PC for building a gaming PC with Win 98

[simonslothtour]

Hi

I want to build a gaming PC with Win 98 and I was wondering, if any of you has some advice to which PC could be nice for building this? I'm thinking of the Dell Dimension XPS r400 because I saw that in a Youtube-video, but I'm new in these things and don't know any similar models from that period. I'm in love with the Intel Pentium II as far as I have read, so I was also thinking of a motherboard which can handle this? (I read about this slot for the Pentium II's CPU-cartridge).
So maybe some of you could give some names on models from that time?

 

[justin.m.beauvais]

Well, I might be a little off here, but are you sure you want to go with a Pentium II? Sure they were great for their day, but better processors did come out shortly after that were still in the Win98 era. You could be locking yourself out of some great late 90's to early 2000's games by getting a system that is high in nostalgia points but not so much in performance. If you were to get a Pentium 4 or an Athlon/Athlon XP system you'd have the same support for Win98, but a much faster PC and these systems are still a bit ahead of the nostalgia curve where prices start to come back up. Most people are throwing Pentium 4 systems out as garbage, but they would make a great retro gaming PC. If you were to pair one with a GeForce 2 GTS or a Geforce 3, even a Geforce 4 MX 440, you'd have plenty of legacy support and be able to game comfortably on titles up to 2003-ish.

If you wanted some crazy nostalgia you could consider getting the Slot A Athlon 1 GHz model which was the first CPU to reach 1 GHz. Gosh that was an exciting time to be a computer guy. I miss those days... crap... now I'm going to have to build a retro system.

 

[Dave8671]

Building one is not possible you could find one on ebay big maybe. Most if not all win98 games are dos based.

What games would you play on a system like that?

 

[Calvin7]

The Pentium II brand refers to Intel's sixth-generation microarchitecture ("P6") and x86-compatible microprocessors introduced on May 7, 1997.

ABIT BH6
https://www.ebay.com/p/ABIT-BH6-Slot-1-Intel-Motherboard/74045234

http://www.hardware-one.com/reviews/celeron504/index.shtml

 

[Dave8671]

I play freespace 2 on my win7 system but it has backing from coders that did want the to be forgotten. So we have open freespace project. For those who not aware of this game.

http://www.hard-light.net/help/introduction

Its the best win95 space combat game of its time. They upgraded the graphics and the engine it uses of course. I still have the original retail box

 

[simonslothtour]

Well, I might be a little off here, but are you sure you want to go with a Pentium II? Sure they were great for their day, but better processors did come out shortly after that were still in the Win98 era. You could be locking yourself out of some great late 90's to early 2000's games by getting a system that is high in nostalgia points but not so much in performance. If you were to get a Pentium 4 or an Athlon/Athlon XP system you'd have the same support for Win98, but a much faster PC and these systems are still a bit ahead of the nostalgia curve where prices start to come back up. Most people are throwing Pentium 4 systems out as garbage, but they would make a great retro gaming PC. If you were to pair one with a GeForce 2 GTS or a Geforce 3, even a Geforce 4 MX 440, you'd have plenty of legacy support and be able to game comfortably on titles up to 2003-ish.

If you wanted some crazy nostalgia you could consider getting the Slot A Athlon 1 GHz model which was the first CPU to reach 1 GHz. Gosh that was an exciting time to be a computer guy. I miss those days... crap... now I'm going to have to build a retro system.

Thanks for your good advice! Mostly, I want to play games like Doom, Doom 2 and Quake 2 - can these games run on a Pentium III or 4? And with cards like GeForce 2 GTS?

 

[simonslothtour]

Building one is not possible you could find one on ebay big maybe. Most if not all win98 games are dos based.

What games would you play on a system like that?

I want to play games like Doom 1, Doom 2, Quake 2

 

[Dave8671]

I used to play doom myself back in the day.

Pentium 4 is a good choice only thing might hard to find a AGP graphics card.
Drivers for windows 98 for graphics cards may be hard to find.

Another option is gog.com

https://www.gog.com/game/doom_ii_final_doom

 

[justin.m.beauvais]

Thanks for your good advice! Mostly, I want to play games like Doom, Doom 2 and Quake 2 - can these games run on a Pentium III or 4? And with cards like GeForce 2 GTS?

A Pentium III with a GeForce 2 GTS would be perfect for Quake 2. It is an era appropriate system for that game. You can honestly play Doom and Doom 2 on a much older system, but the Pentium III will have no problems with that either. You'll see a big improvement over the Pentium II if you wanted to run games like Unreal 2 or Warcraft III as well. All in all, that would make for a great retro system, just don't expect to play anything after 2003-2004

 

[camieabz]

Pentium III 1000Mhz-1400Mhz
512MB PC133 or PC150 SDRAM (2x256MB sticks on four slots is better - all four slots caused added problems)
64MB / 128MB AGP 4x gfx card (Play with the AGP Aperture size for best results)
UDMA 6 / UDMA133 / SATA/150 HDD drive - perhaps a WD740GD (WD Raptor 10K rpm)

Motherboard with UDMA 133, PC133 or 150 RAM, Socket 370 and AGP 4x slot (Guessing BX133 or 815e chipset)

 

[Dave8671]

For AGP look here

https://www.ebay.com/b/NVIDIA-AGP-4x-8x-Computer-Graphics-Cards/27386/bn_57094328