Building a cheap Windows 98 and DOS Retro Gaming PC with AMD Athlon 64 processor

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[@mickles1975]

"You fight like a stillborn kitten" Damn. Old school burns were brutal.

[@philscomputerlab]

LOL Yea so true.

[@R0TFEAST]

I still have my old AM2 939 socket board as well as the Athlon 6000+. At the time, it was the only athlon processor with 1MB L2 Cache. It was one of the most sought after CPU’s by amd for its time.

[@heyyitsultima]

Well this is nostalgic, my dad used that same processor for probably a good 8 or 9 years! I was stuck with the Pentium 4 but he had the Athlon 64 and eventually an Athlon x2 before he got into the higher end Intel CPUs. I personally prefer computers from the era I was born in, so Pentium 1 and earlier :) they're an expensive hobby, but they're so much more enjoyable for me. Regardless, this is an awesome project and I might have to give it a go and see how well I can get one of these running some of my favorite games!

[@jesusserrano3673]

This brings back good memories for me; I had that same ASUS A8V Deluxe motherboard with a Athlon 64 3500+ with a Nvidia Geforce 6800GT and a whopping 512Mb of Ram back in 2004. Those were good times.

[@FrictionalGamer]

This machine was incredible fast at their time. Today it is incredible slow.

[@DhinCardoso]

It's by far the most comprehensive retro pc channel on whole YT - *From Brazil* Good job, sir! I just miss some info on description

[@ricardobarros1090]

Muito bom o Philzão mesmo 👍. Parece ser gente boa também o cara. Conhece algum site assim nacional???🇧🇷

[@michaelwenek76]

Shut the front door! I have this motherboard, an Athlon 64 3200+ and a Ti4400 sitting in the closet along with all the other old stuff. Weekend project!!! I might go with my Audigy ZS though. That or an Aureal Monster Sound.

[@philscomputerlab]

Good sound cards. If you focus is on Windows, the Audigy is stronger with EAX, the Aureal with A3D. If you want a good DOS card, go with the Aureal Vortex 2. It is one of the, if not the, most compatible PCI DOS sound card.

[@Elios0000]

yeah Audigy ZS would be nice in that id go with XP over 98 but what ever flows your boat

[@michaelwenek76]

Thanks Phil! Going with the Monster Sound after all. As far as Win98 vs XP, have a SD Card adapter and separate card with each :) I also just got around to reviving my Abit BH6 with two fully working 366 Mhz Celerons @550. Rainy weekends and fall are for going through the attic.

[@Real_The_Goof]

The great thing about this, is that finding old DOS games and even win 98 games is rather easy now days. You can find them on websites just sitting there waiting to be downloaded, ESPECIALLY DOS games.

[@dizzym9554]

It's so helpful seeing you work through issues. Working with retro PC games is often a case of having to deal with weird issues, and there's a lot you do I wouldn't have thought of trying if you hadn't pointed out. Thank you for being so thorough

[@philscomputerlab]

Thanks! I try to find a good balance of giving enough information without getting boring.

[@darunealbane]

SilverStone Technology GD08B Home Theater Computer Case asus a7n266 vm/aa AMD athaon xp 2000+ 512mb ram 2g/16g 2hd CF cards Geforce4 128mb Lots of those boards out there has built in gpu (geforce2) and sound

[@darunealbane]

@@philscomputerlab asus a7n266 vm/aa love that board for retro

[@johnmcgowan2585]

I loved my old system featuring the Abit NV8 mobo with the nForce4 chipset, AMD Socket 754 Athlon 64 3000+, 3200+ and 3400+ Venice core cpu's (I tried all of them), Crucial Ballistix DDR 400 ram (2 - 512 sticks), Sapphire X800 Pro PCI-E video card with 256 mb GDDR3 ram and Maxtor STM3200820A 200 GB hard drive, A n aftermarket cpu cooler and a high end 450W PSU. That thing would OC like crazy! The Abit mobo had some very nice cpu voltage selections and great ram options. The Crucial would hit DDR500 speeds and all the Venice cpu's would do 2.7+ ghz. On a Socket 754 Overclocking forum the only thing to top me was a Newcastle core Athlon 64. That one really rocked it. Those were the good old days! I still have the setup at home in a different case but I need to put that old psu back in it to crank up the speeds again. It has a cheaper psu in it at the moment and can't do better than 2.5 ghz. I also still have my Asus KV8 (K8T800 chipset) with the same ram and hard drives as above that originally had an ATI X800 Pro AGP video card. I replaced that card with an X1600 Pro and that system is still soldiering on as well. Both systems ran Windows XP like champs.

[@TheNostalgiaMall]

Wow, thanks for the advice on that ESS sound card. That sounds like a wonderful option for playing DOS games on machines without ISA slots. Will keep it in mind.

[@philscomputerlab]

So it depends, from my limited testing it seems to be a combination of chipset and sound card, but no universal "best sound card". Apart from the Aureal Vortex 2, that one works in pretty much everything :D

[@retroftw]

What Phil says here is very important. My AthlonXP 3200 machine with an nforce2 motherboard chipset does not support PCI sound cards and DOS games in either Windows 98 or MS DOS (tested by using Sound blaster live or another card that was acquired by creative). However an IBM Pentium 4 machine I have with an Intel motherboard chipset (I believe) does support PCI sound cards in DOS games in Windows 98 and MS DOS (using the correct drivers and settings etc). So PCI sound is more a motherboard choice than a sound card choice in my experience. There are some DMA support or something that's needed. Vogons has some discussions about this.

