The Sempron is a budget-oriented CPU. If you have the chance to upgrade to an Athlon, I would highly recommend it.

The Radeon 9250 is decent but not particularly powerful. A Radeon 9600 Pro, 9700 (Pro), or 9800 (Pro) would offer significantly better performance.
As for Nvidia's 6000-series cards, their driver support for Windows 98 is subpar—at least in my experience—so I wouldn’t recommend them for Win98 gaming.

Regarding the sound card, the SB0090 Audigy is a solid choice and should provide excellent sound quality.

User5518 wrote on 2025-01-28, 10:15:

The Sempron is a budget-oriented CPU. If you have the chance to upgrade to an Athlon, I would highly recommend it. […]
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The Sempron is a budget-oriented CPU. If you have the chance to upgrade to an Athlon, I would highly recommend it.

The Radeon 9250 is decent but not particularly powerful. A Radeon 9600 Pro, 9700 (Pro), or 9800 (Pro) would offer significantly better performance.
As for Nvidia's 6000-series cards, their driver support for Windows 98 is subpar—at least in my experience—so I wouldn’t recommend them for Win98 gaming.

Regarding the sound card, the SB0090 Audigy is a solid choice and should provide excellent sound quality.

Semptron is actually renamed athlon . Those came out when athlon 64 start its expansion on market and socket a platform moved to low end, budged segment and for marketing purposes athlon on socket a renamed to semptron but it's Athlon xp Barton or thoroughbred core.

ciornyi wrote on 2025-01-28, 11:25:

Semptron is actually renamed athlon . Those came out when athlon 64 start its expansion on market and socket a platform moved to low end, budged segment and for marketing purposes athlon on socket a renamed to semptron but it's Athlon xp Barton or thoroughbred core.

Thank you for the clarification – I’ve learned something new. I should have looked it up before making my statement.
And in this case, I would like to recommend to StriderTR to make sure to use a CPU with 512KB L2 cache, like a Barton CPU.

Thanks for the feedback. 😀

I know there are better options out there, these are just the parts I have on hand and what the build will start with.

I'm just curious how they would perform in a Windows 98 SE based system at those resolutions.

I may get a better CPU and GPU down the road, but for now I'm just going to use what I have.

The Sempron 2500+ is Thoroughbred and only has 256K L2, that's the primary reason I was thinking I may pick up an Athlon 3000+, for the 512K L2. Everything is going to depend on how these starting parts perform.

I failed to mention in the original post that I also have a board with an Athlon 64 3200+ I was going to use for this, but the fact it uses PCIe turned me off using it for Windows 98.

According to PhilsComputerLab (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abYeIixYrbk) you can use PCIe with Windows 98.

But regardless: If you already have the parts, just give it a try. If the games you want to play run well, then everything's great. If there’s stuttering, you can always try the 6600GT—maybe the game is well-supported by Nvidia. And if it still struggles even at lower resolutions, you can always upgrade the CPU later.

StriderTR wrote on 2025-01-28, 18:48:

Thanks for the feedback. :) […]
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Thanks for the feedback. 😀

I know there are better options out there, these are just the parts I have on hand and what the build will start with.

I'm just curious how they would perform in a Windows 98 SE based system at those resolutions.

I may get a better CPU and GPU down the road, but for now I'm just going to use what I have.

The Sempron 2500+ is Thoroughbred and only has 256K L2, that's the primary reason I was thinking I may pick up an Athlon 3000+, for the 512K L2. Everything is going to depend on how these starting parts perform.

I failed to mention in the original post that I also have a board with an Athlon 64 3200+ I was going to use for this, but the fact it uses PCIe turned me off using it for Windows 98.

You got really strong build for win 98 . For graphic I would aim to geforce 4 ti or geforce fx series. As for 60fps goal... it might be impossible in specific games no matter how powerfull you build.
PS What motherboard you are using in this system ?

ciornyi wrote on 2025-01-28, 20:07:

StriderTR wrote on 2025-01-28, 18:48:

Thanks for the feedback. :) […]
Show full quote

Thanks for the feedback. 😀

I know there are better options out there, these are just the parts I have on hand and what the build will start with.

I'm just curious how they would perform in a Windows 98 SE based system at those resolutions.

I may get a better CPU and GPU down the road, but for now I'm just going to use what I have.

The Sempron 2500+ is Thoroughbred and only has 256K L2, that's the primary reason I was thinking I may pick up an Athlon 3000+, for the 512K L2. Everything is going to depend on how these starting parts perform.

I failed to mention in the original post that I also have a board with an Athlon 64 3200+ I was going to use for this, but the fact it uses PCIe turned me off using it for Windows 98.

