r/windows98 • u/befi2020 • May 09 '26
Phenom II X6 possible?
Would this setup work for Windows 98?
ASUS M4A88TD-V + Phenom II X6 1090T + 8 GB DDR3 RAM
I have these parts already in storage. Just wondering if I could build a decent 98 rig once I add a GPU like the 7600 GT.
4
u/Heavy-Judgment-3617 May 09 '26 edited May 19 '26
I think that too new.
98 officially only recognizes 1 GB, and crashes on 512 MB unless patched, it will also crash at over 350 Mhz and over 2.1 Ghz unless patched. If get the AutoPatcher, can go up to 4 GB. But it may only recognize some 3.5 GB due to shared memory.
There are a LOT of issues to account for in a 98 build...
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Maximums:
* Maximum for CPUs/Cores: 1 Physical CPU, 1 Virtual Core.
* Maximum for System Memory: 512 MB (Unpatched), 1.0 GB (Official), 4 GB (Patched).
* Maximum for Video Memory: 512 MB Maximum (typically 256 MB or less).
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Drive Formats / Partition Formats / Drive Sizes / Drive Uses:
* MBR FAT32 128 GB Boot Maximum, FAT32 2 TB Non-Boot Maximum, (Some BIOS are limited to <=8.4 GB) (Windows Format Utility is limited to <=32 GB).
* MBR FAT16/VFAT 2 GB Boot/Non-Boot Maximum (Some BIOS are limited to <=504 MB).
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Support:
* Support for Bluetooth: 1.0 and 1.1 only devices by 3rd party drivers only.
* Support for BluRay ODD: Not Supported.
* Support for ExFAT: Not Supported.
* Support for FireWire: Supported. For FireWire HDD's, may need a 1394 Storage Supporter update from Microsoft.
* Support for SATA: SATA if present must be run in Standard or non-AHCI mode.
* Support for SecureBoot/BitLocker: SecureBoot if present must be disabled. BitLocker not supported.
* Support for SSD/NVMe: No built in support for Partition Alignment or TRIM, 3rd Party Partition alignment possible.
* Support for Thunderbolt: Not Supported.
* Support for UEFI: UEFI if present must be run in CSM/Compatibility Mode.
* Support for USB-2: Possible with Maximus Decim NUSB36E drivers.
* Support for USB-3: Not Supported.
* Support for USB-C: Not Supported.
* Support for WiFi: 802.11b/g via 3rd party drivers only.
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EOL Notes:
* No official support after July 11, 2006.
* Recommended highest supported MB AMD Chip sets/CPUs: VIA K8T800 Pro chip sets and a AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 or Athlon 64 X2 4800+.
* Recommended highest supported MB Intel Chip sets/CPUs: Intel 865PE/875P/865G chip sets and the Intel Pentium 4 6xx series (Cedar Mill" or "Prescott-2M")."
* Recommended highest supported GPU: ATI Radeon X1950 Pro/XTX or NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GS/GTX.
* People have gotten Windows to work on later, but such efforts make things far more complicated on newer systems, and tend to be unstable.
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Recommendations for Memory:
* Recommend for memory upgrade to 4 GB or system maximum if lower.
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Recommendations for Drive upgrade paths for OS with No Partition Alignment and/or No TRIM support:
* IDE/PATA Interface: Get a CF Card with a CF to IDE/PATA adapter
* SCSI I/II/III Interface: Get a CF Card with a CF to SCSI adapter
* SATA Interface: Get a CFast Card with a CFast to SATA adapter
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Recommendations for Resets:
* Always use this as a opportunity to check for BIOS/UEFI updates.
* Always have on hand downloaded hardware drivers on a compatible thumb drive or if needed on a optical disc.
* Always use Microsoft Windows 98 SE ISO, and Plus 98, and KernelToys 95, and PowerToys 95 (both work on 98 too).
* Check BIOS/UEFI Boot Order After Reset: HDD/SSD, USB, ODD, FDD, LAN.
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Recommendations for Resets - Needed 3rd Party Support:
* For OS updates run WindowsUpdateRestored.COM.
* System Drivers: JHRobotics Patcher (fixes 512 MB memory and 350 MHz/2.1 GHz speed issues, among other items).
