I'll just list the pro's and cons of each. Ultimately it'll depend on what hardware you think is cooler (otherwise may as well use emulation)

Personally I'm not very trusting of Socket A. They come from the capacitor plague era and require PSU's with strong 5v rail.
Where as Intel P3 era hardware is much easier to work with IMHO.

Ram, 512, yep

Video card.
Voodoo 3 is good for glide games but will be the bottleneck of Direct 3D games.
Nvidia cards will leave the 3dfx card for dead in Direct 3D but cant do glide.
Both have good dos support, It'll really depend on your games (and budget with anything 3dfx)

PCI Sound card
Any Aureal Vortex 2 card is fine, no need to limit yourself to a specific brand. These have really good dos support as well.
Audigy 2 ZS is very good card as well, but is a pain to have both in the same system (but it is possible)
The Aureal Vortex 2 supports a MIDI daughterboard, the Audigy does not.

ISA Sound card
AWE64 will allow you AWE support for the few games that support it and soundfonts if you can be bothered. Most of the time it'll act like a SoundBlaster 16
PicoGUS will allow you GUS support for the few games that really utilise it and SB Pro which 9 times out of 10 sounds the same as a SB16 as far as dos games are concerned. You also get a CD-Rom emulator

Pentium III Tualatin, the legendary 440BX chipset, and the 440mx card (if it has DVI). That will easily run anything from from the Windows 98 se era very nicely. If you're planning on doing high-res (1600x1200) 3D gaming then use the fx5700.

The Pentium III 1ghz coppermine drew too much power and was at the absolute limit of the 180nm process. The Tualatin is 130nm and runs super cool just remember you need the adapter with the voltage converter. A normal socket 370 to Slot adapter will not work.

I've built retro Althon XP and Athlon 64 systems specifically for Windows 98 se and they were complete overkill and drew double the power of a PIII system. For Athlon XP systems you NEED to find a motherboard with a 12v connector for the CPU since today's power supplies do not provide enough 5v current to run them. For the Athlon 64 system you won't find one that FULLY supports windows 98 AND has an ISA slot.

Athlon XP is also 462 / Socket A, but it one of the sockets with a split personality, from early ones with 100 clock (200FSB), The KT133 chipset that can't do 133 and the KT133A that can, plus limitations of BIOS support.
The Socket with an even greater split personality is LGA775... earliest chipset, single core only + HT, next level, dual core Pentium D, next, Core 2 but only some models and so on.,
If I fits, I sits may work for cats, but it doesn't always work for CPUs

Matth79 wrote on 2025-11-07, 17:05:

Athlon XP is also 462 / Socket A, but it one of the sockets with a split personality, from early ones with 100 clock (200FSB), The KT133 chipset that can't do 133 and the KT133A that can, plus limitations of BIOS support.
The Socket with an even greater split personality is LGA775... earliest chipset, single core only + HT, next level, dual core Pentium D, next, Core 2 but only some models and so on.,
If I fits, I sits may work for cats, but it doesn't always work for CPUs

Yeah, even socket 370 is the same 🤣. I have a PC on the way with a 440BX FIC FB11 motherboard in it, should work with the 1000mhz Pentium III, it offers 133mhz FSB, but idk if I may have issues with AGP clock speed for the MX 440. I found a review from 2000 or 2001, they said FIC said it'd work with the 1000MHz Pentium 3, but they didn't test it 😅

evoportals wrote on 2025-11-06, 00:34:

Pentium III Tualatin, the legendary 440BX chipset, and the 440mx card (if it has DVI). That will easily run anything from from the Windows 98 se era very nicely. If you're planning on doing high-res (1600x1200) 3D gaming then use the fx5700.

The Pentium III 1ghz coppermine drew too much power and was at the absolute limit of the 180nm process. The Tualatin is 130nm and runs super cool just remember you need the adapter with the voltage converter. A normal socket 370 to Slot adapter will not work.

I've built retro Althon XP and Athlon 64 systems specifically for Windows 98 se and they were complete overkill and drew double the power of a PIII system. For Athlon XP systems you NEED to find a motherboard with a 12v connector for the CPU since today's power supplies do not provide enough 5v current to run them. For the Athlon 64 system you won't find one that FULLY supports windows 98 AND has an ISA slot.

I was thinking of getting a Tualatin 1.26GHz that already has the converter installed later on if I really want to. (One in Australia on eBay and there's the Korean seller too) 1.4GHz Tualatins are like 250AUD on eBay 😅

evoportals wrote on 2025-11-06, 00:34:

Pentium III Tualatin, the legendary 440BX chipset, and the 440mx card (if it has DVI). That will easily run anything from from the Windows 98 se era very nicely. If you're planning on doing high-res (1600x1200) 3D gaming then use the fx5700.

The Pentium III 1ghz coppermine drew too much power and was at the absolute limit of the 180nm process. The Tualatin is 130nm and runs super cool just remember you need the adapter with the voltage converter. A normal socket 370 to Slot adapter will not work.

I've built retro Althon XP and Athlon 64 systems specifically for Windows 98 se and they were complete overkill and drew double the power of a PIII system. For Athlon XP systems you NEED to find a motherboard with a 12v connector for the CPU since today's power supplies do not provide enough 5v current to run them. For the Athlon 64 system you won't find one that FULLY supports windows 98 AND has an ISA slot.

I was thinking of getting a Tualatin 1.26GHz that already has the converter installed later on if I really want to. (One in Australia on eBay and there's the Korean seller too) 1.4GHz Tualatins are like 250AUD on eBay 😅

Why do you say the MX 440 if it has DVI? Looks like it does, but it shouldn't be any different to VGA should it?

chinny22 wrote on 2025-11-04, 06:15:

I'll just list the pro's and cons of each. Ultimately it'll depend on what hardware you think is cooler (otherwise may as well u […]
Show full quote

I'll just list the pro's and cons of each. Ultimately it'll depend on what hardware you think is cooler (otherwise may as well use emulation)

Personally I'm not very trusting of Socket A. They come from the capacitor plague era and require PSU's with strong 5v rail.
Where as Intel P3 era hardware is much easier to work with IMHO.

Ram, 512, yep

Video card.
Voodoo 3 is good for glide games but will be the bottleneck of Direct 3D games.
Nvidia cards will leave the 3dfx card for dead in Direct 3D but cant do glide.
Both have good dos support, It'll really depend on your games (and budget with anything 3dfx)

PCI Sound card
Any Aureal Vortex 2 card is fine, no need to limit yourself to a specific brand. These have really good dos support as well.
Audigy 2 ZS is very good card as well, but is a pain to have both in the same system (but it is possible)
The Aureal Vortex 2 supports a MIDI daughterboard, the Audigy does not.

ISA Sound card
AWE64 will allow you AWE support for the few games that support it and soundfonts if you can be bothered. Most of the time it'll act like a SoundBlaster 16
PicoGUS will allow you GUS support for the few games that really utilise it and SB Pro which 9 times out of 10 sounds the same as a SB16 as far as dos games are concerned. You also get a CD-Rom emulator

Thanks! I got a Pentium 3 system with a 440BX mobo FIC FB11, MX 440, Soundblaster Live! 5.1 (SB0220), Soundblaster SB16 CT2770, 512MB SDRAM.

I might wait and see what Voodoo cards pop up and if I play the games with Glide support or require Glide. I'll probably look at getting one or both of the Vortex II and Audigy 2 sound cards in the future. If I do, I'll dual boot or create profiles to disable one card when it's not being used for whatever game I'm playing.