I do not recommend any GF6 or FX-5xxx cards for Win98. Too many driver issues.
GF4-ti4xxx or Radeon-9xxx is what I go for, when dealing with a fast Win98 machine.

Plus you need to check if the machine has Win98 drivers at all. Pci-E sounds concerning.

Thanks for the advice. I did wonder about the PCI-E... Anyway, since this machine is no good I am going to build the machine from the ground up.

I've just purchased a PNY Geforce 4 Ti 128mb 4200 (the exact same card i had back in 2002 ironically)

I'm now wondering what else i should grab for the most ideal windows 98 gaming machine?

Can anyone advise me on the best motherboard or prebuilt PC for windows 98 on the Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon XP platform. Also, what is the best sound card to get as I will just get myself a sound blaster PCI card of some sort which should be compatible with older games? DOS games??

Thanks again.

dreamscape wrote:

Can anyone advise me on the best motherboard or prebuilt PC for windows 98 on the Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon XP platform. Also, what is the best sound card to get as I will just get myself a sound blaster PCI card of some sort which should be compatible with older games? DOS games??

Thanks again.

For a pre-built Pentium 4 PC with 9x compatibility, I'd suggest some older midnight-grey Dell (Optiplex GX240-270, or a Dimension) desktop or a Compaq EVO desktop as those can be fairly easy to find. I'd try to get a full-sized tower model if possible that way you won't have to deal with the trouble of finding a low-profile AGP card that isn't junk.

I'd keep the older systems at least for DOS gaming mainly because PCs from the post-ISA era usually lack DOS sound support on the built-in audio chipset, and the PCI Sound Blasters are hit and miss when it comes to DOS compatibility (from what I've heard). They'll work just fine for Windows games though.

BTW, that pictured video card looks like it has swollen capacitors on the top-left corner.

BTW, that pictured video card looks like it has swollen capacitors on the top-left corner.

Yeah I noticed that too and managed to get it cheap for that very reason. I will replace the caps when it arrives. I've been on quite a spending spree and I've bought the entire machine now.

Specs:

Intel Pentium 4 2.26Ghz 533Mhz FSB SL6PB with brand new cooler
Intel Motherboard D865GLC with AGP 8x
512 MB DDR RAM
Nvidia Geforce GF4 Ti4200 AGP 8X 128MB
DVD ROM Drive
40GB Western Digital HDD
300W SFX PSU
New, small micro ATX case

the only thing I haven't got is the sound card... I was going to grab a Sound Blaster Live! card but as you say, they are hit or miss with DOS games so what is the best option? It has Realtek onboard audio currently.. Would i be wasting my time getting a Sound Blaster?

YMF-724 or Vortex2 is the best options for Win98 PCI soundcards. For XP is another question that I can not answer. Some say Audigy2, yet when I was building machines for a living, no person would ever buy a soundcard. It was all onboard sound during the mid 00's. Regarding those two cards, then the 724 is for early Win98 gaming, as it has an OPL core. The Vortex2 is better for late era (high performing) Win98 era gaming.

If you are from the states, then there are a couple of decent priced YMF-724's on eBay at the moment. 😉

Thanks for the feedback. I'm from the UK and those cards seem to be very rare here.

There are some Vortex2 cards but they are £70 or so, way more than i wish to spend. Is the Sound Blaster Live a bad card? I saw it has SB 16 emulation.

I'm mainly playing 1996 - 1999 era Windows 95/98 games, this machine will not touch XP, ever. I will however try some DOS games in time and i do enjoy a bit of Theme Hospital and Magic Carpet from time to time so I would really like to get DOS sound working.

