Mike_ wrote on 2026-09-24, 06:29:

That's because there are more (retro) games that don't work on XP than there are games that don't work on 98. So you would need to deal with *both* 98 and XP to be able to play that game in XP. 😁

I have like 15 OSes in multiboot, ready to be selected, and many other in cold storaage + dozens of VMs, so you're breaking a door already wide open

Even back in the golden days I had at least W95+W311+NT4+ OS2 4

Perhaps speaking of masochism, when I feel too happy I boot a random masOC VM 😁

Garrett W wrote on 2026-09-23, 08:20:

I'd say you're both CPU & GPU limited, but that's not necessarily such a bad thing. Both games require quite some oomph to achie […]
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I'd say you're both CPU & GPU limited, but that's not necessarily such a bad thing. Both games require quite some oomph to achieve smooth performance by today's standards. First things first, while not top of the line, your system is perfectly fine.
Your CPU is most likely a Northwood 2.6 with a 400MHz FSB, the low FSB being a bit of a weakness, which is totally reasonable for the era you're looking at. You could of course try to upgrade, but I think your motherboard can't do anything higher than 400MHz FSB. That means the highest you could go would be the P4 3.0 GHz with a 400MHz FSB. That's only a 400MHz uplift and the FSB is already quite limiting. Not worth it IMO, I'd consider the platform you have already maxed out.

If you are interested in staying with socket 478 and increasing performance, any i865 based motherboard with a 800MHz FSB Northwood at 3.0 or 3.2 GHz will give you a decent boost in performance. Nothing to die for, but if you are attached to the platform and want to push it a bit more, the cost is not unreasonable.

Your GPU is also very good for that era. Radeon 9600 XT represents the top end of the 9600 series and handily beats all Nvidia GPUs during that era (GeForce FX or 5 series). The only real competition were ATi's own Radeon 9700 and 9800 cards. Of course, by 2004 Nvidia came out with the 6800 GT and later on the 6600 GT which was a fantastic mid-range card and that would indeed be faster (though 128MB VRAM is quite limiting). IMO 9600 XT for 2003-2004 is very period accurate for high performance within a reasonable budget (both then and now with the way some of the higher end cards are being priced!).

Halo is a port from the XBOX original game, but it makes use of Shader Model 2 features AFAIR. It is very demanding for GPUs of 2003 (the port came out in November of that year) and fairly demanding on CPUs as well. What resolution are you running it at? It's also not a particularly great port of the game. It breaks a few visual elements from the original and if you wish to run it at 60fps, keep in mind that animations are not interpolated, which means that you camera movement may be at 60fps but weapon and character animations will be at 30fps, making for a very odd experience. It always pulled me out of the experience.
May I suggest trying the Master Chief Collection on Steam? It has a pretty much perfect conversion of the original game.

As for Doom III, this was one of the most demanding games of 2004 along with Half-Life 2, Far Cry and a few others. Difference between Low and Ultra settings only affects Texture Quality AFAIR, so with 256MB it's normal that you don't really notice any difference in performance. Visual settings are actually hidden in Advanced Options within the game. These ought to influence how the game runs on your system.
I think your GPU is more than decent for this game. You should be getting really good performance at 800x600. 1024x768 might be pushing it a bit, but it's been a while since I tried it on Radeon hardware from that era.
The CPU is a bit more suspect here, and the fact that you mentioned it running the same no matter the resolution, leads me to believe that you are very CPU bound.
I suggest going with somewhat period correct drivers (from say mid 2005?) for your GPU and maybe taking a peek at the Doom 3 timedemo thread here on VOGONS, find a similar system to yours and see where you land performance wise.

All in all, I'd say you've got yourself a very decent system to play games up to 2004, maybe 2005. But expect games to drop frames here and there and not to get consistent 60fps. It's just how it was at the time!

That was a very good response thanks for all that info. I run Halo pretty smoothly on 800 x 600. Doom 3 I'm running at 1024 x 768 and it's not bad, probably ranged between 30 and 60 and drops to maybe 15 if there's too many special effects happening at once. But you're right, if I disable the advanced graphics settings it runs way smoother. The CPU's you mentioned aren't expensive, if I get overkill it will still function right? Just that it will bottleneck at the motherboard? They're about $30. As for the graphics cards I was considering those ones you mentioned with ATI and also the RADEON X800 PRO. I think that'd be a huge upgrade but also not cheap.

Garrett W wrote on 2026-09-23, 08:20:

I'd say you're both CPU & GPU limited, but that's not necessarily such a bad thing. Both games require quite some oomph to achie […]
Show full quote

I'd say you're both CPU & GPU limited, but that's not necessarily such a bad thing. Both games require quite some oomph to achieve smooth performance by today's standards. First things first, while not top of the line, your system is perfectly fine.
Your CPU is most likely a Northwood 2.6 with a 400MHz FSB, the low FSB being a bit of a weakness, which is totally reasonable for the era you're looking at. You could of course try to upgrade, but I think your motherboard can't do anything higher than 400MHz FSB. That means the highest you could go would be the P4 3.0 GHz with a 400MHz FSB. That's only a 400MHz uplift and the FSB is already quite limiting. Not worth it IMO, I'd consider the platform you have already maxed out.

If you are interested in staying with socket 478 and increasing performance, any i865 based motherboard with a 800MHz FSB Northwood at 3.0 or 3.2 GHz will give you a decent boost in performance. Nothing to die for, but if you are attached to the platform and want to push it a bit more, the cost is not unreasonable.

