Which Athlon 700 do you have now?

For me, a non-Thunderbird (Argon, Pluto) is more interesting than a boring Thunderbird, which you could run on any SoA board as well. The fastest Slot A Thunderbird is 1000MHz, which is faster than what you have now, but not a game-changer. So if you're happy with current performance I'd keep the CPU as-is.

As for RAM, more RAM only improves performance if you're using more than you have now and are thrashing to disk. If that's the case, give it 256MB more. If not, don't bother. Which OS are you using? Win9x will rarely need more than 256MB, Win2k/XP could use it so might get faster/more responsive with more.

@dionb Thanks a lot for sharing your impressions. I am using an AMD-K7700MTR51B at the moment. this is a Pluto model 2 I think. As I said in most cases I am content with the cpu. The only game I had issues with running 700mjz was Deus Ex.

My system is a pure Windows 98SE rig.

If you are running win98 like you pretty much should with that combo, 256MB is more than you will ever need and more doesn’t change anything.

You might get few extra frames with faster CPU, but you would probably not notice until you’d install something like the fastest SlotA Thunderbirds available for the platform.

One option is to overclock your current CPU. If mobo supports increasing FSB, you could be able to increase it 10-15MHz. This would also improve the memory performance a bit as your PC133 sticks only run at 100MHz stock on that platform. Again, 10MHz would bring the CPU to 770MHz which certainly isn’t a major increase.

Or you could do what I did, build a goldfinger clone which lets you select CPU multiplier. I installed one to my 650MHz Pluto and it now runs at 800MHz on my EpoX 7KXA. To get more, I should mod cache multiplier as those just hit a wall and system posts, but won’t boot at 850MHz. GFD clone is a fun little project and return to the good old days of overclocking hacks.

TNT2/Pro/Ultra and V3 otherwise are quite on par and they generally trade blows depending on the game. TNT2 has better IQ, better textures and supports 32 bit colors, but V3 still performs better in some games.

All in all, your setup is very good for Slot A and Irongate systems and there is not that much which could drastically improve things, especially when Irongate is quite picky with graphics cards. If you want to tinker, by all means do so, but actual performance benefits won’t be that drastic due to the limitations of the platform.

Vortex2 if one ever crosses your path 😁.
Modern PSU, if not already covered.
PCI bracket fan adapter with two 80mm/92mm fans under Vooodoo.

IDE to SATA adapter or Promise PCI SATA 1 card and a SATA SSD to replace the spinner.

Also, on the Slot-A CPUs, most were sold as slower than what the CPUs were actually rated for. You probably have an 800 or 850 under the heat spreader.

@CharlieFoxtrot overclocking is a topic I have not divided into but I want to into the realm of it eventually. Comparing the 32 bit rendering of the tnt 2 card with the lower color depth of the v3 is also the main reason why I am interested in trying out the TNT2 and compare it my voodoo 3 2000 agp.

@stef80 Funny thing that you have mentioned the audgy 2 card. I am indeed interested in getting that sound card in case it crosses my path at a good price.

@cyclone3d Thanks for sharing your interesting ideas as well. Was not aware that Slot A cpus where sold as slower than the are actually rated.

I'm "stuck" with a 650 Pluto for much the same reason.
It plays the games fine and upgrading to anything significantly faster cost's more money than I'm willing to spend.
Because it's an Irongate your limited in graphic card choices, the V3 is probably the best option, although definitely no harm in playing around with a TNT for a bit.
That only really leaves sound card choices.

Personally I don't really see the point with a Vortex 1, it's a good card but Creative cards can do A3D 1.0 and you get EAX.
However A3D 2.0 is pretty much exclusive to Vortex 2 so think that's worth putting on the shopping list.
As is a SBLive! - Audigy 2 to cover the EAX side of things.

Maybe an ISA sound card as well if you use this to play games in dos?

But yeh, really the whole build is pretty decent already!

Ditto on SBLive! as above. That card is a swiss army knife. One of mine even has a wavetable header. It's just kinda okay for DOS stuff though, in my experience. ISA reigns supreme there.

Other than that, solid state your storage. I think a CF card would do great as your primary, no need to throw out the spinner if it's still going strong, set as slave with the jumper.

Your build seems well balanced overall. RAM is good, maybe throw in a 128 MB stick at some point if you really crave more. Video card is a good pick, though if you really crave more in this department as well, GeForce FX gets along with 9x well, not sure about compatibility hardware wise though. CPU is fantastic, no change needed there.

I had a 700Mhz Slot A Athlon back in the day. I believe I had TNT2, Sb Live and 128Mb RAM. No ISA on my motherboard though so DOS compatibility wasn't great.

I still have that motherboard / CPU but have chosen not to use it in any permanent builds. These systems are so much rarer than Slot 1. I'd be hesitant to overclock it. The CPU could probably handle it, but I think the motherboards were made on the cheap.

Thanks a lot for sharing the further impressions guys.

@chinny22 Getting a isa cart at some point is solid advice. Diving a into the Does realm is thing I wanted to do for quite some time already. But the real live happened and my time to do some retro upgrades was limited. Which ISA cards that do not cost fortune to make avail of my isa slot on the gigabyte mainboard would you recommend?

