The P2B is an i440BX chipet motherboard, as such it can theoretically run at 133MHz FSB but it has no 1/2 AGP divider so your AGP will continue to run at 2/3 (89MHz), which will be a No-No for many cards you want to run, and likely not a healthy thing for the others that actually do run. Also depending on the motherboard revision it may or may not even support low voltage Coppermines, so 133MHz support may be irrelevant regardless; feel free to check here: http://homepage.hispeed.ch/rscheidegger/p2b_p … pgrade_faq.html

Well shit. Thanks for letting me know. Might just end up getting a socket 470 board after all.

I assume my current CPU is running at 100fsb correct? 500mhz is not a speed demon, but it is still a pentium 3, and I'll be focusing on 2000ish and earlier games. Is that enough? If my CPU is running at 100mhz fsb, do my AGP prospects improve at all?

EDIT: According to wikipedia I have a first revision Katmai, which runs at 100fsb.

Only you can say if the 500MHz P3 is 'enough' for your applications - give it a go and see.

If you decide to look for an So370 board, be aware there are three different, non-forwards compatible versions: PPGA (Mendocino Celeron only), FC-PGA (Coppermine P3 and Celeron as well as Mendocino, but no Tualatin) and FC-PGA2 (Tualatin and Coppermine support but no Mendocino). Be aware of what you are looking for. If you want higher performance than with your current P3, avoid PPGA. FC-PGA2 sounds great but can be hard to come by and rarely has ISA slots, limiting its usefulness with DOS.

dionb wrote:

Only you can say if the 500MHz P3 is 'enough' for your applications - give it a go and see.

If you decide to look for an So370 board, be aware there are three different, non-forwards compatible versions: PPGA (Mendocino Celeron only), FC-PGA (Coppermine P3 and Celeron as well as Mendocino, but no Tualatin) and FC-PGA2 (Tualatin and Coppermine support but no Mendocino). Be aware of what you are looking for. If you want higher performance than with your current P3, avoid PPGA. FC-PGA2 sounds great but can be hard to come by and rarely has ISA slots, limiting its usefulness with DOS.

What I think I am going to do is just buy a graphics card and play some games. If performance at 500mhz isn't where I need it to be, I am just going to upgrade to a pentium 4.It is cheaper to get a whole socket 478 platform than upgrade to another p3 setup.

mothergoose729 wrote:

dionb wrote:

Only you can say if the 500MHz P3 is 'enough' for your applications - give it a go and see.

If you decide to look for an So370 board, be aware there are three different, non-forwards compatible versions: PPGA (Mendocino Celeron only), FC-PGA (Coppermine P3 and Celeron as well as Mendocino, but no Tualatin) and FC-PGA2 (Tualatin and Coppermine support but no Mendocino). Be aware of what you are looking for. If you want higher performance than with your current P3, avoid PPGA. FC-PGA2 sounds great but can be hard to come by and rarely has ISA slots, limiting its usefulness with DOS.

What I think I am going to do is just buy a graphics card and play some games. If performance at 500mhz isn't where I need it to be, I am just going to upgrade to a pentium 4.It is cheaper to get a whole socket 478 platform than upgrade to another p3 setup.

Pro-tip: instead go for an Athlon XP instead. Just as cheap, less hot and therefore error-prone.

I would check your power supply. Those old HP Pavilions are notorious for cheap power supplies.

Be aware of your AGP slot's capabilities. All of my PII boards are keyed as 3.3V only, so you need an older card (late Voodoo era) or a universal card. Luckily, universal AGP cards are easy to find.

IMO, the P3 is a great circa-2000 platform to be on. I prefer i815 and Tualatin for low-power, high-performance, but i810 and a 600-900MHz FC-PGA is good too. As someone else mentioned, if you want to run DOS games with sound, try to make sure you get either an ISA slot, or check for an SB-Link header on the board.

I would reserve the P4 for XP, personally. Or even a Core 2 Duo -- they're cheap and plentiful still, and there's not much you can do on a P4 that you can't on the Core 2s.

If I had to choose a minimal line-up to cover a wide history, it would be a 386, a Pentium MMX, a P3, and a Core 2.

Slot 1 makes a great DOs/Win9x cross over PC but as all cross overs it is a compromise.

Put a sound card in that isa slot and 99% of even the most demanding dos game will run fine, catch is some games will run too fast.
Decent AGP card and PCI sound card and majority of Win9x games will run ok, catch is not quite powerful enough to max out the settings on some games.

My P3 600 Katmai is my favorite Win9x gaming PC, Mostly because that's the one with the Voodoo 2 SLI, but still find the games run good enough and any that dont run in WInXP anyway