You got really strong build for win 98 . For graphic I would aim to geforce 4 ti or geforce fx series. As for 60fps goal... it might be impossible in specific games no matter how powerfull you build.
PS What motherboard you are using in this system ?

Yeah, some games are locked and will run what they run at.

Noting special, just a Jetway V2DP.

https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/jetway-v2dp

Looks like a nice build forming up so far, but... oh boy, those silver Sacon/Evercon electrolytic caps absolutely need to be changed - every single one of them. I can see most are bulging already. Do it before something gets damaged.

As for the video cards... you might actually get decent enough performance with the Radeon 9250 if you don't mind 800x600 resolution. One advantage of the 9250 over the newer cards is that it still has proper support for 16-bit modes, so might offer better game compatibility. With R300 -based cards, I remember reading here that this got removed or is not as good.
Also, another plus for the Radeon 9250 is that you can easily keep it cool by having an 80/90/120 mm fan blow air at low speed (read:quiet) on its passive heatsink from far away. You can essentially pound the crap out of it with gaming, and yet never have to worry that it will break / go bad on you. Plus, it's a low power card, so will be easy on the PSU requirements (probably only going to need about 3-ish Amps on the 3.3V rail.) With that Sempron 2500+, you could probably easily run that rig on a 150 Watt PSU, provided it can source around 15 Amps on the 5V rail.

Oh yeah, once it's ready to go in a case, it will get a full recap. 😀

My upgrade path will mainly be determined by cost and availability. We'll see how it goes.

Some game examples I'm looking to run on this system are titles like...

Interstate '76
Unreal
Descent 3
Heretic II
Blood II
Diablo 2
Fallout 2
Final Fantasy VII & VIII
Nox
Pharaoh
Quake III
RollerCoaster Tycoon
Shadow Man
System Shock 2
Final Doom
Atomic Bomberman

I'll work my way though those and see how it goes.

StriderTR wrote on 2025-01-29, 06:40:

Final Fantasy VII & VIII

For those two games, you need a graphics card which supports paletted textures. That means Radeons and GeForce 6 (and up) are out of the equation.

You can still run those games without that feature, they will just have graphics glitches, especially FF8. Relevant screenshots:

Most notably, the menu in FF8 will look washed out. And some glass surfaces (windows and such) will look incomplete. There may be other issues but those are the two that I noticed while testing.

Interesting. I knew those games had issues, I just never seen it. I can likely live with it since I'm trying to get as much performance out of what I have on hand across as many games as I can, for now anyway.

Also, as much as I would love a couple 3DFX cards, at their price points, that's not going to happen. 😜

Though, I could just look into other affordable options that support paletted textures that could also do well in the other games, if any exist. I'm not expert on the subject, that's why I tap the extensive knowledge here.

Honestly, I likely lived with those glitches back then and didn't even notice, or don't remember. It was a long time ago.

StriderTR wrote on 2025-01-29, 09:36:

Also, as much as I would love a couple 3DFX cards, at their price points, that's not going to happen. 😜

Though, I could just look into other affordable options that support paletted textures that could also do well in the other games, if any exist. I'm not expert on the subject, that's why I tap the extensive knowledge here.

You don't need a 3DFX card for paletted textures. Any GeForce 1-5 supports that feature, even cheap cards like the GeForce 2 MX400.

Additionally, only a few games are adversely affected by the lack of paletted textures. Final Fantasy games are the most prominent examples, and Driver uses them for rendering some special effects, as shown in this video. Other than that, not having paletted textures won't really cause many problems.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-01-29, 11:45:

StriderTR wrote on 2025-01-29, 09:36:

Also, as much as I would love a couple 3DFX cards, at their price points, that's not going to happen. 😜

Though, I could just look into other affordable options that support paletted textures that could also do well in the other games, if any exist. I'm not expert on the subject, that's why I tap the extensive knowledge here.

You don't need a 3DFX card for paletted textures. Any GeForce 1-5 supports that feature, even cheap cards like the GeForce 2 MX400.

Additionally, only a few games are adversely affected by the lack of paletted textures. Final Fantasy games are the most prominent examples, and Driver uses them for rendering some special effects, as shown in this video. Other than that, not having paletted textures won't really cause many problems.

That's good to know. Thanks for the info.

The only card I have on hand that falls in that range is a Jayton 3DForce2MX 32MB , but it's just not strong enough to handle what I'm wanting to do. So, I'll likely just live with those issues in the FF titles. 😀

If I happen to come across a good GF 5000 series card at a decent price, I may switch it out, over on eBay some are going for about $30'ish on the lower end (FX5200). I seen a few 5500's going for around $40 to $50'ish. I limit my searches to North America only, often just the US for the sake of shipping costs. It's tempting.

