What's the clock speed of that CPU?

Robbbert wrote on 2025-02-16, 08:01:

What's the clock speed of that CPU?

I think it is 3.0 GHZ but I have to double check since it came with the mobo.

That's still pretty good. My Win98SE runs on a 500MHz Celeron Compaq from 1999/2000. No blue screens, and full USB capabilities. It even connects to the internet, although there's not a great amount of working sites, naturally.

Robbbert wrote on 2025-02-16, 08:08:

That's still pretty good. My Win98SE runs on a 500MHz Celeron Compaq from 1999/2000. No blue screens, and full USB capabilities. It even connects to the internet, although there's not a great amount of working sites, naturally.

Oh thar sounds great. I hate Win 98 BSODs.

Laptops that were built for the Win 98 os would ideally be more stable than desktops which have come way after Win 98 stopped receiving support. I am not an expert but I believe a lot of issues with Win 98 stem from the lack of proper drivers for the hardware it runs. Also mixing VxD with WDM drivers further causes issues. You can also add the Sata drives, usb support and other stuff. RLoew patches do help but Win 98 as a system is quite delicate. I have had issues with Win 98 by simply changing a hardware device or removing the sound card. This is the reason why I keep my OS partition separate and minimize both hardware/software changes. This keeps my system pretty stable.

Hans Tork wrote on 2025-02-16, 07:33:

CT4740 SB PCI Sound card

I'm not entirely sure about his, but I think that card might belong to the Ensoniq Audio PCI family. During the mid-late 90s, Ensoniq got bought by Creative, and they rebranded these cards under a bunch of different names, including Sound Blaster PCI 16, 64, 128, Vibra 128 etc.

If your card falls into that category, then its EAX and A3D capabilities are software based, so they will slow your system down when used in games. I suggest getting a Sound Blaster Live! card for Win9x gaming on a budget. They are cheap and readily available, while still having hardware accelerated sound processing. Audigy cards are even better, but they tend to be a bit more expensive. Again, be sure to look up the model numbers, as there are cut-down Live! cards as well, such as Dell's infamous SB0200.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-02-16, 11:12:

Hans Tork wrote on 2025-02-16, 07:33:

CT4740 SB PCI Sound card

I'm not entirely sure about his, but I think that card might belong to the Ensoniq Audio PCI family. During the mid-late 90s, Ensoniq got bought by Creative, and they rebranded these cards under a bunch of different names, including Sound Blaster PCI 16, 64, 128, Vibra 128 etc.

If your card falls into that category, then its EAX and A3D capabilities are software based, so they will slow your system down when used in games. I suggest getting a Sound Blaster Live! card for Win9x gaming on a budget. They are cheap and readily available, while still having hardware accelerated sound processing. Audigy cards are even better, but they tend to be a bit more expensive. Again, be sure to look up the model numbers, as there are cut-down Live! cards as well, such as Dell's infamous SB0200.

Once again thanks a lot for the tip. I mainly tried to cobble together all the “extra” stuff I had lying around and turn it into a win 98 build.

It does seem that the card I have is an Ensonique card which was also marketed as a Vibra/PCI 64/128 etc card. I believe even the creative drivers say so. I would have probably bought a better card if I was consciously trying to go for a Win 98 build. However since this build is quite stable and satisfies my demands I think I would just call it a day and wait till the GPU or mobo capacitors give out or Win 98 BSODs. Honestly I was never into Win 98 gaming and prefer XP over Win 98 any day.

Note : 915P chipset does have Win98 drivers : LINK
So, if PCI get's too slow for you, you can always try to source PCX class GPU (but those probably won't work with 45.23 drivers).

A note about the FX 5200: This card only came out a year before Farcry did. Just some perspective on how underpowered that card actually is.

