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[done! be my guest!] Hi, it's time to post my resume on my research on AMD-chipsets and boards. This will be a long post, split up in some mails, for the purpose of clarity and transparency. All of this is not "matter-of-fact", but my very personal opinion and experience, so: YMMV ------------------ In a nutshell: After all the years, with the appearance of the 870A chipset, AMD-boards, with the modern socket AM3+ appear on the screen for W98SE-User with a Bang! And we didn't see that coming... Depending on board and chipset, they have some drawbacks and advantages, but something can be said right now: There has never been better compatibility. Some work just right out of the box, and with a minimum of AddIn-cards, you get gaming-enabled boards. You can now go to the shop, and, by careful selection, buy a brand-new board, a brand-new CPU, install, and have fun! (and perhaps a NIC, if you are lazy, and definitely a used sound-card, as the necessary exception from the rule). This is WAY better than P35/P45 or similar Intel-Chipsets, and as a bonus on top, provides excellent Dual-Boot capability with Windows 10 (and XP, of course, but that goes without saying). All of this would not have been possible without the help and programming skills of RLoew, one way or the other, so Kudos to him!!! ------------------ I added some further mails: - one for each chipset tested (AMD 970, 990*, 870A, 890, 880G*, 770) (*not done yet, but will follow later) - one for miscallaenous hardware that was tested (to make this happen), and - one for the "Dual-GPU-stunt", which is of interest for people who want to Dual-boot with i.e. XP and W10, and want to put in some extra effort to have such a modern machine ready for some serious gaming, while they are at it. ------------------- What to think about, before trying this yourself: The socket AM3+ provides space for the modern FX- and Opteron-CPUs, capable, and cheap (and for legacy, use your old Phenom II or Athlon II, that would otherwise gather dust in the corner). Unfortunately, they have some drawbacks: Their single-thread performance cannot touch those of modern Intel CPUs, and to add insult to pain, they can only deliver their subpar speed with an enormous usage of power. Even though their idle-power usage is actually not really bad (and, if done right, still better that i.e. Intel Wolfdale or Yorkfield CPUs, like the latest Core 2 Duo or Core 2 Quad, and maybe even on par with the first generation of i3/i5/i7), these are not really machines for your everyday use, especially with the dual-GPU-stunt. Still, a machine with a good AMD 970 board, and some ATI x800 or NVidia GF 7600 GT, can still provide a good gaming experience on W98SE (and perhaps even XP), and provide an ok machine for browsing and such activities on W10 64bit. Believe me, it is still a much more performant combination than any Legacy-build. And regarding legacy hardware now slowly becoming expensive on ebay, and ageing, this may even be the cheapest solution, if you don't have the right - and *intact* - hardware lying around. And as a (perhaps secondary) machine built for gaming only, you can, via the dual-GPU-stunt, enjoy Full-HD-gaming in XP and W10, and, with some restrictions, on W98SE as well (kind of... more in the "normal" HD range...) IMHO: At the moment, these provide the best build for W98SE on "modern" PCs. Maybe this will change again some time later, when RLoews research on modern Intel-chipsets succeeds. But until then... ;-) -------------------- Restrictions, and problems (of which most can be circumvented by choosing the right hardware): On many boards, you will have difficult times - at least during installation, and definitely with KVM-switches - if they don't have two separate PS/2-ports. PCI-PS/2-port cards (of which i only know of one model) don't work at all on the boards tested by me. For W9*5* users, this means, either to have two PS/2-ports, or end of the show (for experience with W95 on such chipsets, better ask RLoew, as i don't use it, and equally I'm not using WME...). If you want sound, you need a compatible Soundcard, and a free and well-positioned PCI slot on that board. I always recommend Soundblaster Audigy 1 or 2 PCI. For LAN, boards with the RTL 8111E are common, and if you know how to, you can use them with the NDIS2-driver (aka DOS-driver). I always have problems with that, so, as there are always ample of free PCIe 1x slots on those boards, for my convenience, i install an RTL 8111B Gigabit NIC, which can be bought