I think GeForce 4 Ti 4200 would be more than enough, anything higher will probably be bottlenecked, unless you run maybe very high resolution or FSAA.

And while I like the Radeons the 9700/9800 do seem to die. A Radeon 9600 PRO/XT would probably be nice though.

Any of the really high end stuff Ti4600/9700Pro etc run hotter and don't last as long. 9600 or Ti 4200 would be my recommendation.

mwdmeyer wrote on 2023-08-14, 06:36:

I think GeForce 4 Ti 4200 would be more than enough, anything higher will probably be bottlenecked, unless you run maybe very high resolution or FSAA.

And while I like the Radeons the 9700/9800 do seem to die. A Radeon 9600 PRO/XT would probably be nice though.

Any of the really high end stuff Ti4600/9700Pro etc run hotter and don't last as long. 9600 or Ti 4200 would be my recommendation.

Thanks for the info. Yes I have already read about the overheating issues of the high end cards of the gf4 and Radeon 9000 series can have.

I just realised t hat I forget to mention the OS that I am going to use. It will a win 98SE system again just like my first rig, a intel 440bx system.

so I really think going beyond GF 4 and Radeon 9000 series would be a bit over the top.

Yeah. I run a GeForce 6200 PCI on my P3 1ghz with win2000 and it runs well.

GeForce3 is period correct for 2001. (Medion GeForce3 Ti 200 can be found for cheap).
GeForce4 Ti 4200 is most accessible and cheapest to get.
R300 based Radeons would probably give best performance (even on Athlon 1400).

So:
* Geforce3 / Radeon 8500/9000 Pro
* Geforce4 (Ti)
* GeForce FX (5700 or 5900XT)
* Radeon 9500 Pro/9700/9800

Radeon 9500 Pro /9700TX/9700 non-pro would probably be best compromise performance-wise. They were lower clocked and lots of them survived. Price is usually 30-60€ depending on the card (I'd still replace stock cooler with Zalman VF700/VF900. GPU on those cards usually overclocks very well, usually well beyond Pro models.)
Germans had Medion 9800 XXL, which is basically 9800XT with half of VRAM ... can also be found for 40-60€.
FireGL X1-128 (Radeon 9700Pro equivalent) is also recommended if price is right. Although, some driver modding is needed to get OpenGL support in games. (Catalyst 4.12 was latest moddable driver.)

Bottleneck, for the most part, does not exist. Everything depends on your target frame rate, resolution and quality options like anti-aliasing in games you play. So even Radeon X800 or GeForce 6800 won't be out of ordinary for such setup.

I'd go with a Radeon 9600/9800 because that's what I had.
"Period correct" doesn't mean much. I had my Athlon for many years, and have upgraded the GPU during its lifetime.

@all thanks a lot for your further recommendations.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2023-08-14, 08:48:

Bottleneck, for the most part, does not exist. Everything depends on your target frame rate, resolution and quality options like anti-aliasing in games you play. So even Radeon X800 or GeForce 6800 won't be out of ordinary for such setup.

I want to use the system mainly as a high end system for late windows 98 games.

For the years 97 to 99 I have my asus p2b system and for games from late 99 to 2002 I want to the athlon system.

my prefered resolution is 1024x768.

There are many options. What late Win98 games are you targeting?

stef80 wrote on 2023-08-14, 12:08:

There are many options. What late Win98 games are you targeting?

I am interested in playing games like

Drakan
Unreal Tournment
Quake 3
Heavy Metal Fak 2
Deus Ex
Diablo 2
Star Voyager Elite Force
Noctourne
Vampire the Masquarede Redemption
No one lives Forever

I also want to play the orginal versons of Half Life and the Add Ons despite teh fact I have these games on steam fully playable on my modern day Pc.

and also maybe some 2001/2002 games like Return to castle wolfenstein, Max Payne, Nolf 2 , MOH Allied Assault and Jedi Knight 2.

