Building High Performance Windows 98 Retro Gaming PC with Pentium 4 and GeForce FX

Just wanted to share some good news with Phil.

Got a hold of a Soltek Qbic EQ3401A.
Bought second-hand, no massive info in regards to specs, so I had to make best guess from old articles. And I was decently lucky.
CPU: Pentium 4, 2.8 GHz. (Could have been a celeron)
Mobo: Intel 865 chipset. (Soltek custom)
RAM: DDR 256 MB, single stick.
Videocard: FX5200 passive. Dead on arrival. (Could have been on iGPU)
Storage: HDD, IDE. Slow.
Floppy and optical (CD x52).

It turns on. The Videocard didn't work proper it seems. And the BIOS is incorrectly setup with S-ATA setting. (Possibly, because it's running XP and former owner must have set it that way).
Used my Geforce MX4000 and got to the POST message, telling me the issues.
Pressed F2 to continue and booted into WinXP.

After everything was working, I decided to test my Radeon 9600XT.
And presto. I have image and it's registered.

Now...
To re-learn how to install Win98SE and drivers and all that jazz. xD

Why would a 20 year old machine be quiet 😕

You cant always judge good caps by the brand, the cap plauge had several companies putting name brand shrink wrap on their parts, so yea counterfit caps. You should look for leaking, swelling and top bulging.

Have monster 478 cooler never opened and made for the P4 3 ghz

i have a asus p4p800s...845 chipset ...p4 2.0....512mb 400mhz and a fx 5200 128mb agp for win 98 se.. no issues with usb or using sata and the ide together....very stable and fast

How is DOS gaming on this build?

I hope windows 10 pc or windows xp pc has 98

Wow. Retro build in 4k
Phil, you have a new subscriber! Nice to e-meet you!

Ok what did he put on cpu? No thernak needed?

The quadros are very expensive the agp ones at least

Mattkc did it better.

What version of Fraps do you use for Windows 98? What version can I use for it?

Thanks for glquake.. seing this in computer club back in the days had a huge impact on me. Wow effect was comparable to first unreal and q3 experience as it is my all time favourite game.

My guess on Rayman, is that in-game it's 60, but cutscenes are 30. I'm pretty sure it's a Dreamcast port.

I will use my ATI 3850 for Win98 build

What are the list of specs?

Hey Phil! Okay I got everything working on my P4.. however cannot get the gpu working. Using an ATI x800.. I used your 6.2 on your site and it reads in the hardware, but with a question mark? Error code 12 also a secondary shows up with error code 23. Every time I try to update it.. it always asks me to insert Installation ATI CD. I’ve even tried to extract the entire folder and burnt it on a cd drive and copied everything over from D drive to C drive.. I know this sounds confusing.. but any help would be great!!

Great video could you help ne about solve my problem on my build? My motherboard hiper 865gv-ich5 478 socket same P4 CPU, FX5500 AGP, 512 MB ram can swap to 1 GB (tried both) 160 GB sata HDD also tried ssd both worked. Problem is when i try install Windows 98 SE after serial screen shows Windows 98 splash screen an stuck forever i cant pass. Trying reset system or power off still same issue. I tried different motherboards HDD rams and different ISO for Windows i cant solve. Great videos Man thanks keep it up

never seen someone before, putting sandpaper on a cpu to cool it, lol

i recently purchase this motherboard used. great motherboard but , despite the new battery, cmos settings keeps resetting on power loss.

I have no idea what power supply to buy. Can anyone help me? finding the exact one in the video is impossible now. i have all the other parts in the video. just need recommended PSUS

Hello Phil,

As always, pleasure to see your videos, good work!

Just a quick note, the hardware configuration for this video, is excellent configuration for Windows 2000, it will serve windows 2000 excellent. Windows 2000 and this motherboard will work really nicely with each other. The Nvidia Quadro FX 3000 will work really well, using enterprise/studio grade drivers for Quadro, known to be extra stable and extra reliable , and it will not compromise on OpenGL/DirectX gaming, as long as you take some attention to driver installers. My experience using and building systems with Windows 2000 shows the best way is:

1. Install Chipset driver
2. Reboot
3. Install GPU driver
4. Reboot
5. Install sound card drivers
6. Reboot
7. Optional install but good to have - You can also install OpenAL - OpenAudio Library, it works good favor for sound effects, basically improving spacial and positioning effects on sounds for many games without using creative sound cards and their respective CMSS or EAX
8. Install network card drivers
9. Reboot
10. Install OpenGL, for Windows 2000 it is a separate installer, you must install it additionally/separately.
11. Reboot
12. Install DirectX, for Windows 2000 it is a separate installer, you must install it additionally/separately.
13. Fully update Windows 2000 to following levels SP2 SRP1 as intermediate stage and then SP4 SRP1 as its final stage - You want the SRP1 stages, they are the important ones. They introduce some features and compatibilities, which regular SP do not. Reboot when prompted.


