Rage 128 is a few generations too old to even launch Halo CE on PC let alone enjoyably play it. Rage 128 competed with original TNT where you'd need something more like a GeForce 4 or Radeon 9700 for this.

Ah ok. What would be the highest level game I could probably run? I was thinking quake 3 but that could very well be a stretch.

Probably more like half life?
Edit: it's worth noting I know next to nothing about old computers, I'm 15 and just like the look and feel of them and enjoy collecting

If you were to get a better video card, that machine would be able to play Halo, but you'd have to have the settings and resolution quite low. Sphere478 said that he played it on a K6-3+ (@600 MHz?) with MVP3 Super 7 board and a 9800 Pro video card. But, while considerably younger than me, he's quite a bit older than you. Nostalgia for reliving our youth can make poor frame rates acceptable.

I get frustrated with poor frame rates and low resolution and detail settings. I have played Halo CE to completion several times on my Epox 8K3A+ with an overclocked CPU and a GeForce 6800 Ultra. I can play it at 1280x1024 with the details set to maximum and the frame rate never drops below what I consider acceptable, so for me, this machine is on the low end of what I would play Halo CE on.

Others should come along and chime in with both video card and game recommendations. A GeForce 4 Ti4200, Radeon 8500, Radeon 9800 SE, A GeForce 2 Ti (or the Quadro equivalent) are some video card suggestions that would match the rest of your hardware reasonably well.

I think it's great that you are experimenting with old hardware. And I think you might like to do some more experimenting. So if you have a reliable way of getting software from the Internet I recommend download some bin/cue images (or ISOs) for games and using disc mounting software to load those CDs and see what works on your computer.

For starters, figure out which year your graphics card was released and then Internet search (or find a wikipedia list of) the top selling PC games from that year. Download the disc images and try them out. See what you like playing. Then go to the next year and start trying those out. If you go far enough in the future, you'll find games that don't run very well on your hardware. But don't sleep on older games--try them out too. This is part of the fun.

For example, you might browse through
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_in_video_games

And you might think that Rollercoaster Tycoon sounds fun. So you sail the high seas, get a copy onto your vintage PC and try it out. Maybe you'll really enjoy it and spend a bunch of time playing it until you're ready to move onto something else.

The worst that can happen is you find out that a game just doesn't work. If that happens, just move on to the next.

no

Halo has a database of videocards that it'll know to refuse. Radeon 7000's the minimum for the ATI side that will work with Halo. Other minimums are nVidia Geforce256, Trident Cyber XP5 and Matrox Parhelia. 3dfx, 3dLabs, PowerVR, Rendition, S3, QVision, Digital, Weitek, Mpact, Intel, Number 9, Silicon Motion, and Cirrus are BANNED FROM HALO

Ok, that makes sense.
As for burning cds... I may or may not have burned around 25 games already to cds while waiting for this computer.
I've also got a big folder of ~20 Dos games like Lemmings and Rogue that I really enjoy playing.
I've also got physical copies of starcraft and myst (which are both supposed to be incredible).
I think I'm set for games!
Thanks for replying!

leileilol wrote on 2024-01-05, 03:06:

Halo has a database of videocards that it'll know to refuse. Radeon 7000's the minimum for the ATI side that will work with Halo. Other minimums are nVidia Geforce256, Trident Cyber XP5 and Matrox Parhelia. 3dfx, 3dLabs, PowerVR, Rendition, S3, QVision, Digital, Weitek, Mpact, Intel, Number 9, Silicon Motion, and Cirrus are BANNED FROM HALO

Just chiming in to say I've found Halo perfectly playable on a Geforce 256 DDR at 800x600 (using an Athlon 1200). A very 'authentic' experience!

A Geforce 2 MX is the best value for money card that could run it.

What motherboard is in this PC?
As long as it has an AGP slot, the P3 800 should be a perfect match for Windows 98.

It does have AGP, I don't know the mobo though as it's a prebuilt (the gateway e4400 mid tower).

watson wrote on 2024-01-05, 12:31:

What motherboard is in this PC?
As long as it has an AGP slot, the P3 800 should be a perfect match for Windows 98.

A perfect match for Windows 98 itself, but not for all games released while Windows 98 was current. As mentioned above, an Athlon 1200 with GeForce256 gave a very 'authentic experience' with Halo. That's a euphemism for slow as hell. And even though MHz don't say everything, Athlons are faster clock-for-clock than Coppermine P3s, so that's slow as hell on a 50% faster CPU.

A P3-800 is an excellent CPU for a late 1999/early 2000 system (it was released in December 1999), but this was during the fastest period of development in PC history and by late 2001 (when WinXP came along and Win98 started to fade) it would have been very long in the tooth and incapable of playing new games. By then, P4-2000, P3-1266S or AthlonXP 1800+ were high-end and even a low-end Duron 1000, which would struggle at new games, would significantly outperform a P3-800.