[@Lady_Zenith]

I was really surprised by how it turned out. The only PCI ESS I have here is ESS maestro3 in one laptop, and tho the SB pro emulation work on it, its far from perfect, sound is OK but any FM/OPL ,music is really bad and off, 100x worse than the emulated OPL3 on some of the later or cheaper SB cards. But this ESS chip... like the music in doom it sounds pretty much spot on.

[@philscomputerlab]

I'm not familiar wihh the Meastro, but the Solo-1 has a good reputation, and I had one lying around :)

[@RetroReviewYT]

Tomiko Miyafuji I have a laptop with the 2e, the SB 16 emulation is awful. The SBPro emulation is better.

[@mikoyangurevic8634]

That intrigued me. I build my former Athlon XP 3200+ machine which I had it until 2009, but with a 9600 PRO (for Windows 98 SE compatibility) instead of 3850 AGP and the A7V880 instead of the GA-7N400PRO2 (which was donated). For sound card I used my old Audigy Gamer (I had the X-Fi music back on 2009) from my first Socket A build (1900+ XP) back on 2001. But... Some issues made me select the A8V Deluxe and the Athlon64 x2 4400+ due to VIA's Windows 9x support. This machine is for dual early XP and late Windows 9x gaming... I didn't knew that the cool n' quiet compatible cpu's of that era had unlocked multipliers...

[@markskonecki2050]

I love doing stuff like this I have older parts laying around and I like building up my old computers once in a while just to see what it will do now it's fun going down memory lane lol

[@jakeparkinson7695]

I managed to get wing commander running "fine" on a xeon e3 1280 v5. I have ubuntu 8 installed with pci passthrough via kqemu with different video cards like the gtx 1070, geforce 3, VooDoo 2, and the diamond edge 3d 3240 all on the same mobo. I currently run all operating systems (windows 10, XP, 98, 3.11) at the same time with different monitors. Took me about 90+ man hours to get it all working, but I have one computer to rule them all.

[@philscomputerlab]

What an achievement! I can;t imagine how fiddly that would be setting it all up.

[@raysmith5124]

i run a Asrock p4dual 915gl which has both adp & pci-e aswell as 3 pci slots so i can swap & change graphics cards as I please it has so amny boot options you can load a usb with dos & doom boot from it play for a few hours save ya game re boot from your hardrive running xp or linux (my fav ) for your day to day stuff and throw the usb stick in the draw for tomoorow . as long you dont want to play games less than a few years old they P4 3gz holds up well if you match your graphics card to what era game you want to play boot from a drive with the operating system to match & awway you go .

[@raysmith5124]

@@philscomputerlab thanks to you resparking my gaming interest I've been through my loft . i still have my old audigy2nx pro usb sound card which stopped working when my ex left a towel on top of it . if you know anyone that may be able to repair it you can have it . Having full 7.1 eax was mind blowing back then .I've got the drivers discs too ..youll just need cables and speakers or a good set of head phone as it amazing things with positional sound the music quality is spectacular with the up mixing . crystalizer etc

[@FrictionalGamer]

Isn't there a working GOG version?

[@darkwaterblue]

Super video as always. AGP 939 systems are so versatile and so cheap, fantastic to see how well they run the old stuff on a older OS.

[@hyperdriverr]

I had this board. Loved it! One of the best agp boards out there, dual channel ddr400, sat, good overclocking. I bet it is still snappy today compared to most store bought computers provided you could get enough ram into it.

[@drnerd]

Great, clear build vid, thanks for this, I feel inspired to get on with my own builds!

[@tonhu100]

I still have a fully functional Athlon 64 3700+ working on a A8V-MX motherboard with Windows 8.1 installed. It Works perfectly

[@kennedypt]

It's likely 32-bit version. I've run Windows 10 32-bit on AsRock 939dual-sata2, Athlon64 X2 4200+, 2gb ram.

[@jm036]

Antonio Gabriel How much more powerful is 3700+ than Sempron 2800+? Or should I go for LGA775... Wait I already have 2 dualcore LGA775 CPUs.

[@philscomputerlab]

Yea, the 32 bit versions are often overlooked but work on more machines.

[@tonhu100]

It depends, because there are 3 different sockets for the Sempron 2800+ processor. There is one made for the anciet socket A (socket 462), one for the socket 754 and another one for the socket AM2. All these 3 processors are named Sempron 2800+ but there are significant differences between them. Out of topic: I liked your thumbnail =D

[@jm036]

Antonio Gabriel I got the Socket 754 one. Knew there was a 462 model but had no idea about an AM2 one.

[@worldofretrogameplay6963]

I owned a custom built Athlon 64 setup back in the day; it was a great gaming PC. It was the first PC I owned where the processor lasted me a good 2 1/2 years before I had to upgrade it. I did eventually upgrade the video card, but that’s all I had to do.

[@djuroue]

Great video as always. I have one retro machine based on via kt400 chipset and no matter what, without via 4in1 or Hyperion, d3d couldn't start. Keep it up, Phill, you have great support from us, old gamers

[@philscomputerlab]

The early VIA chipset can be troublesome, especially with AGP, but once they got to Athlon 64 they are actually pretty decent.

[@vault13legend]

The first motherboard I had the pleasure of owning. Still have and use it to this day for xp gaming.

[@jonathanellis6097]

Nice video, i bought the same motherboard and cpu about 6 months back for my retro system. Haven't got around to setting it up yet though, looks like i chose well!

[@louistournas120]

Somehow, I got interested in retro gaming again and pulled out my old NES and started gaming. I also bought a SEGA Genesis flashback, model 2. It is pretty sweet. I have never had a Genesis back then. I have never touched one. 3D Realms had even ported Duke Nukem 3D to the Genesis. It is actually 3D but simpler.

