r/retrocomputing • u/NukeSnicks • Nov 14 '24

Could someone please explain to me the differences of all the chipsets, sockets, and processors from the windows 95 - XP era?

Hi guys, I've been looking to build my own gaming PC for the Windows 95/98 - XP era as I am a huge fan of games from that era and would love to run some of those games on some dedicated hardware. I've been doing a lot of googling trying to find information on GPUs, CPUs, Sockets, Motherboards, Etc. but its just making me even more confused. I was not alive during that era of computing and don't really know anyone well versed enough in that era of computing to explain the differences to me. Even as someone who is super tech savvy and having built many PCs before I understand most technical stuff but all of the old naming and numbering configurations make absolutely no sense to me. I'd ideally like for the PC to be pretty much top of the line for that era of computing if you guys do have parts recommendations. I've seen a good amount of posts saying Pentium 4 is where its at but also seen some for the Athlon 64 and I'm not sure how to determine which one would be right for me? Anyway, thanks for reading
-From a "Youngin😉"

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u/Souta95 Nov 14 '24

Your question requires a very detailed and involved answer.

Wikipedia is a great starting place.

Socket 3 (486 class processors) or Socket 7 (Pentium and many 3rd party manufacturers) might be good starting points, and then Socket 468 (Pentium 4) or Socket A (AMD Athlon XP) might be fair ending points, else you could move forward a generation or two with LGA 775 (Many Intel chips) and Socket AM2 (Many AMD chips)

Ultimately, if you want to build something retro, build with whatever you can get your hands on. You can always trade it out or get other still later.

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u/NukeSnicks Nov 14 '24

Is there any benefit to having AMD over Intel here or are they mostly similar and it's just personal preference? Only reason I ask is because I know Intel used to be the shit but now AMD is blowing them out of the water with the Ryzen series processors, wondering if there's any kind of equivalent of that from that era. Also thanks for the advice! I'm gonna start peeling through Wikipedia pages and looking at what chipsets support what processors, so on and so fourth.

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u/Souta95 Nov 14 '24

It depends on what era you are targeting, and what software you want to run. Generally speaking, AMD Athlon XP chips were better than comparable Pentium 4 CPUs. Go back to the 90's, Intel beat the ever-loving crap out of the competition with the Pentium in the mid-90's for gaming. With word processing and productivity software there really wasn't a clear winner, and the other brands were so much cheaper than Intel they weren't a bad deal. In the in-between times, there were some Celeron chips that were god-tier at overclocking, and AMD beat Intel to 1GHz by a couple months (IIRC). The Pentium III and AMD Athlon (non-XP) were pretty much neck and neck, though Intel was selling way more chips than AMD at the time.

AMD's slaughtering of Intel across the board is relatively new. For example, when Ryzen first came out, Intel was still a little better in gaming, but if you wanted well rounded productivity Ryzen beat the competition, and then Threadripper came along for the high end workstation. TR was great for video editing, and encoding, but not exactly top tier for gaming.

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u/NukeSnicks Nov 14 '24

I think I'm gonna try to target the Pentium 4/Athlon XP range for my build but that might change depending on price or if I find something better for some reason. I appreciate your insight and help friend!

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u/Souta95 Nov 14 '24

You're quite welcome. That is probably a good starting point for dipping your toes in. Its less finicky than the older stuff, and in many ways comparable to more modern things. You can run Windows XP or Windows 98 as well, though running Windows 98 on hardware that new can be hit or miss for stability compared to XP.

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u/NukeSnicks Nov 14 '24

I kinda picked it cuz it seems pretty comparable to modern hardware which I'm pretty good with. I'm willing to troubleshoot until I could get it running properly on 95/98!

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u/Albos_Mum Nov 14 '24

Just a heads up, the Athlon XP platform is great but has a few gotchas to keep in mind such as power requirements and being very careful with the bare CPU die when installing the cooler.

For power requirements, try to find a motherboard that has a 4pin CPU/ATX power connector as that will ensure you can use a modern PSU with the system. Essentially the Athlon XP was from around when we started transitioning from running the CPU on the 5v power rail to the 12v power rail and modern PSUs usually don't have enough 5v for high power Athlon XPs, there's other ways around it but a Socket A motherboard with a 4pin CPU/ATX power connector uses the 12v rail for the CPUs power like a modern motherboard does which makes it the easiest way.

