Very impressive. A lot faster than my E6800+PT880 based build. I'm surprised that a P45/ICH10 motherboard is 98 friendly enough to be usable. What drivers did you use with it? Also how do DOS games handle it, if at all?

VDNKh wrote on 2022-10-15, 21:30:

Very impressive. A lot faster than my E6800+PT880 based build. I'm surprised that a P45/ICH10 motherboard is 98 friendly enough to be usable. What drivers did you use with it? Also how do DOS games handle it, if at all?

I used the modded INF's (don't remember from which thread exactly) and some INF's are from the motherboard manufacturer, I added a driver (from RLoew) to the SYSTEM.INI file so I could use Windows XP and later drivers on Windows 98. Almost no conflicts and the system is as fast as it could be.

The system can't return to DOS mode from Windows because of the 4GB RAM mod (VMM files) but you can go to "Command Prompt" at boot pressing F8 key.
Getting a sound card working in DOS is another story, never had any luck with newer motherboards and only the CMI8738 works on older motherboards and have no FM synthesis or the Creative Audio PCI with the horrible soundfont FM.
Had better luck with MT32-PI using a Raspberry Pi Zero 2W with a Serial to USB adapter and using SoftMPU (and HDMI to VGA adapter with audio output jack), games like Monkey Island, Lotus III, Lost Vikings, Police Quest and other Sierra games work great as long as you have a Serial Port.

baguete wrote on 2021-09-15, 00:32:

Please break my record 😀

4.89GHz E8600, meet my 5.00GHz X5690 with a surprisingly 98 friendly Asus P6T motherboard. Working SATA ports in AHCI mode (thanks to RLoew), Intel PCH chipset drivers ported to 9X (thanks to LoneCrusader), fully functional USB 2.0, PS/2 and floppy ports, and even a 98 compatible 1Gb/s NIC. It has its quirks but it's functional enough to daily if I really wanted to, not whiled OCed so hard like this though.

OCing this was a PITA. It took days (of free time) of trial and error to get the RAM and Uncore stable. While the RAM/Uncore are five repeat 3DMark01 runs, P95 (only 1 hour), and Memtest86 stable, the CPU is not. CPU is just stable enough to run 3DMark99, 01, and 03 once. I actually had to crank up the CPU voltage a bit for 3DMark03 to get the Mother Nature test to finish. For some reason, while I was testing in XP, it would finish with a lower voltage than 98 would. I would never daily this machine with the voltages I used to get the clock speeds I did. I haven't optimized the memory timings at all either, it's all just set to what XMP would have set it too. The 7950 GT is also not OCed at all, except for the factory OC. It has a considerably lower clock than a 7900 GTX though. 570MHZ vs. 665MHz. These 98 benchmarks are really CPU limited. With only 1 core enabled, the CPU temperature was not a concern.

These voltages are very yabe.

I still prefer my Madness PC (WAY more versatile and far less deadly to components) :

More here : LINK

agent_x007 wrote on 2023-06-19, 17:52:

I still prefer my Madness PC (WAY more versatile and far less deadly to components) : 3DMark 01 SE 7800 GTX.png 3DMark 03 v2.jpg […]
Show full quote

I still prefer my Madness PC (WAY more versatile and far less deadly to components) :
3DMark 01 SE 7800 GTX.png
3DMark 03 v2.jpg
More here : LINK

I could definitely find a lower stable overclock with more sane voltages, but where's the fun in that? Like I said, I'd only use these voltages and clock speeds if I'm benchmarking something. Which, after beating baguete's score, I don't plan on doing.

Your Madness build was actually a big factor in me choosing to build an X58 Windows 98 build. I haven't finished building it yet but I will make a thread about it when I am done. I don't think I'll try and make it all-in-one like you did. I think I'll just put 98 and XP on it.

VDNKh wrote on 2023-06-18, 09:07:

4.89GHz E8600, meet my 5.00GHz X5690 with a surprisingly 98 friendly Asus P6T motherboard. Working SATA ports in AHCI mode (than […]
Show full quote

baguete wrote on 2021-09-15, 00:32:

Please break my record 😀

Okay.

5ghz_x58_3dmark99.png
5ghz_x58_3dmark01.png
5ghz_x58_3dmark03.png

4.89GHz E8600, meet my 5.00GHz X5690 with a surprisingly 98 friendly Asus P6T motherboard. Working SATA ports in AHCI mode (thanks to RLoew), Intel PCH chipset drivers ported to 9X (thanks to LoneCrusader), fully functional USB 2.0, PS/2 and floppy ports, and even a 98 compatible 1Gb/s NIC. It has its quirks but it's functional enough to daily if I really wanted to, not whiled OCed so hard like this though.

