Not sure what you're asking exactly - is it about motherboards or processors?

I think all the information is here, if you look for it, but it's not always organized and easy to follow, and not always conclusive.

Generally, past a certain point, CPU speed does not matter anymore for "problematic" games. Anything really speed sensitive will be just as broken on a P-III as on a P4. The real limitation is in boards/chipsets and their compatibility with ISA sound cards (if slots are available) or ISA resource emulation over PCI.

A lot depends on what setup you are chasing (Pure DOS? Windows 98? Windows XP? Combined?), and which games you intend to play. E.g., you mentioned "Blood" and "Duke Nukem" as
"earlier games", but for the DOS era, these are rather "late" games. So I assume you want to play Windows games as well?

Since you already have a high-end Socket 478 CPU and an ICH5 board, you can build a nice system around that. Windows XP compatibility will be 100%, Windows 98 SE can be installed with some tweaking; for DOS, if I recall correctly, PC-PCI and DDMA are a no-go on this board, so you are "stuck" with TSR-based software emulation of ISA cards, such as the Aureal Vortex-based solutions, if you want good pure DOS compatibility.

Also, keep in mind, that a Pentium 4 CPU is already powerful enough to play many DOS games in emulation via DOSBOX at good speed - not the high-end ones, but most of the speed-sensitive ones are older and can easily be emulated. For many games DOSBOX in WinXP, rather than pure DOS, might be the preferred route.

dr_st wrote:

Generally, past a certain point, CPU speed does not matter anymore for "problematic" games. Anything really speed sensitive will be just as broken on a P-III as on a P4. The real limitation is in boards/chipsets and their compatibility with ISA sound cards (if slots are available) or ISA resource emulation over PCI.

Yes, although where that point is exactly has been a subject of debate and depends to a certain degree on what games you're interested in (sorry, dr_st, I don't want to set this off either). You're definitely right, though, in that ISA DMA and/or PCI compatibility sideband methods can make or break a late model motherboard. NVidia boards, for instance, are wholly absent of any backwards compatibility tech for DOS sound.

well, what about if we could make this ourself? newly made SB-clone ...with 24bit and AES/EBU... join in development!

A motherboard that works best with DOS on sound and can be played at decent FPS. This is focus. I already have two boards mentioned in passing (P4P800-SE and P5P800) will that work out using DDMA mode in DOS, otherwise I'll use either one of these two boards for win98SE or should I hunt down another board like socket 370 with PC_PCI (SB_LINK) and YMF7x4 that does have SB_LINK headers just for DOS?

I also ask again do you know of really reliable VIA chipset board that does not crash on me as I had one once long ago since new also for DOS support either SB_LINK or DDMA mode?
ISA boards is not common on high performance board and expensive. The cheaper ones tends to be socket 370 and socket A. Socket A I need reliable chipset that works with DDMA or have spots or with header for SB_LINK?

This just in case I deal with some games that does not play too well in a way with sound card that is not ISA.

How much success rate with DDMA mode in DOS and have no need to load TSR or EMM386? I have good background dealing with DOS as I had 8088, 286 and 386, pentium, PII computers working with DOS for years beginning of late 1980's and read documentations. Still occasionally dip into DOS to deal with firmwares.

Cheers, pentiumspeed

I have never had a VIA board crash, ever. The only time I've had them go bad is because of caps or misadventures with BIOS flashing.

Oh no, I had problems with VIA chipset (two of them) in era of socket A era even I upgraded to barton core on same board, and 686B chipset issues with creative.

That why need to know which VIA chipset is reliable on socket A and able to handle DOS as well otherwise I'll look at intel chipset instead for DOS compatibility.

I sourced a socket 370 motherboard with sb_link header (815PE) from russian seller. Also bought a processor; PIII 1GHz with 133fsb 256K, coppermine type. I also have tualatin 1.4GHz as well but this is for trying.

Cheers, Pentiumspeed.

Well, it depends what you want. KT333CE is the best if you want Voodoo 3 / Voodoo 5 AGP compatibility. If you want the latest and fastest, go for KT600 and KT880.

I have a P4P800 build
P4P800 End of Win98 Support Build

While Win98 was more the OS I was aiming at it can still play dos games from within windows quite well.
In theory I could use the non official Audigy 2 dos drivers to play in pure dos but that was never the focus of this PC so haven't bothered. besides a P4 has more then enough power to play dos games from within Win98

You mentioned 440BX, this is far better choice as it has an ISA slot and gets rid of the sound card problem all together. I'm not aware of any problems accept speed related issues and a P4 will definitely have the same problems with speed