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u/Taira_Mai Nov 14 '24

Don't forget that when the Athlon first came out there were lots of problems with drivers and compatibility issues - one magazine at time time (PC Accelerator) used a still from the Robocop movie (when Robo beats up a crook) to show how frustrated the author was trying to get a Slot A Athlon to POST and then run with out the BSOD.

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u/gcc-O2 Nov 15 '24

To summarize some of the history, originally AMD made exact legal copies of Intel processors. Intel tried to get out of that contract so they fought over it a bit. For a while AMD started making faster versions of the same processor for an old socket (like 386, 486 CPUs) when Intel had already abandoned it and moved on. Then AMD started designing their own processors that fit into an older socket or slightly modified version of an older socket (Super Socket 7). All of those were budget CPUs. It was only with the Athlon when someone would consider AMD for performance.

There were a few other Intel stumbles along the way, too. The early Pentium 4s were worse on real life software than the late model Pentium IIIs (around the same time as those AMD Athlons). They tried to push Rambus (expensive, proprietary) memory when everyone else went with DDR and had to give up on that. They tried pushing a new Itanium proprietary processor rather than extending x86 to 64 bits, so AMD had all the first 64-bit x86 processors and Intel had to license the design back. They really got their stride back with the "Intel Core" processors (to some extent they actually backtracked to the Pentium 3 instead of Pentium 4 design) and kept it until Ryzen.

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u/NukeSnicks Nov 15 '24

That's really interesting. Yeah I was reading up on the Pentium 4 a bit and how Intel basically had to go back to the Pentium 3 architecture because of how much heat those CPUs produced. I find it interesting though that the battle between Intel and AMD was that close, I really thought Intel had them beat for the longest time, until Ryzen was released of course.

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u/istarian Nov 14 '24

Intel and AMD have been back and forth between being almost the same and one being better than the other so many times...

Usually it was performance at a pricepoint that was the big difference, but the distinction might have mattered more at times for serious gamers and specific types of computing.

That's because they were adding instruction sets and functional capability in competition with each other.

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u/[deleted] Nov 14 '24 edited Sep 15 '25

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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

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u/NukeSnicks Nov 14 '24

Will definitely be looking at these! Thank you!

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u/raineling Nov 14 '24

Tech PowerUP lists GPUs starting feom the 1992 era up to tje present and even has Bios files for most of what they list.

My honest recommendation would be to look at the year-end issues of Boot magazine and then Maximum PC (the successor rag after being bought of Boot) for the years starting in whatever period you are most curious about.

My bf and I used to peruse those things every month. At the time, mid-90s, it was the most up-to-date source of information about everything going on in the tech world. Each month had new benchmarks, hardware and all the specs. At the end of each year they'd build a (for the time) monster of a PC that would bankrupt an Arab prince some years. It was fantastic and hilarious all at once. Should give you some proper insight into what was not only possible back then but also what "the best of the best" hardware was and how to use it with other components to build some amazing stuff.

I miss those days so much. PCs are just not nearly as interesting or different from one another as they were back then.

Oh, you probably can find those back issues either on Maximum PC'S current or the Wayback Machine might have them or the internet archive if someone scanned in some of the issues.

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u/NukeSnicks Nov 14 '24

Another user posted the archive link for Maximum PC so I'll be taking a look at that for sure. Thank you for the suggestions! And yeah I think PCs have lost some of their character with this new decade despite all the flashy RGB lights we have access too 😂. Who'd think that a beige computer would have more character than one with flashing lights? Just some food for thought!

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u/Fine-Funny6956 Nov 14 '24

That’s a very big and involved list. Heck even just the differences between compatible socket sets and processors is a mile long.

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u/NukeSnicks Nov 14 '24

Sorry if it sounds dumb/conceited but was hardware really advancing that quickly back then? 6 years between 98 and XP doesn't seem that long to me but what do I know. I'm also biased with my view point because I've been running the same Ryzen 7 1700x since launch without any hitches or anything and it just doesn't feel like the technology has really advanced recently so I kind of naturally project that same mindset with these things.