Will the SB Live achieve this? as there are so many of them on eBay over here and they are cheap. Or do i need those expensive cards? 😢

SB-Live is not the best. Shure it can do SB16, yet only with ems compatible games. It does not have the best stereo implementation and the Adlib part is one of the worst that I have heard. Other than that, it is a good beginner card. There are just way better alternatives out there. Regarding Creative cards. Personally I would not use any creative PCI cards at all. I too am not into any XP gaming, as I only find a couple of XP games worth trying. One of the very few games are the original Battlefield games. You know... Battlefield 1942 and Vietnam. Then I need my cards to be stereo cards, as I find Stereo more kind of vintage in my book. Surround is for movies if you ask me. Anyway... If I look at Creative cards, then I get the same joy or perhaps bigger joy from a Creative SB-128 compared to what I get out of an SB-Live. Not to say that I do not have any Live cards. I have one, and it is only for the sake of owning it and comparing it to other cards. It is the CT-4620 model with that special breakout card. It has golden jacks, and is stable enough. It's an ok card in its own rights. Just too inferiour for my specific needs. Again... It is the stereo fail, that are the biggest in my book.

I know that there are way better Creative cards out there. As I wrote earlier, wich are more recent and way better than Live. My problem is that I have not payd attention "in class", so I can not tell what Creative that are a better choice. I just stick to my YMF-724's as of now. They are good enough for me and actually suits my needs better than Vortex2.

Still recommend Vortex2 and YMF-724 as the two best Win98 PCI sound cards.

The SB Live is not a great option for DOS. The TSR is quite large, requires EMM386, doesn't activate the MPU port, and is incompatible with some titles. The Aureal 2 DOS driver, while not small, doesn't require EMM386 and does activate MPU (and the wavetable header). YMF-724 cards are good, but really work best with boards featuring PC/PCI or DDMA support, sometimes requiring manual patching for newer boards. ESS PCI cards are another option, but apparently don't operate well with Intel 865/ICH5 chipsets.

Vortex 2 cards can be had for more reasonable prices. You'll probably have to be patient, though.

For Win98, though, SB Live or Audigy alongside an Aureal card is a good combination as it gives you support for both 3d sound APIs of the time.

brostenen wrote:

I do not recommend any GF6 or FX-5xxx cards for Win98. Too many driver issues.
GF4-ti4xxx or Radeon-9xxx is what I go for, when dealing with a fast Win98 machine.

Plus you need to check if the machine has Win98 drivers at all. Pci-E sounds concerning.

What driver issues? I had a fx card in just about every setup imaginable and never once had a driver problem with 9x. Id not want a 9xxx card for 9x. No 8-bit palletized textures and fog witch can be rather problematic with some games.
Akso for a 9x system your likely be dealing with more dx 7 abd okder games witch the fx line was far better with.

As for a sound card, if you stuck with pci for a 9x system ether get a Vortex or envy24. I believe the envy24 have not dos app support at all and im not sure about the Vortex, i recal the diamond Vortex Cards were well liked for there dos app support under 9c.

Jade Falcon wrote:

What driver issues? I had a fx card in just about every setup imaginable and never once had a driver problem with 9x. Id not wan […]
Show full quote

brostenen wrote:

I do not recommend any GF6 or FX-5xxx cards for Win98. Too many driver issues.
GF4-ti4xxx or Radeon-9xxx is what I go for, when dealing with a fast Win98 machine.

Plus you need to check if the machine has Win98 drivers at all. Pci-E sounds concerning.

What driver issues? I had a fx card in just about every setup imaginable and never once had a driver problem with 9x. Id not want a 9xxx card for 9x. No 8-bit palletized textures and fog witch can be rather problematic with some games.
Akso for a 9x system your likely be dealing with more dx 7 abd okder games witch the fx line was far better with.

As for a sound card, if you stuck with pci for a 9x system ether get a Vortex or envy24. I believe the envy24 have not dos app support at all and im not sure about the Vortex, i recal the diamond Vortex Cards were well liked for there dos app support under 9c.

I had missing textures, shattered gfx and wrong colors in UT99 and Porsche-2000, using a FX-5200 and a FX-5500.
Sold them off pretty fast at nearly nothing. The mouse pointer was displayed wrong in UT99 as well.
Hidden and Dangereous would not even run on FX-5xxx cards. So it may be good and great and all that for games
later than first half of 2000. Yet from 2001 and onwards, we are well into WinXP territory.
I had to set AAx4 and AFx2 to get most errors to go away. Even on a GF4xti4200, I have seen issues.
The GF4 issues can be dealt with, by setting AAx2 and patching all games.
All Radeon-9xxx cards that I have tried, ran better than any FX-5xxx that I have tried, looking at GFX glitches.

