Welcome to VOGONS! 🙂

I'm not 100% sure, but I think there can be issues with the AGP to PCI-E bridge chip that the PCI-E Geforce FX cards use. The FX series was not built to natively support PCI-E, so the bridge chip sits between the GPU (AGP) and the PCI-E interface, basically.

I may be misremembering, but I would recommend doing a bit of research on the Geforce PCX series as well as the Quadro FX1300 (effectively a much lower-clocked FX 5900 with a PCI-E bridge chip) Windows 9x compatibility with regards to the bridge chip. If there aren't any GPU compatibility issues, then yes, I think it would make a nice setup.

That said, it can be a bit finicky getting newer motherboards working in such old operating systems. Sometimes the various controllers and parts of the more modern chipsets require jumping through some hoops to get everything working smoothly. I think ACPI (power management) gave me some trouble when I set up an Intel 800-series chipset in 9x, and that is a generation or two older than what you're thinking of using. It can be done, but it might be a project.

Regarding the processor... I'll let someone else give input on that. I'm really not that experienced with P4s from this time period. I was using Athlons throughout the whole Netburst era.

If it's really cheap, then maybe. There's nothing special in S478 i945, in fact most would consider it to be a huge nerf. Not only you're locked out of more desirable Core 2 CPUs, but also from Pentium 4 Cedar Mill. GeForce PCX 5750 is worth getting for novelty, but it's noticeably hampered by inability to use older drivers.

That motherboard looks like it really wants an 800FSB HT cpu in it.

Wonder how the sata and onboard lan will fare in 98.

As far as pentium 4 systems go, they are quite scavengable these days. I would just use whatever I could find laying about for free, especially when not very specific on which cpu to go for (which makes total sense these days - anything from the celeron to the HT prescott with HT disabled should do just fine with 9x)

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2026-02-03, 03:10:

If it's really cheap, then maybe. There's nothing special in S478 i945, in fact most would consider it to be a huge nerf. Not only you're locked out of more desirable Core 2 CPUs, but also from Pentium 4 Cedar Mill. GeForce PCX 5750 is worth getting for novelty, but it's noticeably hampered by inability to use older drivers.

Well, at first I wanted to go S478 because I thought that the early NetBurst CPUs would be the easiest to bring down to acceptable Windows 98 performance as to not cause any issues with the CPU being too fast, but if that's not an issue the only other thing special about S478 to me is just the novelty of it. Over the years I've handled TONS of AM2 and 775 boards and even if I were to build an XP machine, I'd still probably go with 939 because of how done I am with s775 and AM2(in fact I think I have a A8N-SLI Premium sitting in a box somewhere waiting for that to happen). I'm just hoping that some of the 50 series drivers will be able to work with the card PCX 5750. If I can manage to get that working, we're golden. If I run into games that don't like those driver versions I could always chuck in a PCI FX5200 and run 40 series drivers as a backup. If I can make this PCX 5750 play nicely with Win98 drivers, maybe down the line I can look into swapping the motherboard for another one with better Windows 98 support, even if it were on another socket.

If Windows 98 supports it I'm probably gonna go with a 2.8-3.2GHz P4 with 800 FSB. Do Northwood and Prescott perform/heat up pretty much the same or should I try to aim for one revision specifically?

I'll still wait a bit more before biting the bullet on this combo, maybe someone with more insight chimes in by then.

Northwood - HT enabled cores already have late revisions. Some have 30 caps on the bottom (instead of standard 12 caps) and on average better overclockers.
Presscott - all trash, realistically, but E0 and G1 supposedly have less TDP.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2026-02-03, 09:32:

Northwood - HT enabled cores already have late revisions. Some have 30 caps on the bottom (instead of standard 12 caps) and on average better overclockers.
Presscott - all trash, realistically, but E0 and G1 supposedly have less TDP.

I found a thread that you were pretty active in with posts pretty much confirming what I feared the most. While I might still get the PCX5750 just to have it as a display model, at this point I'm having a hard time convincing myself to get the AsRock 9i945GC motherboard. I just don't see a build I'd use it in. I mentioned having a good Asus 939 board I'm saving for a DX9 PCI-E build(perhaps I could even go with SLI/Crossfire).

In the meantime I found a listing for Asus CT-479 adapter card with Dothan 760 and Asus P4p800 Se motherboard. It's listed for ~$300. Even though this is much more than I intended on spending, I can't say that I'm not tempted, but I read that the USB ports might blow up the mobo, so that kinda kills some of the enthusiasm. There's also listings for 2 Kontron mini ITX boards(one with AGP and one with PCI-E) for even more money. The AGP one is a s479 board, the 886LCD-M/mITX motherboard, but with a soldered in 800MHz Intel SL8XT Celeron(which might not be that bad for a Windows 98 PC now that I think of it). The PCI-E one is a 986LCD-M/mITX with a socket, but that kinda isn't as appealing.

