mp10 wrote:

Thank you Vetz! 😀 I think i will choose only hardware released in stores at 1999.

I got my 3D Blaster Annihilator Pro for christmas '99, that's a GeForce DDR card. 😉

I had to replace my Asus P2L97 with a P3B-F because of this card, the P2L97 had it's own 3,3V regulator that couldn't supply the GeForce DDR with enough power.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Yes but what games exactly. 6 years is a long time to cover with one machine and you will not be able to cater for every game optimally.

I want to play mainly glide games until 1999.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

A3D for example was used by many earlier games, but later games use EAX.

In practice what do you mean with this?

Within windows, a lot of the earlier games used A3D for 3D positional audio and effects. Later on when Aureal was a non-issue, they switched to using EAX and Creative cards became the defacto 3D sound standard once again.

Basically, for the earlier windows games you want some form of Vortex card, but once you get to the later era games, you want a Creative card with full EAX support.

senrew wrote:

Within windows, a lot of the earlier games used A3D for 3D positional audio and effects. Later on when Aureal was a non-issue, they switched to using EAX and Creative cards became the defacto 3D sound standard once again.

Basically, for the earlier windows games you want some form of Vortex card, but once you get to the later era games, you want a Creative card with full EAX support.

So what's the best option to play all games since 1995 to 1999? 😀

If I'm not mistaken, the Live! cards supported A3D 1.0 along with the earlier versions of EAX so that should cover you pretty nicely.

senrew wrote:

If I'm not mistaken, the Live! cards supported A3D 1.0 along with the earlier versions of EAX so that should cover you pretty nicely.

Vortex2 supported EAX 1.0, so all depends if you'd like A3D 2.0 or EAX 2.0.

I would go for the Vortex2 as I like the Aureal driver GUI better than the bloated Creative stuff.

I've got a Vortex2 Superquad in my Win95/Early 3D machine and a Live! in my Voodoo5 Win98 machine so I've got both bases covered.

If you really want to do it all with one machine, you need to decide which games are more important to you for the sound card. A3D 2.0 games sounded fucking fantastic with headphones, but the EAX 2.0 games that supported true 5.1 sound best in that case. Just gotta look at the list. Likely, if you are going for mostly glide games with this machine, the Vortex based cards will fit the bill better for you, but that's just my opinion.

By the end of 99, glide specific games were pretty much on the way out.

If you're truly going for a glide machine, the best you can do for pre-2000 would be a Voodoo3 along with the Vortex2 sound card. The v5 came out later and the Geforce 256, even though a beast of a card compared to a voodoo3, was still only marginally better for the games that were actually available at the time. The V3 was still pumping out nicely in 16-bit games as not too many games really used 32-bit to good effect until later.

good source of information:
http://books.google.com/books?id=tKO-truWww8C … e%20A3d&f=false

I have a Vortex 2 in my current W95 machine. Games I use (mostly for benchmarking) are Turok, Incoming, G-Police, GLQuake, Quake, Quake 2, Unreal, Forsaken.

The card works very well. Drivers are minimal and the card sounds good. A3D surround games over headphones is an amazing experience.

But if you just play with standard speakers and happy with "standard" sound I would go with a live as later games all use EAX.

While the Live is compatible with A3D, it uses a Wrapper which doesn't translate everything.

But this is really why I ask: What games do you want to play. As for every game there is a different "Top 90s machine".

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

I have a Vortex 2 in my current W95 machine. Games I use (mostly for benchmarking) are Turok, Incoming, G-Police, GLQuake, Quake […]
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I have a Vortex 2 in my current W95 machine. Games I use (mostly for benchmarking) are Turok, Incoming, G-Police, GLQuake, Quake, Quake 2, Unreal, Forsaken.

The card works very well. Drivers are minimal and the card sounds good. A3D surround games over headphones is an amazing experience.

But if you just play with standard speakers and happy with "standard" sound I would go with a live as later games all use EAX.

While the Live is compatible with A3D, it uses a Wrapper which doesn't translate everything.

But this is really why I ask: What games do you want to play. As for every game there is a different "Top 90s machine".

For early 3d games, i have my hybird MS-DOS/Win 95 socket 7 machine (233 MMX, Voodoo 1, SB AWE64 Gold, ...).
For my top 90's machine i want to play mainly the last games of 90's (1998-1999) - Unreal, Quake 3, Half-Life, NFS III, etc.
Is it possible to have the two cards on the same system?

At the moment, i have a ASUS p2b-ds to this project. Do you think it's a good choice?
This motherboard with the last BIOS can support 2x pentium III 800 (can support until pentium III 900).