I completely changed gears on this build, I was having far too many issues with it.

I've decided to "attempt" to use a board from 2004, Athlon 64 3200+, and a PCIe Radeon x700 Pro.

Board: https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/msi-rx … m2-ms-7093-v1.x
Card: https://www.newegg.com/sapphire-radeon-x700pr … 2E16814102603R?

Having never tried Win98SE on hardware like this before, it should be interesting. I know it can be done, now to see if I can do it.

Tracking down drivers at the moment, mainly chipset, if they exist.

Going to try the Catalyst 6.2 drivers for the card since I see it's used by others for similar cards.

Will be disabling SATA and the on-board video if possible.

Wish me luck!

id avoid ATI for windows 9x

StriderTR wrote on 2025-02-06, 22:54:

I completely changed gears on this build, I was having far too many issues with it. […]
Show full quote

I completely changed gears on this build, I was having far too many issues with it.

I've decided to "attempt" to use a board from 2004, Athlon 64 3200+, and a PCIe Radeon x700 Pro.

Board: https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/msi-rx … m2-ms-7093-v1.x
Card: https://www.newegg.com/sapphire-radeon-x700pr … 2E16814102603R?

Having never tried Win98SE on hardware like this before, it should be interesting. I know it can be done, now to see if I can do it.

Tracking down drivers at the moment, mainly chipset, if they exist.

Going to try the Catalyst 6.2 drivers for the card since I see it's used by others for similar cards.

Will be disabling SATA and the on-board video if possible.

Wish me luck!

That should definitely be interesting with an ATi chipset. Those are quite uncommon.

... I honestly couldn't find any chipset drivers for it online in 3-4 minutes of searching just now... like... any at all, let alone for Windows 9x. So yeah. Hopefully you can locate some. 😮

EDIT: Only ones I found were direct from MSI, and the farthest they go back is XP 32bit for the chipset drivers:
https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/RX480M2/support#driver

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2025-02-07, 01:57:

That should definitely be interesting with an ATi chipset. Those are quite uncommon. […]
Show full quote

That should definitely be interesting with an ATi chipset. Those are quite uncommon.

... I honestly couldn't find any chipset drivers for it online in 3-4 minutes of searching just now... like... any at all, let alone for Windows 9x. So yeah. Hopefully you can locate some. 😮

EDIT: Only ones I found were direct from MSI, and the farthest they go back is XP 32bit for the chipset drivers:
https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/RX480M2/support#driver

candle_86 wrote on 2025-02-07, 01:45:

id avoid ATI for windows 9x

After a LOT of searching, I found squat.

So, looks like a Win98SE build is on hold. I don't seem to have any good hardware lying around that will do what I want.

Could use this for an XP build, but not sure how good it would perform.

This would be a decent XP machine. The sempron was a budget cpu but not a bad performer. The 9250 wil stand its own of you dont require max settings. The 6600 would outperform it. Of you can find a faster card like the 9800 or x700 that would help ofc, depending on availability and if the price would be right for you, you may consider them.
You may up the ram to 1GB or maybe some more, as it relaxes the use of the swap file.
For audio, Audigy is great! Just yet then and see which one is the best version for you.

StriderTR wrote on 2025-02-07, 04:03:

After a LOT of searching, I found squat. […]
Show full quote

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2025-02-07, 01:57:

That should definitely be interesting with an ATi chipset. Those are quite uncommon. […]
Show full quote

That should definitely be interesting with an ATi chipset. Those are quite uncommon.

... I honestly couldn't find any chipset drivers for it online in 3-4 minutes of searching just now... like... any at all, let alone for Windows 9x. So yeah. Hopefully you can locate some. 😮

EDIT: Only ones I found were direct from MSI, and the farthest they go back is XP 32bit for the chipset drivers:
https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/RX480M2/support#driver

candle_86 wrote on 2025-02-07, 01:45:

id avoid ATI for windows 9x

After a LOT of searching, I found squat.

So, looks like a Win98SE build is on hold. I don't seem to have any good hardware lying around that will do what I want.

Could use this for an XP build, but not sure how good it would perform.

Hm, what is problem? Do you really need ATI chipset drivers for W98? I have working build with W98 on little more recent AMD 760/710 chipset without chipset drivers, with X700 and GF7600 (but you can use even GF 6xxx with official W98 driver, GF7xxx has only modded unofficial) - it is not most appropriate build for W98, but I don't see any more serious problems.