You should be getting a whole new motherboard and processor if you expect better performance for SOF, Midtown and Sims (especially if you plan on installing any expansions). A Voodoo's not going to do miracles here, and for 2000's games, a Voodoo1/2 would be the last thing you'd want.

2000's seen many TNT2s and confusing Rage128 variants for sale, many S3 Savage 2000's on auction from frustrated owners, the Radeon 7200 and Geforce2, and the fall of 3dfx with the too-little-too-late Voodoo4/5, and Matrox's last stand as a fairly competitive card.. Plenty of options. What's best for DOS is extremely variable given this generation of hardware have VESA stuff that bump off support of some older things (like SimCity) and/or make Keen4 jerky.

idan182 wrote on 2022-04-10, 05:11:

And to support up to 2000 Games, I know the 233MMX is a bit bottleneck.

so you want to build two computers

By meaning 2000 games is really minimal. only those 3-4 games.

I can see it let me choose a primary or 3d card only on "Midtown Madness 2" game.
In heroes 3 or Sims 1 I don't have this option.
that means they will run thru the S3?

Think it's mainly a question of compatibility.
You can check for many cards and games here:
https://gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS

If that checks out, there are quite a few Nvidia Geforce 2 MX up to 6200 available as PCI. Maybe look for the Zotac brand.

So, as long as you're not out for "period correct" 1997/8 gear like an Nvidia Riva card, it should be an easy and unexpensive try.

Btw., i430 chipset is pretty unspecific, they were all called 430.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_c … entium_chipsets
But afaik, 64 MB RAM will be perfectly sufficient for all DOS games and up to that, the chipsets won't make too much of a difference.
The Intel 430HX will allow cached RAM beyond that.
And an AMD K6-2+ or K6-III won't care and greatly improve the systems performance - if the board will take one.

I think you are a bit confused. I speculate you are playing all games using Software Rendering, which means that CPU is doing all the heavy lifting and video card is used merely for displaying the games on your monitor. 3D acceleration roughly offloads the CPU from a lot of the grunt work that can be done much faster on bespoke hardware that is designed to do these operations.
The Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 that you own is a video card that uses the S3 Virge chip, one of the first generation of 3D accelerators, which is mostly made fun of its 3D capabilities. It is very, very slow. I suspect that Midtown Madness 2 does not make use of your card, a lot of the games of that era refused to run on S3 Virge or defaulted to Software Rendering because of speed and image quality issues.

Heroes 3 is a strictly 2D game that does not feature any form of 3D Acceleration. An MMX 233 is pretty slow for this one, even if the minimum system requirements state that you only need a Pentium 133.

The Sims runs using Software Rendering and I can't recall if it supports any sort of 3D Acceleration, but even if it did you would be completely bottlenecked by the CPU.

Soldier of Fortune is based on the Quake 2 engine and as such is an OpenGL game. S3 Virge never got an OpenGL ICD (a.k.a. driver), only some experimental miniGL for the original Quake. You are probably running this one in Software Rendering as well. The CPU is entirely too slow here as well, I remember trying it many years ago on a Pentium II 266 (a much faster CPU) with Voodoo 2 SLI and it chugged hard.

Midtown Madness 2 certainly has support for 3D acceleration through Direct3D (the 3D compartment of DirectX), but it probably has a Software Renderer as well, otherwise I can't think of a way it'd run on the Virge. Your CPU is very slow for it 🙁.

While a proper 3D card would definitely improve your experience with many games, it would not make these 1999-2000 games bearable. I suggest reducing the scope of the system or building something different entirely. If you wish to keep it, you can look into getting a Voodoo 2 (even the 8MB version would be a nice pair with this CPU) or perhaps a Voodoo Banshee which is a card that combines excellent 2D with decent 3D for the era. I have a system with the same CPU and the Banshee and it is a very nice pair. You can play games all the way up to 1998 with such a system, although it will still struggle greatly with some of the more demanding titles of 1998 such as Unreal, Half-Life and basically any demanding 3D game released by the end of that year.

Also, much like suggested above, 64MB RAM is a nice fit for your system, unless you happen to have an i430HX chipset in which case you may be able to increase this to 128MB. It's not really that big a deal IMO, 64MB should be fine, especially if you are using Win95.

