Geforce 4 Ti4200 and Radeon 9600 did fine on Win98SE in my experience, even on a ViA chipset.
Also the X700/800 series should do well but may be a bit overkill for socket 370 and are not so easy to get with AGP (and quite fragile due to the AGP bridge chip).

I'd go with the Ti4200 or maybe even a Radeon 9550 which may be cheaper than the others.

There were native AGP X800 cards. Question is whether AGP 3.0 cards would be worth the potential troubles in such a Win98 rig.

ChrisK wrote on Yesterday, 06:56:

Geforce 4 Ti4200 and Radeon 9600 did fine on Win98SE in my experience, even on a ViA chipset. Also the X700/800 series should do […]
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Geforce 4 Ti4200 and Radeon 9600 did fine on Win98SE in my experience, even on a ViA chipset.
Also the X700/800 series should do well but may be a bit overkill for socket 370 and are not so easy to get with AGP (and quite fragile due to the AGP bridge chip).

I'd go with the Ti4200 or maybe even a Radeon 9550 which may be cheaper than the others.

Thanks a lot for your recommendatins. The x700/800 series was not an my radar to be frank but they are interesting cards from technical point of view.

But I am not sure if they might not be too much for a win98se gaming system just like putas has said.

The 4200 ti geforce would be the most logical choice. This card is also my first pick.

In theory it can be very tempting to deal with some more powerful card to go crazy but in the end I want something that justs works and max out the system with as little headaches as possible.

I got myself a geforce 4 4200 ti for my system

Gigabyte GA-7IXE board
Amd Athlon 700 Mhz

256 mb PC 133 ram

and I like the results. The first card for that system was Voodoo 3 card as well. If you find a geforce 4 4600 ti you also consider that card. There is nice video from phils computerlab on youtube abou the card.Phil called the card one of the best cards for windows 98.

Depends on the resolution, but some 2001 and 2002 games can be very hard on an s370 system with the most available graphics cards.

I feel like Morrowind can slaughter anything aside of the most powerful options if you want to max it out. Same with Splinter Cell. I found Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 to also be very heavy. For that an FX5700 is just about enough in 1280×1024. And all this if you pair the fast GPU with a decent Athlon XP or Pentium 4. With a Pentium 3 I'd keep my expectations low. I'd just drop W98(SE) at 2001 and go for a cheaper XP build.

RandomStranger wrote on Yesterday, 16:31:

Depends on the resolution, but some 2001 and 2002 games can be tough on an s370 system with the most available graphics cards.

I feel like Morrowind can slaughter anything aside of the most powerful options if you want to max it out. Same with Splinter Cell. I found Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 to also be very heavy. For that an FX5700 is just about enough in 1280×1024. And all this if you pair the fast GPU with a decent Athlon XP or Pentium 4. With a Pentium 3 I'd keep my expectations low. I'd just drop W98(SE) at 2001 and go for a cheaper XP build.

Thanks a lot for your objections. Yes leaving the rig like it is and start from the scratch from 2001 beyond is good idea. Getting second rig for xp with a athlon or p4 is something I wanted to do for quite some time now. But then I had to postpone my plans.

Starting that project now would be possible.

My prefered resolutions would be 1024x768 or 1280x1024.

Which cheap athlon xp or p4 combination would you recommend as good starting point?

For early XP I'd go further. AMD Sempron 145, it's single core-single thread, very fast, but with low TDP. Some early games have issues with dual/multi core. Though there are workarounds. I like the 780G chipset for AM2/+/3 CPUs. I used to daily drive a GA-MA78GM-S2H.

For graphics card, something from the enthusiast level from the Geforce 7000 series. Some games have issues with graphics cards more recent than that. Though there are workarounds.

Also agree 4200 ti is a good logical choice for a P3. Sure GF6 is the last with official support but not really suitable for a P3 and suffers compatibility issues anyway.

I also feel once games start to get to demanding for a P3 (and in my case) a Ti4600 the games are really more XP era that just happen to have 9x legacy support (GTA3 is a good example)
Its a good time for cheap XP builds. LGA775 make great powerful retro PC's and even newer 1156/1366 can be had for good deals.
Add a mid level PCIe card towards the end of XP compatibility and it'll be more then powerful enough for XP era games.

RandomStranger wrote on Yesterday, 17:52:

For early XP I'd go further. AMD Sempron 145, it's single core-single thread, very fast, but with low TDP. Some early games have issues with dual/multi core. Though there are workarounds. I like the 780G chipset for AM2/+/3 CPUs. I used to daily drive a GA-MA78GM-S2H.

For graphics card, something from the enthusiast level from the Geforce 7000 series. Some games have issues with graphics cards more recent than that. Though there are workarounds.

Thanks a lot for your recommendation. The sempron 145 sounds interesting. In case some of the early games have problems with mulit core cpus a powerful single core cpu sounds like the perfect match for my gaming needs.

I will also check out the geforce 7000 series to find a proper gpu.

chinny22 wrote on Today, 00:32:

Also agree 4200 ti is a good logical choice for a P3. Sure GF6 is the last with official support but not really suitable for a P […]
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Also agree 4200 ti is a good logical choice for a P3. Sure GF6 is the last with official support but not really suitable for a P3 and suffers compatibility issues anyway.

I also feel once games start to get to demanding for a P3 (and in my case) a Ti4600 the games are really more XP era that just happen to have 9x legacy support (GTA3 is a good example)
Its a good time for cheap XP builds. LGA775 make great powerful retro PC's and even newer 1156/1366 can be had for good deals.
Add a mid level PCIe card towards the end of XP compatibility and it'll be more then powerful enough for XP era games.

Thanks as well for your input. I will check out the various LGA 775 mainboards and also the never 1156/1366 to see what is availble right. The same goes the pci cards you have mentioned.

Can you think of some specific cards you would recommend?

ps: I also think that I will get the geforce 4 4200 ti anyway. Nothing against the v3 but I am also curious what the p3 can do with a more powerful card. The 4200 ti cards are reather cheap at the moment so getting one would not break the bank.