-Diablo 2 is a quirky one. It runs perfectly on a Voodoo3 with Glide, better than almost any card trying to use the D3D mode. It's D3D 6-based and that just isn't efficient for how Diablo 2 works. You need to look into Glide wrappers. Sven Labusch's Glide wrapper was the best for a long time, but my favorite is d2dx on a modern PC.
-Unreal Tournament and Deus Ex are best played with UTGLR and DXGLR. Old versions of these are Win98 compatible.
-NOLF runs Lithtech 2.x might get buggy with later cards / drivers. For example, NVidia drivers after 45.23.

You will get the best image quality out of a Radeon 9700 or newer but will probably run into more compatibility quirks. If you want to run 1600x1200 or something similar you will probably want a X800.

If you ever want to play some Bioware games, you will probably want to have a GeForce 4 Ti - GeForce 6 around too. ATI could barely be bothered to make their OpenGL ICD work correctly with those games (or maybe engage the company with devrel).

Here's a typical 3D 2001 score for an XP 2200+ in a KT400 motherboard with a Quadro4 700 XGL (equivalent to a Ti4400).

swaaye wrote on 2023-08-14, 19:01:

-Diablo 2 is a quirky one. It runs perfectly on a Voodoo3 with Glide, better than almost any card trying to use the D3D mode. […]
Show full quote

-Diablo 2 is a quirky one. It runs perfectly on a Voodoo3 with Glide, better than almost any card trying to use the D3D mode. It's D3D 6-based and that just isn't efficient for how Diablo 2 works. You need to look into Glide wrappers. Sven Labusch's Glide wrapper was the best for a long time, but my favorite is d2dx on a modern PC.
-Unreal Tournament and Deus Ex are best played with UTGLR and DXGLR. Old versions of these are Win98 compatible.
-NOLF runs Lithtech 2.x might get buggy with later cards / drivers. For example, NVidia drivers after 45.23.

You will get the best image quality out of a Radeon 9700 or newer but will probably run into more compatibility quirks. If you want to run 1600x1200 or something similar you will probably want a X800.

If you ever want to play some Bioware games, you will probably want to have a GeForce 4 Ti - GeForce 6 around too. ATI could barely be bothered to make their OpenGL ICD work correctly with those games (or maybe engage the company with devrel).

Thanks for your reply. That is good to know that there are some games that may need some tinkering to make them run nice. This info helps me a lot to narrow down which card to purchase.

I will also look into the different glide wrappers. For Glide games itself a real voodoo card would be the best fo course but in order to make the athlon 1400 shine I would need something like a Voodoo 5 card which is way over my budget. I might be able to justify the purchase of a Voodoo 2 or Voodoo 3 card but that would defeat the purpose of my system to play games from 99 to 2002 in a very good quality.

For 99 and games from 2000 the voodoo 3 might have fighting chance but for games from 2001 and 2002 the card should be too weak to run games well enough.

Repo Man11 wrote on 2023-08-14, 20:00:

Here's a typical 3D 2001 score for an XP 2200+ in a KT400 motherboard with a Quadro4 700 XGL (equivalent to a Ti4400).

Thanks a lot for sharing the 3d mark score. It is really intersting to know hich score to expect when using a Athlon.

3d mark is very interesting topic for me anyway. And i will check it out by myself for sure as soon as my system is completed.

gamefan_851 wrote on 2023-08-14, 20:46:

I will also look into the different glide wrappers. For Glide games itself a real voodoo card would be the best fo course but in order to make the athlon 1400 shine I would need something like a Voodoo 5 card which is way over my budget.

If you're into playing Glide games at resolutions higher than 1024x768 then a Voodoo 5 can give you an advantage, but it's certainly not worth the insane eBay prices. On the other hand, if you're willing to run your Glide games at period-correct resolutions, then a Voodoo 2 or a Voodoo 3 will do just fine.

Anyway, as others have said, most Unreal engine games (including UT and Deus Ex) can be played on newer systems using UTGLR and other fan-made renderers. There aren't that many reasons to run those games under Win9x, unless you really want to use an Aureal Vortex 2 card for A3D 2.0 or something.