System requirements and expectations of that era was very different. 20FPS with frame drops was seen as a very decent experience, as such we are in some ways spoiled by stable 30 FPS or 60 FPS frame targets these days.

idan182 wrote on 2022-04-10, 05:11:

Hi all Can anyone recommend me a good 2D/3D card for DOS/W98 Games […]
Show full quote

Hi all
Can anyone recommend me a good 2D/3D card for DOS/W98 Games

233MMX
Socket 7 i430
64mb ram (board supports up to 256mb)
CF card

I currently have a Diamond S3 2000 2MB ram.
I want it to support full DOS 90> games. Hexen, Keen, Doom, Duke, Wolf3d, Rise of Triad etc. no older than these.
And to support up to 2000 Games, I know the 233MMX is a bit bottleneck.
I play Heroes 3, SOF, Midtown Madness 2, Sims 1.

The S3 is slow on these games, I have read that if I use it + Voodoo1/2 it would not work as these games are 2D engine.
So should I be getting a different card?

your cpu is way to slow for 2000's games. Frankly even running some '98 games like Dungeon Keeper 2, NFS Porsche or Homeworld is pushing it. They will run, but they won't be playable...

What's worse is that finding reliable system requirements (developer's original requirements, not the ones posted on some random "can you run it" website that doesn't take into account anything older then a core 2 duo) can be difficult.

To make it worse, some developers system requirements are optimistic... they seem to have posted the minimum requirements for launching the game and not the system specs needed for the game to be playable / enjoyable. I'll give you a few examples:

Homeworld - I own an original disk and the box says Pentium MMX 233Mhz with 32MB of ram and a direct 3d or opengl compliant 3d accelerator with 4mb of memory. That's both vague and misleading. The game will launch on said configuration, but it's very laggy and framerates drop to under 3 fps when lots of ships are on screen. In fact, even on a AMD K6-2+ @ 550 MHz with 128MB of ram and a voodoo 3 3000, the game still lags on levels like the Karos Graveyard and the Gardens of Kadeshi because of the sheer number of objects on screen. For this game to play smooth, you'll want an 800-900Mhz pentium 3 or a 750-800MHz Athlon. The video card doesn't matter much for 640x480 - a Riva 128 will run the game perfectly well at that resolution. For 1024x768 a TNT2 M64 is recommended. For 1600x1200 it runs great on an original Geforce (256) or Radeon SDR.

Dungeon Keeper 2 requires a 166MHz pentium MMX to launch, but after the first couple of missions it becomes unplayable at that configuration. It does not require a 3D accelerator, but without one you will need a cpu that is miles faster then the 166Mhz pentium Bullfrog posted. Back in the day I finished the game on a 400Mhz AMD K6-2 with an on board trident blade 3d card, and it was playable but laggy. On the k6, the campaign was fine up util the 6th or 7th map, where the framerate tanked with lots of creatures on screen. Getting a voodoo 2 helped a little, but not much. My pet dungeons would crawl to 10fps when organizing huge creature battles. A GHz CPU is recommended for dungeon keeper to be smooth (P3 or Athlon) at low resolutions with a basic 3d accelerator like a riva 128. A TNT2 M64 will let you play the game comfortably at 800x600, but if you want eye candy and 1600x1200 you need at least an FX5900XT or Geforce 4 Titanium.

Here's a classic - Dune 2. System requirements say a 386 CPU at 12Mhz and 4MB of memory. Give it a go - try dune 2 on a 386, even a 40MHz one - I'll wait 😀. In reality, the game can slow down even on a 100Mhz 486 DX4.... it depends on how many units and explosions are on screen at one time. It also depends on if you run the game with sound or not. I ran the game on a 33Mhz 386, and it's playable without sound effects (only SC-55 music) up to about level 5 - then it starts to chug. If you enable digital sound effects it slows to a crawl.

I think this issue is common with RTS games... and it would be noticeable with games like sims 1 as well.

