Ozzuneoj wrote on 2025-05-28, 21:17:

A 6200 will be faster than an FX 5500 for sure, but any of these GPUs are going to be massively underpowered for games made afte […]
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rezamolaee wrote on 2025-05-27, 14:12:

Thank you everyone for your help, I decided to buy a GA-8I865GME-775-RH, equipped it when 2GB of DDR memory, it support Core 2 Duo in revision 3.9, this board is more convenient than older ones and I'm going to be sure system always be bottlenecked by GPU.
however I have another question, is GeForce 6200 worth buying if you have FX 5500?

A 6200 will be faster than an FX 5500 for sure, but any of these GPUs are going to be massively underpowered for games made after 2000 or 2001 unless you're okay with low settings.

If you've got one of the most capable AGP boards ever made, you really should try to find some at least mid range if not high end AGP cards.

Something like a 6800\GS\GT would probably be a decent fit, or if you're trying to keep the budget down a Radeon 9600 Pro or 9600 XT will be significantly faster than any of the others you've mentioned.

Yeah but going by my experience of both cards the 6200 can be a bit of a problem in Windows 98.

I have one that uses a 6200 no problem at all (GX270)
I have a T5720 that doesnt seem to like to load the drivers that I use on my GX270 without a problem, then I have a Shuttle PC that doesnt like them at all either and I have a Asrock 775i65G based system that doesnt mind working at all with the same card and drivers that wont work in the Shuttle PC.
But the FX5500 works in any and all of them so I really cant recommend the 6200 for Windows 98 at all.

If you dont want DX9, which the OP doesnt than a GeForce4 Ti of any flavour will out perform a 6200 and work every single time.

The 6200 is one of those cards that is better best forgotten.

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2025-05-29, 02:25:

Yeah but going by my experience of both cards the 6200 can be a bit of a problem in Windows 98. […]
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Ozzuneoj wrote on 2025-05-28, 21:17:

A 6200 will be faster than an FX 5500 for sure, but any of these GPUs are going to be massively underpowered for games made afte […]
Show full quote

rezamolaee wrote on 2025-05-27, 14:12:

Thank you everyone for your help, I decided to buy a GA-8I865GME-775-RH, equipped it when 2GB of DDR memory, it support Core 2 Duo in revision 3.9, this board is more convenient than older ones and I'm going to be sure system always be bottlenecked by GPU.
however I have another question, is GeForce 6200 worth buying if you have FX 5500?

A 6200 will be faster than an FX 5500 for sure, but any of these GPUs are going to be massively underpowered for games made after 2000 or 2001 unless you're okay with low settings.

If you've got one of the most capable AGP boards ever made, you really should try to find some at least mid range if not high end AGP cards.

Something like a 6800\GS\GT would probably be a decent fit, or if you're trying to keep the budget down a Radeon 9600 Pro or 9600 XT will be significantly faster than any of the others you've mentioned.

Yeah but going by my experience of both cards the 6200 can be a bit of a problem in Windows 98.

I have one that uses a 6200 no problem at all (GX270)
I have a T5720 that doesnt seem to like to load the drivers that I use on my GX270 without a problem, then I have a Shuttle PC that doesnt like them at all either and I have a Asrock 775i65G based system that doesnt mind working at all with the same card and drivers that wont work in the Shuttle PC.
But the FX5500 works in any and all of them so I really cant recommend the 6200 for Windows 98 at all.

If you dont want DX9, which the OP doesnt than a GeForce4 Ti of any flavour will out perform a 6200 and work every single time.

The 6200 is one of those cards that is better best forgotten.

I wasn't recommending a 6200 at all, just saying that it's faster than a 5500 but still underpowered, since that is what he asked. Obviously a Geforce 4 Ti would be recommended over either of them for most gaming situations. I'll be honest though, I missed that this was a Windows 98 system intended strictly for pre-DX9 gaming. The 865 chipset with Core 2 Duo support and 2GB of RAM threw me off a bit.

The specs are kind of all over the place for a system like that, so it's hard to make a clear recommendation. I figured that maybe cost was a major factor since the 9250, 5500 and 6200 were the only cards the OP has mentioned so far... then the C2D AGP board came into the picture, 🤣.

OP:
There are several ways you could go about this build, but it could easily be a dual-boot 98se + XP system with a Core 2 Duo. If it's strictly going to be used for Windows 98, put in a Geforce4 Ti or higher end FX series (or Quadro equivalents of either) if you can afford them and it'll be good for DX8 games... or put in one of the cards I mentioned before if you want it to stretch it's legs a bit and not be quite as GPU limited. Realistically, the vast majority of non-DOS games that work in Windows 98 will also run in Windows XP without much trouble. If any game doesn't like Windows XP or newer GPUs it is probably very very old so you could have a more old-game friendly PCI card (FX 5500 or Radeon 9100 for example) to run those games under Windows 98.