Hi guys,

sorry for the lack of news about this project but i've been very busy lately.
Since the last time, I decided to change a little but very important detail:

The limit date for the hardware pieces is now December 31, 2000 (in order to reach the last Pentium III slot 1 133fsb)
(I love the look of the slot1 processors! 😊 )

However a new "problem" arises:
Which the best high end motherboard for gaming performance of the year 2000?

From my research I have a few options (each with negative aspects):

1.
440BX (to reach 133 fsb needs to be overclocked)
June 2000, article with a benchmarking of 440BX overclocked motherboards
http://www.anandtech.com/show/556

Microstar BXMaster is considered the best slot-1 motherboard

AGP problem?

2.
Via appollo pro133A
February 2000, benchmarking
http://www.anandtech.com/show/491

Gigabyte GA-6VX-4X is considered the best option

AGP problem?

3.
i815
December 2000, Last slot-1 motherboard
http://www.anandtech.com/show/691

Limit of 512mb RAM.

4.
i820

The problem here is the RAMBUS memory.

(I have a Asus P3C-E but I think it's a bad motherboard)

Which the goods and bads about these options?
Which is the best slot-1 motherboard of all time?! 🤣

Probably i will use a Geforce 2 Ultra in this build.

Do what we all do (eventually), build several computers!

They will never be perfect....

Never been a big fan of via chipsets, i found a lot of them less stable. I use an a7v333 which is fine but i prefer the nforce2 (but nforce can`t use 3,3v agp cards).

I have a slot 1 133a aopen board but my asus p3b-f is better. It just feels right, is stable and fast. I do not overclock it tough.
Also have via mvp3 boards for ss7 but i prefer the Ali versions (or intel for slower cpu`s).

Never will be a fan of Msi products: for me, they are the king of bad caps!
Even in today`s systems i see a lot of hardware go bad from them.
Medion pc`s are sold a lot here in the netherlands and i have pulled a lot of bad motherboards from these computers and even more bad graphics cards. These are all made by msi.

I just can`t believe it when i see a modern core2duo board and even i5 boards with bulging caps......

It simply amazes me that they still sell stuff.

BX440 chipset is legendary. As for motherboard brand my personal favourite is AOpen. They tend to use Japanese capacitors and favour stability over tweaking options.

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.

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? 🤣

For me 1998 was the big year, the release of the Voodoo 2, the TNT, the 100 mhz FSB, the Aureal vortex 2 and Windows 98. Have I missed anything? That is the year I wanted to have it all but I couldn't afford it. So that is why I built the only period-correct system I have for that year:

BX slot 1 notherboard
PII 450
128 mb RAM
16 mb TNT
2 Voodoo 2's in SLI
Aureal Vortex 2
17 gb SCSI drive
Adaptec 2400S SCSI caching controller
floppy and cd drive

For all else I have a socket 7 machine and a P4 machine both loaded with every 3D API card I could manage, with win 98SE on them which allow me to play from early 90's up to winXP's release and beyond. For me there really is no hard cut-off year, But I do agree that the 90's were the most interesting times for PC evolution.

I have other machines but they are in storage 😉

Asus P2B-DS 1.06 with dual Tualatin Pentium III-S 1.4GHz 512kb L2 sounds like the ultimate 90s computer to me.
Trow in an Voodoo 5 5500 and you've got your self an Lil' Stevie Hardium 3000.

retrofool wrote:

For me 1998 was the big year, the release of the Voodoo 2, the TNT, the 100 mhz FSB, the Aureal vortex 2 and Windows 98. Have I […]
Show full quote

For me 1998 was the big year, the release of the Voodoo 2, the TNT, the 100 mhz FSB, the Aureal vortex 2 and Windows 98. Have I missed anything? That is the year I wanted to have it all but I couldn't afford it. So that is why I built the only period-correct system I have for that year:

BX slot 1 notherboard
PII 450
128 mb RAM
16 mb TNT
2 Voodoo 2's in SLI
Aureal Vortex 2
17 gb SCSI drive
Adaptec 2400S SCSI caching controller
floppy and cd drive

For all else I have a socket 7 machine and a P4 machine both loaded with every 3D API card I could manage, with win 98SE on them which allow me to play from early 90's up to winXP's release and beyond. For me there really is no hard cut-off year, But I do agree that the 90's were the most interesting times for PC evolution.

I have other machines but they are in storage 😉

I already have a machine to cover 1990-1997 (pentium 233 mmx)
Now i want a build to do 1998-2001 😀

Stojke wrote:

Asus P2B-DS 1.06 with dual Tualatin Pentium III-S 1.4GHz 512kb L2 sounds like the ultimate 90s computer to me.
Trow in an Voodoo 5 5500 and you've got your self an Lil' Stevie Hardium 3000.

I like it very much! 🤣 However doesn't respect the time period defined to this build. Maybe the next machine will be like that!