Now for your question - Heroes 3 will run fine on a 233Mhz pentium, but there's no way of getting Sims 1, Soldier of Fortune and Midtown Madness 2 running ok on it. I recommend keeping this PC for dos and early windows games - up to 1998 - and building another PC for 2000 games. For the games you want to play, the best budget option is a low to mind-end 2002-2003 PC. On the Intel side, I'd recommend a socket 478 with DDR memory (i865 or i845) or better yet, a LGA 775 PC with AGP and DDR1. You can find i865 LGA775 motherboards in quite a few prebuilt IBM, Compaq, HP or Dell systems, but be wary of prebuilt because lots of OEM PCs from that era did not have an AGP slot for some reason. Some do. A good example would be the IBM Netvista M42. They usually come with a 1.7 to 2.4Ghz socket 478 pentium 4 CPU. It has AGP, DDR1, and it also comes in the "under monitor" desktop form factor that can enhance the retro feel. I recently got a complete kit (M42 desktop plus IBM 17" CRT monitor and IBM PS2 keyboard) for about 50$ locally. It didn't come with a video card, but it happily took a geforce 4 ti4200.
Just make sure you don't confuse it with the LGA775 version that looks almost identical. That comes with PCI express, not AGP - and in some cases the PCI-E slot is missing from the motherboard. In general i recommend you steer away from LGA775 OEM machines - they usually either have PCI-E or no dedicated video expansion slot whatsoever. Some are even weird form factors and not really upgradable.

There's also the AMD route - a socket A machine should be cheap and easy to find. Just make sure to go for later motherboards with DDR1 - preferably at least a VIA KT400, although I'd recommend the nforce 2 chipset here. Pair it with an athlon XP 2400+ or faster and you have a great little 2000 gaming PC. On the AMD route you can also go for later socket 754 or 939 athon 64 PCs. They're even easier to find then socket A, cheaper and less finicky about power supplies. (athon XP PCs like power supplies with strong +5v rails). The only problem is these come in both PCI-E and AGP versions - stick to an AGP motherboard with a VIA chipset for windows 98.

Good luck!

I've tried two PCI graphics cards in my Pentium 233MMX system: ATI Rage Pro Turbo and Rage 128 Pro AIW. The Rage Pro Turbo felt like a pretty good match for the CPU but the 128 Pro is better in every way when tested with 3DMark 99/00. It produces an almost playable 5-15FPS in Half Life (1998) at 800x600. The Sims (2000) is too slow at 800x600, even on the lowest settings it's single digit FPS. UT99 and GTA 2 (1999) don't run very well either, at least not on the Rage cards.

I'm working on a Super Socket 7 build for better performance in these 98/99/00 games, the MMX just can't do it well.

Garrett W wrote on 2022-04-10, 12:53:

unless you happen to have an i430HX chipset in which case you may be able to increase this to 128MB.

Without an extended Tag RAM IC on a motherboard with Intel 430HX chipset, it won't allow cacheability for more than 64MB RAM.

idan182 wrote on 2022-04-10, 05:11:

I currently have a Diamond S3 2000 2MB ram. I want it to support full DOS 90> games. Hexen, Keen, Doom, Duke, Wolf3d, Rise of Tr […]
Show full quote

I currently have a Diamond S3 2000 2MB ram.
I want it to support full DOS 90> games. Hexen, Keen, Doom, Duke, Wolf3d, Rise of Triad etc. no older than these.
And to support up to 2000 Games, I know the 233MMX is a bit bottleneck.
I play Heroes 3, SOF, Midtown Madness 2, Sims 1.

The S3 is slow on these games, I have read that if I use it + Voodoo1/2 it would not work as these games are 2D engine.
So should I be getting a different card?

What's the resolution of those games you play? On the first glance my "late Win9x build" with Sempron 3100+512MB RAM + Radeon 9600 Pro 256MB sounds like an overkill for Win9x, right? However, when I crank it up to 1600x1200, Quake III Arena and Star Trek: Armada can stutter a bit when the screen has too many elements e.g. smoke of multiple rockets with smoke trails in Q3 or dozens of ships moving / fighting in a nebula in Armada. Those were games of 1999 vintage.

