Vortex/a3d 1.0 came out in 97, vortex 2/a3d 2.0 & sblive!/eax 2.0 in 98, next update is in 2001 with audigy/eax 3.0.

I will use a Sound Blaster Live! platinum with live! drive II (released in 2000)

Well for those of us who do build period correct machines, we have our reasons, So I guess what I am trying to say is if all you are doing is trying to cover the last few years of the 90's and the beginning of the 2000's, why limit yourself to the hardware of that era? Pentium 4 parts are probably at their lowest prices ever right now and you could run a pretty awesome video card like the nVidia 6800 series or even an ATI radeon X800 series (catalyst 6.2 supports them in WIN98SE), which are also quite available on eBay for good prices. That way you could run the games of that era with all the eye candy turned on. That's why the machine I have for that era is this:

ASUS P4B (SDRAM board)
P4/533 northwood
512 mb RAM
ATI Radeon X800 pro
Soundblaster 128 PCI (Had the best compatibility)
Matrox M3D (for mechwarrior 2)
Voodoo 1 (for tombraider and others)
S3 ViRGE (for terminal velocity)
WIN98SE

I can run Max Payne and Return to Castle Wolfenstein for instance with everything on at 1024x768 (as far as my 17" crt will go at 85 hz) smooth as butter.

Problem with those are their drivers. Some of them will even force texture compression introducing artifacts in older games whether you like it or not and don't get me started on the whole table fog thing...

A "fast pixel shader 3 p4" rig would feel rather redundant ATM until the latest tech has some regressions at an irreversably epic scale with DX9 games of 2004-2008. That's not to say we haven't had damage already, the less precise Z depth has been really aggravating with these new cards

well, my early 90's to 97-98 machine I built to do "all the rest" so to speak:

Gigabyte GA-5AX super socket 7
AMD K6-2+ 578 (ebay special)
256 mb RAM
Savage 4 32 mb AGP primary (S3 Metal)
ATI Rage pro turbo secondary (for CIF games)
2 Voodoo 2 in SLI (Glide etc.)
Matrox M3D (SGL)
SB AWE64

These 2 machines cover just about everything I want to do... However, in a few months time, that could all change, such is the curse of the retro adict 😉

leileilol wrote:

Some of them will even force texture compression introducing artifacts in older games whether you like it or not and don't get me started on the whole table fog thing...That's not to say we haven't had damage already, the less precise Z depth has been really aggravating with these new cards

I want to know ore about this! Can you think of some games that are affected by this? And what cards / drivers are we talking about? Would a 6600GT be new enough to show these issues?

mp10 wrote:

TELEPACMAN wrote:

IMO the 90's was one of the best decades for PC gaming, with the best DOS games, the advent of Multimedia (soundcard and CD-ROM kits!). But also the birth of 3D hardware acelerated games. It was a fantastic decade of game tech evolution.
Believe it or not I don't think the 90's decade of gaming stoped in 31 December, 1999. December 2000 is more like it, but I would extend it to middle 2001. For API and OS reasons.

I understand your point of view. i love the 90's decade too 😊 . My time limit is not to be interpreted like the stop of the 90's impact. it was defined only to respect the period of the pentium III slot 1 and windows 98SE.

but... whats "your machine" for the middle of 2001? 🤣

Still building them, but they are quite similar to yours my friend!
One is based on a i815 and has a 866MHz Pentium III, but with 133MHz FSB. A SLI Voodoo2.
But only 256MB of SDRAM and, instead, a Geforce2 ultra.
Oh and one those Yamaha cards that do EAX, A3D and Sensaura.

mp10 wrote:

but... whats "your machine" for the middle of 2001? 🤣

I know the question wasn't at me, but my system for that era is the same machine I had then: a Pentium 4. It runs Windows XP (in theory everything should work in 98 or ME, but I've never bothered on that system) and I've yet to run into a 9x game that it won't play (admittedly it only has probably half a dozen games on it right now - a lot of stuff, surprisingly, works on Windows 7 still). It originally had a GeForce 2 MX, but I've upgraded that to a GeForce FX (every game deserves AA/AF imho).

