Sorry, the digging out that old topic but got a question. My initial plan was and still is to build for own first retro gaming Win 98 machine but a good buddy of mine also said that I might should look into some already completed machines. While browsing around I found a HP VECTRA VL 400 with 1GZ and a Matrox gf450 at a local action platform at a good price.

What P3 1ghz is normally used by these hp machines? Coppermine or Tualatin.

Would you say that these hp machines make good win 98 games (from 97 to the end of 2000) in general or not?

Have not considered getting a Matrox card for example but they seem not to be that bad according to the reviews in the German gaming press.

I was personally aiming a bit higher spec-wise (Athlon XP, Athlon 64, and gf 3 or Geforce 4) but the offer of the hp pc is too good to not consider it at least.

Would be pleased if some of the owners of the hp machines could share their impressions.

Yes, these HP computers work great. I use to run dual 20" Sony CRTs with a Dual head Matrox G400 or G450 video card. Worked great. Never had any problems. I think I was running Win-2000-pro.
I am not sure but it might be a coppermine CPU. But any case its a Solid CPU and Motherboard. Never gave me any problems. HP Vectra and Kayak was HP top of the line PC's.
Designed for businesses. ( Workstations ).

All you need is 128mb or 256mb of RAM for Optimal performance.

The CPU is Good, I am not sure if all models have AGP however. You might want to check.

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2023-06-01, 01:18:

Yes, these HP computers work great. I use to run dual 20" Sony CRTs with a Dual head Matrox G400 or G450 video card. Worked gre […]
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Yes, these HP computers work great. I use to run dual 20" Sony CRTs with a Dual head Matrox G400 or G450 video card. Worked great. Never had any problems. I think I was running Win-2000-pro.
I am not sure but it might be a copper mine CPU. But any case its a Solid CPU and Motherboard. Never gave me any problems. HP Vectra and Kayak was HP top of the line PC's.
Designed for businesses. ( Workstations ).

All you need is 128mb or 256mb of RAM for Optimal performance.

The CPU is Good, I am not sure if all models have AGP however. You might want to check.

Thanks a lot for your reply. I will also check out if the motherboard has AGP or not.I am not sure yet if I would be interested in changing the gpu or not. In case I am happy with the Matrox G450 I might just keep it.

As I have said the reviews I have read about the Matrox G450 were promising.

I am NOT really a gamer from that PC era so I don’t really know what you want to play ?
But this HP computer is a good reliable computer for its time.

You might want to make a list of the games you want to play and then ask in the forums which CPU/Motherboard/Video card combo would be best for playing those games.

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2023-06-01, 15:33:

I am NOT really a gamer from that PC era so I don’t really know what you want to play ?
But this HP computer is a good reliable computer for its time.

You might want to make a list of the games you want to play and then ask in the forums which CPU/Motherboard/Video card combo would be best for playing those games.

That's good advice. I might do that. The games I want to play are nothing peculiar though. Just the classics from 97 to 2000 like c&c 3, half life plus add ons diablo 1 and 2, unreal, unreal tournament, dune 2000, age of empires and so forth.

Looks like its using a motherboard with the Intel 815 chipset. Intel have good 9x drivers so nice stable base to build a win98 PC.
P3 1Ghz is pretty good for 9x games (Most my games are happy with a 600MHz) Anything that struggles on the 1Ghz would be better off on a XP build anyway.
The G450 is roughly the same performance wise as a TNT2, so bit of a bottleneck but as you seem mostly into RTS's it's cleaner picture is probably more important then raw speed.
The G450 also benefits from EMBM support which some games used.
https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/List_of_ … th_EMBM_support

chinny22 wrote on 2023-06-02, 13:00:

Looks like its using a motherboard with the Intel 815 chipset. Intel have good 9x drivers so nice stable base to build a win98 P […]
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Looks like its using a motherboard with the Intel 815 chipset. Intel have good 9x drivers so nice stable base to build a win98 PC.
P3 1Ghz is pretty good for 9x games (Most my games are happy with a 600MHz) Anything that struggles on the 1Ghz would be better off on a XP build anyway.
The G450 is roughly the same performance wise as a TNT2, so bit of a bottleneck but as you seem mostly into RTS's it's cleaner picture is probably more important then raw speed.
The G450 also benefits from EMBM support which some games used.
https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/List_of_ … th_EMBM_support

Thanks for info. That sounds quite promising about the Matrox G450. EMBM also sounds like a neat feature which would be nice to have.

And yeah I am most int RTS games beside the occasional shooters like Unreal and Half Life. I also might be interested in trying out games like Thief 1 and 2.

I have the desktop version of the Vl400 with the same board. Intel 815, P3 1k coppermine and 384mb ram.
It uses the earlier version of the i815 chipset, thus has the slower version of ata ide. I believe the vl400 is a coppermine only board even with the latest BIOS. Finding the isa add on would be nice.

For video, my system currently has a radeon 9600pro installed (likely overkill for w98). I have also used a Geforce2 Gts, unfortunately it was dying with display errors. I also have a Voodoo 3 3500 that will be tested now that I have the correct Vga adapter. Lots of video options with this system.

dc_carguy wrote on 2023-06-03, 20:16:

I have the desktop version of the Vl400 with the same board. Intel 815, P3 1k coppermine and 384mb ram.
It uses the earlier version of the i815 chipset, thus has the slower version of ata ide. I believe the vl400 is a coppermine only board even with the latest BIOS. Finding the isa add on would be nice.

For video, my system currently has a radeon 9600pro installed (likely overkill for w98). I have also used a Geforce2 Gts, unfortunately it was dying with display errors. I also have a Voodoo 3 3500 that will be tested now that I have the correct Vga adapter. Lots of video options with this system.