Looking into a SBLive! and or Audigy 2 card instead of the Audigy 1 is good advice as well. To be honest to purchase of the Audigy 1 was some kind of mistake. The seller labbled it as Audigy 2 but it was just Audigy 1. I got the card for almost nothing so I let it slide. I have not given up to find the Audigy 2 though.

Would a early iteration of the sb live cards like the sb0 or sb100 a good pick?

emu34b Thanks for your advice as well. Looking into the geforce fx realm in case I want more oomph in the graphic department sounds like a solid suggestion. The fx cards are not that expensive either. Besides the ultra cards of course .

which geforce fx cards would you consider worth checking out?

predator_085 wrote on 2025-03-18, 07:45:

Would a early iteration of the sb live cards like the sb0 or sb100 a good pick?

emu34b Thanks for your advice as well. Looking into the geforce fx realm in case I want more oomph in the graphic department sounds like a solid suggestion. The fx cards are not that expensive either. Besides the ultra cards of course .

SB0100, SB0060 are ok. Others may be also.
As for FX, look for FX5900XT or at least FX5700.

stef80 wrote on 2025-03-18, 08:00:

predator_085 wrote on 2025-03-18, 07:45:

Would a early iteration of the sb live cards like the sb0 or sb100 a good pick?

emu34b Thanks for your advice as well. Looking into the geforce fx realm in case I want more oomph in the graphic department sounds like a solid suggestion. The fx cards are not that expensive either. Besides the ultra cards of course.

SB0100, SB0060 are ok. Others may be also.
As for FX, look for FX5900XT or at least FX5700.

Thanks for the recommendations. I will check all of them out.

I am also sure that later variants of the SB live are also good. It just seems that the earlier versions are more readily available and they are supposed to be well suited for win98se gaming. Not sure if true.

predator_085 wrote on 2025-03-18, 07:45:

Thanks a lot for sharing the further impressions guys. […]
Show full quote

Thanks a lot for sharing the further impressions guys.

@chinny22 Getting a isa cart at some point is solid advice. Diving a into the Does realm is thing I wanted to do for quite some time already. But the real live happened and my time to do some retro upgrades was limited. Which ISA cards that do not cost fortune to make avail of my isa slot on the gigabyte mainboard would you recommend?

Looking into a SBLive! and or Audigy 2 card instead of the Audigy 1 is good advice as well. To be honest to purchase of the Audigy 1 was some kind of mistake. The seller labbled it as Audigy 2 but it was just Audigy 1. I got the card for almost nothing so I let it slide. I have not given up to find the Audigy 2 though.

Would a early iteration of the sb live cards like the sb0 or sb100 a good pick?

emu34b Thanks for your advice as well. Looking into the geforce fx realm in case I want more oomph in the graphic department sounds like a solid suggestion. The fx cards are not that expensive either. Besides the ultra cards of course .

which geforce fx cards would you consider worth checking out?

Since you have an AGP slot, 5200 Ultra minimum. 5500 and 5600 are basically the same card. 5700 has an extra vertex shader, probably going to be the best bang for your buck in this line. 5900+ are quite expensive.

emu34b wrote on 2025-03-18, 15:16:

predator_085 wrote on 2025-03-18, 07:45:

Thanks a lot for sharing the further impressions guys. […]
Show full quote

Thanks a lot for sharing the further impressions guys.

@chinny22 Getting a isa cart at some point is solid advice. Diving a into the Does realm is thing I wanted to do for quite some time already. But the real live happened and my time to do some retro upgrades was limited. Which ISA cards that do not cost fortune to make avail of my isa slot on the gigabyte mainboard would you recommend?

Looking into a SBLive! and or Audigy 2 card instead of the Audigy 1 is good advice as well. To be honest to purchase of the Audigy 1 was some kind of mistake. The seller labbled it as Audigy 2 but it was just Audigy 1. I got the card for almost nothing so I let it slide. I have not given up to find the Audigy 2 though.

Would a early iteration of the sb live cards like the sb0 or sb100 a good pick?

emu34b Thanks for your advice as well. Looking into the geforce fx realm in case I want more oomph in the graphic department sounds like a solid suggestion. The fx cards are not that expensive either. Besides the ultra cards of course .

which geforce fx cards would you consider worth checking out?

Since you have an AGP slot, 5200 Ultra minimum. 5500 and 5600 are basically the same card. 5700 has an extra vertex shader, probably going to be the best bang for your buck in this line. 5900+ are quite expensive.

Thanks for info. I will check your recommendations out and i am going to purchase them as soon as something interesting catches my eye.

predator_085 wrote on 2025-03-18, 17:17:

Thanks for info. I will check your recommendations out and i am going to purchase them as soon as something interesting catches my eye.

My bet is that none of those FX cards works with Irongate MBs, but if you can score something cheaply, I guess there is no harm trying.

It doesn’t necessarily matter to you, but your current setup is beautifully period correct with V3 or TNT2. Geforce2 GTS would be more appropriate compared to FX cards introduced in spring 2000, but again those cards would most likely be problematic with that motherboard. Irongate is REALLY picky with GPUs, unlike KX133.

