The following is a list of AGP and PCI-e cards showing current price and availability as quoted to me by a parts vendor.

Given a motherboard (such as the VIA-based Asrock) where there is a working PCIe bridge being shown by device manager, and also given the right hacked or modded driver, then:

Which of these are known to work (or to NOT work) on 98se

Asus EN7300GT pci-e Fanless -- $69 - Readily Available
XFX 7600GT pci-e -- $119 - Limited quantities
eVGA 7600GT pci-e -- $119 - Limited quantities
Asus EAX800XT pci-e -- $579 or $749 - Different versions - Limited

XFX 6800GT AGP -- $289 - Very Limited
Albatron 6800GT AGP -- $359 Very Limited
BFG 7800GS AGP -- $279 Readily Available
Sparkle nVIDIA 6200 Ultra 128MB AGP - $49

I would think the Sparkle 6200 would work no problem, but it would be my last resort because it's a low-end card.

I'd rather try the Asus EN7300GT or eVGA7600GT but the messing around I did about a year ago with basically any PCI-e boards on the Asrock motherboard didn't work.

The ATI board above is crazy-priced so it's not an option. What sub-$200 ATI boards (PCIe or AGP) should I look at?

Hi 98 Guy,
For nVidia cards, see this thread: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=97140
Official ATI drivers support up to Radeon 9800 series: http://ati.amd.com/support/drivers/98me/radeonaiw-98me.html
Not sure about newer ATI cards and others.

All cards will run under any OS, or Command line if you have the drivers installed. You need the drivers ( or files that can be used as drivers ) to run any card. Even the most expensive cards can run in 98, 95, Unix, Linux, Sun, and any other you can think of. You also need to know how to iinstall the drivers.

Most cards have installation guides with them. If it can't install the card then it is a proprietary card made
to push you into buying the next OS installation or is not made for that OS.

More recent proprietary cards have all kinds of tools that you would have to use like temperature agent, speed guide, and over clocking options.

It really depends on the motherboard you are using. One motherboard i tried, that claimed it was win98 compatible, and which I think had a VIA chipset, did not run any 6 or 7 series geforce pci-e graphics card I tried on it. Another motherboard, and also the one I am currently using, has an nvidia chipset and works with ALL of the pci-e graphics cards that didn't work in the other motherboard.

I have experimented with win98 compatible motherboards with pci-e slots and can tell you that what you say is not true. At least one win98 compatible motherboard I know of will not work with pci-e graphics cards no matter what drivers you use with them.