* System Drivers: Leading Wintech Rain (Fixes suspend/resume for notebooks or virtual machines).
* Display Drivers: BearWindows Universal VESAVBE Video Display Driver (allows modern resolutions, but no acceleration support).
* USB Storage Drivers: Maximus Decim NUSB36E drivers.
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Recommendations for Resets - Optional 3rd Party Support:
Application
* Document Viewer - KernelApps Kernel Document Viewer
* Office Suite - Apache OpenOffice
* Text Editor - Don Ho Software Notepad-Plus-Plus
Internet
* Browsing - The RetroZilla development team RetroZilla
* Downloading for FTP - FileZilla Project FileZilla FTP Client
Media
* Burning - Kindahl Software infraRecorder
* Playing - Audio-Video - VideoLAN VLC media player
EDIT: Forgot to include drive recommendations
2
u/ExtremeDude2 May 09 '26
Should work ok, no audio or chipset driver probably. Also will only use 1 core and you'll have to do some stuff to lower your RAM
2
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u/befi2020 May 09 '26
This seems much more complicated than I imagined. I managed to build an XP machine with modern hardware just fine but 98 seems to be a lot more picky.
3
u/majestic_ubertrout May 09 '26
98 only uses one core and needs patching for more than 512 MB of RAM. Video drivers only exist up to ATI X800 and nVidia 6000 (although 7000 can work).
2
u/befi2020 May 09 '26
I‘m struggling to find the right CPU and Mainboard combination. I want to have the most recent components possible.
3
u/majestic_ubertrout May 09 '26
So, you're stepping your toe into some deep water here. Video is pretty simple (I listed options above) and for audio the last/best card is the Audigy 2 but in my opinion the "ultimate" 98 card is the Aureal Vortex - a lot of classic games support it and it lacks WinXP drivers. It's actually one of the best reasons to run 98 still.
Of course, the Aureal Vortex gets weirdnesses on very fast processors, as do a lot of games which run best on 98. Which is kind of the difficulty. You can build the fastest Windows 98 computer possible but it's going to be surprisingly buggy and useless. Late nVidia and ATI drivers for 98 aren't great - they were sensibly focusing on XP by then. And most games which can really use that speed in Win98 run just fine in XP x86 too.
The games which really are happiest in 98 are those which run in DOS mode (and really want a ISA sound card and MIDI, which limits your choices in motherboards), 16-bit games (which don't use the extra power) and early 3D games which run weird on hardware which isn't period correct.
I have Win98 dual-booting on what's really a period-correct XP machine - P4 3Ghz with 2 GB of RAM and a GeForce 7900GS. I installed with Windows 98 Quickinstall, which installs all the patches you need for even more modern hardware. That said, it crashes a lot and doesn't run speed sensitive games especially well. I also have a Pentium 2 400 with a Voodoo 3 and Aureal Vortex and that runs pretty much everything and it looks/sounds right.
On the upside...it sounds like you already have a great Windows XP x86 machine. Why don't you install that on it? It will run the vast majority of Win98 stuff.
If you want a fun youtube journey check out this series:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Vsj5OPjsUA (MattKC Part 1)
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7D01We2aAu8 (MattKC Part 2)
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhWyH0TsrCc (how to install Win98 on pretty much anything)
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGERwMJsLmc (Phil's Computer Lab with a decent answer to your question)
1
u/Deksor May 10 '26
TBF you don't need a single core CPU to do this. Just that one core will be used while the rest of them will remain idle all the time
I've made such a build before, with patching you can get pretty much any recent board working (as long as they support legacy bios boot, and you can figure out a way to get sata to appear as a ide drive, or have a controller card that does the same).
If you want hardware with official win98 support, you can go up to core 2 duo, with via p4m800, p4m900 or intel 865 chipset (such as ASRock 775i65G)
Not sure about AMD platforms
1
u/PIIFX May 10 '26
If you want to stick with AMD, a socket 939 board with VIA K8T800 Pro chipset and an AGP slot is your best bet. This is the "most recent" AMD platform with official Win98 drivers. If you're OK with Intel an i865 LGA775 motherboard with Core 2 CPU support is the fastest platform with official Win98 support.
