ASRock ConRoe865PE --> just for laughs...

[ragnargd]

1 hour ago, LoneCrusader said:

I see.. I didn't take into account the Quad support, so I suppose the ConRoe board has some degree of advantage there. However Windows 9x cannot use these other cores anyway, so a single-core P4 with a higher raw clock speed should still be better for 9x than a Quad.

The most performance i get out of my AM3+/8350FX/GTX7900 combo (and the Titan/970GTX for XP/W10 in the second 16x slot <-- one of these is to replace the 770GTX).

The best AGP-performance comes under XP with an ATI 3850 HD. I just couldn't care less.

This is all about comprimise, and for everyone the MMV.

My systems are there to multi-boot, because i have already enough machines cramped into my room - and w98se (and XP) is rather a secondary use on those (even if building them takes the most time).

So, for me, the performance on W10 (or Ubuntu or, upcoming, ARCH Linux on my real workhorses) is the one most important thing. THEN  good w98se performance comes second. That's why Quad and moaaaar RAM rule for me.

The AM3+/8350FX/GTX7900 combo (esp. with the fine SSD to boot) delivers more than enough speed for all games i know under w98se.

The one legacy system i kept is an ATI 9700 Pro AGP 256MB with a nice-looking passive cooler (exactly this combo: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/zalman-zm80a,594.html), an AMD 3000+ on Socket 754 (µATX) with a nice looking passive cooler (this one: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/10-mammoth-cpu-coolers,1053-23.html without the fan), and a Terratec Soundcard. At that time, this was cheaper, faster and better than the usual NVidia/Intel/Soundblaster-combo - and therefore a little bit more bad-a**... ...and is my only system that doesn't even carry XP. Why should it. It's perfect.

Older ASRock-boards have always been of lower quality, only very recently (since Z77 chipset) they are on par with Asus and the like. Most here praise them for ASRocks "i use old but cheap parts", as exactly that cheapo-attitude resulted in boards that can still run w98se at all, and are still available. It's one of those incidents... and it's not by chance that those compatible AM3+ boards are mainly by ASRock. It was the same with ABit, somehow (anyone here remember the glorious BP6, Dual-Celeron with that ***** components?).

I was never able to do ANY kind of overclocking on ASRock boards until recently.

My true love never belonged to hardware. It's the games, and, to a certain - but smaller - degree, w98se itself, for the nostalgia.

Edited August 15, 2017 by ragnargd

[ruthan]

Quote

Also, based on reports I've seen I'm not certain ASRock has the same level of quality as Gigabyte or DFI but I've never used ASRock so I don't know. 

  I can tell, that board is not ideal from OC point of view CPU power part has only 4 phases and SATA support sucks, compatibility mode is not working at least with my SATA III SSD.. Oterwise is fine.

  I dont care about Quad because it means 130W+ and i one thing is that machine is slow (from todays) perspective and second that is noisy - that were wrong for old school gaming. I rember days where cpus were without any heat sinks. I have wery big passive cooler on my Core 2 Dua and 1 Noctua 500 PRM fan is here only as icing on the cake..

Advantage of Asrock was avalways that they were able to bundle everything with everything together and some users really like such combos, from specs perspective there are nice, from stability perspective there are usually isssues. I have now one Z97 board with Asmedia Sata and USB controlerr, which are nice for Windows XP, but are not stable in Windows 7..

Edited August 15, 2017 by ruthan

[98SE]

On 8/14/2017 at 0:34 AM, ragnargd said:

I own three such boards, with the VIA chipset (ASRock 4coreDual etc.)... I got them working with w98se, xp and w10 just right, but still... some alternative would have been nice, right?

The intel chipset is just better to handle, native drivers directly from Gigabyte and such...

If i could get my hands on one of those GA-8I865PE775-G-RH ... <-- corrected, because to Quad-Support...

(still, some chinese trader hoarding this ConRoe865PE board in his backyard, trying to sell it for an absolutely too high price, even if you consider collectors, and then with that typo... it remains funny, even on second sight...)

As others have mentioned the Dual core wouldn't apply to 98SE in performance boost.

What's interesting is the highest performing single core of the CPU regardless if Dual or Quad core.

Second is working DMA ISA slots a lot of these industrial motherboards don't have the DMA feature making DOS Sound Blaster ISA cards unusable.

So an AGP/PCIe/PCI/DMA ISA slot motherboard with the maximum CPU possible would be the most important for dealing with DOS and 9X/ME gaming.  Memory of 4GB/8GB/16GB are only bonuses for Ramdrive possibilities.  I don't care too much if it is SATA 1 or 2 but IDE and Floppy controllers should also be present.  Two PS/2 ports would be best or 5 Pin DIN for sturdiness.  Serial and Parallel Ports would be nice as well.

So whatever motherboard (if it exists or can be manufactured) encompasses those requirements I would put at the top tier for legacy gaming.