I havent tried any of them, but I know that i815 is a great and fast chipset - but its limited to 512MB RAM. VIA doesnt have that limitation... so... coupled with ISA slot, and lower price tag - my vote goes for VIA.

...and just ignore the 4-in-1 packs if everything works. Its more often then not, that 4-in-1 packs create more problems then they solve.

Well, 512mb is all I'm going to use anyway 😜
You sure about the 4in1 thingy? Hope that's true!

I'd personally go for the Intel Chipset because they're probably much higher performance than VIA and is most likely more stable.

Only if you are using win 98, if xp then no need for the driver pack.

I'll be running a Tualatin 1.4 S and Win98SE. The aim is to play games all the way to 2002 or so. I've had a couple of i815 boards and they're awesome, but my only experience with the Apollo Pro 133 wasn't that bad either. Was using one on a Slot 1 board.
What has really scarred me for life on Via chipsets are Super 7 and Athlon/Athlon XP chipsets from Via. xD

Yea, I am not happy with VIA equipped socket A boards atm. There is always something that isn't working right.

Buy an Intel 840 motherboard. 😀

swaaye wrote:

Buy an Intel 840 motherboard. 😀

I got an Tycan i860 dual 603 board that I am considering putting together but need a new case and buy a better psu 😒

I did buy a big lot of rdram last year (like 10gb worth for pennies on the dollar) and a pair of 3ghz 4mb xeons.

BTW it looks like 840 boards need adapters to run Tualatin. Forgot about that aspect.

I would go with the GA board, you can run 1GB ram with win98SE on it. Also stick to the 4in1 4.43 driver pack and you shouldn't have any problems. Make sure the board is flashed to the latest bios so that it supports that chips stepping revision. Get an SL6BY tully too so you have the full cache size.

Cool thanks guys, I'll go for the Gigabyte then!

I recommend going dual,
Dual PIII-S Tualatin 1.4 GHz Success Stories

Finding a board at good price is going to be tricky for a dual setup. Especially if I'm looking for a board that has an AGP slot and perhaps an ISA slot.
The boards I'm being offered on the other hand are at a very reasonable price, 15 euro for the Gigabyte one and 25 for the Abit.
Plus, I have no intention of running Windows 2000/XP on it, so dual processors would go to waste on Win9x 🙁

Duallies are cool and all, but for retro gaming, next to useless. I was contemplating building a duallie for a long time but in the end settled for a single cpu Tualatin 1.4S @ 1.6ghz Win 98 machine. Plays everything up to 2002 damn well on a Geforce 3 Ti200 + Voodoo 2 SLI for Glide.

Personally, I think the 512 MiB limitation is not really an issue when you're planning to run a non-NT Windows on it. Very few applications and games from that <2002 timeframe would profit.

While we are talking about it: Does anyone have first-hand experience with the SiS-Chipsets for Pentium 3? Especially the 635T on the ECS P6S5AT?