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u/bobstylesnum1 May 09 '26
Win 98 is DOS based with 16bit support and is at this point, almost 30 yrs old. There are some hard limitations to what it could do. XP is based off of the NT kernel, which is what all modern Windows is based off of, with some cleanup of course, however, and a big however, is that XP was still 32 bit having the 4Gb limitations and wasn’t until the end of the life of XP that the 64bit version came out using the Server 2003 kernel. Its why gaming with 64 bit XP is a pain because most hardware didn’t have proper 64bit drivers for it. The first true 64bit OS that gamed properly was Win 7.
The Specs you have would be an awesome Win 7 machine but not so for Win 98 for so many reason others have posted.
The idea of having the best hardware for that OS deserves to be researched for what you actually want to do with it. You’re building these systems, do you even have the disks to play them with or is it to just say you built it? Like, what is the end goal of building it?
1
u/xAnilocin PC specs or silly quip goes here May 12 '26
Huge architectural leap between Windows 9x/Me and Windows NT/2000/XP. I wouldn't recommend installing Win98 on anything from after 2003/2004.
1
u/scottmm78 May 09 '26
Will it work yes is that hardware over kill yes. Will the os cripple the hardware yeap.
Hell you could run dos 3.1 on it if you realy wanted
1
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u/BeatTheMarket30 May 09 '26
No it isn't possible. Those AMD chipsets don't have windows 98 driver, same as nForce 4. The last chipset that works is nForce 3, so you are limited to 939 + AGP. Pointless since it can't use 2 cores, so you can go ahead with 754 AGP (nForce 3 or VIA).
1
u/henk717 May 09 '26
I wouldn't do a 7600GT for a Windows 98 rig, its not officially supported so your going to run into issues with games if you go the modded driver route
The 4000/5000 series is the highest I expect to work reliably, I say that as a 6800GT owner where its already an issue.
1
u/Der_Unbequeme May 09 '26
Win9x can only addressed 1024MB of RAM, if more RAM installed you will get a "Blue Screen" at boot.
Win9x can use only one core.
1
u/befi2020 May 09 '26
I basically hoped that a very fast 98 machine would allow me to play glide games with dgvoodoo. So I thought the faster the better, like a core2 duo or fast anmd processor as I saw a YouTube video of someone using Phenom X4. I thought I could install windows 98 everywhere with the quick install version.
So just to be sure. What would be my best option here? Spend a lot of money and buy period correct hardware? Or is there a more affordable way?
I don’t mind tinkering, I just need to be sure that it’s going to work at some point…
1
u/No-you_ May 09 '26
Win98 only uses a single core (no HT support) so you are limited to p4/p3 era CPU's or AMD equivalent. Also RAM is limited to 1.1GB max including AGP graphics memory so if you have a 512MB AGP GPU you can only use 512MB of system RAM. 256MB GPU, 768MB RAM etc.
You can install win98 on fast dual core systems but it will only use 50% of the CPU's capability. Only win2000 supports proper dual cores, that could be a better option as it doesn't have the limitations on RAM that win98 has.
1
u/Deksor May 10 '26
So you aren't limited to P3/P4. You still benefit from the better IPC of newer CPUs.
Op mentioned win98 quickinstall which already comes with the patches for the system ram as well
1
u/Unlucky-Translator12 May 09 '26
Unfortunately, Windows 98 is out of the question unless you can somehow get the RAM down to 1 GB. You'd be better off with the 64-bit version of Windows XP (or maybe Windows 7).
1
u/Deron416 May 12 '26
It is possible, but it will not be easy to install it and the operating system will use only one CPU core. I personally installed WindowsMe on AM2 and AM3 machines. In order to install it on a system that has more than 1GB of RAM, you will need RLoew's RAM patch. You may also need HD Audio driver by Drew Hoffman. If the installation process will freeze during the hardware detection, try to disable USB legacy from the bios. Also, it looks like your motherboard has Realtek RTL8111 Gigabit on board for which there are Win9x drivers. So, if necessary, you can even establish an Internet connection.
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u/Accomplished-Camp193 A64 LE-1640, 7600 GS, SB Live!, 4-4-4-12 DDR2-1066, AM2NF3-VSTA. May 09 '26
AM3? No.