The fastest machine I had Windows 98 running, for a video project, was a socket 754 Athlon 64 3700+ together with a GeForce FX type card, I think a 5800. That machine was extremely fast, especially boot and shut-down times.

It ran nGlide and outperformed a real V5 easily 😀

I have a p4/2.4Ghz for some win98 gaming - I rarely use it though. I built it to play the older windows games without speed worries or bottlenecks and in that aspect it works fine. Rest of the specs are:
- some Gigabyte mobo with DDR1/sata1 and agp-pro slot , can't rememnber the model exactly atm
- 512mb DDR1 RAM
- 320GB HDD
- 6800GT vga
- voodoo2 sli
- sb live!

ofcourse running win98SE with unofficial SP and patched HDD support so that the 320GB FAT32 HDD won't crap out and start deleting data 🤣 🤣 🤣

No me. But a close friend of mine ran 98 on a x48 system on dice.

Probably my Tualeron system. I hate Win9x enough that the idea of turbocharging it on modern hardware doesn't interest me at all.

Dell XPS T550, Celeron 1400, 512MB CL2 RAM, overclocked V3-3000 AGP, Aureal SQ2500 Vortex 2 and SB AWE64, 80GB HDD.

It's easily fast enough for DOS and Glide gaming. Everything else runs fine on XP and 7.

Right now? Tualatin 1.4S on 820 with 1 GB PC-800 RDRAM, and Voodoo5 5500.

This! Win 98, XP & 8.1 fully supported on one dual core PC? Here is my retro approach!

Core 2 based, 2GB RAM, GF 6800 ultra, i865, official support!

AMD T-Bird 1200 mhz, DFI KT133 MB (I believe an AK74-EC), 256MB SDRAM, Radeon 9100/64MB + PowerVR PCX2, 120GB WD HDD, on board audio

i used it on athlon xp 2600+ with 512 and later 1536mb ram, some gigabyte nforce based mobo and a geforce 3 ti 500 iirc

Athlon XP 3200
Nforce2 Mainboard ASUS A7N8X-X
Ati Radeon Sapphire X850XT PE
2 GB Ram (512 MB visible to Win98)

None I believe, as I usually pick ME instead of 98SE.

I did have 98SE running on at least 1 rig, a K6-2/350 or so running at 5x66MHz (333MHz total).

Iirc fastest I ran ME was Tualatin 1400 and at least one Thunderbird 1400

Pentium Dual Core E5700 @ 4GHz with 4GB RAM (locked to 1,13GB for Win 98 SE), ASRock 4CoreDual-SATA2 R2, GF 7900 GX2 and SATA3 SSD 😀
Next time I try this with QX9770 @ 3,8GHz 😀
Basicly, this :

The fastest would be my Slot 1 machine:

- P2-400
- 3 x 128MB RAM
- 80GB HDD
- 16MB Nvidia Riva TNT2
- 12MB Voodoo 2
- Sound Blaster Live!

However, I tend to use Windows 95 OSR2.5 on most of my builds (including Pentium Pro and PMMX). There is no practical reason for that — just feels more "period-correct" and it's my actual first OS.

I run DOS 6.22/Win3.11/Win98 SE on the "Retro" machine in my signature.

Ok so here's my fully working build for now:
Windows 98SE Unofficial SP 3.56
Motherboard: Intel D865GBF
CPU: 3.4GHZ Pentium 4 (HT disabled)
HDD: 500GB IDE
RAM: 1GB 2x512MB DDR3200
PSU: 380watt Antec Earthwatts
DVD Burner, floppy, SD card reader and usb 2.0

Actively, a PIII 1.4 Tualatin on an Asus (Apollo Pro 133T chipset) motherboard, GF2 Ultra + V2 SLI and 512MB RAM. I also have a double boot Windows 98 / Windows XP rig which is not active and might be cannibalized for parts. It is a Pentium 4 3.0 GHz on an Intel D865PERL motherboard.

In the past it was the GEM PIII case modded full-size AT running a 1GHz Intel Pentium III and 1/2 a Gigabyte of RAM with a NVIDIDA GeForce MX4000 PCI 64MB 3D Accelerator from Wally World in it. It only ran Win98SE for a day or two till I put Windows 2000 Professional on it because the machine felt like it was too fast and unstable for Windows 98 SE (I'd just upgraded the Processor and Memory from a 667MHz PIII and 256MB) - that was back in 06'

Currently, the 1995 Gateway 2000 P5-100 I might be putting on the auction block soon because I really have no need for it. Anything I can run on Windows 95 I can run on current era Windows without issue off ISOs of the original CD-ROMS. Anything before that my 486, 286, and Tandy 1000A have covered.....though the 486 has run 98SE before and did pretty good for a little DX2/66.

Technically, this:

PC Chips M861G v1.6a motherboard
Athlon 64 3400+ Venice
1GB DDR400 RAM
GeForce 6800 GT
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS

This is a PC that I never really expected to have, and never really wanted. When I realized I had enough junk lying about, I assembled it from otherwise unused and unwanted parts. I found the case for free on craigslist. I got the cheap piece-o-shiat SolidGear SDGR-600BX PSU for only $5 after rebate. I got the 6800 GT for only $10 on eBay; it has a bad VGA port but the DVI is fine.

It currently runs WinXP SP3 with the 6800 GT, but that can easily be swapped out for a GF4 Ti4600 or FX5950 Ultra to get better Win9x compatibility.

When I originally put it together, I built a Win98SE image to go along with the WinXP SP3 image. Neither image is dedicated to any particular video card. My original idea was that I would use an FX 5950 Ultra and dual-boot using WinXP SP3 most of the time, and fall back to Win98SE for any incompatibilities; (European Air War, etc). Instead, I find myself single-booting WinXP SP3 with the flawed 6800 GT 100% of the time.

Perhaps at some point I'll put the GF4 or FX card back into it and dual-boot the machine as I originally intended. For now, I'm enjoying the 6800 GT under WinXP SP3 and hope to someday soon complete the original Halo game. The 6800 GT is a really great card, but it's not my 1st, 2nd, or even 3rd choice for a Win9x system.

The original halo was awesome the ending with the worthog was the best. I hated the flood though.

Oldskoolmaniac wrote:

Im thinking about building something like this: Win98SE W/ unofficial service pack 3.56 1GB RAM 2x512MB DDR Athlon xp 2.2GHz 500 […]
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Im thinking about building something like this:
Win98SE W/ unofficial service pack 3.56
1GB RAM 2x512MB DDR
Athlon xp 2.2GHz
500GB HDD (Going to see if i can clone a fully setup windows install from a 40GB HDD)
DVD burner drive
380Watt PSU
USB 2.0
Geforce 6800GT 256MB AGP 8X

How do you have yours setup?

Windows 98 SE (plain)
1GB RAM (same configuration)
Celeron 2GHz S478/ASRock P4i65G
40 GB Samsung SP0411N HDD
DVD-Burner and CD-ROM drive
350W LC-B350ATX PSU (recapped)
Geforce FX5200 128MB AGP8x