I have another build with very similar spec: P233MMX + 64MB RAM + CF card as HDD, with the exception of using a Savage4 Pro 16MB for video. The system is Win9x ready but I rarely run any Win9x game (or Win9x at all) besides testing / benchmark.

I see that earliest DOS games you have can handle protected mode and are not speed sensitive; for minimum budget I'd recommend building a P3 Coppermine or Athlon with video no later than GeForce / Radeon (i.e. forget about TNT or Rage). Leave your P233MMX + Diamond S3 2000 just for late DOS games.

Socket3 wrote on 2022-04-10, 20:46:

your cpu is way to slow for 2000's games. Frankly even running some '98 games like Dungeon Keeper 2, NFS Porsche or Homeworld is pushing it. They will run, but they won't be playable...

What's worse is that finding reliable system requirements (developer's original requirements, not the ones posted on some random "can you run it" website that doesn't take into account anything older then a core 2 duo) can be difficult.

I'm a bit pedantic so I have to correct you here, none of the games you mentioned are 1998. DK2 and Homeworld are mid to late 1999 and NFS Porsche is 2000.

As for system requirements, you can usually find them on Mobygames. I tend to open up photos of the game boxes and check to see what's written on there.

The rest of your post I mostly agree with, but just keep in mind that chugging was somewhat expected. Dune 2 on a 386DX 40 was a more than decent way to play the game back in 1992-1993. Sure, it feels slow nowadays (Dune 2 itself I would argue is incredibly slow by today's standards), but it was fine way back 😀.

Garrett W wrote on 2022-04-11, 08:52:

I'm a bit pedantic so I have to correct you here, none of the games you mentioned are 1998. DK2 and Homeworld are mid to late 1999 and NFS Porsche is 2000.

As for system requirements, you can usually find them on Mobygames. I tend to open up photos of the game boxes and check to see what's written on there.

No problem, I stand corrected. I could have sworn that Homeworld launched in 1998, but it seems it launched in september 99. The old brain box isn't what it used to be I guess.

Garrett W wrote on 2022-04-11, 08:52:

The rest of your post I mostly agree with, but just keep in mind that chugging was somewhat expected. Dune 2 on a 386DX 40 was a more than decent way to play the game back in 1992-1993. Sure, it feels slow nowadays (Dune 2 itself I would argue is incredibly slow by today's standards), but it was fine way back 😀.

Yeah, I remember that much. First time I played Dune 2 was on a 25Mhz 386-DX and it was not a great experience. I loved the game, so I tried to plough trough, but it was very frustrating because said 386 was part of my school's computer lab and I could only use it for 1-2 hours daily. It would slow down so bad, scrolling the map was a slideshow, and at that speed, some missions took days to finish. And that was with PC-Speaker sound. Later that year I saw it running on a friend's then brand new 133Mhz Pentium, with digital sound mind you (he had an SB PRO 2) and it was amazing. Smooth as butter. I stopped playing it at school after that, and picked it up again when my folks bought our first PC. It ran great on a 133MHz cyrix 586, and that is with sound (bought a yamaha ymf 718 and 8 more megs of ram out of my own money a few weeks after getting the PC)

Garrett W wrote on 2022-04-10, 12:53:

System requirements and expectations of that era was very different. 20FPS with frame drops was seen as a very decent experience, as such we are in some ways spoiled by stable 30 FPS or 60 FPS frame targets these days.

Definitely.
I'd assume game programmers had other standards on what to expect their target audience to own - most games from the 486 era were supposed to run on a 386 because few people could afford a recent machine.

And user expectations were different.
E.g. we played Tie-Fighter (1994) on a 386-40 and had fun until the more crowded levels with Tie Advanced where it was reduced to a slide show. I gave up, my brother still finished the game.
UFO (1994) ran nicely, but TFTD (1995) did not.
All that on a really sluggish OTI-VGA. We probably would have been fine with an ET4000.
Master of Orion (1993) was round-based, but with larger galaxies, the AI turn must have taken minutes.
DOOM (1993) was considered borderline playable on a 386 - with reduced screen size. Reduced, from 320 x 200 on a 14" CRT 😁

For reference:
i386-33: 1989
am386-40: 1991
i486DX2-66: 1992
Pentium-60: 1993

The thing is: Today, we'd probably wont play any of those games on a 386 even if it were the last computer on earth 😉

I know that the 233 is capable of playing early 3d accelerated games Ok with a Voodoo 2 for example, but... I just treat it more like a DOS+ machine, I think your 2MB card is probably very adequate for the games the 233 mmx can actually run really well,

in any case, when I had the voodoo 2 with the mmx I remember seeing some great performance boost for NFS2.