Thanks for sharing your impressions. Good to know that there are many video options for the build gives it way more flexibility. While I am sure that there is nothing wrong with the Matrox G450 i am still interested to max out the video optionso f the system as far as possible. Going into the Geforce 2 or Radeon 8000/9000 territory is definitely an interesting thing to try.

Getting a Voodoo 3 card to fulfill a childhood /early teen dream would be another nice matter to consider. But considering the prices at the moment a Voodoo 3 would not be first choice for video card.

Thermalwrong wrote on 2019-08-15, 22:16:

That connector that resembles a very long IDE connector at the bottom of the board can give you 2 ISA slots if you find the HP part "5065-4211", that's an ISA bridge board.

I found the ISA bridge board then found the VL-400 board, it works great for providing ISA sound capability.

I have 2 of these VL400 towers, gotten for free as a system bundle (incl. monitor, printer, software, etc) over 2 decades ago when I used to work at Intel Corp, & a decade or so ago I was also looking for that bridge board & found them on eBay back then but did not buy one. But OMG today I was looking on the web for these bridges again & they have bumped the prices up into the $300 to $500 range, wtf. I don't remember the price 10-20 years ago but I think they were affordable back then, geesh.

theiceman085 wrote on 2023-06-04, 06:59:

Thanks for sharing your impressions. Good to know that there are many video options for the build gives it way more flexibility. While I am sure that there is nothing wrong with the Matrox G450 i am still interested to max out the video optionso f the system as far as possible. Going into the Geforce 2 or Radeon 8000/9000 territory is definitely an interesting thing to try.

Getting a Voodoo 3 card to fulfill a childhood /early teen dream would be another nice matter to consider. But considering the prices at the moment a Voodoo 3 would not be first choice for video card.

My 2 VL400's from Intel (see my previous comment above) came factory-installed with G450's (G45+MDHA16D/OE5), but as I was a PC gamer back then (and still am), playing Battlezone II (BZ2) in those days with a G450 was a little bit hampering. You have to keep in mind that around 2001, BZ2 was still relatively new & it was a pioneering PC game that needed high hardware requirements of that era. One reason that BZ2 wasn't received well at that time around Y2k, was because of debut release bugs, as well as minimum & recommended hardware, of which recommended, or higher, hardware of that time was still also expensive for most. Today, modern hardware can run circles with BZ2. And BZ2 did have bump mapping capability built-in & I recall the G450 took advantage of that & made things look beautiful. However, with the hardware of that time, Matrox bump mapping also slowed things down again a notch & reduced the framerate a little more. Eventually I was not satisfied with the G450 & eventually moved to the nVidia Ti-4600, of which one of my VL400's still has installed today. In 2002, I chose the Ti-4600 because it was the best video card of that time for its price:performance ratio, nVidia or otherwise. The higher speed & power of the Ti-4600 compared to the G450 was very noticeable. And also had its own bump mapping. My other VL400 eventually became my home theater PC in 2008 with a fanless DVI nVidia graphics card & quiet powersupply to keep noise down further, as my projector already was too much noise, heh. Unfortunately, the VL400 with the Ti-4600 is down right now due to a lightning strike a couple years ago, which killed the prior powersupply but the motherboard requires a connector that the previous powersupply had but the newer supply doesn't have so I am still looking into that. And I still have both of the G450 cards.

technoid wrote on 2023-06-16, 23:10:

theiceman085 wrote on 2023-06-04, 06:59:

Thanks for sharing your impressions. Good to know that there are many video options for the build gives it way more flexibility. While I am sure that there is nothing wrong with the Matrox G450 i am still interested to max out the video optionso f the system as far as possible. Going into the Geforce 2 or Radeon 8000/9000 territory is definitely an interesting thing to try.

Getting a Voodoo 3 card to fulfill a childhood /early teen dream would be another nice matter to consider. But considering the prices at the moment a Voodoo 3 would not be first choice for video card.

My 2 VL400's from Intel (see my previous comment above) came factory-installed with G450's (G45+MDHA16D/OE5), but as I was a PC gamer back then (and still am), playing Battlezone II (BZ2) in those days with a G450 was a little bit hampering. You have to keep in mind that around 2001, BZ2 was still relatively new & it was a pioneering PC game that needed high hardware requirements of that era. One reason that BZ2 wasn't received well at that time around Y2k, was because of debut release bugs, as well as minimum & recommended hardware, of which recommended, or higher, hardware of that time was still also expensive for most. Today, modern hardware can run circles with BZ2. And BZ2 did have bump mapping capability built-in & I recall the G450 took advantage of that & made things look beautiful. However, with the hardware of that time, Matrox bump mapping also slowed things down again a notch & reduced the framerate a little more. Eventually I was not satisfied with the G450 & eventually moved to the nVidia Ti-4600, of which one of my VL400's still has installed today. In 2002, I chose the Ti-4600 because it was the best video card of that time for its price:performance ratio, nVidia or otherwise. The higher speed & power of the Ti-4600 compared to the G450 was very noticeable. And also had its own bump mapping. My other VL400 eventually became my home theater PC in 2008 with a fanless DVI nVidia graphics card & quiet powersupply to keep noise down further, as my projector already was too much noise, heh. Unfortunately, the VL400 with the Ti-4600 is down right now due to a lightning strike a couple years ago, which killed the prior powersupply but the motherboard requires a connector that the previous powersupply had but the newer supply doesn't have so I am still looking into that. And I still have both of the G450 cards.

Thanks for sharing your impression. That was interesting to read. I came to late to get hp vectra and ended up with something completely different.

A good old P2 400 MHZ System with a Aus P2 motherboard and the Riva TNT 2.