Does this look like a good late 90’s setup? \ VOGONS

Does this look like a good late 90’s setup?

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First post, by Lo-ResBros

Posted on 2019-01-06, 15:10

Lo-ResBros Offline

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so after building a nice 486-DX2-66 for early to mid 90’s games, I feel like making something for late 90’s games 😀
I bought what looks like a nice Tyan S1470 Socket 7 motherboard on ebay for $50 and a lot of 6 Pentium MMX CPUs $10. 2 or 3 of those CPUs are 233Mhz. From what I’ve read Tyan boards are pretty good quality boards and should work well with a MMX 233.

As for video I found a Ati Rage 128 pro 32MB PCI card for $40. What I really want is a nice Voodoo card but I’ll work on that later, I hear the rage 128 pro is actually a good card too so probably good to start with till I find a good deal on a voodoo setup.

Sound I have a Sound Blaster Live card or Sound Blaster AWE64 (with 32MB) which would be better for this setup?

The motherboard supports SDRAM so I have 64MB (2x 32MB sticks) is that enough? too much for dos but good for early windows 98 3D games?

hoping to play games like Duke Nukem 3D, Quake I-II, Star Craft, System Shock, not sure how far this setup can go....

any opinions or suggestions appreciated!

AMD K6-2+/550MHz
Soltek SL-54U5 Super Socket 7
64MB SDRAM
3DFX Voodoo 3 3000 16MB
Sound Blaster AWE64
Roland SC-55mkII

Pentium MMX 233MHz
Tyan TitanVX S1470 Socket 7
128MB SDRAM
ATi Rage 128 pro 32MB
Audio Plus 320 v.1
Roland SC-88

Reply 1 of 16, by LunarG

Posted on 2019-01-06, 15:22

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For DOS games the AWE64 is better, for Windows 9x games, having the EAX from the SB Live is actually a significant advantage. EAX on headphones in Unreal is totally awesome.
64MB is fine for anything that a Pentium MMX can run.
Sounds like it should be a pretty nice system.

WinXP : PIII 1.4GHz, 512MB RAM, 73GB SCSI HDD, Matrox Parhelia, SB Audigy 2.
Win98se : K6-3+ 500MHz, 256MB RAM, 80GB HDD, Matrox Millennium G400 MAX, Voodoo 2, SW1000XG.
DOS6.22 : Intel DX4, 64MB RAM, 1.6GB HDD, Diamond Stealth64 DRAM, GUS 1MB, SB16.

Reply 2 of 16, by Lo-ResBros

Posted on 2019-01-06, 15:28

Lo-ResBros Offline

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LunarG wrote:
For DOS games the AWE64 is better, for Windows 9x games, having the EAX from the SB Live is actually a significant advantage. EAX on headphones in Unreal is totally awesome.
64MB is fine for anything that a Pentium MMX can run.
Sounds like it should be a pretty nice system.

ahhhh I see. Ok I’ll use the Live card for this setup and keep the AWE64 for the 486 setup that is strictly DOS right now. Thanks!

AMD K6-2+/550MHz
Soltek SL-54U5 Super Socket 7
64MB SDRAM
3DFX Voodoo 3 3000 16MB
Sound Blaster AWE64
Roland SC-55mkII

Pentium MMX 233MHz
Tyan TitanVX S1470 Socket 7
128MB SDRAM
ATi Rage 128 pro 32MB
Audio Plus 320 v.1
Roland SC-88

Reply 3 of 16, by Baoran

Posted on 2019-01-06, 17:14

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With 233Mhz mmx cpu system shock should be playable, but not perfect when it comes to frame rates.

Reply 4 of 16, by Lo-ResBros

Posted on 2019-01-06, 18:27

Lo-ResBros Offline

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Baoran wrote:
With 233Mhz mmx cpu system shock should be playable, but not perfect when it comes to frame rates.

That’s fitting and nostalgic for me since I was always struggling to play the newer games back in the day 🤣

Last edited by Lo-ResBros on 2019-01-08, 22:44. Edited 1 time in total.

AMD K6-2+/550MHz
Soltek SL-54U5 Super Socket 7
64MB SDRAM
3DFX Voodoo 3 3000 16MB
Sound Blaster AWE64
Roland SC-55mkII

Pentium MMX 233MHz
Tyan TitanVX S1470 Socket 7
128MB SDRAM
ATi Rage 128 pro 32MB
Audio Plus 320 v.1
Roland SC-88

Reply 5 of 16, by FluffyPop

Posted on 2019-01-07, 16:51

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That's almost exactly the setup I had back in the late 90s. All the the games you mentioned will run great, but the further you get from 1998, the worse it will get (games from 2000 will be playable, but slow, anything released later won't run very well, if at all).

Reply 6 of 16, by doaks80

Posted on 2019-01-07, 17:10

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Lo-ResBros wrote:
LunarG wrote:
For DOS games the AWE64 is better, for Windows 9x games, having the EAX from the SB Live is actually a significant advantage. EAX on headphones in Unreal is totally awesome.
64MB is fine for anything that a Pentium MMX can run.
Sounds like it should be a pretty nice system.

ahhhh I see. Ok I’ll use the Live card for this setup and keep the AWE64 for the 486 setup that is strictly DOS right now. Thanks!