Reading this thread, the Pentium 233MMX is good for Windows 3D games up to 1998 (and some 1999 games) with a Voodoo2 accelerator. Don't forget that there are also non-3D accelerated Windows 9x games around the timeframe when the Pentium Classic and MMX CPUs were being sold so I don't consider a DOS+ machine at all (using DOS on them is nice though).

People didn't buy new CPUs at release date because they could't afford it (especially that Pentium 60 which hardly any consumers had in the early 90s) and were initially aimed at workstations and servers before years consumers would get an affordable one.

Overall, the OP is better getting/using another computer for these 2000 games for better and more consistent performance.

Hi
Yes I played those games in 1999 when I had a Pentium 3 500mhz + Voodoo 3

What about FIFA 99? does it have 3d acceleration?
My S3 plays it very fine.
I can find Voodoo 2 8MB very cheap from a friend, not Voodoo 1.

I haven't found any settings in Sims (sims is 800x600 I believe), or Heroes for changing Primary/3D card.
only in Midtown Madness I have this option.

That means If I connect Voodoo 2 + my S3 for example, it won't change even a bit?
If I find a Voodoo 3/Voodoo banshee PCI.
Would I notice anything different in these 2 games only I mentioned?

idan182 wrote on 2022-04-12, 07:57:

What about FIFA 99? does it have 3d acceleration?
My S3 plays it very fine.
I can find Voodoo 2 8MB very cheap from a friend, not Voodoo 1.

Found a seller photo on eBay:

So yes, it supported 3D acceleration and required DirectX 6.

FIFA 99 has 3d acceleration and works well, I think it's fixed at 640x480 but I played it like that in a modern card in d3d a few years ago and it just worked (well, modern = HD 5850 on XP I think)
but back when it was new I played in a Pentium 133 in software mode, I remember it playing fine.... but then... what fine was back then, probably isn't anymore in terms of framerate, that's why, I would recommend a faster CPU even for games the 233 can run "OK" by the standards of the day.

SPBHM wrote on 2022-04-11, 11:42:

I know that the 233 is capable of playing early 3d accelerated games Ok with a Voodoo 2 for example, but... I just treat it more like a DOS+ machine, I think your 2MB card is probably very adequate for the games the 233 mmx can actually run really well,

in any case, when I had the voodoo 2 with the mmx I remember seeing some great performance boost for NFS2.

A 2Mb Card is even inadequate for many DirectDraw Titles.

Get at least something with 4Megs+
Riva128, Permedia 2, Savage 4, Rage 128, TNT1/TNT2, Matrox G200 etc.

idan182 wrote on 2022-04-12, 07:57:

That means If I connect Voodoo 2 + my S3 for example, it won't change even a bit?
If I find a Voodoo 3/Voodoo banshee PCI.
Would I notice anything different in these 2 games only I mentioned?

You can use Voodoo2 + S3 ViRGE just fine.

In D3D (DirectX) games the Voodoo2 card is always treated as a secondary adapter and in several games from the Voodoo2 era it can be chosen or gets prioritized for 3D acceleration over the ViRGE. S3 never had an OpenGL ICD (except for a wrapper found in a Techland game), so the Voodoo2 card will be always used provided that the 3Dfx OpenGL ICD is in the game directory or MiniGL is used in supported games.

matze79 wrote on 2022-04-12, 08:32:

A 2Mb Card is even inadequate for many DirectDraw Titles.

Get at least something with 4Megs+
Riva128, Permedia 2, Savage 4, Rage 128, TNT1/TNT2, Matrox G200 etc.

For 2D titles 2MB is largely fine and more than that is mostly used for high resolution with 24/32-bit color depth.