[@matheuswanderley6501]

i wasn't even born when most of the pc parts that you show in these videos were launched but even i can feel the nostalgia just by being a gamer i love your channel

[@PaintsAreOp]

Athlon 64 2800+ with Geforce 4400 was my 2nd computer ever and the first one that was bought new. Brings back memories

[@blakecasimir]

Another fun project and a great video, Phil. Thanks! I missed out on 939/AM2. I recall having trouble playing UT2004 with a max player count even on an Athlon XP 3200+ and wondering what else I could do. But I hadn't really looked at the options for new builds in a while (this was around 2005) as otherwise my systems did everything else I needed just fine - that 3200+ was handling Cubase well. But I decided to go for a Socket 754 build and was shocked at how much faster everything was, including UT2004! AMD made huge strides in those days, it's good to see them back in the game in a similar fashion today.

[@philscomputerlab]

Thanks man! Yea for me catching up with the past is a huge reason I do this :D Get to play with all the stuff I couldn't afford back in the day.

[@MJ-uk6lu]

UT2004 with 32 bots is still heavy on CPU. I have FX 6300 and in smaller maps fps dips to 40s.

[@mrburns366]

I'm thinking VERY seriously about doing this.. complete with CRT of course.. but I can't help but wonder if it's even necessary with things like PCEM and DosBox.. I guess I'll have to try and find out :)

[@RetroPCUser]

I ordered this exact board (A8V-UAYVZ) on an auction site and I was the only bidder. Unknown CPU and RAM at the moment, but I'll post a video about it once I receive it.

[@joeformanek8165]

Athlon 64s were absolutely amazing. I worked at a System Builder back in 2003-2006, and we were one of the lead AMD system builders. The performance of the A64 just blew the doors off of the P4. It wasn't until the Core2Duo came about that Intel could compete (and ultimately exceed) with what AMD was doing.

[@FrictionalGamer]

And today AMD leads again over Intel.

[@InfiniteClouds]

Finally the S939 build! Great video! I really like how you share the issues you run into and the various troubleshooting attempts you try before coming to a solution. I've been working on a S939 build using the Asrock Dual-VSTA board with the hopes of making a hybrid late 98/XP machine. Some notes/comparisons with my own S939: - My 4000+ (2.4ghz) has no issues with down-clocking and get can it to go as low as 723mhz -- very useful since there are even some 9x games that have speed issues. Outcast for instance has some gamestoppers if you CPU exceeds 800mhz. At this speed my Quake benchmarks were right in line with a Pentium III Coppermine between 750-850mhz. -FX5900 Ultra and Geforce 4 Ti4200 both gave me some issues in DOS. watch?v=Y_xP5jkz6XE watch?v=yvtj82uRzFA these videos show the flickering or 'screen shaking' that occurs in PCPBench Most of all though, the Build Engine games like Duke Nukem and Blood ran awful. When I dropped down to a Geforce 3, Blood can do 1600x1200 @ 50FPS and Duke Nukem the same at 60FPS. Interestingly other resolutions like 800x600 in Blood will often report something like 7 FPS on the counter ... while the gameplay is actually completely fluid and feels like 60FPS. This is all of course with WC enabled -- there's some pretty bad screen tearing without WC. -At full speed (2.4ghz) I get the following benchmarks in Quake (with WC enabled): 300x200 - 223.1 FPS 640x480 - 85.1 FPS 800x600 - 57.9 FPS 1024x768 - 40.5 FPS 1280x1024 - 41.9 FPS These were done with the FX5900 so I haven't tested to see if there was any difference with the Geforce 3.

[@philscomputerlab]

For high resolution DOS gaming, I think I might have some results for a Pentium 4 soon. It's possible the P4 is very strong here.

[@InfiniteClouds]

I look forward to seeing the comparisons! Did you ever try Duke Nukem on this build? I'm curious if you experienced the same issues with the Ti4xxx series that I did with Build Engine.

[@philscomputerlab]

I think I ran it, but not sure about the resolution, maybe 640x480 but nothing higher. I'll try to include it in future projects.

[@snetmotnosrorb3946]

What's WC?

[@InfiniteClouds]

WC stands for Write-Combining. watch?v=Acq4_muebxc That's Phil's video he did on how to enable WC for your CPU -- especially at higher resolutions it basically doubles performance.

[@nerdspark8084]

You deserve more subs Phil, great vid thanks mate, keep it up :)

[@philscomputerlab]

Thank you, we shall see how 2018 turns out :D

[@AlejandroRodolfoMendez]

really cool build. those boards are realy cheap and even can do some xp gaming. it is nice to see them run better with w98. i found a athlon xp and a fx5200 agp card and works even better than some modern pc for certain games. those machine toppe at winxp but this is a cleaver way to give it more power without spending.

[@AmstradExin]

I had a friend with one of the first Athlon 64 notebooks...one with a Radeon 9600 mobile...what a beast! Tho it struggled hard at Doom 3.

[@directionlessstudios7210]

Nice one! I just refurbished an old Compaq desktop with the ESS Solo-1 es1938s chipset onboard. It had no problems in DOS but I can attest to the ESS Solo-1 Windows drivers being a problem. I’ll give the Terratec ones a try. :)

[@philscomputerlab]

Yea it's odd, most sound card do better under Windows, like the Yamaha YMF card.

[@RetroAdventure]

I have way too many of these boards(Socket 754) and chips(Athlon 64) lol. I do need to pick up one of those sound cards! Nice video, I was wondering if I could use 98 and DOS together as 98 is the first PC OS I had growing up.

