Win 95-98 PC

[kittycannon]

I have a small collection of older games that are a pain in the arse to get running on a more modern system. So I have decided that a older system would be what I need.

 

I am looking for a higher end (for the time period) system, that isn't going to brake the bank.

 

Any suggestions for parts would be greatly appreciated! 

[NelizMastr]

Are we talking mid to late 90's games, both Windows and DOS or what?

 

The cheapest way to get a Win98 system would be going for an Athlon XP or Pentium 4 system from around 2003-2004 ish. Stuff like that is often thrown out for free.

If you want something period correct, I'd say go for a socket A Athlon 1GHz+ or Pentium III 1GHz on socket 370. In terms of RAM, any PC100 memory will do, I recommend 256MB and at most 512MB as that's the limit of what 98 can handle. OS Win98SE all the way. 

 

If you use newer boards with AGP 8x, not all suggested graphics cards below will work, as they are often AGP 2x/4x cards with different voltages.

 

General idea of what to get:

 

AMD:

- Athlon 1GHz or Athlon XP 1600+ / 2400+ (at best) (palomino/thoroughbred)

- 256/384/512MB RAM, PC100/133 or DDR memory will work fine too

- GeForce 3 (/Ti200/Ti500) / GeForce 4 (Ti 4200/4400/4600) or ATI Radeon 8500/9500 or if you're baller, 3DFX Voodoo 3 2000/3000 or Voodoo 5.

 

Intel:

 

- Pentium III 1GHz / Pentium 4 2.0-2.8HT (Northwood, 512K)

- 256/384/512MB RAM, PC100/133 or DDR memory will work fine too

- GeForce 3 (/Ti200/Ti500) / GeForce 4 (Ti 4200/4400/4600) or ATI Radeon 8500/9500 or if you're baller, 3DFX Voodoo 3 2000/3000 or Voodoo 5.

[kittycannon]

Just now, NelizMastr said:

Are we talking mid to late 90's games, both Windows and DOS or what?

 

The cheapest way to get a Win98 system would be going for an Athlon XP or Pentium 4 system from around 2003-2004 ish. Stuff like that is often thrown out for free.

If you want something period correct, I'd say go for a socket A Athlon 1GHz+ or Pentium III 1GHz on socket 370. In terms of RAM, any PC100 memory will do, I recommend 256MB and at most 512MB as that's the limit of what 98 can handle. OS Win98SE all the way. 

 

If you use newer boards with AGP 8x, not all suggested graphics cards below will work, as they are often AGP 2x/4x cards with different voltages.

 

General idea of what to get:

 

AMD:

- Athlon 1GHz or Athlon XP 1600+ / 2400+ (at best) (palomino/thoroughbred)

- 256/384/512MB RAM, PC100/133 or DDR memory will work fine too

- GeForce 3 (/Ti200/Ti500) / GeForce 4 (Ti 4200/4400/4600) or ATI Radeon 8500/9500 or if you're baller, 3DFX Voodoo 3 2000/3000 or Voodoo 5.

 

Intel:

 

- Pentium III 1GHz / Pentium 4 2.0-2.8HT (Northwood, 512K)

- 256/384/512MB RAM, PC100/133 or DDR memory will work fine too

- GeForce 3 (/Ti200/Ti500) / GeForce 4 (Ti 4200/4400/4600) or ATI Radeon 8500/9500 or if you're baller, 3DFX Voodoo 3 2000/3000 or Voodoo 5.

I'm going to go with prob just windows, as most if not all of my games are windows. Thanks for the reply!

[NelizMastr]

The higher end games from the era, i.e. Quake 3/UT99 type of deal, will run best on something like an Athlon XP or Pentium 4, but if you play games not quite as demanding, a P3/Athlon/Duron will work just fine for them framerates.

[chiller15]

Use a VM for this. New hardware most likely won't work on such an old OS and you'll probably struggle to find hardware from that time.

[kittycannon]

4 minutes ago, chiller15 said:

Use a VM for this. New hardware most likely won't work on such an old OS and you'll probably struggle to find hardware from that time.

I'll try it and see if it works for me.