Never again FX-5xxx cards. Never again....
Regarding the drivers, well, then I have seen same kind of issues with those later drivers on GF4 as well.
Normally I tend to stick with 40 series of drivers for GF2/3/4 cards. They work well.
And as far as I know, the FX-5xxx can not use such low drivers.

EDIT:
I have done a test a long time ago, were I ran the different 40 series of drivers on UT99, and found a solution.
The solution is to patch the game and set AAx2 in most cases. And I did some documentation in picture form.
I even made a post here on Vogons, explaining what and how I solved the issue.
It is a long time ago, so I might be a bit rusty on the details. Yet I have the pictures stored on Google drive.
Complete with pictures of the setup. (Intel d815eea2, Medion GF4-ti4200, P3-933, 512mb Ram and YMF-724)

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0Bzzas … RXM?usp=sharing

Thanks for the great feedback guys. This is all really helpful with my build especially when it comes to which driver to use with a Ti 4200.

I'm still stuck at the sound card area though.. As the cards you mention either aren't around here or are crazy money which i can't really invest right now.

I've been looking at Live! as mentioned before and also Sound Blaster Audigy 2 which appear to be the same price. Is the Audigy any better? Or am i really stuck at this point?

Are these cards any good?

Sound Blaster SB128
Sound Blaster CT4810
Soundblaster CT5803

Also if the Live! will work, which model is best? The early models with gold ports? The later SB0220.

I know it's not idea the route I'm taking but there must be a cost effective card i can use for this.

For PCI card, definitely look at the Yamaha YMF series cards.

YMF-724 is good. YMF-744 is better due to 4-channel support in Win98 as well as a higher SNR. Pure DOS support will depend on whether or not there is a initialization utility that supports your chipset. At the very least, you can get authentic OPL3 support with a YMF based card even if your board doesn't have a PC_PCI/SB-Link connector or support DDMA.

You could also try a Forte Media FM801 based card.

Another option of course is a Vortex2 based card. Don't just look at the ones labeled Vortex 2. All you need to do is get a card with a Aureal 8830 chipset. There are a ton of OEM Vortex 2 based cards out there.

You can also look for an ESS Solo1 based card. (ES1938s). There are a few other revisions I think that are SOLO 1 as well from the search I did.. just not 100% sure.

See here for a much older discussion for PCI cards supporting DOS.
Recommend a PCI Sound Card for DOS

The Creative PCI cards are very hit or miss on what the DOS SB emulation will work on.

Ok thank you I've had a look and...

Forte Media FM801 - only one on eBay and it's in the US 🙁
Vortex 2 cards - far too much £££ here
YMF-724 - to much ££ and only one on eBay
YMF-744 - none here
ESS Solo1 - none here

What is your take on this card?

Ensonic Audio PCI 3000 ES1370 PCI Sound Card

Apparently it has "full dos legacy support".

I don't recommend the SB0220 over other SB Lives with a digital out port, as it requires OEM drivers from Dell and doesn't have a live drive header. Use it if you have one, but cards like the SB0060 are better.

The Audio PCI 3000 will have the same limitations as a SB Live, except it supports only up to SB Pro. It also internally samples at 44.1 khz (if you're picky).

Thanks yeah i just read about those so will keep away from them. I need a retail value or gold model i think as i heard the 5.1 model can cause issues?

Is that true?

The Audio PCI is probably OK for sound effects, but for OPL3/Adlib it is horrible.

With any PCI card, there are going to be at least some drawbacks. If you want the best OPL3, a Yamaha YMF card is really your only choice. The ESS Solo 1 is probably the second choice as it has pretty good OPL3 emulation.

What would really help out before sound card choice is to figure out what motherboard you are going to use first.

This is because the DOS support on PCI sound cards is different for different chipsets.

For Pentium 4, you will want one with actual ISA support or a PC_PCI/SB-Link header or at least the pads for it to ensure that it will work for PCI cards that support DOS.