[@dawiekaboutereen]

I love this build. I think I still have a Athlon 64 FX-55 CPU somewhere.

[@DangThanhBinh]

go and make your video. I love that CPU

[@MrSzero13]

HECK YES !!!!! ... I love my retro pc i actually use a ATHLON 64x2 i wanted a dual core form my retro ... SO HAPPY with this build of yours phil also on my retro i use a MSI AGP motherboard the MSI MS-N1996 with a AMD duron processor but it works well lol

[@bradsmith8977]

When you had sounds problems I had soundblaster card I never had any problems with sounds like with one those cards.

[@GGigabiteM]

Hopefully you aren't running Windows 9x/ME on it because the second core won't be doing anything.

[@MrSzero13]

no the athlon 64x2 is on my XP retro, i also use a Duron On my AGP retro build i was referring to 2 builds, my bad lol, but yea i use a duron for 98, with a MSI MS-N1996

[@seshpenguin]

Awesome, this seems like a really good overall machine for retro gaming! Affordable, too.

[@philscomputerlab]

Sure is! It just shows, while some retro hardware is getting rare, there are still plenty of cheap options.

[@AncientElectronics]

Nice video. My ultimate Win98 rig also uses socket 754. initially used a Athlon XP board but got sick of almost every board having bad caps and some kind of instability. Socket 754 just seemed to give a better overall experience.

[@philscomputerlab]

That's exactly how I see it. Socket A is great, but it has too many roadblocks, the PSU issue is a massive one for starters, and the caps plague just to finish you off :D

[@endgovernmentextremism]

Awesome channel... I've been playing most of my old games either in DOSBox or by dual booting for years, but the list of working titles is slowly dwindling down as time goes on. By the time I got to Ryzen most things were a no-go. It's time for a dedicated retro PC for Win98. I ditched most of my really old hardware years ago unfortunately, so will probably have to go the P4 route. I still have some old video and sound cards as well. This channel is really going to help me to narrow down a hardware combination. Thanks! BTW, Linux is a viable option for playing old games on modern systems if you don't mind a lot of trial and error.

[@dallesamllhals9161]

I've gotta' A64 3000+ Socket 939! And no need for it (3500+, 4000+ and an Opteron 180 for ONE motherboard) ^You don't have to go down the P4-route... ;-)

[@jofraniac]

That Athlon 64 3200+ was my very first CPU, paired with an Asus A8N-Sli mobo and a GeForce Fx 5500. Very nostalgic build to me.

[@dallesamllhals9161]

Sry' SEMI-necro! The org. A8N-SLI(NOT deluxe, SE, Asus-whatever)?

[@jofraniac]

@@dallesamllhals9161 Actually, it was a A8N-SLI SE, I just remembered the exact model thanks to your post!

[@dallesamllhals9161]

@@jofraniac Dang it! (not to you!) Still have my A8N-SLI and an Opteron 180...for a Windows XP build...someday. It' has performed well as my moms PC untill Jan. 2020(Win 7 64 EOS) = 15 years. Your GPU though. FX5500 = Oh dear ;-D

[@jofraniac]

@@dallesamllhals9161 Really impressive, dude, 15 years of use is amazing! My mobo died after only 5 years of use so I had to upgrade to a new platform, unfortunately. Yeah, the FX5500 was a really good chip for that era, I played a lot of good games with it, good times :)

[@linoxyard]

Also, if you want EAX support, the onboard sound chip AD1988 SoundMAX on that motherboard has an excellent implementation of the EAX and the EAX 2.0 technologies

[@foch3]

I would love one of those Asrock 939 boards with AGP and PCI-E boards for this kind of testing

[@hinac3]

Thanks for your video!!!!

[@wimmetje]

Great video Phil, i enjoyed it a lot nice approach at DOS gaming. I recently brought up my old AMD 64 and 64x2 CPU/MOBO off the attic in my parents home. Was thinking of building a 2004/2005 machine, maybe some project for you?

[@philscomputerlab]

2004 and 2005? Go all out man, the faster the better! Games like Far Cry and FEAR can be very demanding.

[@Arti9m]

One interesting thing about Athlon 64 builds is that you can run every single OS from DOS to Windows10 64-bit on such system. The only uncertain thing is too much RAM for older Windows OS. I know win98/winME can be limited manually to 512MB. Win3.1 probably uses what DOS uses (thus RAM can be limited within DOS). As for win95, I never researched it, but it's probably possible to limit RAM too in it.

[@johndoe1254]

Very nice tutorial. I am looking forward to rebuild this as i have exactly the same components from the days. You mentioned a throttling tool for the cpu to make it even slower. Can you please provide a link to this tool or any tutorial for this, or did you mean the SetMul tool?

[@squeeeb]

Athlon 64 makes for a wonderful, and powerful Windows 98 setup. For the nvidia graphics drivers, I've had more issues than success using older versions vs the last release for Win98 - but I'm sure this varies based on the motherboard/chipset and of course video card series.

[@Twintania]

My retro gaming PC is not terribly old but I grew up with it I love it- Windows XP Athlon XP 2200+ 1.5GB Ram and a FX 5200 but I have a AMD card for it. I also am using a soundblaster sound card for it

[@Mani-aX]

i have had those issues several times with all kinds of sound cards. its due to interference from your monitor refresh rate. changing it makes the tone faster or slower. i went back to my CRT and there was no issue.