All in all, it seems like this wasn't as good of an idea as I first thought, but thanks for your replies guys.

AFAIK only breakout USBs are not shielded on some boards with ICH5/ICH5R south bridge. USB ports from ATX I/O are fine.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2026-02-03, 02:29:

Welcome to VOGONS! 🙂 […]
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Welcome to VOGONS! 🙂

I'm not 100% sure, but I think there can be issues with the AGP to PCI-E bridge chip that the PCI-E Geforce FX cards use. The FX series was not built to natively support PCI-E, so the bridge chip sits between the GPU (AGP) and the PCI-E interface, basically.

I may be misremembering, but I would recommend doing a bit of research on the Geforce PCX series as well as the Quadro FX1300 (effectively a much lower-clocked FX 5900 with a PCI-E bridge chip) Windows 9x compatibility with regards to the bridge chip. If there aren't any GPU compatibility issues, then yes, I think it would make a nice setup.

That said, it can be a bit finicky getting newer motherboards working in such old operating systems. Sometimes the various controllers and parts of the more modern chipsets require jumping through some hoops to get everything working smoothly. I think ACPI (power management) gave me some trouble when I set up an Intel 800-series chipset in 9x, and that is a generation or two older than what you're thinking of using. It can be done, but it might be a project.

Regarding the processor... I'll let someone else give input on that. I'm really not that experienced with P4s from this time period. I was using Athlons throughout the whole Netburst era.

Far as I know the bridge used is the same as AGP bridged cards (BR02 I think it was) so probably they're on the same level of compatibility.

All PCX cards require newer driver, because ForceWare 5x.xx is not aware of the bridge.

I unexpectedly managed to score a Kontron 986LCD-M/FLEX with a PCI-E slot along with a Intel Core Solo T1350 1.86GHz for $10, so I guess PCI-E Windows 98 is back on the menu.

So, since any PCI-E cards with bridge chips are gonna have flaky Windows 98 support, what do you think of getting a ATi x600/x800 PCI-E card for performance and going for a PCI nvidia card for compatibility?

Do ATi x600/x800 PCI-E cards have the same level of support as their AGP variants?

Also, I know that I can get a low profile PCI NVS 280 for DVI, but do you know of any Geforce2-Gefroce4 era nVidia card that also has DVI with PCI(that's also preferably low profile)?

Performance-wise, the FX5950 Ultra is CPU limited up to around 3.2-3.3Ghz on an X6800 in Win98se which is magnitudes faster than a P4... At least in 3DMark at the resolution it defaults to.

I'm sure higher resolution + AA would make it not so CPU limited on a slower CPU.

I do have a PCX 5750 and 5900 that I can test at some point in Win9x.

cyclone3d wrote on 2026-02-09, 18:19:

Performance-wise, the FX5950 Ultra is CPU limited up to around 3.2-3.3Ghz on an X6800 in Win98se which is magnitudes faster than a P4... At least in 3DMark at the resolution it defaults to.

I'm sure higher resolution + AA would make it not so CPU limited on a slower CPU.

I do have a PCX 5750 and 5900 that I can test at some point in Win9x.

With this build I'm not that concerned about being CPU limited, but thanks for the heads up. Since starting on this journey I remembered that I should still have a ASRock AM2NF3-VSTA and a AIW x800 XT AGP in storage somewhere so I guess that I should aim to pair those two with a Phenom II X2 BE and overclock it to 4GHz to get the most out of the x800 XT, but I'm kinda dreading even attempting that because I've read horrible things about NF3 and AGP compatibility.

At the moment, the only viable PCI-E cards I can get are a x600(half height), AIW x800GT and the already mentioned pcx 5750(I'm not considering 6xxx and 7xxx series GeForce cards because they seem to not work all that well with Win98). Since there are a couple of PCI fx 5200 and a PCI nvs 280 cards on the market as well, I thought about going with ATi xX00 on the PCI-E for performance and a nVidia fx on PCI(either native or with a low profile AGP card+adapter) for compatibility. I'd rather get an GeForce2/4 MX card for the PCI slot(but I don't know if cards like that with a DVI connector exist) for less of a performance penalty in case I tried to downclock to sub 1GHz to try some really old games, but I think I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself.

This is kinda off topic, but I wanna share my thoughts on downclocking. The idea is to use a fast card in the main slot with the max CPU clock and then using the slower but more "compatible" PCI card while downclocking the CPU as low as possible for the games that are picky about compatibility.