I would take your system as it is and accept its limitations. Especially when you seem happy with it. I would personally make some quality of life improvements at best, like installing ~120gb SSD. It provides huge amounts of space for win98 era and it’s fast. I’ve pretty much completely abandoned HDDs in these later retro computers of mine and storage is one of those things that I personally don’t find important for otherwise period correct builds I mainly aim nowadays.

CharlieFoxtrot wrote on 2025-03-18, 17:35:

My bet is that none of those FX cards works with Irongate MBs, but if you can score something cheaply, I guess there is no harm […]
Show full quote

predator_085 wrote on 2025-03-18, 17:17:

Thanks for info. I will check your recommendations out and i am going to purchase them as soon as something interesting catches my eye.

My bet is that none of those FX cards works with Irongate MBs, but if you can score something cheaply, I guess there is no harm trying.

It doesn’t necessarily matter to you, but your current setup is beautifully period correct with V3 or TNT2. Geforce2 GTS would be more appropriate compared to FX cards introduced in spring 2000, but again those cards would most likely be problematic with that motherboard. Irongate is REALLY picky with GPUs, unlike KX133.

I would take your system as it is and accept its limitations. Especially when you seem happy with it. I would personally make some quality of life improvements at best, like installing ~120gb SSD. It provides huge amounts of space for win98 era and it’s fast. I’ve pretty much completely abandoned HDDs in these later retro computers of mine and storage is one of those things that I personally don’t find important for otherwise period correct builds I mainly aim nowadays.

This is a good point. Was not aware there might be issues with the iron gate mainboards. This changes things. In general, I was and I am still very happy Voodoo 3 user. I am just curious to try out other cards once in a while like the tnt2 to check out the 32 bit rendering.

An Audigy 2 card is also on my bucket list to upgrade the sound. Adding a ssd also sounds like a great suggestion.

Going crazy with the gpu is just a fun project without being necessary.

I had the SoA version, 7IXE4, and loaded it with 3x 128MB - Win98SE can accept 384MB, you just have to follow the rule that VCACHE + AGP aperture < 512MB - even though you have < 512, the virtual mapping could still break it if you forget that rule.
Also, can use 256MB modules but MUST be low density / double sided.
Early Irongate chipsets had a flaw, Geforce drivers limited them to AGP 1x - SOME drivers allowed overriding to 2x if the later (super bypass capable) chipset was used.
If I remember right from the AGP cards I tried....
Rage 128 - worked
S3 Savage 3d - NO GO
Geforce 2 MX - ok, but even though I had the later chipset, faced the AGP 1x limit in some drivers
Geforce 4 MX - same

predator_085 wrote on 2025-03-18, 17:55:

This is a good point. Was not aware there might be issues with the iron gate mainboards. This changes things. In general, I was and I am still very happy Voodoo 3 user. I am just curious to try out other cards once in a while like the tnt2 to check out the 32 bit rendering.

An Audigy 2 card is also on my bucket list to upgrade the sound. Adding a ssd also sounds like a great suggestion.

Going crazy with the gpu is just a fun project without being necessary.

If you are considering sound card options, perhaps my favourite PCI card currently is Terratec DMX Xfire 1024. It has A3D 1.0 and EAX1/2 support. It is really clean sounding card, has excellent bug free drivers and almost all the features you want for this era system (A3D 2.0 would be cool, but Vortex2 cards cost an arm and leg these days). I got my Xfire 1024 some time ago, but decided to try it in place of CT4760 on my SlotA system and haven’t looked back since. As far as the quality of the card goes, I’d put it clearly above the similar-ish Creative products I have (CT4760, Audigy, Audigy2).

CharlieFoxtrot wrote on 2025-03-18, 18:34:

predator_085 wrote on 2025-03-18, 17:55:

This is a good point. Was not aware there might be issues with the iron gate mainboards. This changes things. In general, I was and I am still very happy Voodoo 3 user. I am just curious to try out other cards once in a while like the tnt2 to check out the 32 bit rendering.

An Audigy 2 card is also on my bucket list to upgrade the sound. Adding a ssd also sounds like a great suggestion.

Going crazy with the gpu is just a fun project without being necessary.

If you are considering sound card options, perhaps my favourite PCI card currently is Terratec DMX Xfire 1024. It has A3D 1.0 and EAX1/2 support. It is really clean sounding card, has excellent bug free drivers and almost all the features you want for this era system (A3D 2.0 would be cool, but Vortex2 cards cost an arm and leg these days). I got my Xfire 1024 some time ago, but decided to try it in place of CT4760 on my SlotA system and haven’t looked back since. As far as the quality of the card goes, I’d put it clearly above the similar-ish Creative products I have (CT4760, Audigy, Audigy2).

Thanks for the recommendation of the Terratec DMX Xfire 1024. I have just done some superficial research about it but it sounds like a great card that would pefect for my gaming needs.

And you are so right about the vortex 2 cards. They ware not cheap exactly last year when I was looking for them but they are even more expensiv now. The Terratec DMX would be the better choice without any doubt.