[@lucaspam]

Great stuff Phil. I am very impressed with this PCI sound card. I wonder if it works with MIDI. My i7 Motherboard has a PCI slot. I will probably buy this card and install DOS on my i7 using this card. You're right, it's a breakthrough - the card sounds as good as ISA cards and it's inexpensive. Thanks!!!

[@philscomputerlab]

MIDI? Haven't tested it, but the gameport should be a full MPU-401 interface to hook up a Sound Canvas for example. I'm still focusing on ISA sound cards with reviews, but with PCI builds I will slowly explore other cards. And there will be PCI sound card reviews on 2 models :)

[@Carstuff111]

The Athlon 64 3200+ stomped a mud hole in the 3 Intel Pentium 4 processors I had back then, in most games and benchmarks. I had a 2.5GHz P4 that would not overclock for anything (it maxed out my motherboard's front side bus out of the box) a 2.8GHz Northwood core P4 that I got clocked up to 3.45GHz stable (3.5GHz would cause blue screens without more voltage, that I was not willing to add) and finally a 3.5GHz Prescott that stayed stock and was the fastest of the bunch... And my roommate's 3200+ Athlon 64 beat all of them, more so when he overclocked. When he went to an Athlon 64 x2 4200+... there was just no contest! When I bought that machine off of him, hell that dual core beast was my main computer into the early-mid AMD FX series. When I went to an Athlon II x4, it was a decent step up but the Phenom II x6 1045T (overclocked to 3.4GHz) 1045T I upgraded to was a HUGE step up. Then moved on from there to a 4.5GHz overclocked Intel i5 3570K that was again, a nice big step up... but now I have an AMD Ryzen 5 1600X and I LOVE this machine! Back in the Athlon 64 days, AMD was amazing, and I am so happy to see AMD is back on their performance game!

[@danielson9579]

Nice build.

[@prozzac85]

This made a great video! I've never seen anyony go with the Athlon 64 for running DOS or 98. I bet it'll be helpful for someone who wants to try out older games on their retro rig :) But in my opinion this is more suited for XP, but if it's the one machine you have then I totally understand why you would want to run something older on it. On occasion at least :)

[@philscomputerlab]

I agree, the Athlon 64 or Pentium 4 are much more suited for Windows XP. But if you go for the slowest parts, or down-clock them, they work great for Windows 98. I see it more as a rather than go for a high end Pentium III or Athlon XP, why not go for a basic Pentium 4 or Athlon 64.

[@philscomputerlab]

No, I urge you to stick with 32 bit Windows XP!

[@georgemaragos2378]

Please avoid XP 64 bit like the plague, if you want early 64bit try Vista. But all of these require 4g ram or better and that is way past retro specs, you might as well run Win 7 and get the free microsoft virtual machine and Windows XP mode - now once you do that your basically in emulator mode

[@GGigabiteM]

>Please avoid XP 64 bit like the plague There is absolutely nothing wrong with Windows XP x64 Edition, it's basically Windows Server 2003 x64 with a Windows XP GUI. I have no idea why you think Vista 64 bit would be better, it's a far more bloated OS runs a whole lot slower. I ran Windows XP x64 Edition for years on my Athlon 64 and later Core 2 Duo E6420 and never had an issue. The only limitation is that it doesn't have thunk support, so you can't run 16 bit applications (DOS and Win16), but this applies to all 64 bit Windows versions.

[@rodneydawn4134]

did something similar with that same processor, though running windows ME. No real mode dos natively, but I just boot off floppies when real mode dos is needed. Windows 98 and ME will boot just fine even on a FX9590, (use an older machine with less ram to install windows and install Rloew ram patch from MSFN forums). drivers will be problematic, but most boards have at least one pci slot for a period correct graphics card. Early pci-e cards /might/ work as well, but thats a gamble. some people have them working, others have reported no end of headaches trying to use pci-e graphics.

[@cybernet3000]

Loving how helpful your vids are. So I'm guessing a build like this is more compatible with modern power supplies? I almost bought a Socket A board and Athlon XP CPU and then I saw your video about trying to power them with modern PSUs and thought better of it.

[@philscomputerlab]

Cyber Net Yup, the A64 and P4 work with pretty much any modern PSU. P3 is OK, but Athlon can fail, depending on the CPU and system.

[@CesarDRK]

Hi phil, great video as always! Watching your channel makes me wanna grab all old hardware i have lying around and bring then back to life. Your guides for installing DOS and Windows 98 (with the super easy dos mode) are a blast. I did recently benchmarked some machines and noticed a "bug" in the dosbench pack of yours. If i try to run the System Information 8.0 or the Landmark System Speed Test 6.00 directly after a fresh boot to DOS they doesn´t work, and even sometimes hang the entire system. But if i run 3DBench and PC Player Benches before then, they work fine. Did you noticed this issue?

[@philscomputerlab]

That's funny! I never run those tests, so no, haven't noticed it :)

[@osgrov]

Great video Phil! :) I'd love to see some options in building a similar box. How's the old SoundBlaster cards doing these days, for example? It would also be nice to learn how well the ATI video cards work in Win98. I don't have any handy to test myself, perhaps you do? Feedback-wise I really like how you show and talk about driver installs and issues with them. It's been a long long time I played with these things and my memory isn't what it used to be. Very helpful with some insights. Finally, I've got some old 80-120GB SSDs I thought I could put to good use in a machine like this. Maybe a topic for a future video, getting old SATA SSDs to work in Win98? I don't currently have a motherboard with SATA on it, only IDE so I'm assuming that's not gonna work. Cheers!

