VOGONS


First post, by justin1985

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I've been working with my retro PCs a lot more over the last week or so (I've had a bad cold so not much else to do) and keep coming back to the rationalisation that have accumulated more than I either end up actually using, or have a particular emotional attachment to.

Surprisingly to myself, the machine I seem to end up using least is the one I imagined would be most flexible when I put it together:

AMD Sempron 3300+ Socket 754
MSI K8M800 based mATX board, 1Gb DDR
GeForce 4 Ti 4200 64Mb
SoundBlaster Live!

In theory, this should play pretty much anything that will on Win98, right?

But in practice, I find myself either using the older PIII 450 system with Radeon 9250, Yamaha YMF724 and PicoGUS for DOS and 2D strategy games etc, OR my AMD A8 APU smallest-possible ITX box under XP for most Windows based 3D games.

I've not really noticed much that won't run well on XP / with the DX11 Radeon HD7560D, but which is also too demanding for the PIII system.

So, is there much of a USP for a "late Win98 era" system like this?

Reply 1 of 32, by Joseph_Joestar

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Mostly for playing games at 1600x1200 with AA and AF cranked up. You'd need something a bit stronger to fully max that out though, like a Radeon X800 series card.

Also, there are a few Win9x era games with insanely high CPU requirements. The most notable example being the original Deus Ex.

PC#1: Pentium MMX 166 / Soyo SY-5BT / S3 Trio64V+ / Voodoo1 / YMF719 / AWE64 Gold / SC-155
PC#2: AthlonXP 2100+ / ECS K7VTA3 / Voodoo3 / Audigy2 / Vortex2
PC#3: Core 2 Duo E8600 / Foxconn P35AX-S / X800 / Audigy2 ZS
PC#4: i5-3570K / MSI Z77A-G43 / GTX 970 / X-Fi

Reply 2 of 32, by RetroPCCupboard

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justin1985 wrote on 2025-02-02, 13:02:

So, is there much of a USP for a "late Win98 era" system like this?

Bragging rights! 😀

Seriously though I have an overkill Win98 machine. Specs are:

Core 2 Duo X6800
512Mb RAM
Geforce FX 5900 Ultra
1024x768 LCD screen
Western Digital Raptor X 10k RPM HDD with see-thru side:

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I use it as my machine of choice for a quick game of something during my lunch break. Pretty much all of my Win9x games work on it. It's fast to boot and fast to load all games.

But when I have more time on my hands or want A3D audio, or OPL3, I use one of my more period correct machines on a CRT.

Reply 3 of 32, by AlexZ

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I do not see much point in building a really powerul Windows 98 rig as games lack details so will not benefit much from higher resolution. I just end up using 800x600 or 1024x768. Games from that era are not designed for high resolutions.

I built a PIII rig that I can use for both DOS and Windows 98 therefore I do not have your problem. The latest sports games it can play is Fifa 2003 and Nhl 2003. A Windows 98 only rig is not that useful in my opinion. That OS is unstable by design and you want to get out of it your game runs on Windows XP if possible.

GeForce 4 Ti 4200 is great for Windows 98, but hopeless for Windows XP.

Socket 754 can be useful for a Windows XP rig, but it needs a much more powerful graphics card. All my 754 boards are AGP, but a PCIe version is probably a better choice as one could use i.e. GeForce 9800 GT. Fast AGP cards are ridiculuously expensive while PCIe from that era super cheap.

Last edited by AlexZ on 2025-02-02, 20:01. Edited 1 time in total.

Pentium III 900E, ECS P6BXT-A+, 384MB RAM, GeForce FX 5600 128MB, Voodoo 2 12MB, Yamaha SM718 ISA
Athlon 64 3400+, MSI K8T Neo V, 2GB RAM, GeForce 7600GT 512MB, Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS
Phenom II X4 965, Gigabyte GA-870A, 16GB RAM, GeForce GTX 980 Ti

Reply 4 of 32, by RetroPCCupboard

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AlexZ wrote on 2025-02-02, 15:04:

I do not see much point in building a really powerul Windows 98 rig as games lack details so will not benefit much from higher resolution. I just end up using 800x600 or 1024x768. Games from that era are not designed for high resolutions.

Agreed. I use 1024x768 on my machine. I also use vsync to restrict the framerate, as some games don't like it too fast. Where a faster machine is great though is to eliminate frame drops / stutter. Also you can use AA and AF to make the image smoother and better looking.

Reply 5 of 32, by AlexZ

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That Western Digital Raptor is a great idea. I will be getting some velociraptors for my Windows XP rig and switch to SATA.

Pentium III 900E, ECS P6BXT-A+, 384MB RAM, GeForce FX 5600 128MB, Voodoo 2 12MB, Yamaha SM718 ISA
Athlon 64 3400+, MSI K8T Neo V, 2GB RAM, GeForce 7600GT 512MB, Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS
Phenom II X4 965, Gigabyte GA-870A, 16GB RAM, GeForce GTX 980 Ti

Reply 6 of 32, by Fish3r

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justin1985 wrote on 2025-02-02, 13:02:

So, is there much of a USP for a "late Win98 era" system like this?