in shops, and has drivers for W9x. For NVidia-cards on 890 and AMD 9xxx chipsets, to avoid stuttering because of an incompatibility of the NVidia-Driver with those chipsets, you need a commercial patch by RLoew. It also includes the NVidia-Ram-Size Fix, so this gives you further options. You don't need this on 870A chipsets (and probably not on 880G chipsets). You don't need this patch for ATI-cards, like the x800, so, yes, AMD/ATI-fanboys can rejoyce... :-) Because USB2 on W98SE will only work (on AMD 9xx and 890 chipsets, and not hang your board on 870A) when you fiddle with the USB2-legacy-settings, you will have trouble with booting from USB-devices, which very often need legacy-compatibility. If you do that (as i.e. you don't want to work with DVD-drives), you will have to find an individual way around this. It always woked out for me in the end, but was tedious. -------------------- All of this may work with AM2, AM2+ or AM3 boards, if you have one of those lying around, provided they have the same chipsets. But don't bet on that, and, moreover, better don't spend money or much time on those - this has been tried, with unconvincing results. And, until further notice: The AMD 770/710 chipset, today also sold as "AMD 980", or "760G", is NOT fit for W98SE (even though they are tempting, because of their onboard-equipment looking like feature-heaven for W9x-users). You have been warned. -------------------- Why i did all this: 1. for the same reason old man (with too much time and money... kind of...) lay under old (nice) cars on their weekends 2. since the ASRock Dual Series, i had some Phenom II lying around, and i asked myself: Why the f*** can't i run an AMD CPU with W98SE AND W10 on the same machine? I can do this with Intel... heck... now... let's do this... -------------------- I hope all of this is useful for you - it was nice for me, but pretty expensive. Does anyone need an AMD 770 board right now? ... Cheers, Ragnar G.D.

Hi, i've installed W98SE on an MSI 970A SLI Krait, and also installed XP pro 32bit, and W10 home 64bit. ------------------------------------ Hardware: ------------------------------------ AMD FX 4320 (4 cores, 95W TDP, 4GHz base, 4.2 HGz Turbo) Soundblaster Audigy PCI TP-Link RTL8111B Gigabit PCIe 1x 1 GB Ram (all works fine with 32GB, might have 16GB in the end) 3 SSDs (60GB SATA III FAT32 for W98SE, 120GB SATA III NTFS for XP, 240GB SATA III NTFS for W10 home 64bit) 1 DVD-RAM SATA 2 x EVGA NVidia GeForce 7900 GTX 512MB PCIe, linked with SLI bridge USB2 works on all OS (compatibility set to "Auto", USB3 on XP and W10) Temporarily a SATA I-controller to have a DVD on W98SE, but will most probably switch to RLoews SATA-patch, IF i keep this machine... ------------------------------------ The minor issues ------------------------------------ The OS and hardware installed, there were only minor issues: - i had to switch to Ushers method early on during the installation of W98SE even with just 1 GB of Ram - on this board, although the chipset allows for it, MSI did not implement separate ATA/AHCI-settings for the SATA-channels 5 and 6, so i installed W98SE on the controller in IDE/ATA-mode, and when installing XP and W10, switched to AHCI-mode. This of course set the controller in W98SE to compatibility-mode, which voids the use of other SATA-Devices (like the DVD-RAM). I used an add-in SATA-I controller for $things from DVD, but removed it later. I guess this means getting RLoews SATA-patch later on, if i want to have normal operations with the onboard-controller set to AHCI. This is a minor issue on W98SE, though, as with the SSD, the system is still fast. - The board has bad quality-control by MSI, so many people had to swap boards with their seller, until they had a working one in the end, and so was me: Only on the third attempt i had a working one. ------------------------------------ SLI-Issues ------------------------------------ No, there is no SLI on W98SE (yet). I'm pretty sure this will not change, as i learned about SLI from i.e. the "Hybrid-SLI"-mod-community, and i know, the issue is complicated. Still, i wanted to use SLI at least on XP and W10. My question, now (already posted on the german MSI-forum, and NVidias SLI-support-community-forum): Why does the SLI-option not show up in my NVidia-System panel (in XP or W10) ?!? I know this is not directly related to W9x... if you can point me to a place where this is to be located... move this thread, and tell me... I know that RLoew has this board as well: Did you try SLI? Do you have any idea? Cheers, Ragnar G.D.