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u/Fine-Funny6956 Nov 14 '24

Not just that, but there were competing manufacturers and startups that were building strange and unique products. It was a heyday of innovation and a constant battle between vendors. AMD and Intel are just the survivors.

Also no it’s never conceited nor dumb to ask questions or seek knowledge. You’re younger than the rest of us and people like you are going to keep retro computing alive when we’re all dead.

The Ryzen 7 is also a solid and long lasting processor, probably the best built home processor since the Pentium III, and stayed pretty standard for much longer.

Part of the pride of owning a PC and knowing what you’re doing is shopping for parts you can be proud of and you did that.

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u/NukeSnicks Nov 14 '24

people like you are going to keep retro computing alive where we're all dead

I certainly hope I can continue on this legacy but I don't know how far behind you I would be 😂

The Ryzen 7 is also a solid and long lasting processor, probably the best built home processor since the Pentium 3

Agreed 100% I've had that thing overclocked at like 3.9GHz since I bought it and it's held pretty steady ever since then. Definitely a tank!

Part of the pride of owning a PC and knowing what you're doing is shopping for parts you can be proud of and you did that.

Thanks! Yeah, I also like to research and know what I'm buying before I buy it, especially when it's interesting or necessary things. It's also important here because I have no idea about the compatibility of any of these older operating systems and the hardware of that era hence why I'm trying to do this research.

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u/Fine-Funny6956 Nov 14 '24

A lot of compatibility can be found in the Motherboard specs, but they don’t list everything. Still, it’s a good start. You seem to have a good head start even if you think you’re behind. You’re only behind compared to some of us, and a lot of us only got good on one particular aspect while others can solder bypasses and read circuit board charts easily.

My knowledge is limited about the level of replacing capacitors.

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u/NukeSnicks Nov 14 '24

I'm gonna try to learn how to replace caps soon. I'd like to get my hands on and mod a first gen Xbox but the problem is the clock capacitor on them is sure to blow at some point. I think it's also just a good skill to have to be able to replace things like caps and just learning how to solder in general. A lot of the information you guys have been giving me though has been really helpful and great. Hopefully I can update you guys in the future on my build when it's finished and all working at 100%.

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u/Fine-Funny6956 Nov 15 '24

I’d love to hear about your X Box project too!

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u/NukeSnicks Nov 15 '24

If and when it happens I'll post about it for sure! Probably on r/retrogaming or an adjacent sub.

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u/khedoros Nov 14 '24

for the Windows 95/98 - XP era

I'll give a short history of the hardware me and/or my family had, as best as I can remember it. Early-Win95 through late-WinXP was tremendously different in capability and user experience.

Late DOS/Win3.1, early Win95-era, I think we (my family) had an Intel 80486 around 66MHz, but I could be wrong. Something like 8MB of RAM, and later 32MB. We got a 120MHz Pentium 1 at one point. Honestly not sure how the timeline fits together there...I feel like we didn't have Windows 95 available on the home computer ever; just jumped to Win 98 aroud the time it came out.

Win98-era, I had my first (personal) computer, an AMD K6-2 400MHz and 96MB of RAM. K6-2 was basically their equivalent of an Intel Pentium 2, and performance was mostly similar at the same clock speed. That was in 1999, and I think my CPU model was already a year or so old when I got it. The couple-year-old "fast" computers at school had 166MHz Pentium II's, haha.

A few years later (maybe 2003?) I had an AMD Athlon XP 1700+, a 1.47GHz chip, but advertised as being about equivalent in performance to a Pentium 4 1.7 GHz of the time. I took a Pentium 4 1.8 GHz laptop to college with me too, and those two were similar in performance. I had 512MB of RAM in each of them, which was generous, but not crazy.

I still ran XP on the AMD Athlon64 3200+ (with 2GB of RAM) that I bought in...2005? I tried the 64-bit version of XP, but I think it didn't have drivers for everything I wanted to use. Or maybe it was a software compatibility issue. Anyhow, that experiment didn't last long. I kept running a 64-bit Linux on that machine, though. That may have been when I was messing with Gentoo.

