Seeing how it's his first retro rig, I'd guesstimate the odds of being disappointed by unexpectedly low performance are probably higher than those of running into hardware incompatibilities, i.e. I'd have him start with one of the Geforces.

Though a Matrox card('s excellent VGA signal) would be nice if he's also picking up a CRT, or playing mostly 2D/text heavy stuff...

An mx 440 is cheap enough that I'd start with that, until an actual performance problem occurs, then I'd talk other options.

Any GeForce is a super fast card for a P3 600. For TNT gen, I would look for a TNT2.

A Radeon will have better image quality than the NV cards, including 2D sharpness in most cases. Nvidia cards of that time sometimes have terrible vga output quality. Game compatibility will be somewhat more problematic though. Radeon 7500 is a bug fixed die shrink of the original so a nice option and similar in speed to top GF2 cards. Radeon 7000 / VE is about 2x faster than a TNT2.

Matrox G400 is similar in speed to a TNT2 but with much better image quality. Like a Radeon. Game compatibility will be worse than both ATI and NV though.

If you want good compatibility DVI output, I would go with some kind of GF4 or >= Radeon 9500. VGA is usually the way to go with old hardware though. ATI lacks fixed aspect ratio scaling until much later drivers (2009?).

Depends on your preferred resolution and color mode. If you want stable frame rate at 1024x768 32-bit or higher - don't even bother with anything below GeForce 2 GTS.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2023-09-10, 17:50:

Depends on your preferred resolution and color mode. If you want stable frame rate at 1024x768 32-bit or higher - don't even bother with anything below GeForce 2 GTS.

I concur. Most people seem to forget that “back in the day” we would be running CRTs, so dropping gaming resolutions whilst leaving Windows at a higher one was perfectly acceptable, sometimes even desirable.

With most people now running LCDs with native resolutions higher than that which we used to game at, you need to overpower for any given era.

Geforce 4 Ti4200s are still relatively cheap, and is probably where I’d aim. Good backwards compatibility, good drivers, and will play your late 90s/early 2000s games at 1280x1024 (or 1280x960) without breaking a sweat.

I would also vote for the TN2 card if your buddy wants to get a peroid correct card. I am using a Riva TNT 2 for my asus p2b 400 mhz system und it is nice card. I will replace it eventually with a more powerful card but I still think it is good starting point if you can get one cheap.

I am not familiar how much TNT 2 card is these days I got mine with my aus p2b mainboard. it was a complete set (asus p2b PII 400 mhz and the Riva Card).

Price wise the geforce 4 440mx should be among cheapest cards you can get. Geforce 2, 3 and 4 cards can also be fairly economical if you keep looking long enough.

Thanks a lot for the replies guys. Looking for a GeForce 2,3 or maybe even 4 sounds like the best approach. I am using a geforce 4 4200 myself and I like a lot. I am using the gf 4 on way more powerful system though so I was not sure if the GF4 is a worthy recommendation for my buddy.

theiceman085 wrote on 2023-09-11, 11:43:

Thanks a lot for the replies guys. Looking for a GeForce 2,3 or maybe even 4 sounds like the best approach. I am using a geforce 4 4200 myself and I like a lot. I am using the gf 4 on way more powerful system though so I was not sure if the GF4 is a worthy recommendation for my buddy.

I can relate to that but some retro gamers these use quite umatching parts for their rigs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0Kn3FxHdqQ

In this video you can see a Penitum 2 333 MHZ running Half Life with with one the Geforce FX card. Seems to work somehow.

So it also should be possible to run Pentium 3 800 mhz with a Geforce 4 4200 Ti.

But as beginner in retro computing I leave the final judgement if some combination Pentium 3 800mhz and the GF 4 would make sense to the more seasoned reto gamers.

I am just saying do not rule out such combintions just because of the fact that somehow sounds wrong to pair such a old gpu with a newer GPU.

gamefan_851 wrote on 2023-09-11, 12:38:

I can relate to that but some retro gamers these use quite umatching parts for their rigs. […]
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theiceman085 wrote on 2023-09-11, 11:43:

Thanks a lot for the replies guys. Looking for a GeForce 2,3 or maybe even 4 sounds like the best approach. I am using a geforce 4 4200 myself and I like a lot. I am using the gf 4 on way more powerful system though so I was not sure if the GF4 is a worthy recommendation for my buddy.

I can relate to that but some retro gamers these use quite umatching parts for their rigs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0Kn3FxHdqQ

In this video you can see a Penitum 2 333 MHZ running Half Life with with one the Geforce FX card. Seems to work somehow.

So it also should be possible to run Pentium 3 800 mhz with a Geforce 4 4200 Ti.

But as beginner in retro computing I leave the final judgement if some combination Pentium 3 800mhz and the GF 4 would make sense to the more seasoned reto gamers.

I am just saying do not rule out such combintions just because of the fact that somehow sounds wrong to pair such a old gpu with a newer GPU.

Thanks for your input. From the point of view, my buddy's 4 4200 would be the perfect card. They are not expensive, widely available, and also rather powerful.

But like you said it is better to leave the final verdict of such a combo would make sense to the more experienced people here.

The MX440 would be a good choice, it's basically a high end Geforce2 and it's one of the more common and cheaper cards. Make sure it has 128-bit memory though (most do but some deceptive ones don't).
But if you find a good price on a Ti4200 then I see no reason not to use that instead, unless you just have some sentiments about what card "feels" right with what you want to build.

The Ti4200 would generally be overpowered for a P3-600, but that just means you have headroom for future upgrades without the video card being a limitation. It also means you can run higher resolutions without a framerate drop.
If your friend stays interested in the hobby, he might end up with more motherboards and CPUs in the future, and the Ti4200 can come in handy with those also.
The Ti4200 is likely to increase in price more than an MX card ever will, so if he's in the market for a video card and finds a good price on a Ti4200, it's a good investment to get it now instead of later.

The only downsides I can see with the Ti4200 are higher power consumption and maybe less reliability, but those are unlikely to be a problem. Just make sure the pegs that hold the heatsink in place are in good condition and that the fan isn't dying.

If they are close in price then I'd say the Ti4200 is great, but don't spend a lot for it. On a P3-600 you probably won't see much difference from a fast Geforce2 to an MX440 to a Geforce3 to a Ti4200 but the difference will grow at higher resolutions. I don't have benchmark figures but I would expect you'll see a difference at 1600x1200, maybe at 1280x1024. If your friend does have a 1600x1200 monitor, keep in mind that using 800x600 mode is an option, and at that res all these cards would perform about the same.

I'm suggesting a GeForce too.
If your PIII 600 have a 100Mhz and if you want to overclock it to 133 x 6… then the AGP freq will be overclocked too on 440BX
And Nvidia cards tend to be more tolerant to increased AGP freqs.

@Shamino Thanks for the detailed post. Yes, the mx440 is a decent and budget-friendly card worth recommending. It was also the card I had almost picked for my system, but I got a gf4 4200 at a good price.

The higher power consumption of the Gf4 could be troublesome and the fan could also be a problem and might need some replacement. Which would be not so cool because my buddy is not able to replace the fan and I could not help him with that as well.

I was lucky in that regard. My GF4 has still the original fan and it is still working. I have read that some people got a gf4 with a dying fan so it was worth mentioning.

@acl Thanks for sharing your opinion as well.

Radeon (R100 GPU) SDR, original Geforce 2 MX, Voodoo3 2000 AGP, Rage 128 Pro, etc..