OCing this was a PITA. It took days (of free time) of trial and error to get the RAM and Uncore stable. While the RAM/Uncore are five repeat 3DMark01 runs, P95 (only 1 hour), and Memtest86 stable, the CPU is not. CPU is just stable enough to run 3DMark99, 01, and 03 once. I actually had to crank up the CPU voltage a bit for 3DMark03 to get the Mother Nature test to finish. For some reason, while I was testing in XP, it would finish with a lower voltage than 98 would. I would never daily this machine with the voltages I used to get the clock speeds I did. I haven't optimized the memory timings at all either, it's all just set to what XMP would have set it too. The 7950 GT is also not OCed at all, except for the factory OC. It has a considerably lower clock than a 7900 GTX though. 570MHZ vs. 665MHz. These 98 benchmarks are really CPU limited. With only 1 core enabled, the CPU temperature was not a concern.

Specs

CPU: Intel Xeon X5690
Motherboard: Asus P6T
RAM: Kingston HyperX T1 6 GB (3 x 2 GB) DDR3-2000 CL9 (KHX2000C9AD3T1K3/6GX)
GPU: XFX GeForce 7950 GT (PV-T71J-YPE7)

Clocks and Voltages

CPU: 5GHz - Core: 1.525v, PLL:1.88
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper H412R
BCLK: 200MHz
RAM: 2005MHz - DRAM Bus: 1.8v
Uncore: 4009MHz - QPI: 1.4375v, IOH: 1.2v, ICH: 1.2v
GPU: Core: 570 MHz, Memory: 730MHz (Stock)
1 core active, HT disabled, LLC enabled, spread spectrum disabled

Nice, great results 💪💪

This shows that the CPU is always bottlenecking Windows 98. I wonder if a 3rd gen CPU/motherboard can be fully supported, maybe one i7-3770K overclocked core can push this even further with an overclocked 7900GTX.

baguete wrote on 2023-07-01, 13:15:

Nice, great results 💪💪

This shows that the CPU is always bottlenecking Windows 98. I wonder if a 3rd gen CPU/motherboard can be fully supported, maybe one i7-3770K overclocked core can push this even further with an overclocked 7900GTX.

Z68 motherboards could be a good contender for 98 compatibility. I've looked at a few AsRock boards and some have floppy ports and PCI (bridged over PCIe) and 98 compatible NICs, but we're chasing a maybe 10% uplift in single core performance at this point.

Once you go above X58 you lose conventional PCI and have almost no DOS sound compatibility, and USB 3 controllers that 98 can't use. At what point is 98 no longer fully functional? I guess you could stuff a modern board with PCIe to PCI bridges and get 98 compatible USB2 and a sound card that way.

VDNKh wrote on 2023-07-02, 00:36:

baguete wrote on 2023-07-01, 13:15:

Nice, great results 💪💪

This shows that the CPU is always bottlenecking Windows 98. I wonder if a 3rd gen CPU/motherboard can be fully supported, maybe one i7-3770K overclocked core can push this even further with an overclocked 7900GTX.

Z68 motherboards could be a good contender for 98 compatibility. I've looked at a few AsRock boards and some have floppy ports and PCI (bridged over PCIe) and 98 compatible NICs, but we're chasing a maybe 10% uplift in single core performance at this point.

Once you go above X58 you lose conventional PCI and have almost no DOS sound compatibility, and USB 3 controllers that 98 can't use. At what point is 98 no longer fully functional? I guess you could stuff a modern board with PCIe to PCI bridges and get 98 compatible USB2 and a sound card that way.

I don't think PCI over PCIe lanes is a problem, for the OS all of them are still PCI, just like a 7900GTX PCIe works on Windows 98. I will take out the dust from my MSI Z77A-G43 with an i5-3570K @ 4.5GHz and see what compatibility it has, if ok I will try to overclock it to 5.0GHz on a single core.

VDNKh wrote on 2023-06-18, 09:07:

4.89GHz E8600, meet my 5.00GHz X5690 with a surprisingly 98 friendly Asus P6T motherboard. Working SATA ports in AHCI mode (than […]
Show full quote

baguete wrote on 2021-09-15, 00:32:

Please break my record 😀

Okay.