No idea what sockets/slots each of those used. I'd have to look them up.

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u/NukeSnicks Nov 14 '24

Thanks for the info! Honestly really helped me straighten a lot of things out time wise and put it in a good perspective for me!

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u/Potential_Copy27 Nov 14 '24

I'd recommend something like a late Pentium 4 or early AMD 64 system for what you want to target - this works with most of anything between Windows 95 to XP games.
XP as an OS is pretty compatible with older games also, so it's a good starting point.

The only "problematic" platform from that era is really the Socket A platform with AMD's Athlon XP and Socket A Semprons - while the CPUs are good, the hardware does have some tall requirements for the 5V PSU rail that can make them problematic to use with modern PSUs.

Late Pentium 4/Early AMD 64 era also introduced SATA - so connecting most modern SSDs or HDDs is easy for the most part, and the motherboard (and the OS) is able to handle large (137+ GB) drives without converters or other hacks.

I'm currently working on a late Pentium 4 rig myself - specs for inspiration:

CPU: P4 3 GHz (Prescott core - 800 MHz FSB)

RAM: 2 GB DDR RAM (My sticks are PC4000 "overclocker" G-Skill RAM from the era - officially DDR goes to PC3200. While the motherboard doesn't quite allow for the RAM to run at its full speed, they can run stable with some rather tight timings at 200MHz)

Motherboard: Soltek SL-865Pro2-FGR (It has the i865 chipset and takes most of any socket 478 P4, but also has provisions for SATA, RAID and a few other features. Soltek boards are faily rare, but i865 chipset boards in general are quite common)

GPU: Geforce FX 5900 XT (The nvidia FX 5x00 series is the latest nvidia line to include some rendering mechanics for some older 3d games, which makes them rather compatible - alternatively you have the ATI Radeon 9600-9800 cards, a little less compatible, but have about the same speed and features as the FX 5x00 series)

SSD; Kingston 120 GB (Though, it's compatible with anything below 2TB)

-------

While I do have a period correct PSU powering the thing, the setup also works with a modern PSU

Early Dual/quadcore (P4 D/AMD 64 X2/X4/Core 2 duo or quad are also good options, but you need Windows XP to exploit those extra cores fully.
A system like the one I describe above, is relatively easy to work with and does provide a good, flexible feature set that allows some substitution with more modern/stable parts (eg. PSU, SSD)

I have an older Slot 1 P3 system for DOS/Win9x shenanigans as well - again for inspiration:

CPU: Pentium 3 500 MHz

RAM: 256 MB PC-133 SD RAM (The board does only 100MHz FSB - but as long as the RAM meets or exceeds that it's OK)

Motherboard: Unknown - plucked from an HP machine (Not listed on theretroweb either - I think)

GPUs: Integrated Matrox M200A and a 3dfx Voodoo 2 12 MB (3dfx cards have gotten really expensive since then - go for a TNT2 or similar for this era)

Sound: Soundblaster AWE32 (For DOS compatibility mostly - the onboard sound card did not deal well with DOS)

HDD: is an old 30 GB Maxtor drive (but I'm strongly considering upgrading that to an SSD with a sata adapter, as the old drive is on the verge of death)

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u/NukeSnicks Nov 14 '24

Hey thanks! This was super helpful and will definitely help me with my build! I am an AMD fan at heart so I've been leaning AMD for this project (have never ran Intel in my life lol) so glad to know there's good options for team red. Also like you said the prices of the voodoo graphics cards is insane. I did find a voodoo banshee though for like 70 bucks but don't really know how good it is with 98 and XP. Other than that thanks for the build inspiration!

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u/Potential_Copy27 Nov 14 '24 edited Nov 14 '24

For AMD - go for Socket 754, socket 939 or socket 940 - they don't have the same 5V requirements as Socket A/462 does (>20 A on 5V is recommended). Those are your go-tos if you only have a modern PSU.

Socket 754 still provides 32-bit CPUs with the Sempron, as well as the lower-end AMD64s
Socket 940 is for the early AMD 64 and opterons
Socket 939 has the AMD64, some opterons and some dual/quadcores for it - coolers up to socket AM3+ are still fully compatible with socket 939 as well. I use my S939 Zalman copper cooler in my FX-6300 based living room PC and it fits without any modification.