Depending on what you're looking for out of your systems some modern conveniences like SATA, USB2.0 and USB booting can be nice to have.

Reply 7 of 32, by justin1985

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AlexZ wrote on 2025-02-02, 15:04:

I do not see much point in building a really powerul Windows 98 rig as games lack details so will not benefit much from higher resolution. I just end up using 800x600 or 1024x768. Games from that era are not designed for high resolutions.

Really good point! I had been running my little XP box on my main desk, sharing my main 27" monitor, but most of the games I run even on XP either don't go up to those kinds of resolutions at all, or look pretty weird when they do! So now the Piii Win98 machine and the XP box are sharing a Dell 19" 4:3 monitor on a separate desk.

RetroPCCupboard wrote on 2025-02-02, 16:24:

Where a faster machine is great though is to eliminate frame drops / stutter. Also you can use AA and AF to make the image smoother and better looking.

I've been really impressed with the Radeon HD 7560D integrated in the AMD A8 APU so far. Certainly since I started using it with dual channel RAM, it's done great in every XP era game I've wanted to play. And I don't think there's anything the GeForce 4 could do under Win98 that the APU couldn't also do? (3DMark2001 scores 30690 versus 8193)

Fish3r wrote on 2025-02-02, 19:31:

Depending on what you're looking for out of your systems some modern conveniences like SATA, USB2.0 and USB booting can be nice to have.

Good points! (Although the VIA SATA never worked for me at all in Win98 ...). To some extent I think I've worked around the other issues on the PIII system with a PCI-slot mounted CF card as removable/swappable storage, and a Gotek for boot disks.

So I think I am coming around towards moving on the Sempron system, just keeping the Slot1 PIII and the FM2 AMD A8 as my main go-to systems. (I have several quirkier systems tucked away in the workshop ...)

Reply 8 of 32, by DarthSun

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I my hobby on the new machine using as the older operating system. Today, the DOS/WIN98 can be solved for Zen2.

The 3 body problems cannot be solved, neither for future quantum computers, even for the remainder of the universe. The Proton 2D is circling a planet and stepping back to the quantum size in 11 dimensions.

Reply 9 of 32, by Unknown_K

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The last machines you can install 98SE on (or in my case Window ME) are probably better off as XP machines.

Running ME on a fast SATA drive was almost too fast.

Collector of old computers, hardware, and software

Reply 10 of 32, by DarthSun

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Unknown_K wrote on 2025-02-03, 11:27:

The last machines you can install 98SE on (or in my case Window ME) are probably better off as XP machines.

Running ME on a fast SATA drive was almost too fast.

Turn to unimaginable speed under Win98 with SSD 😀

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The 3 body problems cannot be solved, neither for future quantum computers, even for the remainder of the universe. The Proton 2D is circling a planet and stepping back to the quantum size in 11 dimensions.

Reply 11 of 32, by gerry

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I can't think of a game that runs badly on a circa 2001 PC (when xp came out) with a reasonable agp card and would not run on XP, hence genuinely needs later tech in order to play a game. there might be some, but with that spec i'd probably go with win xp and get access to later games too. maybe its a good dual boot option or maybe some experiments with windows 2000 or a suitable edition of vista 😀

Reply 12 of 32, by Socket3

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AlexZ wrote on 2025-02-02, 15:04:

I do not see much point in building a really powerul Windows 98 rig as games lack details so will not benefit much from higher resolution. I just end up using 800x600 or 1024x768. Games from that era are not designed for high resolutions.

That is only true for CRT users. If you're driving an LCD you're going to want to use native resolution witch is usually 1280x1024 sometimes even 1600x1200 (for 20 and 21" 4:3 panels). Anything less then native looks horrible.

I like using CRT monitors whenever possible, but they are getting pretty hard to find - particularly ones in good working order - and they take up a lot of room. As such I mainly reserve them for older machines and 2d games. Most of my win98 PCs drive LCDs, usually 20/21" (Syncmaster 214t, Dell 2007FP, etc). In my opinion 3D accelerated games look fantastic on these, but the caveat is you need to go way over recommended system specs to drive such high resolutions at 60fps. I found that going a bit overboard on the CPU makes most 1998-2001 era games run very smooth - GPU wise they're not very demanding.

Here are a few examples of such games:

- Black and White - minimum system is a 350 MHz Intel Pentium II MMX processor, 64 Mb RAM and an 8Mb 3D Hardware Accelerator Card with Direct3D(TM) support (PCI/AGP). Now that will let you run the game, but it will be a slideshow. Black and white is very CPU intensive and also a bit of a ram hog. GPU-wise it's not particularly demanding. I find the game runs best @ 1600x1200 maxed out on moderately fast socket 478 / socket A CPUs, on a system with 256MB of ram and a late 2000 graphics card with at least 32MB of vram. A geforce 2 GTS or radeon 7500 will do quite well for this game. This game launched in 2001, so it's technically an XP era game, but it was designed to run on win9x, and has some minor to moderate stability issues when running on top of XP, particularly when running it maxed out.