5ghz_x58_3dmark99.png
5ghz_x58_3dmark01.png
5ghz_x58_3dmark03.png

4.89GHz E8600, meet my 5.00GHz X5690 with a surprisingly 98 friendly Asus P6T motherboard. Working SATA ports in AHCI mode (thanks to RLoew), Intel PCH chipset drivers ported to 9X (thanks to LoneCrusader), fully functional USB 2.0, PS/2 and floppy ports, and even a 98 compatible 1Gb/s NIC. It has its quirks but it's functional enough to daily if I really wanted to, not whiled OCed so hard like this though.

OCing this was a PITA. It took days (of free time) of trial and error to get the RAM and Uncore stable. While the RAM/Uncore are five repeat 3DMark01 runs, P95 (only 1 hour), and Memtest86 stable, the CPU is not. CPU is just stable enough to run 3DMark99, 01, and 03 once. I actually had to crank up the CPU voltage a bit for 3DMark03 to get the Mother Nature test to finish. For some reason, while I was testing in XP, it would finish with a lower voltage than 98 would. I would never daily this machine with the voltages I used to get the clock speeds I did. I haven't optimized the memory timings at all either, it's all just set to what XMP would have set it too. The 7950 GT is also not OCed at all, except for the factory OC. It has a considerably lower clock than a 7900 GTX though. 570MHZ vs. 665MHz. These 98 benchmarks are really CPU limited. With only 1 core enabled, the CPU temperature was not a concern.

Specs

CPU: Intel Xeon X5690
Motherboard: Asus P6T
RAM: Kingston HyperX T1 6 GB (3 x 2 GB) DDR3-2000 CL9 (KHX2000C9AD3T1K3/6GX)
GPU: XFX GeForce 7950 GT (PV-T71J-YPE7)

Clocks and Voltages

CPU: 5GHz - Core: 1.525v, PLL:1.88
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper H412R
BCLK: 200MHz
RAM: 2005MHz - DRAM Bus: 1.8v
Uncore: 4009MHz - QPI: 1.4375v, IOH: 1.2v, ICH: 1.2v
GPU: Core: 570 MHz, Memory: 730MHz (Stock)
1 core active, HT disabled, LLC enabled, spread spectrum disabled

Hi, can you share what drivers you used to get the XFX GeForce 7950 GT (PV-T71J-YPE7) to work? Really appreciate it. Cheers

Fizzo wrote on 2023-07-13, 12:20:

Hi, can you share what drivers you used to get the XFX GeForce 7950 GT (PV-T71J-YPE7) to work? Really appreciate it. Cheers

I used the unofficial 82.69 drivers and applied RLoew's NVSIZE VBIOS patch to the card before installing the drivers. Note that you need a Windows 98 system with more than 512 MB of RAM to use the VBIOS patch, which let's you use all 512 MB of VRAM. Otherwise you'll have to use RLoews' driver patch to limit the accessible VRAM to 256 MB.

VDNKh wrote on 2023-07-13, 23:01:

Fizzo wrote on 2023-07-13, 12:20:

Hi, can you share what drivers you used to get the XFX GeForce 7950 GT (PV-T71J-YPE7) to work? Really appreciate it. Cheers

I used the unofficial 82.69 drivers and applied RLoew's NVSIZE VBIOS patch to the card before installing the drivers. Note that you need a Windows 98 system with more than 512 MB of RAM to use the VBIOS patch, which let's you use all 512 MB of VRAM. Otherwise you'll have to use RLoews' driver patch to limit the accessible VRAM to 256 MB.

Appreciate and thanks the guide.🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻

For what it's worth, this is the 3DMark2001 SE 98SE World Record: https://hwbot.org/submission/3228042_zafiropo … gtx_69807_marks
And other competitors: https://hwbot.org/competition/osibs_s2rb/stag … rk01_windows_98
(of course LOD cheat and liquid nitrogen...)

Meanwhile, here are my scores from today, I don't think I'll be able to squeeze much more from my setup, I'll make a dedicated topic on my crappy 98SE builds one day...
ASUS P5Q Pro, Transcend 2x2GB aXeRam DDR2-1066 (can't find in BIOS option to change Command Rate), ASUS 7900 GTX (removed the ugly stickers 😁), USB Sound Card
"No cheats" means no benchmark cheats:

Comparing the scores with more reasonable, "daily" settings, I'd say torturing my poor CPU isn't worth it, especially when looking at the 3DMark03 score, of which I'm personally more interested than 2001 SE, since there's no way I am getting even close to the top 2001 SE scores without sacrificing the "dailyness" of the PC, I want to do more stuff than just benchmarking 😁

Anyone up for beating my 03 score?

MrMateczko wrote on 2023-07-16, 19:47:

Anyone up for beating my 03 score?