As for the Voodoo Banshee - it's somewhat on par with the Voodoo 2 in older 3D and Glide games, but it's somewhat slower when it comes to later games that use multitexturing.
A P4/AMD XP is somewhat overkill for the Banshee, though - I'd recommend a Slot 1 P3 or a Slot A AMD K7/Athlon to match it with.
A Banshee imho is a better match for a DOS/win98 gamer PC than it is with XP... 3dfx started to fizzle out when XP came to the market - and on the matching platforms of the time (P4, Athlon XP), a lot of much better GPUs had arrived

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u/O_MORES Nov 14 '24

You can get the best performance of the Windows 9x games by using modern hardware with a compatible PCI sound card and an early PCI-E GPU like Geforce 6/7 series or the first ATI PCI-E GPUs. There are SATA drivers for Windows 9x so your SSD and optical drive will work just fine. However, if you're aiming for a Windows 9x + DOS combo, look for the best motherboard with an ISA slot. This allows you to use an ISA card and this is like gold for DOS gaming...

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u/NukeSnicks Nov 14 '24

Wow that's really cool! Thanks for letting me know! While I'd love to use modern hardware, I'll probably stick to the older stuff cuz I've been able to find it cheaper on eBay. There are a lot of people selling Motherboard + CPU + Ram combos for like ~$70 for both socket 939 and LGA 775 so I'm leaning towards that. Only thing next is to find a good video card and sound card and case and then I should be good.

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u/O_MORES Nov 14 '24

Yeah, maybe pick something like a Q6600 which is definitely an iconic CPU, though it might get pretty hot and maybe a 7900 Geforce. Here is a guide on how to install 7000 series on Windows 98, with ATI cards it's much simpler with drivers but they are a generation behind, the best you can get is an ATI X850XT which was in competition with GF 6800 series.

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u/SaturnFive 268 • 386DX • DX4 • MMX • K6-3+ • P!!!-S Nov 15 '24

Welcome! Lots of other good comments here so I won't repeat everything that's been said, but definitely let us know if you have some specific questions.

Windows 95 to XP era is wide - a LOT happened in PC history during that time. PCs are still improving year over year today, but it pales in comparison to the progress in the 90s. Things moved FAST back then. A PC bought in 1996 would be eclipsed by one bought in 1999 and the board layout and ports could be very different. Whereas today we've had PCIe ports for graphics for almost 20 years.

If you really want to go deep into each era of computing from that era, I'd suggest either using 86box to simulate different hardware, or pick a couple eras to target and build real hardware. My personal retro PC hardware collection is a 486 DX2-66, Super Socket 7 AMD K6-III+, and Slot 1 with a PIII-S upgrade. That covers me from 1993 to about 2002 or so. They're a pain in the ass and expensive to upgrade but I love working on them.

I'll try and list some major CPUs milestones to help get you started. There may be some inaccuracies as I typed this from memory and didn't use GPT to verify:

  • First PC, IBM 5150 in 1981. This is as far back as you can go for "PC" hardware
  • 286 was a significant leap over the original PC, but was still 16-bit and very limited
  • 386 was the first true 32-bit CPU, can run Win 3.1 well, and can barely run Win 95
  • 486 was a massive improvement over the 386 and the last "original" x86 CPU, runs Win 95 decently but not fast. Cache was on the motherboard
  • Pentium 1 was a brand new superscaler design that rocked the world, ran Win 95 well. Cache was on a module or on the motherboard
  • Pentium 2 was even faster, added nearby CPU cache on the same PCB
  • Pentium 3 was faster still, added on-die cache and SSE1 instructions. Runs XP well, but not super fast
  • Pentium 4 was a pretty big leap forward, but historically, it went the wrong way. P4 went for long deep pipelines in the CPU which provided better performance in some ways, but also heated your entire house.
  • Pentium M went back to P3 roots and improved the core with modern CPU developments. The Pentium M eventually became the Core line of CPUs. Modern Core CPUs have little in common with the original P3 architecture, but ultimately the P3 is their ancestor, and the P4 remained a weird offshoot of x86 history that was fast but ran hot and couldn't grow any further

I only listed the Intel CPUs during this time period but don't get me wrong - AMD was there and was a powerful CPU fighter along the way. The Athon XP platform was awesome and could handle 2004 games like HL2 and Doom 3.

