bobsmith wrote on 2023-03-16, 03:36:
I'd like to make a build to play mid 90s games (Tomb Raider, Quake, Unreal, other games I need to play) as well as mid 2000s (GTA, Sims 2, NFS, Far Cry and Serious Sam). Is this possible? I know Windows 98 can run some later graphics cards just fine albeit they have issues with older games. Should I dualboot XP/98SE? I was looking at CPUs and it seems the Athlon 64 is a good choice but struggles in mid 2000s games, would an 64 X2 be better and would it run as good as a 64 with 98SE? What about video and sound card? I am new to building older PCs, so sorry if these are noob questions 🤣
If possible I could hunt down a Voodoo card to use with games that run better with 3dfx. Could I leave that in the PC with a ATI/Nvidia card and just disable the other card in Windows?
My 98/XP rig works decently well with about 98'ish to around 2007'ish games. I avoided LGA775/A64 because of spotty Win98 support (only a handful of boards work well and I didn't feel like playing roulette) and Athlon XP because of it's ridiculous 5v/3.3v power requirements. Yes, I know Intel was dragging behind AMD in this era but honestly - not by that much. If you opt for a case with decent airflow, they don't even run that hot either. Most computers back then were sweat boxes with little ventilation, tiny 80mm fans, and not much thought in airflow design.
- Pentium 4 3.0c (Northwood, the hyperthread is nice for XP but unused in 98)
- ASUS P4P800-VM (mine is a non-OEM model, the board itself doesnt matter but you want the 865PE chipset). It has driver support for 98, rock stable, has SATA ports that can run in IDE/Legacy mode, and USB2 ports that work well at full speed in 98 with nusb3.3. Most boards from this era regardless of CPU type suffer from the capacitor plague so if you're buying this, do check the caps or replace them if you're knowledgeable enough to.
- ATI Radeon x850 Pro ('beta' drivers for 98 but I haven't really run into any issues with it for the stuff I play). If you want to aim for better compatibility at the cost of a bit of performance on the late-end, go for a GeForce 4 Ti of some sort (ideally one that can run 28.32 drivers). I have a Ti 4200 for a spare/switch card in case I run into a badly running older game which I haven't needed to do yet. I avoided GeForce FX because of poor performance and GF6 because of having to run nvidia's bullshit later detonators in 98.
- 2GB DDR400 (Need rloew's PATCHMEM patch for 98se). Don't need nearly this much for 98 but having it is useful for the later XP games with pushing the envelope a little bit and it's cheap anyways.
- 320GB WD Blue HD (partitioned 80gb for 98, rest for XP - set in legacy/compatibility mode so it acts as an 'IDE drive'). Any more modern HD will be plenty fast for 98 and XP in comparison to the old clunkers that were around back then and you avoid TRIM/SATA 1 support issues from trying to use a SSD. A good cheap speedy modern HD that works well with this board is the WD Blue 1TB 7200RPM (WD10EZEX). Do note that Win98 has a serious bug with partitions over 127gb or so and you'll either need to patch it using rloew's PATCHATA or keep your 98 partition under that limit. If you have a smaller drive, an alternate option is setting up a RetroNAS for storing images/installers (which can also be helpful for storing stuff for any other retro rigs that you may have/get)
- SB Audigy 2 ZS (use the VXD drivers for 98). It does work ok for DOS games within Windows if you follow this guide. There are other good options as well but I had this one around anyways.
Some earlier titles (pre DX5/DX5 era) may give issues due to ATI's bad drivers. From your list - Quake and Unreal/UT99 all do work decently well on it, haven't tried Tomb Raider but I don't think there would be any issues with it in particular. If I'm wrong I can find a copy and give it a try to report back if you'd like. I haven't tried many mid 90s games because I have a 200MMX rig for those but I did run a few to try them out which all worked perfectly (Age of Empires, Quake 1 and 2, C&C and C&C Red Alert, Earthsiege 2, GTA Windows, Dune 2000, NFS II-SE)
Late 90s games all work pretty much maxed out in 98se (UT99, Unreal, Quake III Arena, C&C Red Alert 2, C&C Tiberian Sun, Diablo II, Age of Empires II, GTA 2). If you're curious about a particular game from this era for compatibility wise, let me know and I'll try it out sometime and report back.
Early to mid 2000s games in XP scream on it as this is what the build targets (C&C Generals, COD2, Battlefield 1942, Battlefield 2, Doom 3, NFS:Underground/U2, GTA3/Vice City/San Andreas, Quake 4, Lord of the Rings Battle for middle earth 2, Simcity 4, UT2004, Warcraft 3, Counter Strike, Halo/Halo2, Rise of Nations/Legends, Age of Mythology, Sims 2). I haven't tried Far Cry or Serious Sam but no real reason they wouldn't work too.
Performance starts to drop off around the era when SM3.0 games start to come out (which this card doesn't support - thanks ATI). So, around 2007-2008 but I can play some games from then decently well on it if I drop the settings a bit (C&C3, COD Modern Warfare, Tom Clancy's HAWX).
Later games, I either run on my main or I have a i5-4590 + 750Ti build that works in XP that shreds them all (which is sadly down at the moment due to a dead PSU and drive). But it doesn't sound like you're aiming for very late 2000s/early 2010s stuff with this anyways.
Hope this helps!