If you can have either you must be able to have both together.

k6-3+ 400 / s3 virge DX+voodoo1 / awe32(32mb)
via c3 866 / s3 savage4+voodoo2 sli / audigy1+awe64(8mb)
athlon xp 3200+ / voodoo5 5500 / diamond mx300
pentium4 3400 / geforce fx5950U / audigy2 ZS
core2duo E8500 / radeon HD5850 / x-fi titanium

Reply 7 of 16, by The Serpent Rider

Posted on 2019-01-07, 17:16

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having the EAX from the SB Live is actually a significant advantage. EAX on headphones in Unreal is totally awesome.

EAX is a bit too heavy for Pentium MMX, as pretty much any other 3D sound implementation (A3D 1.0 excluded). A3D 2.0 is especially horrible CPU hog.

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 8 of 16, by Logistics

Posted on 2019-01-07, 17:51

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Then perhaps, he could use an Extigy? Would that offload the CPU or would the USB usage hurt?

Reply 9 of 16, by SirNickity

Posted on 2019-01-07, 17:52

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IMO, Pentium 1 is DOS / early Win95 territory. Bit long in the tooth for games that run on Win98+. I would say the Live would be better suited to a later-year build, and even the AWE64 would be just on the perimeter. Did you have any intention on building a PII/III? That would be better for early 3D games, and the Live.

Reply 10 of 16, by The Serpent Rider

Posted on 2019-01-07, 18:11

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Would that offload the CPU or would the USB usage hurt?

It's already offloaded by the DSP, if we're talking about Live!, Vortex 2, Crystal CS4630, etc. Pentium MMX is just to weak for complex 3D sound, even with proper hardware to reduce the burden.

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 11 of 16, by LunarG

Posted on 2019-01-07, 20:38

LunarG Offline

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The Serpent Rider wrote:
having the EAX from the SB Live is actually a significant advantage. EAX on headphones in Unreal is totally awesome.

EAX is a bit too heavy for Pentium MMX, as pretty much any other 3D sound implementation (A3D 1.0 excluded). A3D 2.0 is especially horrible CPU hog.

That might be absolutely correct. I've not tried to. I didn't have an SB Live! back in the days before I had a K6-2 300MHz. But with that CPU, it was just fine.

Reply 12 of 16, by The Serpent Rider

Posted on 2019-01-08, 01:35

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K6-2 300 is even worse.

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 13 of 16, by chinny22

Posted on 2019-01-08, 14:05

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What windows games are enjoyable on a 233MMX that also support EAX?

I tend to agree with SirNickity that this is more dos gaming rig with very early Win95 gaming pushing the limit, but never actually owning one am happy to be convinced otherwise.

Reply 14 of 16, by Lo-ResBros

Posted on 2019-01-08, 22:40

Lo-ResBros Offline

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SirNickity wrote:
IMO, Pentium 1 is DOS / early Win95 territory. Bit long in the tooth for games that run on Win98+. I would say the Live would be better suited to a later-year build, and even the AWE64 would be just on the perimeter. Did you have any intention on building a PII/III? That would be better for early 3D games, and the Live.

I’ll probably build a PII/PIII system later too 😀 My focus with this build was definately with late dos games in mind but was interrested to see how far I could go with it. I’ll try out the SB live first since I’ve seen it has decent dos support, but if it doesn’t workout well I’ll use the Awe64. I’m just getting back into PC stuff so slowly getting more parts and looking for good deals I’m sure I’ll end up with 3 setups in the end

AMD K6-2+/550MHz
Soltek SL-54U5 Super Socket 7
64MB SDRAM
3DFX Voodoo 3 3000 16MB
Sound Blaster AWE64
Roland SC-55mkII

Pentium MMX 233MHz
Tyan TitanVX S1470 Socket 7
128MB SDRAM
ATi Rage 128 pro 32MB
Audio Plus 320 v.1
Roland SC-88

Reply 15 of 16, by Lo-ResBros

Posted on 2019-01-08, 22:49

Lo-ResBros Offline

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doaks80 wrote:
Lo-ResBros wrote:
LunarG wrote:
For DOS games the AWE64 is better, for Windows 9x games, having the EAX from the SB Live is actually a significant advantage. EAX on headphones in Unreal is totally awesome.
64MB is fine for anything that a Pentium MMX can run.
Sounds like it should be a pretty nice system.

ahhhh I see. Ok I’ll use the Live card for this setup and keep the AWE64 for the 486 setup that is strictly DOS right now. Thanks!

If you can have either you must be able to have both together.

You’re right I could use both together but I also have a 486 setup that could use the AWE64 instead of the Sound Blaster 16 it currently has. Unfortunately the SB16 is one of the noisy ones

AMD K6-2+/550MHz
Soltek SL-54U5 Super Socket 7
64MB SDRAM
3DFX Voodoo 3 3000 16MB
Sound Blaster AWE64
Roland SC-55mkII

Pentium MMX 233MHz
Tyan TitanVX S1470 Socket 7
128MB SDRAM
ATi Rage 128 pro 32MB
Audio Plus 320 v.1
Roland SC-88

Reply 16 of 16, by dirkmirk

Posted on 2019-01-08, 23:32

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System Shock will play fine at 640x480, if it doesn't I would try a different graphics card as the ATI might be a little quirky.

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