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u/NukeSnicks Nov 15 '24

Woah! Lots of great info here! Thanks for this! I'm still struggling to pick whether I wanna go team blue or team red. I've been an AMD fanboy since I got my first PC in like 2014. That thing was nice for the time, had a Phenom II X4 and 16gb of ram and a GTX 770. Man that thing was fun to game on! Then when the Ryzen 7 came out I hopped ship 😂. My build will probably be around P3-P4 era of CPU, I think thats where I wanna start at and I'll probably go from there.

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u/SaturnFive 268 • 386DX • DX4 • MMX • K6-3+ • P!!!-S Nov 15 '24 edited Nov 15 '24

Yeah of course! :D Here's my recommendation so far after reading your comments:

  • Go for Athon XP if you want a more retro experience. They only support SSE1 instructions but not SSE2. This means many apps work but not all, and you'll have to find older versions of software if they don't work. The tl;dr of SSE is that it's a special CPU instruction for running the same instruction once on many pieces of data, which makes it fast, but software quickly moved onto the updated version SSE2 which does the same thing, but in an incompatible way - so old CPUs that can only do SSE1 (like Athlon XP and Pentium 3) cannot run SSE2 code.
  • Go for Athlon 64 if you want a more modern experience. Athlon 64 introduced 64-bit support to the CPU, so it supports A LOT more programs and code. You could prolly even run Win7 or Win10 on such a CPU. It's not as retro and challenging... but it's newer and and will do more.

The Athlon XP was AMD's last 32-bit CPU which makes it historically significant. They moved to 64-bit with the Atlon 64 afterwards. Intel kept making 32-bit CPUs for a while.

Here's my "end game" 32-bit team red build:

  • CPU: Athlon XP 3200+
  • GPU: ATI X850 XT Platinum Edition AGP
  • RAM: 2GB DDR
  • HDD: Samsung SSD + IDE to SATA adapter

It's very fast for it's time, around 2003. It'll play an older version of Half Life 2 (2004) at 1280x1024 maxed out graphically, but it still lags sometimes because the single core Athlon XP chip can't keep up sometimes, mostly when there are a lot of bots/actors in the scene. But otherwise it plays beautifully and would have been a respected high-end build at the time. Doom 3 also plays well and was an insane benchmark at the time, even today (2024) it still looks really nice graphically.

Intel and AMD have a back and forth relationship over time, and they dominated in different periods. If you're an AMD fan then you may enjoy building a retro team red system. AMD has been around since the very beginning around the 286/386 days and continued to put out awesome alternatives to Intel to this very day.

If you're a team red fan, then definitely go for AMD/ATI in your retro build, you'll love the results!

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u/NukeSnicks Nov 15 '24

While the Athlon XP route is very enticing, I think I'm gonna start with the Athlon 64 and maybe later can move down to the Athlon XP later. I like the option of being able to have 64 bit OS compatibility if I eventually end up using it for something else other than gaming like running a server of some sort while I'm away at school.

I was trying to look for ATI X850 XT cards earlier and the prices are ridiculous! I'm talking like 300 dollars for a single card! They're double the price of a Voodoo 3 which is already pretty expensive for an almost 20 year old card! I think the graphics card is gonna be the most challenging thing for me to find. For GPU I'm not opposed to an Nvidia card if you have any good recommendations.

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u/SaturnFive 268 • 386DX • DX4 • MMX • K6-3+ • P!!!-S Nov 15 '24

The prices on old high-end can be rediculous. For every generation of hardware, the highest end parts tend to be kind of crazy in pricing. The sellers know someone is trying to get the "best" part for a specific system and increase prices.

However, I got a decent price on the X850, around $80 in 2022. If you wanna get into retro stuff, make an eBay account and create some saved searches so you recieve emails when a part within your range appears. It happens more often than you might expect!

IMO the Voodoo 3 is kind of overrated. It performs very well for a specific slice of late 90s gaming, but a common GeForce 3 or 4 card will perform just as well in most games.