[@philscomputerlab]

Thanks man! It's always tricky finding a balance between too little and too much information :) I do try to use more Radeon cards, I had really good experiences with a 9600 XT. The 9700 and 9800 cards, they are too "precious" for me to actually use LOL They stay stashed away. Radeon 9000, 9000 Pro and 9200 series are also very suitable.

[@user-kd4pg8hu7t]

There are SATA to IDE adapters, good luck with Win98 on those SSDs!

[@kennyj4366]

Duke Nukem, Space Quest Myst, The 7th Guest are some old DOS favs too lol.

[@WaybackTECH]

ESS made some good sound chips IMO. That compaq I looked at used the Solo-1 and I also found it to be very good. The noise was probably down to the cheapness of the card, lack of adequate capacitor filtering. Sometimes noise is only on certain slots though. Hey I wanted to ask you, what are you using to create your charts?

[@philscomputerlab]

So someone mentioned the VIA PCI latency patch. I know that patch well, just never thought of trying it LOL. I use Microsoft Office for all my stuff :)

[@jameslewis2635]

I used to have one of these CPU's which overclocked relatively well. I matched it up with a Radeon X1800 Pro which seemed to be quite a good pairing although at that time I didn't know enough to look for bottlenecks in the system.

[@philscomputerlab]

Love the X1800 series!

[@RetroTinkerer]

Ohh very nice I never tried windows 98 on my athlons 64 couse I went with PCI-e, now that I have some MB with AGP I will have to try! Thanks Phill! Btw... I respect peopple interested in period correctness but what I appreciate is enjoying the old games without breaking the bank.

[@philscomputerlab]

Yea the Athlon is super flexible, 2 sockets, AGP or PCIe, Sempron or Athlon 64, even dual core. So lots of options!

[@Dave4000]

I'm glad you got it all working. :) Did you update the BIOS to the latest version? I'm wondering if the AMD Cool'n'Quiet can affect the sound quality, in a similar way that Enhanced Halt State (C1E) does on ACPI computers? I turn off C1E in the BIOS.

[@christopherbartleson8918]

I'm doing a similar build for myself using Windows 98 SE, your videos are actually really helpful, I plan on playing games from the early 2000s and earlier. I have a chance to get an ATI X1600 Pro for cheap to replace the Nvidia TNT2 M64 32 MB card which you refer as pretty bad. Eventually, I want to get a period correct card to go in my Socket A Palomino Core AMD Athlon XP 1700+, what budget options do I have? The latest games I want to play are Diablo, Starcraft, and Septerra Core.

[@Domaudeo]

The Via Epia platform is also a nice DOS-Capable device that is easy to find and pretty cheap. It runs a equivalent to Pentium III and provide legacy-compatible VGA and SB Pro right on the board.

[@chriss2500]

I actually do have an old school socket 939 LanParty NF4 SLI Board from DFI that has an athlon 64 3800+ in it that I got for free. :) Very interesting board, though very picky about memory lol.

[@cgriggsiv]

Excellent video Phil I just need to know one thing where in the world did you get your open Air test bench frame

[@philscomputerlab]

Search for High Speed PC! The bench is fair value, but international shipping is really expensive. Still, for me it is the best bench in terms of setting something up quickly with minimal screws and cable management.

[@cyruscarbone982]

Hey Phil, I would be very interested in a video about Radeon x300 and x800 cards for Win 98 gaming. I bought a x800 pro recently myself. Even though the driver support never got out of "beta", it still works flawlessly from my limited testing. The cards come in both AGP and PCI-E, and both are supported under Windows 98. These seem like the ultimate Windows 98 gaming cards.

[@osgrov]

I second this. I don't know if my memory is rose-tinted, but I seem to recall the ATI cards worked better in the early days. Looking to build a similar box to what you did in this video but would love to see how the ATI cards stack up. :)

[@philscomputerlab]

I'm going against the trend here, I really feel that slow is good when it comes to retro gaming. I do get the appeal of "ultimate builds" though, but you will find that most of the demanding "98 games" actually run super under XP. I think I have a X850 card, but yea, it's PCIe. Maybe a X300, but I have far less Radeon cards than GeForce.

[@TheSanco26]

10:13 I really like this chart. Its so clear and easy understandable. Nice video

[@RetroReviewYT]

I had an Athlon XP 2500+ 98SE build with a Radeon 9200SE, 512 MB DDR 400 memory in dual channel, 120 GB hard drive. That system flew! Too bad the board failed in a few months, it was rather nice for later games.

[@philscomputerlab]

Bloody capacitor plague from that era...

[@Adam-rt7lp]

Great Video iam really interested about DOS compatibility. Dont know if you still have assembled but do u know if One Must Fall runs at normal speed?

[@outtheredude]

I had errors all over the place with the 45.23 driver myself using my NV18 based 128MB Palit GeForce 4 MX 440 128-bit AGP 8x card on my Tyan Tomahawk 440BX Socket 370 motherboard with my Celeron 400A Mendocino on Windows 98se. Changing to the 56.64 driver fixed that. Maybe 45.23, which may be just fine with AGP 4x cards, doesn't like GeForce 4 series AGP 8x cards?

[@ArchadesGames]

My latest experiment is a late Dos-windows XP machine running a Core 2 Extreme X6800 on an ASRock 4CoreDual-VSTA. The cool thing about this board is it supports AGP and PCI-E GPU's (PCI-E is limited to 4x though :/). I'm already running an FX 5900 in it but waiting for an HD 5770 to come in the mail for that late 2000's XP gaming!

[@philscomputerlab]

Wow that is a very fast system!