- Dungeon Keeper 2 (1999) recommended specs is a 300MHz pentium II, 64MB of ram and again an 8MB graphics card. Mininum requirements ask for a 233MHz pentium and a 2MB grapics card... And, while the game will launch on a pentium MMX, it is a slidehow. In fact it's pretty unpleasant to run on it's recommended specs as well (tested on a 350MHz P2 with a riva TNT2). It will run ok @ 800x600 on a 650-733MHz pentium III / Athlon / Duron with a TNT2, but it will start chugging pretty hard when there are lots of creatures and particle effects on screen (combat). I find the game runs best on way faster machines - 2GHz Pentium 4 / Athlon 2000+, with a Geforce 3 or radeon 8500.

- Homeworld (1999) - this game again needs over recommended specs to run smoothly. I find a 900-1000MHz Pentium 3 / Athon / Duron + 128MB of ram and a Radeon 7200 / Geforce 2 MX 400 will get the job done smoothly.

Reply 13 of 32, by chinny22

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I found the same.
I built a Socket 478 P4 with GF6800 Ultra which dual boots Win98 and XP.

Any game that doesn't like XP works fine on my Slot 1 P3 with a GF4 Ti 4600, at pretty high resolutions
Once games start getting too demanding for the P3 they work trouble free in XP anyway.

I'm sure some edge cases exist but not in my personal games library, but it does make me happy knowing I have this stupid fast 9x build.

Reply 14 of 32, by fosterwj03

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I'm obsessed with speed, so I'm driving Windows 98/Me on an Xeon E3-1275v2 (essentially an i7-3570k) at 3.5GHz and a Radeon x800 XL. It handles all of my software (including DirectX 9 titles) very well at super high resolutions. I love playing Call of Duty at 1080p in Windows 98/Me at high frame rates. I couldn't do something like that with the hardware I had in 2001-2002.

I'm thinking about trying Windows 9x on an i7-9700 next. I wonder if I can get the BIOS to use only one core to turbo up to 4.7 GHz on a H310 board (I haven't bought this stuff yet).

Reply 16 of 32, by nd22

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chinny22 wrote on 2025-02-04, 03:19:

Any game that doesn't like XP works fine on my Slot 1 P3 with a GF4 Ti 4600, at pretty high resolutions
Once games start getting too demanding for the P3 they work trouble free in XP anyway.

I'm sure some edge cases exist but not in my personal games library, but it does make me happy knowing I have this stupid fast 9x build.

This illustrates perfectly the solution to the question: do I need a powerful Win 9X machine? Most games from 2001 onward will run just fine on XP and even most of the Win 9X games I play actually run just fine on XP.
The most powerful Win 9X system I have is actually a period correct one: Pentium 3 1400, Abit ST6, 512mb RAM, geforce3 ti 500, 80gb PATA HDD, Sound blaster live. Windows ME flies on this machine and I never found to need a more powerful Win 9X system for any game. All games installed run exceedingly well even at 1600*1200 resolution at max settings - all games are from 2000 or earlier. In fact I have a second system with the same components except for the motherboard which is Abit VH6T and the memory which is 1.5gb. Xp runs just fine on it and plays the same games that are on the Win ME system at the same settings with no performance drop.

Reply 17 of 32, by fosterwj03

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I guess I don't see the harm in multibooting OSs if you feel like you must have one machine to rule them all. The only issue might be the overlap of mostly compatible components for XP and 9x. Otherwise, decent sized SSDs are super cheep, so you could buy two drives easily (one for each OS).

Reply 18 of 32, by RetroPCCupboard

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nd22 wrote on 2025-02-04, 12:09:

The most powerful Win 9X system I have is actually a period correct one: Pentium 3 1400, Abit ST6, 512mb RAM, geforce3 ti 500, 80gb PATA HDD, Sound blaster live.

Is that period correct though? The 1400 was released after WinXP was out and was more of a workstation/server CPU than a gaming CPU.

Reply 19 of 32, by VivienM

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RetroPCCupboard wrote on 2025-02-04, 15:00:
nd22 wrote on 2025-02-04, 12:09:

The most powerful Win 9X system I have is actually a period correct one: Pentium 3 1400, Abit ST6, 512mb RAM, geforce3 ti 500, 80gb PATA HDD, Sound blaster live.

Is that period correct though? The 1400 was released after WinXP was out and was more of a workstation/server CPU than a gaming CPU.

Gamers stuck to 98SE well into 2002 or 2003... while everybody else got off the sinking 98SE ship with Win2000 if they could.