Tip:
About the CPU, Windows 2000 with SRP1s for bot SP2 and SP4 will make a good use of Pentium 4 with Hyper-threading and it will be able to use both threads, manage them and schedule them in an optimal way.

Tip: Do not install more than 3 GB of RAM for Windows 2000, Best case scenario is 2GB RAM in Dual channel is more beneficial for performance, you will feel the difference, compared to 3 GB RAM in single channel.

Now Windows 2000 is good to go and it will surprise you with compatible, stable and reliable work in games in both DirectX and OpenGL mode.

pentium 4 willamette, gigabyte 8tx, rdram 1024 megabytes 4x256mb 400 mhz, geforce fx 5800 ultra, sound blaster audigy 2 platinum

quadro fx 700, quadro fx 1000 graphics cards are better than geforce fx 5800 ultra

Inspired me to use this mainboard on a build. Went a different way.
P4 3.2GHz
1000w EVGA Supernova G+ PSU
Geforce 7800 GS 8XAGP
2GB 2x 1GB PC3200 DDR 400Mhz
Added DVD drive, Wireless PCI card, Soundblaster, Gotek Floppy emu, Kingwin Fan controller with 2 case fans inside an Enermax CS-125.

Waiting for the HD gpus to come available on eBay for that final best in slot AGP. Running windows XP.

Just bought a shabby 5900XT for 8 bucks. Crossed fingers that it works as stated.

Hey Phil, just wanted to drop a comment to say thank you so much for this video! I just completed my own windows 98 build and I used this as a guide for parts etc. The machine is working great and I can play all those old games I used to play as a kid/wish I could have played had I had the money. My next project is a windows XP machine based on one of your other videos. Love watching all these builds - keep up the great work!

Greetings Phill.
As I'm preparing for a first Win98 build, I can guess an FX 5900XT isn't way overkill afterall, especially when considering year 2000-2002 games, plus a 19" LCD/1280*1024 when supported (a nice NEC/IPS from 2015).
Frankly though my main aim is Tombraider 3.
I do intend to film it and upload, hence that might delay it a couple of months more :D
P.S. you well know the dilemma between keeping a rare/sealed FX5900 (in this case) or use it for yourself. Enjoyable but would still hurts.

I went with a 5950 ultra

Do u keep reusing the same CD drive

I just pulled my old Pentium 4 3.2 GHz machine out of storage and it works fine, it has a Geforce 5950 so was wondering if I could actually put Windows 98 on it. It's been a long time since I used that OS and wanted to play around with it. era faithful parts are so expensive so if I can get it working on the machine I have that would be awesome.

Hello where did you buy the sheet to replace the CPU thermal paste ? Greetings

Can u fit a 4090 on this tho

I have an ati rage 128 pro and pentium 3 700 mhz pc

Many thanks Phil for all your videos which have helped me a lot. Managed to refurb my Dell XPS 233 mmx system which was the 1st bought 30+ years ago. Also got the P4 system shown in the video. AGP if the best interface for graphics cards for compatibility. A lot of games don't like PCI-E cards. Keep up the good work !!!!

Lol I have this exact same cooler on my FX5900 Ultra, that's what this Quadro is based on I'm guessing? I remember ironically buying it for 20 euros in 2011 with the stigma on the FX-series and while thinking about starting a project of benchmark cards through generations. They are offered on Ebay for around 400usd these days, nostalgia is one hell of a drug.