Generally my POV is that if I wanted to run stuff "maxed out" I wouldn't try to do it with contemporaneous hardware - go a few years down the line and get something that's dramatic overkill. But that's me. If you're explicitly dead-set on the hardware side of it (as opposed to the games it will run), your rough spec-out seems to be a foot in the right direction, but like others have said there probably is no uniform "best ever" - that doesn't mean you won't have a very competent machine (and don't get me wrong - there's nothing wrong with wanting to build a historic machine just for the sake of it; I'm just saying, establish if that's your goal, or if the gameplay is your goal).

I have I think 1 or 2 total games capable of even using Glide, nothing that won't run without it, so I'm not a good source of information as far as Glide games go. I can tell you though that the Voodoo3 + GeForce256 would be kind of annoying to live with as you'd either need a video output switch or multiple monitors and even there it'd still be kind of ugly logistically (they're both fully capable 2D/3D cards). The Voodoo2 will be much neater as it accepts pass-through (so it'll let whatever X card be 2D, and only "cut in" for certain 3D). Alternately you could go with a Voodoo4/5 if you need more power and have a universal (or 3.3V) AGP slot available, but I don't think those meet the Dec 31 1999 cutoff. 😊

^^ I agree with you 😀

So far I really have only come across a handful of games that cause issues on period incorrect hardware. Splinter Cell and Pandora Tomorrow being my favourite 😀

Sometimes the graphics drivers breaks a game but that is mostly if you go too far into the future. Using an older driver usually takes care of this.

My general advice for retro hardware, and you can call me fanboy if you like, but it is really based on my experiences are sticking with:

Intel, Nvidia and Creative

You shouldn't have a lot of issues with these products. They lead the way and games and drivers were mostly tested with their hardware.

Often jumping straight to the next platform works well. E.g. play 386 games on a 486SX, play 486 games on a Pentium. Play Pentium III games on a Pentium 4. Usually you get a system that is easier to work with, be it stability, price, availability, documentation, hard drive support...

That Yamaha card sounds interesting but, at least for me, if I want A3D I get a Vortex 2 card, if I want EAX I get a Live!, Audigy, Audigy2 or X-Fi.

More is better until, said program becomes unstable or stops working correctly on newer hardware.
Finding the sweet spot means assembling many machines for different tasks, you can never find one that can do everything.

Being period correct can increase the amount of machines you need 😈 .
There is always some game or program thats broken or glitchy on one, but not the other.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

^^ I agree with you 😀

(...)

That Yamaha card sounds interesting but, at least for me, if I want A3D I get a Vortex 2 card, if I want EAX I get a Live!, Audigy, Audigy2 or X-Fi.

I'm not really into sound for now. Still dealing with cpu/3d, but maybe after having everything set up. Anyway the yamaha card I have only does A3D 1.0 😀, no 2.0 or 3.0 .

I would dabble into old Athlons again but they're an unstable nightmare, so I take it easy and drink the mainstream koolaid for Pentium 4 filling that Athlon hole instead. 😜

If I wanted to build a period correct Pentium IV i'd load it up with Willamette, Geforce2 GTS, Windows Me 🤣, and deck out the HD in excess Q3/UT/HL addons from the era (<2001) and Bid for Power leaks (I only have RC3 sadly) and of course a WinAMP (v2.7 at best) full of songs of bands I once adored. Other than that (and the curiosity of the poor onboard video chipsets of the era 🤣) I can't think of any other interesting P4 to build, especially nothing after hyperthreading. If I wanted serious "pre-coreduo p4 era" horsepower i'd go Pentium M or Athlon64.

leileilol wrote:

I would dabble into old Athlons again but they're an unstable nightmare, so I take it easy and drink the mainstream koolaid for Pentium 4 filling that Athlon hole instead. 😜

If I wanted to build a period correct Pentium IV i'd load it up with Willamette, Geforce2 GTS, Windows Me 🤣, and deck out the HD in excess Q3/UT/HL addons from the era (<2001) and Bid for Power leaks (I only have RC3 sadly) and of course a WinAMP (v2.7 at best) full of songs of bands I once adored. Other than that (and the curiosity of the poor onboard video chipsets of the era 🤣) I can't think of any other interesting P4 to build, especially nothing after hyperthreading. If I wanted serious "pre-coreduo p4 era" horsepower i'd go Pentium M or Athlon64.