I need to confirm if this Kontron socket M board can even do downclocking, it might have it's multiplier locked like s478/s479 or it might be unlocked like on s775. On s478, because of the locked multiplier, the only thing you can do is getting a 800FSB P4 HT and halving the FSB to 400(so the lowest I could go is 1.2GHz with a 2.4GHz 800FSB P4 HT. I think that the lowest multiplier for s775 is x6(not sure if FSB can get lower than 533 though, it probably depends on the BIOS), but I really wanna avoid building a s775 system.

AMD boards with s754, s939, AM2 and even FM1 sockets in theory should be able to do 800MHz, or even a bit less if the board supports lowering the reference clock below 200(100 for FM1), but there's almost no record of anyone attempting something like that. The outlier with this is surprisingly FM1. The BIOS of ASUS FM1 boards states that the reference clock can go as low as 90 and I have found a post with someone claiming to have managed to run FM1 CPUs at 500MHz (via software). Now I'm not sure if FM1 is too new and if that can even cause issues with PCI GPU or sound cards, but discovering this was fun.

Lowest multi on P4 is x14 for Prescott and x12 on Presler.
It's also impossible to change to lowest value without unlocked CPU (some old boards can force it via PROCHOT signal).

agent_x007 wrote on 2026-02-10, 00:32:

Lowest multi on P4 is x14 for Prescott and x12 on Presler.
It's also impossible to change to lowest value without unlocked CPU (some old boards can force it via PROCHOT signal).

Thanks, I didn't know that. I'm guessing Cedar Mill, with it being 65nm has the same x12 limitation as Presler.

Also, let me add that I feel so silly, theorizing about something in huge paragraphs only to stumble upon multiple threads discussing the very same thing in much more detail.

Antique93 wrote on 2026-02-10, 10:52:

agent_x007 wrote on 2026-02-10, 00:32:

Lowest multi on P4 is x14 for Prescott and x12 on Presler.
It's also impossible to change to lowest value without unlocked CPU (some old boards can force it via PROCHOT signal).

Also, let me add that I feel so silly, theorizing about something in huge paragraphs only to stumble upon multiple threads discussing the very same thing in much more detail.

You just summed up 90% of my activities on the internet... 🤣

To my knowledge, all Netburst CPUs have hardlocked 12x minimal multiplier which can be forced via SpeedStep (where applicable). Prescott is not an exception. Core 1 and Core 2 series halved it to 6x. All Core CPUs have SpeedStep.

but I'm kinda dreading even attempting that because I've read horrible things about NF3 and AGP compatibility.

Nforce 3 has very shitty driver support for 64-bit OS, which is ironic, but it doesn't affect Windows XP. Although that defeats the purpose of Asrock Nforce 3 AM2 board as multi-OS system.

At the moment, the only viable PCI-E cards I can get are a x600(half height), AIW x800GT and the already mentioned pcx 5750

X800GT is obvious choice.

Antique93 wrote on 2026-02-09, 20:20:

(I'm not considering 6xxx and 7xxx series GeForce cards because they seem to not work all that well with Win98)

If you don't care about running games that use table fog or palletised textures, you can just use 61.76 drivers (some cards need to be force-installed, I haven't tried NV44 GeForce 6200 variants) without too much issue and get much better performance than later drivers with 6xxx cards. Whatever you've heard about "not work all that well" is most likely the typical misinformation that plagues the retro PC community.

NV43 cards (GeForce 6600 series, early GeForce 6200 cards) are detected as unknown cards, but you can use RivaTuner to disable vsync perfectly fine - I just literally tried that last night with an AGP 6600.

If you are absolutely intent on going with a PCI-e Radeon card, use Catalyst 4.11 or 5.2 - 5.9 and 6.2 are significantly worse in overall performance. Those are the only four drivers for Win9x which support PCI-e Radeons.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2026-02-12, 00:26:

To my knowledge, all Netburst CPUs have hardlocked 12x minimal multiplier which can be forced via SpeedStep (where applicable). […]
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To my knowledge, all Netburst CPUs have hardlocked 12x minimal multiplier which can be forced via SpeedStep (where applicable). Prescott is not an exception. Core 1 and Core 2 series halved it to 6x. All Core CPUs have SpeedStep.

but I'm kinda dreading even attempting that because I've read horrible things about NF3 and AGP compatibility.

Nforce 3 has very shitty driver support for 64-bit OS, which is ironic, but it doesn't affect Windows XP. Although that defeats the purpose of Asrock Nforce 3 AM2 board as multi-OS system.

At the moment, the only viable PCI-E cards I can get are a x600(half height), AIW x800GT and the already mentioned pcx 5750

X800GT is obvious choice.