I have a Pentium III Tualatin 1400 system which is comparable to your Athlon 1400. I have a Geforce FX 5950 Ultra installed. To be fair, I've never played a game on the system that have maxed out that card. It's my primary Windows 98 machine. The issue is that games newer than year 2000 normally runs fine/is designed to work on Windows XP, and I have a much beefier Win XP system. Also I don't tend to run games in 1600x1200 even if its available, max is 1024x768 due to UI normally not scaling. It's nice to enable FSAA/MSAA on those resolutions, so to have something a bit quicker than what the games you're playing were designed for is a good thing

So it depends on what you are planning in the future with retro rigs. I can almost promise you that you won't end up with just two systems in this hobby 😜

If you get beefier WinXp system, then you can go with almost any card newer than year 2000 (not including budget cards). If not, and this is your fastest system and you intend to play games well into the 00's (extending a bit more than your list above), then get the fastest card you can up to Geforce 6800/X850.

at a quick glance D2 seemed to look correct with a ti 4200, using the 1.13d patch, but the CPU overhead was absolutely ridiculous. in glide on a V3, a pii 400 is enough to almost always hit 25 FPS save for very intensive areas, but with the ti 4200 in D3D it was a stuttery mess even on a piii 1100. i reckon a fast athlon XP is needed to max it out there, and some fast storage too ideally, because the way the game loads in assets on the fly does not seem to play well on period hard drives. 512 MB RAM is good for long sessions but does not remedy the stutter when coming across new assets for the first time.

on modern hardware there are definitely glitches in D3D with 1.13d, but it's possible that this was improved with the 1.14 patches.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-08-14, 21:17:

gamefan_851 wrote on 2023-08-14, 20:46:

I will also look into the different glide wrappers. For Glide games itself a real voodoo card would be the best fo course but in order to make the athlon 1400 shine I would need something like a Voodoo 5 card which is way over my budget.

If you're into playing Glide games at resolutions higher than 1024x768 then a Voodoo 5 can give you an advantage, but it's certainly not worth the insane eBay prices. On the other hand, if you're willing to run your Glide games at period-correct resolutions, then a Voodoo 2 or a Voodoo 3 will do just fine.

Anyway, as others have said, most Unreal engine games (including UT and Deus Ex) can be played on newer systems using UTGLR and other fan-made renderers. There aren't that many reasons to run those games under Win9x, unless you really want to use an Aureal Vortex 2 card for A3D 2.0 or something.

A big thanks for your answer.Well I am more a fan of peroid correct resolutions like 800x600 or 1024x768. With some games highter resolutions can look rather nice but strange tat the same time because the user interface was not meant to be displayed in such high resolutions.

Also thx for the hint. I will look into the fan made renderers of Unreal Engine games to play them on newer systems.

vetz wrote on 2023-08-14, 21:34:

So it depends on what you are planning in the future with retro rigs. I can almost promise you that you won't end up with just two systems in this hobby 😜

If you get beefier WinXp system, then you can go with almost any card newer than year 2000 (not including budget cards). If not, and this is your fastest system and you intend to play games well into the 00's (extending a bit more than your list above), then get the fastest card you can up to Geforce 6800/X850.

You are absolutely right. The retro computing landscape so vast that is impossible to just get 2 systems. There are so many more things to explore and try out.

Getting a xp system did not did not occur to me yet to be frank but it would be worth considering as well for the next project.

I think I might turn the athlon 1400 system just into the ultimate 1999 and 2000 gaming rig. And for games from 2001 and beyond I might get beefy xp system.

Which specs would you consider as decent for a rather powerful xp gaming system for the years 2001 until 2003/04?

auron wrote on 2023-08-14, 21:36:

at a quick glance D2 seemed to look correct with a ti 4200, using the 1.13d patch, but the CPU overhead was absolutely ridiculous. in glide on a V3, a pii 400 is enough to almost always hit 25 FPS save for very intensive areas, but with the ti 4200 in D3D it was a stuttery mess even on a piii 1100. i reckon a fast athlon XP is needed to max it out there, and some fast storage too ideally, because the way the game loads in assets on the fly does not seem to play well on period hard drives. 512 MB RAM is good for long sessions but does not remedy the stutter when coming across new assets for the first time.

on modern hardware there are definitely glitches in D3D with 1.13d, but it's possible that this was improved with the 1.14 patches.

