Windows 9x Builds

Hardware

CPU / Motherboard Platform

A popular target is the Intel 440BX motherboard combined with a supported CPU, which can include up to a Pentium 3 "Tualatin" with some motherboards.

Some people prefer to maintain period authenticity by using hardware from the time. However, it is possible to run Windows 9x on newer hardware, up to some Core 2 boards using Intel 865 or Athlon 64 boards with K8T800. By running such fast hardware, you eliminate potential CPU bottlenecks and there are numerous games that can benefit from this.

If 3.3v AGP support is required, for example to use 3dfx Voodoo5, the VIA KT333 chipset is the top performing choice.

2D Card

Matrox cards are often considered good choices as a companion for Voodoo3. They have sharp output.

NVIDIA cards are a somewhat risky choice in that the quality of the boards vary a lot. They are all very fast accelerators, but the output quality varies from blurry mess to razor sharp depending on the manufacturing quality.

Voodoo Banshee through Voodoo5 have high performance GUI accelerators and typically have sharp output as well.

S3 cards such as Trio64 and the various ViRGE chips are adequate GUI cards, but they often don't maintain sharp output at high resolutions.

3DLabs Permedia 2 cards like Diamond FireGL 1000 Pro are often sharp and they are fast. These were low-end CAD cards and so may be likely to have maintained a certain quality level.

3D Card

The can't-go-wrong choices are the 3dfx Voodoo 2-5 cards. Games from the time were often designed around 3dfx hardware features, even Direct3D and OpenGL games. Glide support is of course very common in games of the day. Some D3D games use features like 8-bit paletted textures and table fog which are 3dfx-related features that not all other cards support/emulate.

NVIDIA GeForce 256 through FX cards make good choices too because they support the popular features of the time. They also have exceptional OpenGL support. Note that RIVA TNT/TNT2 and GeForce 6 lack paletted texture support.

ATI cards are best avoided because they do not support table fog or 8-bit paletted textures.

There are of course other obscure cards that have some interesting games accessible through proprietary APIs, such as Rendition Verite cards and Diamond Edge3D.

Sound Cards

Typically you should look at Aureal Vortex 2, Creative Sound Blaster Live! or Audigy. Vortex 2 supports A3D 2.0 and some games use it to great effect. Creative cards get you quality EAX support and some games do use that well, and Aureal cards do not emulate it properly.

Software

Operating System

Windows 9x encompasses Windows 95, Windows 98(SE) and Windows Millennium.

• Windows 95 essentially lacks support for AGP and USB and so isn't useful unless that hardware isn't needed. Windows 95 is lighter weight than 98 though and is very fast.

• Windows 98's original release is unrefined so it's best to use Second Edition (98SE).

• Windows Millennium has numerous advancements over 98SE but it also has some limitations and quirks that cause people to prefer 98SE.