Your GPU is also very good for that era. Radeon 9600 XT represents the top end of the 9600 series and handily beats all Nvidia GPUs during that era (GeForce FX or 5 series). The only real competition were ATi's own Radeon 9700 and 9800 cards. Of course, by 2004 Nvidia came out with the 6800 GT and later on the 6600 GT which was a fantastic mid-range card and that would indeed be faster (though 128MB VRAM is quite limiting). IMO 9600 XT for 2003-2004 is very period accurate for high performance within a reasonable budget (both then and now with the way some of the higher end cards are being priced!).

Halo is a port from the XBOX original game, but it makes use of Shader Model 2 features AFAIR. It is very demanding for GPUs of 2003 (the port came out in November of that year) and fairly demanding on CPUs as well. What resolution are you running it at? It's also not a particularly great port of the game. It breaks a few visual elements from the original and if you wish to run it at 60fps, keep in mind that animations are not interpolated, which means that you camera movement may be at 60fps but weapon and character animations will be at 30fps, making for a very odd experience. It always pulled me out of the experience.
May I suggest trying the Master Chief Collection on Steam? It has a pretty much perfect conversion of the original game.

As for Doom III, this was one of the most demanding games of 2004 along with Half-Life 2, Far Cry and a few others. Difference between Low and Ultra settings only affects Texture Quality AFAIR, so with 256MB it's normal that you don't really notice any difference in performance. Visual settings are actually hidden in Advanced Options within the game. These ought to influence how the game runs on your system.
I think your GPU is more than decent for this game. You should be getting really good performance at 800x600. 1024x768 might be pushing it a bit, but it's been a while since I tried it on Radeon hardware from that era.
The CPU is a bit more suspect here, and the fact that you mentioned it running the same no matter the resolution, leads me to believe that you are very CPU bound.
I suggest going with somewhat period correct drivers (from say mid 2005?) for your GPU and maybe taking a peek at the Doom 3 timedemo thread here on VOGONS, find a similar system to yours and see where you land performance wise.

All in all, I'd say you've got yourself a very decent system to play games up to 2004, maybe 2005. But expect games to drop frames here and there and not to get consistent 60fps. It's just how it was at the time!

That was a very good response thanks for all that info. I run Halo pretty smoothly on 800 x 600. Doom 3 I'm running at 1024 x 768 and it's not bad, probably ranged between 30 and 60 and drops to maybe 15 if there's too many special effects happening at once. But you're right, if I disable the advanced graphics settings it runs way smoother. The CPU's you mentioned aren't expensive, if I get overkill it will still function right? Just that it will bottleneck at the motherboard? They're about $30. As for the graphics cards I was considering those ones you mentioned with ATI and also the RADEON X800 PRO. I think that'd be a huge upgrade but also not cheap.

The Solutor wrote on 2026-09-23, 18:43:

ldeveraux wrote on 2026-09-23, 17:28:

Is there a point to running an old OS over an even older one? IDK.

IMO using 98 to run a game that runs well (or better) on XP, can be explained only in two ways, a personal challenge or a bit of masochism.

If it's the first option OK, if it's the second...

I am simply very attached to the aesthetic of Windows 9x 😀

Oh no no, you can't use a 800MHz FSB processor on your board. I'm guessing you thought you could just buy a Northwood 3.0 or 3.2 and have it run at those frequencies just with a lower FSB.
That's not the case, as the multiplier is locked on these parts and the frequency is derived by the multiplier x FSB/2 . I'd check your motherboard and revision and then consult a compatibility list. In general, never go for the top model as people tend to ask crazy money. The ones that are just a step or two below that are usually far more reasonably priced.

If indeed your motherboard can only do 400MHz FSB, then I think the Northwood 3.0 is the fastest you can go. The question is are you really missing out on a Northwood 3.0 HT with 800MHz FSB? I can't find any benchmarks at the moment, but I'd expect most games to exhibit roughly ~10% difference in performance, with some maybe approaching 20%. Not insignificant. HyperThreading is not much of a loss for gaming, in fact you're saving yourself a couple of headaches with some games that don't know what to do with the extra thread and crap out and single threaded performance actually drops by 2-3% AFAIR when HyperThreading is enabled.

If indeed you can get a 3.0 for 30$ and it is the 400MHz FSB one, then by all means grab it. I reckon you might actually get a better deal on a 865P board and a proper 3.0 or 3.2 HT 800 FSB.

What's your RAM situation by the way? Is your board accepting SDRAM or DDR SDRAM? If it's the latter, are you using dual channel memory? If it is the first case, abandon ship! Pentium 4 loves memory bandwidth and was severely bottlenecked with plain SDRAM!

In terms of GPU, beware of Radeon 9700 and 9800 GPUs, a ton of them are dead or half-dead by now, which is why they are somewhat rare and expensive. X800 cards are nice, but expensive for AGP. I'd take a look at a 6800 GT from Nvidia if you are willing to spend that much money anyway.

Just as a heads up, even if you splurdged and got yourself a top of the line Northwood at 3.4 GHz, 1GB of DDR400 memory in dual channel and 6800 Ultra or X850 XT or whatever, Doom 3 would still have drops even at 1024x768! Though Halo would probably be okay... It's just the nature of PC gaming in those days.

I also concur with some of the posters here, that the hardware you are using is a bit more suited to WinXP rather than 98SE. I'd dual boot and keep 98SE at DirectX 7.0a, any higher than that and you get random crashes here and there, on top of whatever 98SE's feeling at any given moment. GPU drivers are also more mature on XP at this point, especially later Nvidia drivers are all over the place in 98SE.