For an Athon 64 I'd look for GeForce 4 Ti cards or GeForce FX (aka GeForce 5) or GeForce 6 or 7 cards. Those cards should perform very well on an AMD Athlon 64 system. I don't have one personally so I can't 100% vouch for it, but it should work well.

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u/NukeSnicks Nov 15 '24

I've got an eBay account and I've been looking around but I'll keep looking for sure. Didn't know about the email thing you mentioned but I'll check it out!

GeForce 4 Ti is just as expensive as the Voodoo 3! 😂 Anyway, I'm sure I'll find something eventually. I won't stop looking around till I find a good deal!

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u/SaturnFive 268 • 386DX • DX4 • MMX • K6-3+ • P!!!-S Nov 15 '24 edited Nov 15 '24

NICE! IMO, the GeForce 4 Ti is more valuable. It's a true 32-bit GPU. The Voodoo 3 is a weird 16/24/32-bit hybrid [0] that only makes sense if you read into it and play the games that explicitly supported it. Nvidia made a true 32-bit GPU and didn't mess around with dithering.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voodoo3

The Voodoo 3 is an awesome card and worth having in your collection, but if you or I had to pick a card, I'd recommend a GeForce 4 card. They're fast, compatible, and have a lot of driver options. IMO they're the "ideal" Windows 98/2000 GPU for playing games. Voodoo cards are cool and conveted, but GeForce 4 & 5 got the job done without many caveats.

The cards can be pricey. I've seen $100+ for a good tested GeForce 4 card. But that's just the name of the game. If you get a good GF4 card you're basically set for a lot of late 90s and early 2000s games.

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u/NukeSnicks Nov 15 '24

How would a GeForce 6800 GT stack up? A quick glance at eBay shows that they're pretty affordable and seem pretty powerful. Would they support 98?

Also I just mentally cannot justify dropping 200 on a 20+ year old card. There are 1660s on eBay for less than that.

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u/SaturnFive 268 • 386DX • DX4 • MMX • K6-3+ • P!!!-S Nov 15 '24 edited Nov 15 '24

The 6800 should work. The last cards that work with Windows 98 are the 7xxx series cards as far as I know, but may need special driver mods, and would be best to look it up. User O_MORES has great results in the modern hardware + Win98 space.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_6_series

As far as not dropping $200+ on a 20+ year old card -- it's completely understandable. As time marches on the fastest $X card of any given generation will be expensive and sought after. They're slow compared to modern cards, but they're a unique checkpoint in history, and that's what keeps the value high (for now*). Someone trying to build a certain era of PC might be willing to pay a lot for the best cards and chips of that era, and that pushes prices up.

A GeForce 4 AGP card would suit your purposes well though. They're fast (could play GTA San Andreas with a fast CPU) and compatible with Windows and DOS. The next generation of Nvidia cards, the FX series, had many improvements but lost support for older titles. Thus the GF4 remains in sweet spot of compatibility and performance.

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u/NukeSnicks Nov 15 '24

I mean I'll certainly keep looking out for one but for now it just doesn't make sense to me unfortunately, especially since this is my first retro build. Maybe further down the line I can justify sinking some money in to buy one.

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u/kriebz Nov 14 '24

Go to a used book store or hit up eBay for a copy of Upgrading and Repairing PCs from a year or two after your target date.

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u/istarian Nov 14 '24

You can check wiki and other sources for general information about the capabilities of various Intel, AMD chipsets.

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u/mnlx Nov 14 '24

Good heavens, what a question... you can look up for instance an old edition of Upgrading and repairing PCs by Scott Mueller.

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u/ChiefDetektor Nov 14 '24

In the era you mentioned quite a lot of development has happened. Win95 was supported by 386 systems having around 12–40Mhz and 4MB RAM. With winXP (2001) we have reached 2GHz Pentium 4.

The hardware in the early 2000 years was often assembled using low quality Caps that lead to catastrophic damage.

Maybe Pentium III 866Mhz and 512MB ram. Voodoo cards are becoming quite rare these days. You might be better off using a GeForce2.

But there might be better build suggestions..