Using the power of a QEMU based VM and GPU pass through! I did it.
29,000 3DMarks.
To be more specific:
A vm consisting of
1 core from a Ryzen 5 5600X @ 4.8GHz
16GB of RAM
And a 7900 GTX clocked at 695MHz core 865MHz memory
For reference, I’m using version 3.2.0 of 3DMark 03

Majority of the score increase comes from Game Test 1 which is heavily CPU based, GT2, GT3, GT4 are all dependant on the GPU Core/Mem values and don't differ dramatically from my scores. From what I remember my 7900 GTX can't really overclock well, so I am already at the lost position 😒

Are you using single GPU passthrough under Linux host? Or two GPUs? Or something else?

3DMark03 Version 3.5.0 is the latest one for 98SE.

We can't really get much more performance from the GPU side of things, it's now all about getting the fastest CPU to run under 98SE...though I prefer real hardware results 😀 Should QEMU results count anyways? Maybe they should be put into a different category?

If your UEFI is lucky enough, you might be able to run 98SE natively...though would the performance be the same?

Are you TheMiningTeam?

MrMateczko wrote on 2023-07-18, 15:19:

Majority of the score increase comes from Game Test 1 which is heavily CPU based, GT2, GT3, GT4 are all dependant on the GPU Cor […]
Show full quote

Majority of the score increase comes from Game Test 1 which is heavily CPU based, GT2, GT3, GT4 are all dependant on the GPU Core/Mem values and don't differ dramatically from my scores. From what I remember my 7900 GTX can't really overclock well, so I am already at the lost position 😒

Are you using single GPU passthrough under Linux host? Or two GPUs? Or something else?

3DMark03 Version 3.5.0 is the latest one for 98SE.

We can't really get much more performance from the GPU side of things, it's now all about getting the fastest CPU to run under 98SE...though I prefer real hardware results 😀 Should QEMU results count anyways? Maybe they should be put into a different category?

If your UEFI is lucky enough, you might be able to run 98SE natively...though would the performance be the same?

Are you TheMiningTeam?

To answer your questions (I should learn how the list item in the Vogons toolset works):
1: On the host side, I have a GTX 1080 that I use for the host and a 7900 GTX that is passed through to the VM.
2: Ah, okay. I'll grab that ASAP and get back to you with the score. If my 7900 GTX cooperates. It really does not like running at these cloks.
3: I kinda agree with you. Running 98 on real hardware is much harder than running it in a VM, as I can personally attest to.
4: So my BIOS does support CSM. The problem is peripherals. I don't have PS/2 peripherals ATM, and additionally I only have 1 PS/2 port on the board. As far as I can tell, this motherboard only has USB3 controllers, no USB2 or USB1 controllers, meaning no USB support in 98 even with NUSB. That being said, running 98 natively is still an option I'm looking into. I don't love the idea for the reasons above, plus the fact that all the info I've read says that QEMU with KVM acceleration has only a tiny CPU overhead, mean that it likely would be more trouble than it's worth. It's probably technically possible, but I don't want to at this time.
5: yes, how'd you know?

You UEFI should have PS/2 Emulation via those USB3 controller ports (Legacy USB Support), so 98SE will see your USB keyboard/mouse as PS/2 devices, no USB drivers required.

You might encounter an issue with jumping mouse cursor but that is fixed by using LMOUSE.DRV file from Windows 3.11.

As someone actively engaged in "extreme Win9x shenanigans" and searching the Internet for similar things I am interested in, your name popped up a few times on Reddit/YouTube amongst other users like Omores or agent_x007

Are any of you able to bench Quake 3 for me on an nVidia PCIe card on Windows 98 please? Thanks

mockingbird wrote on 2023-08-18, 15:17:

Are any of you able to bench Quake 3 for me on an nVidia PCIe card on Windows 98 please? Thanks

If it helps, for comparison purposes, here are the results with a Core 2 Duo E8600 @ 4 GHz + ATI Radeon X850XT PCIe:

1Quake 3  640 x  480 x 16: 979.0 FPS
2Quake 3  640 x  480 x 32: 976.0 FPS
3Quake 3 1024 x  768 x 16: 795.5 FPS
4Quake 3 1024 x  768 x 32: 675.6 FPS
5Quake 3 1600 x 1200 x 16: 531.0 FPS
6Quake 3 1600 x 1200 x 32: 456.5 FPS
7Quake 3 1600 x 1200 x 32: 382.3 FPS (MAX TEXTURE DETAIL + TRILINEAR TEXTURE FILTER)