions and bit depths along the way - no luck. Finally, I've used the dgVoodoo wrapper - and now the game runs without any problems 🤣 How's that even...

Oh, bonus fun fact: the game runs out of the box without any problems on my Windows 7 laptop 🤣

EDIT: OK, it was the 9600 PRO's fault, I've replaced it with the GeForce FX5500 and Jane's WWII Fighters started working adain without the help of dgVoodoo.