dosquest wrote:

Ok. I have a gaming pC I'm building, this is for early to mid 00s PIII 580nhz 256mb ram 16bg ati card Sb. LIVE card Windows 98s […]
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Ok. I have a gaming pC I'm building, this is for early to mid 00s
PIII 580nhz
256mb ram
16bg ati card
Sb. LIVE card
Windows 98se
Any suggestions?

I guess that is a PIII 850 MHz and a 16 MB ATI card, probably a Rage 128.
It will handle games from 2000 fine and up to 2002 decently but newer games need a faster machine.

Isnt that a bit behind the times for the time frame ?
anandtech reviewed a 1.2tbird in 2000 and i'm sure i had a tbird in the same time frame

I have an amd 64 with a 256mb video card and 2gb ram for my late 00s gaming. As for this system its also a late 90s early 00s so my amd will have some overlap.

Early to mid 2000s on a P3 with 256MB of RAM, a Rage 128, and Win98 capping you out at 512MB of memory? Not a recipe for success imho.

Should be more like Pentium 4, AthlonXP, or Athlon64 with 1-3GB of RAM, WinXP, and GeForce FX/Radeon 9 just to start. Mid 2000s you're talking games like Oblivion (2006), Doom 3 (2004), Half-Life 2 (2004), Hitman 4 (2006), Age of Empires 3 (2005), etc which will happily take a GeForce 6800 to its knees depending on settings and resolution. Ideally you'd step a year or two beyond and have a Core 2 or Phenom, and GeForce 8 or Radeon 2k series to ensure everything will run swimmingly with high settings. Games from the early 2000s like Halo and Morrowind will happily come along for the ride on such a system, but a few of them (like Morrowind) won't like Windows Vista or higher, which is why I'd stick to XP.

For early 2000s I'd still regard the P3, 256MB, Rage 128, etc to be mostly inadequate - it will struggle with a lot of things, especially titles that want TnL, PS support, etc. The Rage 128 is the biggest problem as it sits (its anachronistic - it's a DX6 card from 1998/9), the 256MB of memory is the next biggest problem, and then the CPU after that. If you have to keep this P3 system for whatever reason, I'd suggest at least upgrading to a GeForce 2 or Radeon (more ideally GeForce 3 or Radeon 8500 to have TnL and PS support), maxing it out at 512MB, and upgrading to whatever the fastest P3 the board can take. Alternately, reduce your upper chronological boundary - 2001-2002 is probably realistically the upper limit for most games on the machine you've outlined (and many of those will run at low settings, low resolution, and may still drag), but it will be MUCH more comfortable in the 1990s.

Another thing to consider - I've yet to have a DX9 title refuse to work in WinVista or higher (although there's currently a discussion on Vogons about FarCry having some graphical oddities under Vista+), so if you have a modern (even semi-modern) gaming system running Vista/7/8/etc it should have no problems with mid-2000s games, and if you're just meaning to support things that are having trouble with the newer OS, this P3 with a better graphics card, more RAM, etc may be just the ticket.

This is mostly for nostalgia. My main system is a core i5 3.7
R9 270x 2gb
500gb wd
Win 7
I'm doing this for the retro feel.

dosquest wrote:

This is mostly for nostalgia. My main system is a core i5 3.7 R9 270x 2gb 500gb wd Win 7 I'm doing this for the retro feel. […]
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This is mostly for nostalgia. My main system is a core i5 3.7
R9 270x 2gb
500gb wd
Win 7
I'm doing this for the retro feel.

If by "retro feel" you mean revisiting titles like WarCraft 3, Morrowind, or C&C Generals at 640x480 or 800x600 with low settings (and still having lots of lag) or re-exploring the world of DX7+ gaming without TnL, I think it'd be a fine experiment. 😊

Your current system should have no problems with DX9 games from the mid 2000s and later (many of them at max IQ settings), so re-covering that is redundant. This P3 system can't do DX7/8 titles and will be mostly limited to the 1990s and a few early 2000s titles that don't rely on TnL, PS, etc support (e.g. Red Alert 2 should run great), so there will be a "gap" between what the two machines can cover (from around 2001 to around 2004). My advice to dump the P3 and go with something a bit newer, and a bit faster, and with a newer and more appropriate graphics card stands - such a machine will/should still handle games from the late 1990s (at least if you stick to Win98 or WinXP), and will also handle DX7/8 titles (which may not work properly under Win7). I'd suggest XP primarily because it will let you go over 512MB, but if you have an actual list of games you'd like to play, run down their system requirements and see if any of them will have any real issues with 512MB or less; if it's no problem, Win98 is likely no problem either. 😀

If the board is a BX board get a FCPGA slotket and a modified Tualatin Celeron 1400.
If the board has a chipset with true 133 MHz FSB support then buy a modified Tualatin pIII 1400.

If your board is fcpga you dont need the slotket only the modified CPUs, there is a Korean guy on Ebay that sells them.
Check the Doom 3 timedemo thread to see how a Tualatin can beat pretty fast systems, it seems they at least handle Doom 3.

Together with for example a Geforce 6800GT this would bridge the whole gap .

Be sure to check that your board can supply 1.6V or lower.