[@ArchadesGames]

PhilsComputerLab even though the board doesn't technically support windows 98 it has had drivers readily available which has been awesome! Thanks for the vids they have really helped me get DOS figured back out!

[@nicholassteyer]

hey, I happen to have that exact motherboard! lol

[@NightMotorcyclist]

For me and AMD Athlon64 is easy to obtain.... I never threw out my old 3000+ with nForce 3 and my AMD Opteron 170 dual core and nForce 4 =D I still have my Audigy to pair with either of them and a Live! Platinum if it's too new should I build a Win 98 SE retro system. Right now the single core is paired with Windows XP and the Opteron is paired with Vista Home.

[@TheAndrewDET]

This is my favorite PC era, it has pretty much everything short of ISA and AGP 2x support. There's pretty much driver support for every version of windows; you can even install the 32-bit Windows 10. With a few tricks I've been able to do a multi boot with dos/98/xp/7/10 (shout out to EasyBCD). There are also interesting out spec options too. Some boards will work with DDR server memory. I have a ABIT KV8 with 4gb (bios limited to 3gb) and an ASUS A8n32-sli Deluxe running 16gb. Also on the 754 side mobile chips are pin compatible and will work in most boards. The main problem is the heat sink setting correctly. I'd love to see a video like this based around that ASRock 939Dual-SATA2 you showcased last year. Especially the something about the last generation of GPUs with support for Win 9x.

[@philscomputerlab]

With the Athlon 64, the top CPUs are the FX-57. They are seriously fast!

[@dikbozo]

As an old AMD user from socket 7 days, (not the Super socket 7 but the older Pentium 1 socket; my first was a K6 233), I have followed and used almost all sockets that AMD has produced short of the Slot 1 and the recent AM4 and TR4. I had one S754 board and found that the manufacturers tended to produce cheaply and not be carefuk in manufacturing standards. The results of this was in the rather high failure rate of these chipsets, in particular the VIA ones, especially when overclocked. It could well have been partially the result of using less reliable and poorer quality power supllies as well. This was endemic back in the day, as there were so many knock off producers and few if any tools to check them with. As you are using a new high quality power supply, I am happy to such good performance from this old favorite of mine. I had several fo the dozen A64 3200+ variants that were produced. The TDP on mine was rated at 89W but there others much lighter in actual use. I susopect yours is one of the .09 nm 67W TDP from later in the production run. cpu-world.com is a treasure trove of information on CPUs such as these. ;) In all my time spent with these I never even thought about the possibility of under clocking. As you have again shown these could be made to run cool and quiet indeed. BTW i never had an issue with too much heat or noise but just saying... Thanks again for another well done and enjoyable video.

[@Physcella]

Such a well made video. I really appreciate all the work put into this, true German workmanship.

[@davidp4456]

Prices have changed in 4 years. Socket 939 m/bs and CPU’s are not so cheap these days. ESS Solo-1 cards are also now difficult to find, with the few on eBay starting at around £40 - £50. However there is a seller on Aliexpress selling for around £14, but no wave table header 😕. Does socket AM2 / 2+ provide similar versatility and compatibility? For my retro system I opted for the socket 939 track and it does provide great performance with an Opteron 180 and Radeon HD4650 (agp) but all these components are quite expensive and better value with added performance specs can be found on the AMD 2/2+ platforms. Is this the better choice or do I stick with socket 939?

[@10WA]

I used to play Lemings and Indy 500 back then.

[@OzSkunkworks]

Im running a 1996 pentium 150 (s3 trio video ess sound) and this has more than enough power for DOS games .. but it has issues running some games from 1990-1991-1992 (have not tried earlier) .. problems like joystick support not working on flight sims .. once it reaches 1993 software things go smoother .. issue seems to need a slower bus/cpu .. Figure that once u move too far from supported hardware u will run into trouble. .

[@guardianali]

Or you can use DosBox to get Dos games running on your current PC. Works great and haven't had any issue or what ones I had was minor issues where work arounds were found with a google search.

[@rars0n]

The Athlon and Athlon 64 processors were great for a good period of time. Absolute giant killers. I have fond memories of my Athlon 800 system. AMD's stock coolers have always been particularly awful though. Especially the ones during the Athlon x2 era. The coolers they now ship with Ryzen CPUs are almost revolutionary, they're so good that you don't really even need an aftermarket cooler in most cases. Gotta give AMD credit for going back to their old ways and giving a HUGE amount of value for the money spent. We're very nearly in another Athlon age right now.

[@sfx1999]

I believe I have had that sound problem before, but on Linux. I believe it changed with the audio volume. It was a driver issue in my case. It sounds like it's picking up power supply noise, though; maybe it will go away in a case. You could try to build an audio probe if you don't have an oscilloscope to check for noise from the power rails.

[@MotownBatman]

Is there a Shelving unit like this that just has Random mounting holes for Different Motherboard Types? Then you can Add an additional Rack Level and Setup Another System... Then even have a Shelf on top/bottom with a KVM...?

[@RyanJamesPratt]

great video as always!

[@KerranKaksi]

Nice, this would just need better MIDI support to be a pretty tempting build! Which device did you use to capture video from the Retro PC?

[@philscomputerlab]

Just connect a Roland Sound Canvas for MIDI. And under Windows 98, the YAMAHA has a decent SoftSynth.

[@KerranKaksi]

Still about the capture device. The video quality is really nice, which device did you use?

[@CenturionKZ]

Unfortunately in my country (Kazakhstan) early and mid AMD processors were not popular, but I succeeded to buy a fully functional functional Pentium 3 computer for only $5. I had been hunting local Craigslist-like board for a couple of months though.

