Keep the Athlon 800Mhz system.. Its very hard to find now days.. Specially Slot A stuff.

Why not keep both?

If I had to choose between them, I would keep the Slot-A system, use the RAM from the PIII system, keep the V3-2000 and the Geforce 2 MX 400.

Almoststew1990 wrote:

I have a choice in keeping either of the following systems: […]
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I have a choice in keeping either of the following systems:

AOPEN MX3S S370 (chipset ???, Universal AGP, PCIx3)
Intel P3 866Mhz
512MB SDR 133MHz RAM
Cant' find the specific manual for it online and I've had some issues getting display drivers to work with the chipset drivers installed.

MSI 6191 Slot A (AMD Irongate, AGP, PCIx3)
Athlon 800MHz (not Thunderbird)
256MB SDR 100MHz RAM (although I assume the 512 133 would work in here too)

With either a TNT2 or a GeForce (2) MX 400 or PCI Voodoo 3 2000; SB Live.

The slot A system. There very uncommon and you will have a MUCH easier time finding another S370 8n the future. Swap out the 256MB with the 512 and use the GeForce2 if you're looking for maximum compatibility.

Athlon! P-IIIs are everywhere, and if your board is finicky with drivers...

THanks for the replies. I can't keep both because I am trying to make some space and money (to spend on more computer parts, obviously!) I am also going to be shifting some boring P4, Socket A stuff, probably for about £1 🙁 The decent coolers are worth more than that alone!

Almoststew1990 wrote:

THanks for the replies. I can't keep both because I am trying to make some space and money (to spend on more computer parts, obviously!) I am also going to be shifting some boring P4, Socket A stuff, probably for about £1 🙁 The decent coolers are worth more than that alone!

Boring? IMO that's the best era to mess with right now. CPUs and RAM are plentiful and cheap. Which means you can oberclock without worrying about blowing up a $25 CPU.

Socket A is kewl stuff, why so low prices?

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

Boring? IMO that's the best era to mess with right now. CPUs and RAM are plentiful and cheap. Which means you can oberclock without worrying about blowing up a $25 CPU.

That's why I think they're boring, they're really common! Swarms of OEM boards from when "The Family's Dell" was how people used PCs.

Voodoo 3 PCI cards are getting very hard to come by at decent prices.

They are desirable because there are much better\faster AGP cards out there for systems that will be playing a variety of games, but if you want a good Glide experience on the same machine you'll need a PCI Voodoo. The most affordable, reliable and best performing cards to get are the Voodoo 3 series. A Voodoo 2 SLI setup is competitive performance-wise and is flexible but its more work, more expense (usually) and can reduce 2D image quality. Much easier to just get a PCI Voodoo Banshee, V3 or if you feel like spending an arm and a leg, a V4 or V5. The Voodoo 3 is also known for its high quality 16bit color due to the internal 24bit rendering it does. So games that don't support 32bit color can look better on a Voodoo 3.

I would combine the two systems into the Athlon. Use the best parts of both, use the Geforce 2 MX (assuming it is AGP) and the Voodoo 3 PCI if possible. The P3 is probably a little faster, but generally anything that benefits from that will probably run even better with no problems on a much newer system. The Athlon would be a nice 98SE system for playing games up to 2000 or so. Lots of Glide support and some early 32bit color games that the Geforce would be better for. It would be easiest to dual-boot two installations so that one OS is read to go for the Voodoo and one is ready for the Geforce with the other card disabled in each OS. That would make for an awesome system!