Of course, most people in October 2001 didn't have a brand new PC, in fact given replacement times of about 3 years if you were lucky, most would have had something significantly older than a P3-800. So a P3-800 is perfectly representative of what a lot of people would have had. But they would not be enjoying it, they would not be able to run the latest games, and even those that would run, would generally do so very slowly. Max Payne would be an obvious example - minimum spec says a Duron 700 with D3D compatible video card with 16MB - so this P3-800 with Rage128 is about that minimum. Prepare for a slideshow - and not just during bullet time.

If you want a machine that can handle anything that was released while Win98 was current, you need a real GPU with hardware T&L as well as at least twice the CPU, particularly if you want 3D audio and networking while playing.

My late Win98Se machine runs on a P3-1400S with GeForce3 - and still feels slow (CPU limited) at times.

RintaDev wrote on 2024-01-05, 13:01:

It does have AGP, I don't know the mobo though as it's a prebuilt (the gateway e4400 mid tower).

Motherboards in pre-built systems also have names. Look it up.

In October of 2001 I had an Abit KT7A with a Thunderbird 1333, 256 megs of RAM, a GeForce 2 Ti 64 megabyte, and a Philips Acoustic Edge sound card. The only game I played at the time was Jane's WW-2 Fighters, which was released several years earlier ( I just checked, 1998). I think the key to a good vintage gaming experience is to play games that are older than the hardware you are using. Only a few months earlier, I was playing Jane's on an Asus P55T2P4 with a K6-2+ @ 500 MHz, 64 megabytes of EDO memory, a Pine PCI TNT2 with 32 megs of RAM, and an SB16. The experience of moving from hardware that was contemporary to slightly older than the game I was playing to hardware that was significantly newer was very enjoyable.

In 2002 I bought the Original IL-2 Sturmovik (released only a few months earlier), and that (being a much newer game) quickly showed the limits of my hardware. I had become frustrated with the limits of the flight/damage models of Jane's, but the much better flight/damage model of IL-2 came at a price.

Not sure why 2001 is being thrown around. This is a PC not an xbox (crippled pc) and Halo came out in 2003.
I was probably using this in 2003 Re: DosFreak All System Specs 4-14-2022
I'd only throw 2001 around if you were asking about using 2001 GPUs with Halo which of course a GF3 and similar is fine for Halo.

Here is K63 w/9800 Re: Quest to make Halo CE run smoothly on a amd k6-3+ on XP so you can do all sorts of crazy things.

Find the crappiest pixel shader video card (although GF2 would work) you want and go crazy with potato mode I guess:
https://c20.reclaimers.net/h1/arguments/

DosFreak wrote on 2024-01-05, 18:06:

Not sure why 2001 is being thrown around.

Because of the "perfect Win98 PC" statement.

Win98 era basically ended when WinXP was released in October 2001, hence any PC claimed to be a perfect Win98 PC should be able to run stuff up to that point.

Look it up

There is almost no information on this computer online, I've been using the manual and whatever pictures I can find to identify parts I need. I know it has AGP because the manual mentions it. I don't have the PC until this weekend so I can't tell yet from looking at it.

The two games I'm really looking forward to are StarCraft and Half Life, as well as all the Dos games I can find. Halo isn't super important for this, and I'm out of Christmas money so upgrades will have to wait.
Thank you!

😉
Re: video card for original Half-Life
https://www.compatdb.org/forums/topic/31132-r … #comment-151873

I think you might just about be ok with Half-Life mainly thanks to that CPU. I just played through on a K6-2 500 and a Voodoo Banshee and it was just about okay, with choppy dips here and there, but mostly 25-3ofps. Very playable.

Just don't expect modern 60fps minimums, such a luxury was only for the 1% back in the day if at all!

RintaDev wrote on 2024-01-05, 18:51:

Look it up

There is almost no information on this computer online, I've been using the manual and whatever pictures I can find to identify parts I need. I know it has AGP because the manual mentions it. I don't have the PC until this weekend so I can't tell yet from looking at it.

Gateway E4400 isn't the full model name, there's another code there. That should give clarity. But generally it helps to have a good photo of the board and check that. Gateway tended to have motherboards that were very similar to Intel OEM boards.

The two games I'm really looking forward to are StarCraft and Half Life, as well as all the Dos games I can find. Halo isn't super important for this, and I'm out of Christmas money so upgrades will have to wait.
Thank you!

These will run fine. StarCraft ran acceptably on a Pentium 1 and I have very fond memories of playing Half Life at the office I worked at in 2000 with Cuban cigars in my mouth on awful Compaq machines with Celeron 466 CPUs, i810 integrated mess and Windows NT4. A P3-800 with Rage128 would be lightyears ahead of that.