[@philscomputerlab]

Pentium III is very nice :)

[@dmnsonic]

Great discovery Phil! One more out-of-the-box option for good and old games, even in DOS! Excellent!

[@philscomputerlab]

Thanks! It's a start, hopefully the community can fine-tune it and we can improve it further.

[@mark12358]

Yup, I would have parted hd and cd on different ide channels. Maybe, not doing cd data transfers it does not hurt performances however.

[@Lady_Zenith]

Phil, do you have SB Live? Would it work on this board? Aka working SB-16 emulation, which on this card is EMM386 based and does not work from my testing on anything newer than KT333 or SIS 645 or Intel up to 875 (does not work on any Nforce board). I mean KT800 may somehow have miraculous support, seeing as the other sound cards work without issue. Is that the reason why you stick with VIA? I find VIA chipsets always generally more problematic and underperforming. On 939, I would always pick Nforce 3, it has full win98 support. But if it would break the 16-bit sound compatibility as it does with SB live that would be the deal-breaker.

[@philscomputerlab]

I don't like the Live!, so you won't see me using it most of the time I'm afraid. Big fan of the Audigy 2 ZS though! But not for DOS, there are better options. The main reason I went with VIA was because the boards are cheaper and easier to find. I had no idea what to expect with DOS, so I was really positively surprised!

[@glittlehoss]

Phil I think this project needs a revisit. Continue to use xp era cpus and boards to make awesome win 98 and Dos systems. How many can you find and rank them accordingly. Months worth of research I think.

[@StigDesign]

NFS4 FTW :D

[@railsrust]

I basically have the same board as this. Some of the main differences in my case are that I used an Athlon 64 X2 4600+ and an Nvidia GeForce FX 5600 Ultra. I'm also using an AOpen Cobra AW744L II card instead of the ESS Solo-1 since these are being sold NOS on eBay for like $25 right now. I use a SoundBlaster Audigy II ZS for XP and for games with EAX audio. I recommend anyone building an Athlon 64/AGP build to get an GeForce FX card or a ATI Equivalent that still has palletized textures. This will give you great compatibility, but it'll also be powerful enough to run games up to 2004 in XP. You'll be able to run a LOT of games on one rig.

[@philscomputerlab]

Good tips The Yamaha and ESS Solo-1 are the two best PCI sound cards with DOS in mind :)

[@Pholiage]

Will Fastvid work on older hardware too? Duke Nukem 3d or especially Shadow Warrior on a P166MMX struggles at 640x480 or would you say that is the 4k of the 90s?

[@philscomputerlab]

Just try it out, it doesn't cost anything.

[@1sonyzz]

AMD Athlon 64 3000+ 1.8ghz was my first AMD system back in 2006 :)

[@philscomputerlab]

Nice :D After having had a Pentium 4 2.6 for a long time, I got a 754 system with Sempron, and overclocked it to 2.4 GHz! That last me for a while.

[@1sonyzz]

back in the 2012 i bought amd phenom x4 965 black edition, 2015 amd fx8350 and in 2016 i switched to intel i7 6700k for high end gaming machine but my first amd cpu is still working up to this day with windows xp, none of my used cpu's was or is overclocked since i have no need for it :)

[@104d_3rr0r_vince]

This CPU is amazing. At 2GHz with a KV8-MAX3 Abit mobo, an HD3850 AGP gave full framerate with COD4 at 1920x1200. It doesn't work as fast though on an MSI mobo with PCIE and an HD4850 :-/

[@777anarchist]

I've got a s754 WIN98 machine. I was pretty happy with it until I got to know there are AM2 boards with AGP and VIA K8M800 chipset. Those should be perfect for a dual-boot 98/XP rig.

[@dallesamllhals9161]

What's wrong with 939?

[@777anarchist]

@@dallesamllhals9161 Nothing. Just older, more expensive to buy new and the performance is a good step down. If you have one in anything resembling a good condition, really nothing wrong.

[@dallesamllhals9161]

@@777anarchist Sry' what I meant: Socket AM2 with AGP...why?

[@Felix-ve9hs]

I have a Athlon 64 3000+ (Winchester) on a Msi K8T Neo2 with 2x 512MB DDR400 Cl2.5, but diddn't had the time to test anything except for Half Life. Now I have more of an idea of what can expect to run on this Hardware, thanks a lot :) Maybe Im going to look after a copy of Windows 98, but for now Windows XP is all i have

[@philscomputerlab]

So the way I see it, go with 98 if you want DOS action, but otherwise go with XP. All the GOG games for example run great under XP, so that makes life easier. And most Windows 98 games also run great on XP. XP is also easier to use I would say.

[@hcbeissi]

I have that same motherboard or I think it the first Neo. Someone had thrown it away so I picked it up from our garbage can shelter :'D I don't remember other specs but win 98 se works like a charm on it.

[@Felix-ve9hs]

hcbase One man's trash is another man's treasure, right? :)

[@hcbeissi]

Definitely! Btw It was a whole computer, not just the mobo. I just now notices what I wrote.

[@KevinArcade87]

I have a KV-X SE with a AMD Athlon 64 3400 and a Radeon 3850 AGP with 2GB of RAM which Soundcard would you recommend me? And if I would want to switch motherboard and ram which would you recommend me? Thanks

[@fourthdirective]

Silent Hunter II has table fog!

[@mikehays0070]

I wonder, is the CPU or Chipset, or both, that enables this breakthrough discovery to slow down DOS so well. Right now, VIA chipsets are my new favourite chipset!

[@philscomputerlab]

It's the combination of chipset and sound card! Not all of them like each other.