Yep, an AudioPCI based card, 2, 4 or 8MB hardware assisted system RAM wavetable (ECW format), may have to hunt down the 8MB as not sure if Creative included that or if it was a Ensoniq excluisive

Sure the video and sound card are more on the budget side of the scale but hey if it does everything you ask of it then what's that matter?
In some ways the challenge of creating a decent build with parts just lying around is more fun than going out and buying everything specifically.

agent_x007 wrote on 2025-02-16, 16:58:

Note : 915P chipset does have Win98 drivers

ICH6 no DDMA sound

chinny22 wrote on 2025-02-17, 01:42:

Sure the video and sound card are more on the budget side of the scale but hey if it does everything you ask of it then what's that matter?
In some ways the challenge of creating a decent build with parts just lying around is more fun than going out and buying everything specifically.

True, I get what I want and most importantly it is reliable and cheap for a Win 98 system. All thanks to the forum members and Phil`s video about LGA775 sockets being good for Win 98 system.

Robbbert wrote on 2025-02-16, 08:08:

That's still pretty good. My Win98SE runs on a 500MHz Celeron Compaq from 1999/2000. No blue screens, and full USB capabilities. It even connects to the internet, although there's not a great amount of working sites, naturally.

sounds like a great machine, i used to have a celeron 500 too, and found that with a tnt2 card and 128mb ram it could play anything late 90's

i cant imagine what would happen online though, i'd guess compatible browsers wouldn't even try and run media etc. the web now is like running crysis at times!

You may want to consider leaving some unpartitioned space e.g 20% due to lack of TRIM. Not sure Windows 98 is stable without a swap file. You may want to upgrade to GeForce FX 5600 if you find one cheap, but finding a PCI version won't be easy.

Ohh a PCI nvidia card! are very difficult to find, at least here in spain

AlexZ wrote on 2025-02-19, 20:51:

You may want to consider leaving some unpartitioned space e.g 20% due to lack of TRIM. Not sure Windows 98 is stable without a swap file. You may want to upgrade to GeForce FX 5600 if you find one cheap, but finding a PCI version won't be easy.

Yeah I left some space while formatting the drive. I also use the TRIM provided by RLOEW.

A FX5600 PCI is probably going to cost a lot and not in my sights right now. It would also mess with the setup as Win 98 behaves very weirdly if you swap around hardware components.

Just so you know, it's possible to use certain PCIe graphics cards under Win9x. Phil has a video on that.

Driver installation is a bit complicated, but it works fine after that. In terms of price, X800 cards are fairly expensive nowadays, but X700 and X600 cards are still relatively affordable. All Radeons lack some legacy features like table fog and paletted textures, so compatibility may suffer a bit in older games, but their sheer power is incredible. With a Radeon X800 card, you can run any Win9x game made before 2002 at the 1600x1200 resolution using max settings, and with some AA/AF added on top, if so desired.

Yep, you can definitely use PCI-E GPUs and other PCI-E cards in Windows 98/ME.

PCI-E was introduced in 2004, so even Windows 2000 and XP didn’t have built-in support for it at first. But for some reason, people mostly doubt whether Windows 98 can handle it. The thing is, PCI-E was designed to be backward-compatible at the OS level so Windows 98 just sees PCI-E cards as regular PCI cards. So as long as you have the right drivers, it’ll work just fine.

For example, here’s an Nvidia Quadro FX4500 512MB, a PCI-E to USB 2.0 card, and a PCI-E Broadcom Gigabit card - all working just fine on Windows 98.

And yes... Nvidia drivers for Windows 98 do require some tweaking with R. Loew's patches ( https://archive.org/details/PTCHNVSZ ), but once you get them set up, you’ll get the best performance and some crazy scores in 3D Mark, especially if you use a newer setup with a fast CPU.

OMORES wrote on 2025-02-25, 22:31:

but once you get them set up, you’ll get the best performance and some crazy scores in 3D Mark,

With GeForce 7 you also get bad compatibility with older games and fullscreen MS-DOS prompt screen corruption.
I’m yet to see if anyone manages to successfully get FM out of one of those PCIe 1x bridged CMI8738 sound cards in DOS. I believe you’d need VIA chipset for that because of DMA.