Did not know that is hard to get D2 running in good quality. That's very interesting topic. But the topic also made me curious to try out how well D2 would run on my first rig ( a p2 400 mhz system with a riva card). I have ordered a copy of D2 already i will check it out soon as the copy arrives.

auron wrote on 2023-08-14, 21:36:

at a quick glance D2 seemed to look correct with a ti 4200, using the 1.13d patch, but the CPU overhead was absolutely ridiculous. in glide on a V3, a pii 400 is enough to almost always hit 25 FPS save for very intensive areas, but with the ti 4200 in D3D it was a stuttery mess even on a piii 1100. i reckon a fast athlon XP is needed to max it out there, and some fast storage too ideally, because the way the game loads in assets on the fly does not seem to play well on period hard drives. 512 MB RAM is good for long sessions but does not remedy the stutter when coming across new assets for the first time.

on modern hardware there are definitely glitches in D3D with 1.13d, but it's possible that this was improved with the 1.14 patches.

The problem with Diablo 2 is it dynamically loads textures as you move around and they are palettized textures. The D3D mode is limited to what Direct3D 6 could do and it is poor at this on the fly texture streaming and can't use the palettized textures (thus they need realtime conversion). This increases texture memory usage as well. The D3D mode also skips some things like filtering the ground.

So you really want to avoid using the game's D3D option.

gamefan_851 wrote on 2023-08-14, 20:46:

Thanks for your reply. That is good to know that there are some games that may need some tinkering to make them run nice. This info helps me a lot to narrow down which card to purchase.

I will also look into the different glide wrappers. For Glide games itself a real voodoo card would be the best fo course but in order to make the athlon 1400 shine I would need something like a Voodoo 5 card which is way over my budget. I might be able to justify the purchase of a Voodoo 2 or Voodoo 3 card but that would defeat the purpose of my system to play games from 99 to 2002 in a very good quality.

For 99 and games from 2000 the voodoo 3 might have fighting chance but for games from 2001 and 2002 the card should be too weak to run games well enough.

If a Voodoo3 can be found affordably, I think it's a great card to have. You get unique visuals with a real 3dfx card that you don't otherwise get to experience. You don't really need a Voodoo5. And Voodoo2 cards don't really have enough texture memory.

Glide wrappers can be used to run almost anything though too. In fact they are nice because you can run super high resolution faster than a Voodoo5 anyway.

swaaye wrote on 2023-08-15, 20:59:

gamefan_851 wrote on 2023-08-14, 20:46:

Thanks for your reply. That is good to know that there are some games that may need some tinkering to make them run nice. This info helps me a lot to narrow down which card to purchase.

I will also look into the different glide wrappers. For Glide games itself a real voodoo card would be the best fo course but in order to make the athlon 1400 shine I would need something like a Voodoo 5 card which is way over my budget. I might be able to justify the purchase of a Voodoo 2 or Voodoo 3 card but that would defeat the purpose of my system to play games from 99 to 2002 in a very good quality.

For 99 and games from 2000 the voodoo 3 might have fighting chance but for games from 2001 and 2002 the card should be too weak to run games well enough.

If a Voodoo3 can be found affordably, I think it's a great card to have. You get unique visuals with a real 3dfx card that you don't otherwise get to experience. You don't really need a Voodoo5. And Voodoo2 cards don't really have enough texture memory.

Glide wrappers can be used to run almost anything though too. In fact they are nice because you can run super high resolution faster than a Voodoo5 anyway.

Being the a owner of a Voodoo 3 card would be really neat I have to admit. They are not exactly cheap but still more afordable than other cards of the Voodoo family. Turning the Athlon system into a glide system for 99 and 2000 games would be really cool.

A glide wrapper would be good alternative as well no doubt about it but I am more the fan of having original hardware.

I think I am going to do that. For games from 2001 and beyond i will look into the realm of win xp gaming like recommended.