the MX300 is THE soundcard for the era. if not that card, then the first audigy. If you have a A2-zs then just use that. while its a little new to be period correct, it was probably the best pci sound card until the x-fi. And even that is debatable.

The differences between 2000 and xp are negligable. if it will run in 2k it will run in XP. Thats what I found on my retro-gamer. At least the one I play Quake 3 /unreal on.

Here is a link to a few photos: http://imgur.com/a/ZJ6U2

I will look in to the MX300. Right now I am running the Live! with no issues. Probably will pop the Audigy in later.

I went with Windows XP. Just fired it up, and I am very pleased with the speed of the setup. Deus Ex gave me a little trouble at first, but I got the most recent patch and it corrected some D3D issues the game has.

luckybob wrote:

The differences between 2000 and xp are negligable. if it will run in 2k it will run in XP. Thats what I found on my retro-gamer. At least the one I play Quake 3 /unreal on.

This is true until you start installing service packs. SP1 and 2 are fast enough but with SP3 XP is dog slow and will easily gobble RAM and run pretty badly.

I'm running SP3 on a ThinkPad with 500mhz PIII and 256mb memory and have no troubles with it. Though it was a slipstreamed install disc I used; it's possible upgrading an SP1 or 2 machine will add bloat.

I'd say stay with the Live! 3Dfx cards ain't all that great either, the passthrough cable needed for V1 and V2 ruins the video quality.
Your best bet would be to find a PCI version of a Voodoo 3,4,5 (last two are very expensive though) and use them for games that will not run otherwise. The GeForce 3 though should run most of the games you'd want to play (excluding Glide of course) and it works much better in DOS with VESA games.
Since you have the processor power you could also use this:
http://www.zeus-software.com/downloads/nglide
It should allow you to run most Glide games just fine 😁

Yeah, Voodoo3/4/5 are a big quality improvement over Voodoo1-2 because of the move away from the passthrough cable. Voodoo3/4/5 are also top tier VGA and 2D GUI cards.

The Aureal Vortex vs. 2K/XP story is complicated. Aureal never completed quality drivers for NT5. Microsoft actually worked on them after Aureal died. There are beta drivers with some acceleration and A3D support but they are buggy/unstable. XP's stock Vortex drivers have acceleration but it is as stated. There are newer drivers on Windows Update but they remove the unfinished acceleration features. These cards are best used with Win9x but even there I run into bugs and stability issues frequently.

I knew nothing about the mx300 previously. I did have a "plain" Aureal Vortex 2 a few years back. It is actually probably still in my closet somewhere. I do recall having some problems with XP drivers. Are there any major differences between the MX300 and a run of the mill sound board with the AU8830 chip?

Also, can you guys list some games that really take advantage of the 3D sound technologies of the time? Like EAX and A3D? I will be testing them out with a nice pair of headphones for the full effect.

Thanks for everyone's input. Going to check out nGlide this evening.

Unreal based games (like deus ex) Also games based off the half-life engine (counterstrike) supports the 3d sound provided by the mx300. It also supports the microsoft 3d as well. and If my memory is correct, creative diddnt do that until the audigy series.

I remember having an mx300 when counterstrike was TEH SHIT, 3d audio made all the difference in the world back then.

ΜΧ300 = Vortex 2
However, the Vortex 2 has caused me a ton of problems in the past, I only keep it nowdays to host my DB60XG on a Windows 7 machine (32bit only 🙁 ).
The Live! has never caused me any problems however, it is one of the most compatible cards around!

I think Audigy would be undeniably superior to Live in even Win9x if somebody could figure out an easy install for the VXD drivers and control panels. The CD install takes like 20 mins and then you still need to run the program that swaps to the VXD drivers. The WDM drivers aren't great for games because EAX sounds different.

Blue ZIF's and a never soldered-in ISA slot. What happened here?

Schizofrik wrote:

Here is a link to a few photos: http://imgur.com/a/ZJ6U2

I will look in to the MX300. Right now I am running the Live! with no issues. Probably will pop the Audigy in later.

I went with Windows XP. Just fired it up, and I am very pleased with the speed of the setup. Deus Ex gave me a little trouble at first, but I got the most recent patch and it corrected some D3D issues the game has.

That reminds me, I have to get my Abit BP6 and VP6 mounted in cases soon. Doh! 🤣

Can't wait to see this beast! Remember when I first learned there was a 1.4GHz P3, I already had a P4 lulz!

Haven't been back here in a while! Here are a few 3DMark2001 runs.

Geforce3 Ti500
Dual 1.4Ghz P3
1.5GB RAM
Sound Blaster Live! 5.1
Windows XP SP3

This one is just after getting the system all set up:

This one is after setting various things in the BIOS to "High Performance" and also enabling AGP 4x:

This one is after the BIOS optimizations and updating the chipset drivers after a bit of searching:

Overall, a gain of ~500 points just in optimizations and drivers. Been hunting around on eBay for a cheap AGP card to replace the Geforce3. I'm not sure, but I think it is the reason the Windows GUI is dog slow. I have it on DVI out at 1920x1080. Back when I had it when new, I had a 19 inch CRT at 1900x1200, and I don't recall being able to visibly see windows being drawn to the screen. This system manages Youtube (barely) and surfing the web isn't too much of a problem at all. Both processors are maxed at 100% with 480p Youtube videos. I am currently posting this from the machine!

I have played several older games on here with no problems. The original Fable manages pretty well with settings tuned down at 800x600, 1024x768 is playable, but has some pretty bad slowdown at parts. Black & White runs very well. Arx Fatalis runs pretty well with slowdown here and there. I just think my Geforce3 is holding me back a bit.

I am going to try and get a few timedemos and other benchmarks together with dual procs and with single to see if there are any gains at all. I believe that if there are any gains to be had, they will be small due to nothing really taking advantage of SMP besides the OS itself.

You could try a Geforce 4 Ti 4600, FX 5900 or Radeon 9700-9800 for a slight improvement in performance. It will vary from game to game though. Not many games back then could utilize dual cpu setups, so basically they will rely on the raw speed of one of the cpus, and to be honest, a P3 1.4ghz will not max out a Geforce 3 in many situations. You still have some untapped power in that card.

Speaking of the MX300, I have one on the way which will be replacing my Turtle Beach Vortex 2.

internet surfing should gain a notable boost with two cpus. there is a version of palemoon (palemoon firefox) optimized for older CPUs.

feipoa wrote:

Blue ZIF's and a never soldered-in ISA slot. What happened here?

I don't know about the ISA slot, but Gigabyte used blue CPU sockets for boards that support Tualatin chips. I guess they just wanted to make it easy for people to know if they were supported.
Actually, I think maybe they were also incompatible with Mendocino Celerons. Not sure if that was a "blow up the board" situation or just "incompatible".

I'd suggest a Geforce 6800 Ultra/6800GT/6800GS or Radeon X800PRO(And relevant family cards whatever they are), you should see about 9,600 3Dmarks with no overclocking.

Multi-threaded games are a pretty young group, but you'll have the enviable advantage of switching between programs with ease. I remember even WinXP would take a crap on my single-core machines when I had Photoshop, Visual Studio and Office open.

I second getting a 6800GT. A 7800 might be too demanding on the power supply. I believe that the Radeon X1950 is the best DX9 card, but I have no idea what the requirements are. If I had your rig, I would be curious how it ran Win7. In that case, a GeForce 9400 is the newest card I've seen for AGP.