If you're only ever going to use a P4, then the performance picture changes quite a bit depending on which CPU you put in it exactly... but a Geforce4 Ti or FX (5600 Ultra, 5700 Ultra, or 5800\5900 of any kind) series are probably still your best bet.

Also, be careful of AGP cards with PCI-Express bridge chips on them, such as the 6600GT, 7600GT, 7800GS, etc. They can be a lot more finicky than other AGP cards.

Thank you, like I said before I'm not gonna be after some period correct high end retro system, want something genuine like what everybody had in late 1990/early 2000s, we don't know much about specs back then just pure PC gaming with joy, I don't want a super expensive GPU or CPU, anyway can't find many retro PC parts here! I asked you guys how to get full potential of my cards Do I need P4,or a P3 board with AGP 2X is still sufficient? Nobody talks about AGP revisions! Today I found out that I can burn AGP cards simply by puting them in incompatible slots!

http://www.playtool.com/pages/agpcompat/newagp.html

If such a thing ever happened it was a design fault with the board or sloppy insertion by the user.

rezamolaee wrote on 2025-05-29, 13:25:

Thank you, like I said before I'm not gonna be after some period correct high end retro system, want something genuine like what everybody had in late 1990/early 2000s, we don't know much about specs back then just pure PC gaming with joy, I don't want a super expensive GPU or CPU, anyway can't find many retro PC parts here! I asked you guys how to get full potential of my cards Do I need P4,or a P3 board with AGP 2X is still sufficient? Nobody talks about AGP revisions! Today I found out that I can burn AGP cards simply by puting them in incompatible slots!

Well, one important question here - do you want to just comfortably play games, or do you want "period correct, what everybody had"? Because this are 2 very, very different things.

I had like athlon 800 + GF2mx400 in early 00s and it definitely was not sufficient. 15-20FPS at low resolution and low settings? That's pretty good.

I've built a few vintage systems at this point too and if i learned anything that is - period correct hardware was not sufficient to play games comfortably. Not by today's standards.

Even if you absolutely max stuff out, which will be expensive even now, it will still be slower than you'd expect.

So easy and cheaper option, if you want to just play games as well as possible, is to go for as new hardware as possible while still maintaining compatibility.

That's why my opinion still is - P4 makes much more sense than P3, heat and all. It'll simply be a better experience, even if building it well will be a bit more effort. And it will give you some headroom to upgrade the card later if you decide to. However if you do not have this hardware and are just considering what to buy - do consider AMD side of things. Socket 462/A and may be 754 with AGP are, IMO, nicer than P4/478. AthlonXP was a big win for AMD, just like core2 was a big win for intel a bit later.

If you, however, want that authentic experience - low resolution, slow and everything just for the experience - then you should go for period correct.

Just my opinion....

rezamolaee wrote on 2025-05-29, 13:25:

Thank you, like I said before I'm not gonna be after some period correct high end retro system, want something genuine like what everybody had in late 1990/early 2000s, we don't know much about specs back then just pure PC gaming with joy, I don't want a super expensive GPU or CPU, anyway can't find many retro PC parts here!

It's still a bit confusing what you're looking for. A period correct system is, by definition, what someone would have had during a specific period, so these are more complicated to build.

Even a high end period correct system will not run games that well as Archer57 said, if you're shooting for a specific year. If you want a mid range system that is like what an average person would have had, you kind of have to pick a year that you're basing this on and expect games to not run that great unless you're playing games made 2-3+ years before your GPU\CPU. People's standards for frame rate and graphics quality were very bad back then because computer parts were so expensive and were obsolete so quickly.

To be clear: I don't think you need to worry about all of that. A period correct system is interesting to build but doesn't really provide much benefit. I would recommend just making the best of what you have and seeing if it runs your games properly. More detailed suggestion below...

I asked you guys how to get full potential of my cards Do I need P4,or a P3 board with AGP 2X is still sufficient?

AGP 2x will have very little impact on an FX 5500 or Radeon 9250SE, since these cards are very low end and aren't capable of pushing a lot across the AGP bus.

To get the most out of a low end video card, I would suggest focusing on games made at least 3 years before that card was released and equip the PC with a CPU + motherboard that will handle those games.