P4 was a bit iconic for the good rigs at the time but I already built a Pentium M desktop and got two Inspiron 9300s so that is all covered. Pentium M desktop boards are for the most part are rare and the only reason that they can be available at times is due to almost nonexistent demand as most retro builders are unaware of their existence. I got the MSI and the FSB is good up to 159 mhz before the sata controller quits.

Its weird I have such a different experience with P4's and 9x retro then everyone else here.
I have many examples of very stable 9x AMD XP boards all via based, from KT266-400.
But I have nothing but failures with all my P4's with 9x.

They include 2 i845's, an I850 Rdram base, an i875, and a Via based P4M800PRO, the Via one actually works with sound in dos, but even still 9x won't pass the installer on it.

The only one I have ever gotten to successfully even use 98se is my 1.6a Willamette based oem IBM, that uses an i845, not with ddr, but PC133-Sdram, and even that is unstable. It bluescreens very often in 98, and so is running Nt4\win2k which it is completely stable with.

Stick with Intel, Nvidia and Creative and you shouldn't have any problems.

All 865 chipset boards should work with W98SE. Here is Unreal on a V2 on a P4 2.4 GHz: http://youtu.be/c4LfByYFv8Y

Yea I lack an I865, that must be the sweet spot.
The Rdram P4 is weird even in Nt.X. Its a full ATX board but its also Gateway salavage PULL I saved from a pile of boards about to get recycled.
The I845's are older, tho you think they would do better.

Anyway why against Amd so much, I never had a problem with via based XP's in 9x.
In-fact back when my Epox 8kha+ KT-266 was a new thing, I had more problems getting it to run Windows 2000 SP2, which it hated back then, yet was perfectly stable under 98 First edition. Which was later resolved with updated chipset drivers, and SP3.

They can even run alot of late dos games just fine with a Yamaha sound card, like the PCI YMF-7xx series, or Xwaves.

Depends on which AMD. It's not a broad anti-AMD thing, it's just some of their stuff are very associated with very finicky and subpar motherboards relative to the Intel socket/slot offerings. Super Socket 7's and Epox for example, my mobos that are these didn't survive. 🙁

I agree with the via based Super socket 7 boards.
Manufacturers cut corners with these 🙁

I have one working one with an AGP slot, and I can't use the AGP slot in it, as this particular board a Fic PA-2013 has some sort of voltage regulation issues with it.
I acquired 2 of these at the same time, and lost one because I did not know about this defect. I ran it for a little bit with a voodoo 3 3000 AGP, and it ended up blowing a hole clear through one of the IC chips near the AGP slot. Not fixable. The caps were all in good shape on the board too.

leileilol wrote:

I would dabble into old Athlons again but they're an unstable nightmare, so I take it easy and drink the mainstream koolaid for Pentium 4 filling that Athlon hole instead. 😜

If I wanted to build a period correct Pentium IV i'd load it up with Willamette, Geforce2 GTS, Windows Me 🤣, and deck out the HD in excess Q3/UT/HL addons from the era (<2001) and Bid for Power leaks (I only have RC3 sadly) and of course a WinAMP (v2.7 at best) full of songs of bands I once adored. Other than that (and the curiosity of the poor onboard video chipsets of the era 🤣) I can't think of any other interesting P4 to build, especially nothing after hyperthreading. If I wanted serious "pre-coreduo p4 era" horsepower i'd go Pentium M or Athlon64.

ATi's IGP from around that time (might be a tad later) that will enable triple monitor features with Radeon card (might work with AIW too, could be interesting) and appropriate drivers. Can't think of any other IGPs from the time that are very interesting - the Intel and SiS stuff tends to be fairly slow, and iirc nVidia didn't do chipsets for Intel until nForce 4.