For Athlon XP, look for a KT133A chipset based board.. The Abit KT7A/KT7A-Raid has a modded BIOS available that supports Barton chips. You can get to around 2.4Ghz with an Athlon XP-M chip and the socket wire mod for higher multiplier support. Be prepared to recap the motherboard though unless it has already been done previously.

It has an ISA slot so you can just use an ISA card instead of going through the trouble of trying to find a PCI card that will work properly with DOS.

brostenen wrote:

I had missing textures, shattered gfx and wrong colors in UT99 and Porsche-2000, using a FX-5200 and a FX-5500. Sold them off pr […]
Show full quote

Jade Falcon wrote:

What driver issues? I had a fx card in just about every setup imaginable and never once had a driver problem with 9x. Id not wan […]
Show full quote

brostenen wrote:

I do not recommend any GF6 or FX-5xxx cards for Win98. Too many driver issues.
GF4-ti4xxx or Radeon-9xxx is what I go for, when dealing with a fast Win98 machine.

Plus you need to check if the machine has Win98 drivers at all. Pci-E sounds concerning.

What driver issues? I had a fx card in just about every setup imaginable and never once had a driver problem with 9x. Id not want a 9xxx card for 9x. No 8-bit palletized textures and fog witch can be rather problematic with some games.
Akso for a 9x system your likely be dealing with more dx 7 abd okder games witch the fx line was far better with.

As for a sound card, if you stuck with pci for a 9x system ether get a Vortex or envy24. I believe the envy24 have not dos app support at all and im not sure about the Vortex, i recal the diamond Vortex Cards were well liked for there dos app support under 9c.

I had missing textures, shattered gfx and wrong colors in UT99 and Porsche-2000, using a FX-5200 and a FX-5500.
Sold them off pretty fast at nearly nothing. The mouse pointer was displayed wrong in UT99 as well.
Hidden and Dangereous would not even run on FX-5xxx cards. So it may be good and great and all that for games
later than first half of 2000. Yet from 2001 and onwards, we are well into WinXP territory.
I had to set AAx4 and AFx2 to get most errors to go away. Even on a GF4xti4200, I have seen issues.
The GF4 issues can be dealt with, by setting AAx2 and patching all games.
All Radeon-9xxx cards that I have tried, ran better than any FX-5xxx that I have tried, looking at GFX glitches.

Never again FX-5xxx cards. Never again....
Regarding the drivers, well, then I have seen same kind of issues with those later drivers on GF4 as well.
Normally I tend to stick with 40 series of drivers for GF2/3/4 cards. They work well.
And as far as I know, the FX-5xxx can not use such low drivers.

EDIT:
I have done a test a long time ago, were I ran the different 40 series of drivers on UT99, and found a solution.
The solution is to patch the game and set AAx2 in most cases. And I did some documentation in picture form.
I even made a post here on Vogons, explaining what and how I solved the issue.
It is a long time ago, so I might be a bit rusty on the details. Yet I have the pictures stored on Google drive.
Complete with pictures of the setup. (Intel d815eea2, Medion GF4-ti4200, P3-933, 512mb Ram and YMF-724)

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0Bzzas … RXM?usp=sharing

I never once had said problems with an FX card, but older version of UT99 are buggy as hell with just about any card with OpenGL.

Hi, I had no idea the chip set mattered on the motherboard and I've already purchased the board it's an Intel D865GLC.

I must mention that I'm not looking for the best audio ever. All i want is for games such as DOOM, C&C, Wolf3d, Magic Carpet, Theme hospital etc to work period. I'm not looking for a pure DOS environment just for DOS games to work within a Windows 98 environment. My speakers as seen below are pretty old and rubbish anyway so I'm really not bothered how it sounds i just want sound.

Full spec of my machine once built is:

Intel Pentium 4 2.26Ghz 533Mhz FSB SL6PB with brand new cooler
Intel Motherboard D865GLC with AGP 8x
512 MB DDR RAM
Nvidia Geforce GF4 Ti4200 AGP 8X 128MB
DVD ROM Drive
40GB Western Digital HDD
300W SFX PSU
New, small micro ATX case