I wouldn't expect games made after 2000 to run well (by today's standards) on either of those cards. So, if you have a Pentium 3 933 I would just use the FX 5500 in that system and play games made before ~2001. Any CPU newer than that will be pretty heavily bottlenecked by these cards, and any games made after 2000 or would run far far better on a faster CPU and GPU.

If you have to use the newer 865 board, then it really doesn't matter what CPU you use if you are coupling it with an FX 5500 or 9250SE. You will be limited to running games up to about 2000-2001 unless you use very low graphics settings.

If you can find a 9600, 9600 Pro or 9600 XT (NOT 9550 or 9600SE) they offer a pretty huge performance increase and would open up at least a couple more years of games played at decent settings and frame rates.

Most of the Pentium 3 boards that support the 133FSB would have a 4x AGP slot not a 2x one.
2x was more common on the 440BX chipset boards.

rezamolaee wrote on 2025-05-29, 13:25:

Thank you, like I said before I'm not gonna be after some period correct high end retro system, want something genuine like what everybody had in late 1990/early 2000s, we don't know much about specs back then just pure PC gaming with joy, I don't want a super expensive GPU or CPU, anyway can't find many retro PC parts here! I asked you guys how to get full potential of my cards Do I need P4,or a P3 board with AGP 2X is still sufficient? Nobody talks about AGP revisions! Today I found out that I can burn AGP cards simply by puting them in incompatible slots!

For a system that we would have had back then then you might go for a Pentium 3 933.
By then we were rockin the 1GHz CPUs but 933 fits too.
Video cards were the likes of the Geforce 2 GTS (or Ultra for the high end option but then you would have had a better CPU), GeForce 3 Ti 200 (or Ti 500 but with better CPU), GeForce4 Ti 4200 (or better with a better CPU)
For Radeon it was the 8500 all the way.

The 2x AGP slots were mostly on the 440BX chipset boards, the 815 chipsets usually had the 4x slot on them.

You can fit ann FX5500 in that system, but it would be a step down from a GeForce4 Ti of any flavour.

I had a Dual P3 1Ghz with an 8500 back then. so it is period correct for me.

Yes you can kill hardware by putting the wrong card into the wrong slot but thats mostly to do with putting old cards into new slots.
Usually though not always if the card fits into the slot it should be ok. But the only time you have to think about what youre doing is on the newer boards with an 8x slot.
But youre not thinking about getting one of those so no point thinking about it, and if you were looking at one of those boards then you shouldnt be thinking about adding a card that can kill it because they would be woefully under powered for the CPU hardware you would be using.

I'm going to answer your original question.

If you're looking to build a win98 gaming PC without a vodoo card:

CPU: 2 core CPU is pointless, same with Hyperthreading. You can use these CPU's but you should disable any extra cores or Hyperthreading. I would go with a Pentium 3, Pentium 4 or Athlon XP. (Anything higher than Pentium 3 1ghz is overkill for win98 gaming imo)
Motherboard: For compatibility I would only use Pentium 4 (Socket 423 or 478) or Athlon XP based motherboards (Socket A/462) on the fast end. Or Pentium 3 (Socket 370/Slot 1) for period correctness.
RAM: PC100/133 or DDR1. For the least amount of hassle make sure you have no more than 512MB or you'll have to do some messing around to get it to install and work without issues. Dual Channel RAM is not going to make much difference for win 98 era games. x2 256mb sticks or 1 512mb stick will suffice.
GPU: The FX5500 is a good choice out of the 2 you mentioned for win98 gaming because it supports 8 bit paletted textures and will support Nglide (DX 9 needed) so you can run your glide based games. I always recommend the Geforce 4 MX440 or Radeon 9600 XT because they are still very cheap and easy to find.

Akchuallee!!

Apparently clock speed makes a big difference for software mode at high resolutions.
I can't comment on WHY anyone would want to use software mode but it is a factor.

Quake, software:
Quake (DOS) software-mode tested from 320x200 to 1280x1024 on 36 CPUs (and 7 platofrms) from 1996 to 2004

There's also the simple fact that a newer chip is generally less power hungry for a given load - assuming you take advantage of it by, say, underclocking.
IIRC the 775 core era were able to have their multiplier dropped.
Then there are uArc improvements, Eg core vs P4 was a dramatic improvement in IPC and power.
And, of course, knowing you have waaaay too much power for the task means you'll never have any performance issues.

A 2.8ghz core era chip at 1.4 vs a Tualatin at 1.4 should result in a clear win for the core.

I know which I'd pick assuming drivers all lined up.
Who cares that a core is sitting there turned off?