Thanks for the vote of confidence on the AsRock nForce3 board. I'll go visit my mom over the weekend and try to find that mobo along with the x800xt AGP, some DDR1 and DDR2 RAM and an Audigy2 ZS. I remember the cooler on the x800xt being noisy, so I'm gonna try to track down some Gigabyte cards which came with Zalman coolers from the factory to try to replace the cooler.

At the moment I'm not interested in building a multi OS build with parts that old. I might run WinXP along with Win98 on these systems for comparing benchmark results and troubleshooting Win98, but don't see the appeal of running Windows Vista/7 or anything newer at all.

DEAT wrote on 2026-02-12, 03:32:

If you don't care about running games that use table fog or palletised textures, you can just use 61.76 drivers (some cards need […]
Show full quote

Antique93 wrote on 2026-02-09, 20:20:

(I'm not considering 6xxx and 7xxx series GeForce cards because they seem to not work all that well with Win98)

If you don't care about running games that use table fog or palletised textures, you can just use 61.76 drivers (some cards need to be force-installed, I haven't tried NV44 GeForce 6200 variants) without too much issue and get much better performance than later drivers with 6xxx cards. Whatever you've heard about "not work all that well" is most likely the typical misinformation that plagues the retro PC community.

NV43 cards (GeForce 6600 series, early GeForce 6200 cards) are detected as unknown cards, but you can use RivaTuner to disable vsync perfectly fine - I just literally tried that last night with an AGP 6600.

If you are absolutely intent on going with a PCI-e Radeon card, use Catalyst 4.11 or 5.2 - 5.9 and 6.2 are significantly worse in overall performance. Those are the only four drivers for Win9x which support PCI-e Radeons.

nVidia 6000 cards are scarse on my local market. I can find a NVS440 which is a "dual GPU" card, but I think I read a post from The Serpent Rider that you should be able to run it the same as if you had 2 separate GPUs in separate PC slots and I could just ignore one of them. There might also be a GeForce 6700XL available. I guess it would act the same as any other 6600 card would.

There's a lot more 7600 and 7800/7900/7950 cards available tbough. Not sure if they even work proprerly in Win98 or if they support anything older than the latest driver. Actually, I thought the Radeon x series of cards also supported only the latest Catalyst 6.12 drivers. Since it released a bit earlier, would the x800xt AGP support older drivers than PCI-E cards from the same series?

I just wanted to check one more thing. Since the PCX 5750 can't run drivers older than 60 something, 8-bit palleted textures and table fog aren't gonna work with the card? Newer drivers broke support?

I just grabbed my All-In-Wonder Radeon x800xt AGP in storage. While looking for it I also grabbed an Audigy2 ZS with coloured connectors and no firewire(I'm 99% sure that I also have a version with gold connectors and firewire as well), a Radeon HD3450 AGP(to have as a backup), a PCI-E GeForce 8400gs and a bundle of DDR2 RAM (the last two for tinkering with the Kontron 986LCD-M/FLEX board).

I found a lot of stuff that I left in storage. Some semi working GPUs like a PCI-E x1650 pro with an Accelero L2 Pro cooler but ripped out fan pins and a semi defective 9800GT (doesn't work in slots with more than 8 PCI-E lanes) wich also has an Accelero aftermarket cooler(it might have been an Accelero S2 Pro, I don't remember anymore), but I left them in storage since I don't plan on using those cards. In the future I could transfer the coolers to a GeForce 7800/7900/7950 card if I ever get one, the mounting holes are matching. There's also my brother's All-in-Wonder 9800 SE which at one point developed a problem with showing a error message that the floppy power connector wasn't connected and stopped the system from booting because of it.

Some.interesting mobos are my s939 Asus A8N-SLI Premium which I'm saving for a WinXP system and the motherboard of.my first personal computer that I didn't have to share with my dad, an s462 Abit NF7-S(I don't know the revision) with a Thermaltake Volcano copper cooler with the 38mm thick fan.

I also "discovered" lots of old VGA cards, the newest of which were a passive Gigabyte Radeon 9250 and two GeForce 2 MX cards, but I didn't recognize the rest at first glance and tyey seemed like they were way older than these 3. Among other things that I didn't recognize I found some P3 and maybe even older motherboards. Most of the parts in this section were from before my time. I don't know how my dad got ahold of them, so I don'tknow if they even work. I'll post pictures later to see if they're good to make builds with.

Sadly I found none of my AM2 or newer boards nor my OCZ Reaper 2x1GB 1200MHz DDR2 RAM. They just weren't in the basement unit that the rest of the parts were in. They might be somewhere else, but I'm not gonna bother searching for them this weekend.