Hi Phil! Following your excellent videos. I did exactly same setup as you, ASRock P4i65g + pentium 4 2.4ghz. It is running windows 98 very well but when i try to install usb 2.0 drivers i cant get all usb ports working with my Ugreen USB HDMI KVM switch (unfortunately i have single keyboard&mouse&monitor setup with more modern computer. So i am using single setup with 2 pcs) problem is if i instal intel usb 2.0 drivers downloaded from Asrock website if i switch usb ports, system freezes. If i install Nusb drivers then I am getting BSOD. I am wondering if you faced any issue with usb 2.0 devices with different ports? You know Asrock mobo has 6 usb ports at the back plus i have 2 more at front case. Thanks & Keep up good videos!

@philscomputerlab this is the build i was refering, but the p4 i have is 3.0 ghz/1M/800

@philscomputerlab why not run 4gb of RAM? Doesn't WinXP support up to 4?

If you are looking for a cheap but solid Pentium 4 platform with the 865 chipset, i suggest you get an HP D530 SFF pc! "But that's a low profile pc, i want to be able to use full sized graphics cards!!" and i would say yes, i know, but hear me out! The mobo inside these computers use the standard micro atx platform, so you can put it into a regular tower case no problem! Yes you won't have the I/O shield, but if that doesn't matter to you, you can build an awesome P4 pc with this board like i did! I have a P4 3Ghz with 512mb and a good cooler on it and it works fine! And the Geforce FX is great for Win98 gaming! I know this video is 4 years old, but it is still relevant, and maby Phil can show off a build using one of these motherboards! The early ones use bad caps, but the later ones use good quality caps!

WDDM support:
Internal graphics (Intel Extreme Graphics 2): No WDDM support, XDDM only
External graphice (GeForce FX): WDDM 1.0

What do you think about ati radeon graphics card

Howdy.
I managed to set up my first Retro PC with Windows 98SE. The PC has the following configuration: MB Fujitsu D1215-A22 GS3 (mATX Intel 815e chipset), 2x128MB SDRAM, CPU P III 1GHz Socket 370, integrated video and audio but I disabled them in the BIOS. As a video card, I first used an S3 Savage 4 LE with 8MB VRAM, which you also reviewed on your channel. And I did some tests in 3DMark99Max and got a score of 6192 points in the resolution of 640x480, a particularly good score. Then I tested the same video card in Quake 2 and at the resolution of 640x480 and OpenGL I had over 75fps in timedemo 1.🤩
After that I tested some more games and then I said to move on to something more serious and change the video card with a more powerful one. And I put the most powerful video card on AGP that I own, an ASUS V9520/TD/N/128MB (FX5200, 128MB VRAM 128-bit). And in 3DMark99max I obtained 7130 points in 640x480 and 7007 points in 800x600.
And then I wanted to do some test in Quake 2 and that's where the problems started. When I enable OpenGL, no matter what I do, it goes into software rendering. And in the game Return To Castle Wolfenstein I get an error like "could not load OpenGL subsystem..."🤨
The system has DirectX7 installed and my question is the following: FX5200 does not support Open GL as a rendering method or is it something related to the video drivers? Maybe I didn't download the right version?🤔
I know that I downloaded some drivers from nVidia (I don't know which version) because I couldn't find anything on the ASUS vendor site.🤐
Please help me with a suggestion if you can, how to solve this problem. 🙏And please take care of your health. 💪Thanks in advance!🤗

Why don't you cap your fps?

I have something like this, Its a Slot1 Pentium 3 600 Mhz, and an FX5200 LP. Almost all OEM or old-ish parts, but was nice enough to run the small selection I have.

scythe infinity 1000 ultra motherboard abit iC7 MAX3 processor pentium 4 willamette or pentium 4 northwood memory ram ddr1 1024 megabytes 4x256 megabytes 400 megahertz graphics card radeon X1950 XT agp windows xp or geforce 2 ultra agp windows millennium

I would love to do something like this someday

Hi again! Phil, I got a weird issue with my Pentium 4/Win98SE setup. As I mentioned before, I have same motherboard, same CPU with you except SB Live 0220 sound card, ATI Radeon 9250. I dont know why, Win98SE is freezing sometimes (especially when I install Plus! 98 software. it happens time to time when I install other softwares too. When I uninstall PLus! and/or reinstall it, it doesnt freeze anymore. Why do you think this happens? Did you face freeze issue too? I am also using USB KVM Switch for keyboard and mouse. it is also causing a bit slow-down boots. I know win98 is not good with usb devices but I dont have another option unfortunately.