For 2000s it seems underpowered.
Atleast More RAM (512MB +) and a better video card. I don't know much about AGP cards but I am quite sure there are better than unnamed 16 MB ATI cards available.
Just by VRAM alone I can see it won't be sufficient for many games newer than 2000

I would also consider Windows 2000 or XP to shed the RAM limitations of 98.

As others said, your main rig will run DX8/9 titles just fine

I think a P3 850 is fine for 2000. 2000 games didn't demand a lot, there's only a couple of heavy ones. Most 2000 games still targeted a P2 300 system with a Voodoo2 card at the least, even the id Tech3-based ones that were considered the prettiest of that year (Fakk2, Alice, Elite Force).

I would swap the video card for something slightly better though, like a later Rage128 or a TNT2, or maybe a Geforce256/GF2GTS if you don't mind a blurry screen. 😀

as for broad half-a-decade spanning, current PC setups of this generation can actually serve that well, unless it's asshole DRM like StarForce

850Mhz P3 would be ok for games from 2000-1, Ive ran Max Payne at high settings on an 800Mhz, though it did slow down quite a bit. a 1Ghz P3 or Athlon would be better.

Also the video card is anaemic for later stuff, Ive ran Warcraft III on a Voodoo3 (probably similar to that ATI) and it was painful , very low res and blurry with a low frame rate as well..
If possible go with something a bit higher spec, a 64Mb Geforce2 would work well. They tend to be pretty cheap too.

I consider 2002 to be a whole different era where SSE, T&L and S3TC were actually getting some use.

In 2000 my main system was Amd Duron 700 mhz on via kt 133,64 ram, geforce 2 mx 128 bit 32 megs ram, a 7200rpm udma 66 hard drive and games from that period ran fine.

Nahkri wrote:

In 2000 my main system was Amd Duron 700 mhz on via kt 133,64 ram, geforce 2 mx 128 bit 32 megs ram, a 7200rpm udma 66 hard drive and games from that period ran fine.

we have to be careful what we mean by fine though , remember our expectations then were different. if he expects to run games at a relatively high resolution (say 1024X768) at 50+ fps, a Geforce2 MX probably wouldn't do it for most games. Back in the day most of us were perfectly happy with 30-40 fps at 800X600 in most cases.

The monitor im using has a top res of 640x480

dosquest wrote:

The monitor im using has a top res of 640x480

😲 WOW

If you want to play the games from 1998 to 2003 (guess that is the main purpose of a 2k gaming PC), I recommend getting a GeForce2 GTS 32MB. I have one right now, it runs everything from Doom95 to Grand Theft Auto San Andreas (sluggishly though). Most of 'em are AGP 4x, and they hang around the internet for quite cheap too.

You should definitely pick a Pentium III with a speed of atleast 1000MHz or maybe even 1200MHz. The RAM's sweet spot is about 512MB though.
Windows 98SE is a safe bet, I would've picked XP, but for compatibility, stay on 98SE, maybe 2000. The only problems I have with 98SE is the crashes and blue screens (but my HP 98SE rig did fine for long enough)

EDIT: Seeing you only run at 640x480, a GeForce2 MX will also do. Cheaper and even easier to find, supports most games from 199- to 2004.

TwOne wrote:

If you want to play the games from 1998 to 2003 (guess that is the main purpose of a 2k gaming PC), I recommend getting a GeForc […]
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If you want to play the games from 1998 to 2003 (guess that is the main purpose of a 2k gaming PC), I recommend getting a GeForce2 GTS 32MB. I have one right now, it runs everything from Doom95 to Grand Theft Auto San Andreas (sluggishly though). Most of 'em are AGP 4x, and they hang around the internet for quite cheap too.

You should definitely pick a Pentium III with a speed of atleast 1000MHz or maybe even 1200MHz. The RAM's sweet spot is about 512MB though.
Windows 98SE is a safe bet, I would've picked XP, but for compatibility, stay on 98SE, maybe 2000. The only problems I have with 98SE is the crashes and blue screens (but my HP 98SE rig did fine for long enough)

EDIT: Seeing you only run at 640x480, a GeForce2 MX will also do. Cheaper and even easier to find, supports most games from 199- to 2004.

he could always dual boot 98 and 2000, which is what I do , Win2000 does work better with some games (worse with others of course) , its also useful in case Win98 decides to commit suicide and break.

I also dual boot 98se and 2000. I have three hdd, one for dual boot os, second for program installations and third for a tonne of iso's.
i'm rocking a 6800gt and tualatin 1.4ghz 512mb ram, relatively quiet setup 😉

maverick85 wrote:

I also dual boot 98se and 2000. I have three hdd, one for dual boot os, second for program installations and third for a tonne of iso's.
i'm rocking a 6800gt and tualatin 1.4ghz 512mb ram, relatively quiet setup 😉

I also have 3 HDDs , but I set it up a little different. a 20GB drive for Win98SE , another 120GB drive for both Win2000 as well as games that I run on both operating systems. Lastly I have an 80GB drive formatted to NTFS where I keep games I only intend to run on Win2000 these are mainly games from 2000-1 that usually run as well or better on Win2k.

as long as one doesn't run the different operating systems on the same partition there will be no issues.