First post, by retro games 100
- Rank
- l33t
My aim is to build a really fast Windows 98 rig without any serious consideration for "pure" DOS. (So no ISA slots.) I did a search on ebay for: sempron motherboard, and this thing [a GA-K8NS socket 754 rev 2 mobo] showed up in the results, so I bid for it. It's a Gigabyte board and it had a Sempron 3400+ CPU in it, along with some 400 speed RAM. After I won it, I checked the Gigabyte website for a Windows 98 driver, and there was one so that was lucky! However, next to this win98 chipset driver download, there was a warning message saying something like "win9x/me not supported" - or words to that effect.
First mistake: I didn't realise "Sempron" means "budget". I also didn't realise Athlon 64s existed, until I checked the CPU support list for the Gigabyte mobo. Oh well. Time to get an "Athlon 64" CPU...
To complete a basic working set up, I needed a graphics card. My first choice was a "retro friendly" FX 5900 (or similar), but these things are a little thin on the ground. I already have a passively cooled OC'd 128-bit FX5200 for another rig, so I decided to get a 6800 instead, because ebay has lots of them, and an nVidia driver apparently works in Windows 98.
Anyway, I've tested the mobo/Sempron/RAM bundle and it works. The 6800 gfx card hasn't arrived yet, so I just shoved in an nVidia 440 AGP (can't find my FX5200!), and went ahead and installed windows 98.
At this stage, I would really appreciate any criticism of the mobo that I've bought, as I don't know whether I've made the best choice. (I just took pot luck - had no idea what I was buying.) The CPU support list includes an Athlon 64 3700+, which sounds like it could be fast!
During the windows 98 SE installation, I kept getting strange "file system" related problems. Before I installed win98, I enabled the "Top Performance" option inside the BIOS set up area. When I enabled this BIOS option, a warning appeared saying something like "might be OK for Windows NT, might not be for XP." (Words to that effect.) After getting these strange file access related problems, I set this option back to Disabled. I think that has fixed the problem, cos I haven't seen any more strange file access problems.
Also inside the BIOS, I saw quite a few OC'ing features. At the moment, none of these OC'ing features have been activated - everything is set to "off/default". I'll do some benchies when the 6800 card arrives.
Side note: all of this is a bit mad and pointless, because my modern Windows XP machine plays most older win98 games just fine. Oh well! 😁