Your Tualatin might be able to run nGlide at good speed. Faster CPUs can even outperform real hardware.

You could potentially convert your BX machine over to a VIA C3 equipped slowdown box which would be better at handling titles that want 486 speeds.

Socket 370 tends to eclipse Slot 1, and if you really want Glide on that platform you can just add a Voodoo 2 or SLI configuration to it; So you probably want to keep a Socket 3 or Socket 7 companion to your Socket 370 rather than a Slot-1 PC.

But the real answer to your question is "At least Five." Congratulations, you have been set on the path to madness all of us have trodden in the past, you will end up hoarding dozens of PCs, so One or Two is pretty much an insignificant choice at the moment.

SubZero wrote:

Hi Guys, […]
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Hi Guys,

Pc 1:
Chaintech 6BTA3 Slot 1, Intel 440BX
Pentium 2 333MHz (unlocked = downclockable to 133MHz)
384MB RAM
Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
Sound Blaster AWE64 CT4520
32GB SSD (IDE to S-ATA adapter)

Pc 2:
QDI Advance 10T Socket 370, VIA 694T
Pentium 4 Tualatin S 1400MHz (Equivalent to 386DX25 with caches disabled)
512MB RAM
Geforce 4 Ti 4400
Sound Blaster AWE64 CT4500 (for DOS)
Sound Blaster Audigy 1 (for Windows)
60GB SSD (IDE to S-ATA adapter)

Your socket 370 machine is almost same as what I have, except Voodoo 2 SLI, which would eliminate your "except the lack of glide support" concerns. It all comes down to your personal preferences (which games you would like to play, etc.) but personally, I don't think pairing a PII and PIII is a good idea, even if you want to have two systems, anyway.

If you decided to have a single machine and you have no "too-much-more-than-enough-speed" issues with your choice of retro software/games, I'll go with the second one and add some sort of Voodoo in it (Voodoo 2 would be the choice of course).

If you decide to have two systems on the other hand, make the second one a Pentium/Pentium MMX at most (my choice also), or maybe even a 486.

And don't take the "crazy people" here seriously. 🤣 If your retro interests does not focus on tinkering with old hardware but you just want to play some games and run some software (i.e. if you only want some practical retro builds that you can actually regularly use), 2 or 3 is the magic number, in my opinion.

PS: I have 9 at the moment though, I'm one of these "crazy people" unfortunatelly 😊
PS2: But only 3 of them at a time are active and being used regularly 🤣

Here is a list of games with speed issues and what the game works well with.
https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/List_of_ … sensitive_games

but you have really answered your own question, if all your games run fine then you can drop the P2 if nglide runs your glide games

I've got 1/2 dozen machines because I enjoy having a 486, Glide box, super fast Win9x gaming, etc, etc. and don't like down clocking (Its cheating in my book)
95% of my games run fine on my P3 600 Slot 1 and still have 1 game (Hi Octane) that runs too fast on a P3 but too slow on my 486, so your always going to have a game or 2 that just refuse to run on whatever you decide on.

Even if you don't keep full systems, you can keep around parts that might be interesting in the future. That BX motherboard might be interesting, for instance, depending on how much expansion it has and what the VRM can do.

I would keep both, but I have too many already, so... Tualatin system is great, add a V2 (or better - V2 SLI) and it should be an excelent DOS, Windows 95/98 and even Windows XP machine. But keep the main components from the older system (motherboard, cpu, videocard, soundcard), sell them only if you *really* need the money or some free space (they shouldn't take too much space, unless you live in a very small room.

Try a glide wrapper.. they are good enough and your system is fast enough to easily do it. I prefer it over messing with voodoo 2's