1.: The majority yes, but games like Unreal and Half-Life won't run fluently.

If you are limited on money, then it would be very difficult to get something started.. Because these `old junk` as some people called it, goes away mostly for higher `gold prices` So it would be very hard to find those higher class components.. And its not a great idea to take endless time to get some parts together, because these parts getting scarser every year you wait longer.. So the time is ticking!

For the games like unreal and half-life, they should run great on your Pentium III machine. A pentium 1 is a little bit to slow for running those games.

If you want to gather quick some decent components, i definitively can recommend a Pentium 1 ATX build, its much easier on finding a good right period case. And also you have a much better power supply.
Which component i should take?

Intel pentium 233 MMX (you can find this really cheap)
Pentium socket 7 ATX motherboard. ( i think this is the most expensive part), but now and then you be able to find one) Try to find a board with SD-RAM.
64 - 128MB of SD-RAM (72-pins simms are harder to find) (SD-RAM there is still plenty available. (if you have some sticks left you can also use them in your other machines)
20GB harddisk (you can take a 6,4 GB harddisk but that is in no-time full.. Most boards will support till 20- 40GB disks.
RIVA 128 graphics adapter or an other decent one)
I would advise to take at least one Voodoo 2 board.
Soundcard i would suggest an Creative AWE 64 or an AWE32 should do (i like the AWE64 more for that build, and have a nice clean output)
A cheap cd-rom player would easy to find..

And then you already done.

An AT system is a lot more hassle.. Finding a nice case would cost you money.. And AT board mostly have some problems before starting building.

Robin4 wrote:

Intel pentium 233 MMX (you can find this really cheap) Pentium socket 7 ATX motherboard. ( i think this is the most expensive pa […]
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Intel pentium 233 MMX (you can find this really cheap)
Pentium socket 7 ATX motherboard. ( i think this is the most expensive part), but now and then you be able to find one) Try to find a board with SD-RAM.
64 - 128MB of SD-RAM (72-pins simms are harder to find) (SD-RAM there is still plenty available. (if you have some sticks left you can also use them in your other machines)
20GB harddisk (you can take a 6,4 GB harddisk but that is in no-time full.. Most boards will support till 20- 40GB disks.
RIVA 128 graphics adapter or an other decent one)
I would advise to take at least one Voodoo 2 board.
Soundcard i would suggest an Creative AWE 64 or an AWE32 should do (i like the AWE64 more for that build, and have a nice clean output)
A cheap cd-rom player would easy to find..

SDRAM means either VX or TX, both have low cacheable limit, so anything over 64MB is off the table. Other (non-intel) chip sets are rare and less stable/slower. 166MMX also makes more sense as it is not only more common than 233, but also is considered the 'true' pentium 😀

Considering video card, Riva 128 has to be PCI and Pentium MMX does not have horsepower to load either Riva or V2. Matrox Millenium or Mystique alongside Voodoo 1 would be a better choice, for a cheap 2D replacement card any S3 would do.

I'd say you should start with a P4, you can get a lot of parts for free if you care to ask around. Just see what you can get for free, make a list of it and see what you can make of it.

Thanks. I'm actually not looking to save money though. I learned long ago when I start settling for second best I end up accumulating a lot of crap. I've accumulated a lot of crap over the years so if I part with my money now I really want to make sure its for what I really want. In the past I have bought things only to have what I really wanted show up on ebay the next week for only 20 bucks more. I already have a super socket 7 system, 3 PIII systems, 2 P4 systems, several laptops, several old macs, a C64, Amiga 500, and my modern rig. I need to reduce the amount I have and replace them with the rigs that I really want. I'm more interested in know what is best, not what is affordable. I've been slowly collecting parts together for years but I'm very picky about the parts. I don't really care how long it takes. I want the best. When I mentioned the financial aspect what I meant was that it has slowed my progress, not inspired me to spend what I do have on second best.

1984 wrote:

Thanks. I'm actually not looking to save money though. I learned long ago when I start settling for second best I end up accumulating a lot of crap. I've accumulated a lot of crap over the years so if I part with my money now I really want to make sure its for what I really want. In the past I have bought things only to have what I really wanted show up on ebay the next week for only 20 bucks more. I already have a super socket 7 system, 3 PIII systems, 2 P4 systems, several laptops, several old macs, a C64, Amiga 500, and my modern rig. I need to reduce the amount I have and replace them with the rigs that I really want. I'm more interested in know what is best, not what is affordable. I've been slowly collecting parts together for years but I'm very picky about the parts. I don't really care how long it takes. I want the best. When I mentioned the financial aspect what I meant was that it has slowed my progress, not inspired me to spend what I do have on second best.

The best of the best really depends what your goal is. Ultimate 486 (Socket 3)? Ultimate 386? Ultimate Socket 7 system? A specific year? There are no machine that can do it all. Tell me what you're looking for and I can help you out. Generally in the Socket 7 era you'd want a AWE64 Gold, Voodoo2 SLI, PowerVR PCX2, Roland SCC-1 or SC-55 along with some fast SCSI drives. If you are limiting yourself to the MMX CPU, then a good Intel 430HX motherboard is the fastest and can cache more memory than 64MB.

Regarding your questions in your first post:

1. Majority yes, but games like Carmageddon 2, Dungeon Keeper 2, Half-Life, Unreal will not play good enough. You're good for all of up and including 1997 and most of 1998. Imo for the 94-98 timespan you are better served with a Pentium III with the old graphics cards installed. A AMD K6-III will do the trick as well if you have to stick to 1998.

2. Back in 1996 and 1997 all the reviews/magazines had Matrox Millennium/Mystique as the ultimate 2D card to pair with a Voodoo card. That combination still do wonders. The Matrox'es are very quick, built-in BIOS VESA support and very good output (VGA signal) quality in both DOS and Windows. The Tseng is also a good choice imo, but the S3 Virges, while they do have better compatibility with older/earlier DOS games they generally have weaker output signal and slower performance (though not by much and with a quick CPU it won't matter). Other alternatives are the Nvidia cards like Riva 128, TNT, TNT2 as 2D cards

3. No. If you go the Virge route, get a high-end card for the best VGA output signal. I personally can recommend STB Velocity 3D (highend card with 8MB of RAM for CAD users).

What about Voodoo3? Would that not make a good, compatible card and save some PCI slots?

My suggestion would be to buy an OEM machine, (disable the onboard video) and add / install a high end PCI / AGP video card for whatever game you want to play. 😀 That should keep cost down considerably.