First post, by Emrys3177
I have a Frankenstein PC project I'm looking into putting together. I have never built a PC before, and I am going to crash coarse my experience in the CHAOS of 90's computer technology with a twist. Here is what I think I want to do.
Window's 98 SE/MS-DOS 7.1 OS
Gigabyte GA-7NNXP Motherboard
AMD Athlon XP 3200+ CPU
3 Gb DDR-400 RAM
No clue yet on PSU, HDDs, cooling, floppy, zip, disc, or case. Monitor(s), and peripherals still being looked into as well, but a CRT and LCD will be used.
Graphics: S3 ViRGE/DX (86C375) [Genoa Phantom 3D/DX] BIOS version: 3.0 (1997-Jul-27) for DOS games
AND
maybe HIS Radeon X850XT IceQ II Turbo VIVO AGP
Sound Card: Soundblaster 16 ISA using a 32PCI to 16ISA adapter
AND
Aureal Vortex 2 SQ2500 for Window's based games.
Here is the question no one seems to have asked or answered thus far...
Assuming enough power is supplied, adequate cooling is possible, and space in a case allows, can one run two GPUs and two soundcards from different generations of equipment on the same motherboard? I know software exists to slow the CPU in the BIOS from Windows. So throttling the CPU should allow me to adjust the FSB from 100mhz to 400mhz with this setup. What I don't know or understand is what will happen if both sets of cards are installed and drivers downloaded, will I be able to toggle each card respectively as a default before playing games or will games see both and get read errors. I'm not a computer whiz. I'm very much a nub that has grown up seeing this stuff but didn't really have the means or freedom to jump in. You know what they say about boys and their toys 🤣...
From what I have seen, no one has attempted this, or no one has reported attempting something like this. At this point, I'm still in R&D phase and have not put money down on anything. Let me know if this is just nonsense? Let me know if it will work but not the way I think? Let me know if this is totally possible, but I meed to take extra steps to ensure success. I eagerly await answers to this scenario.