I think you could do with a Tualatin class CPU in there if the motherboard will take it. Also PC133 RAM if you can't force the PC100 to 133.

Pentium3 600MHz and Rage XL 8MB AGP (Rage Pro) gives 3DMark99
Default 800x600 x 16 1579 points
VGA Mem OC 800x600 x 16 2103 points.

I think your Nvidia FX is faster than old ATi 1997 based card. Use earliest driver for your FX. I recommend even more older card for your Celeron.
Geforce2, Geforce3 or even Geforce4 maybe and use older Nvidia Geforce driver versions if possible. You should get at least 4000-5000 points.

While your system should definitely be performing better in 3DMark99, don't expect miracles. Let's break it down.

• I believe the Celeron 733 is still on 66MHz bus, no? If that is so, then the CPU is barely faster than a Pentium III 500-550, if at all. Minimum specs for Warcraft III was a Pentium II 450 I believe? Wishful thinking on Blizzard's part I'd say.
  If you already have that PIII 800EB in your possession, it will give you a nice boost, but still not enough to really enjoy War3 with modern standards. IMO you should move that game to a newer computer.
• The GPU is also slow. I understand you have the PCI variant of an FX 5500? Do you know if it happens to be the 128bit or a 64bit version? More or less, the FX 5500 is usually 128bit I think. It is essentially identical to an FX 5200 though which I'm sure you know is not a fast card for the era. If it is a 64bit version though, then it is dreadful and the PCI bus is not helping either. In any case, try to use period correct drivers where possible.
• Then there's the SiS 630 chipset which is pretty cool in its own right (all-in-one chip, no southbridge!), but it is definitely budget minded, which means performance will take a hit compared to a more popular and "serious" chipset.
• First off, 3DMark99 is a bit clunky. With the hardware used, I would use 3DMark 2000 and 2001SE to measure performance relative to similar systems online.
• Warcraft III is quite CPU intensive for the era and definitely not light on GPUs either. As you can see in this Anandtech article from late 2003, the FX5600 Ultra, a much faster card than the FX5500, is barely hitting the 40s on average. And that's on an Athlon 64-based FX51! No matter what CPU you put on that board, you will be CPU limited.

As long as you have the above in mind and keep your expectations in check, you should be ok.
I should note, I first played Warcraft III on a SiS630 based ASUS board running a Celeron 900 and just the iGPU! I remember it chugging pretty hard but I didn't mind at the time, it was just the norm!

Garrett W wrote on 2025-04-07, 18:35:

While your system should definitely be performing better in 3DMark99, don't expect miracles. Let's break it down.

• I believe the Celeron 733 is still on 66MHz bus, no? If that is so, then the CPU is barely faster than a Pentium III 500-550, if at all. Minimum specs for Warcraft III was a Pentium

With Celeron 566/66Mhz bus + my Rage XL did get 149x points @3dmark99 so he underperforming 50-60% for sure and yes Celeron 733 should have 66Mhz bus. Nvidia driver are newer than needed, at least 45.23 should be better and i recommend more older cards and older drivers, even Radeon 92xx is better with 128bit memory.

So what are I did was swapped the Celeron with a P3, seem that I have a couple of it, so I started with P3 600 which immediately improved the score of 3dMark99 to 3400ish !

So thank you all for the suggestion.

I build a system with GA-6OXT motherboard + Pentium 3-S 1.26Ghz + ATI Radeon 9550 gfx card(Modified GPU and VRAM frequency @ 400Mhz/500Mhz) + 512mb@PC150. I didnt run any benchmark, but it get very low fps(20 to 55) when I try to play MOHAA and Max Payne 2 on it. I thought it was gfx issue, so I bought four different brand of 9550 cards and even a 9800pro, and tried many different version of drivers, then i got low FPS still. I dont remember I got such low fps back in the days.

P3SSSSS wrote on 2025-11-04, 20:19:

I build a system with GA-6OXT motherboard + Pentium 3-S 1.26Ghz + ATI Radeon 9550 gfx card(Modified GPU and VRAM frequency @ 400Mhz/500Mhz) + 512mb@PC150. I didnt run any benchmark, but it get very low fps(20 to 55) when I try to play MOHAA and Max Payne 2 on it. I thought it was gfx issue, so I bought four different brand of 9550 cards and even a 9800pro, and tried many different version of drivers, then i got low FPS still. I dont remember I got such low fps back in the days.

Im using Win98 as OS by the way

amontre wrote on 2025-04-08, 03:52:

So what are I did was swapped the Celeron with a P3, seem that I have a couple of it, so I started with P3 600 which immediately improved the score of 3dMark99 to 3400ish !

So thank you all for the suggestion.

Yup, that would be what I experienced too.
I had a 370 with a Celeron 700 and a TNT2 M64. Going from that CPU to a PIII 1000 improved 3dMark scores by a lot. Helped by the fact it also had a 133mhz FSB, that would take 133mhz ram.
Also, using a PCI GPU for early 2000 games, especially if 64bit bus, will be painful. I have one of those in my 462 rig, 9250 PCI 64bit, and playing Max Payne becomes dreadfull at 1024x768 the second mutliple enemies appears on screen. It becomes a slideshow.

So it appears that yours was a case of CPU bottleneck, those celeron weren't at all made with gaming in mind.

Mondodimotori wrote on Yesterday, 09:15:

Yup, that would be what I experienced too. I had a 370 with a Celeron 700 and a TNT2 M64. Going from that CPU to a PIII 1000 imp […]
Show full quote

amontre wrote on 2025-04-08, 03:52:

So what are I did was swapped the Celeron with a P3, seem that I have a couple of it, so I started with P3 600 which immediately improved the score of 3dMark99 to 3400ish !

So thank you all for the suggestion.

Yup, that would be what I experienced too.
I had a 370 with a Celeron 700 and a TNT2 M64. Going from that CPU to a PIII 1000 improved 3dMark scores by a lot. Helped by the fact it also had a 133mhz FSB, that would take 133mhz ram.
Also, using a PCI GPU for early 2000 games, especially if 64bit bus, will be painful. I have one of those in my 462 rig, 9250 PCI 64bit, and playing Max Payne becomes dreadfull at 1024x768 the second mutliple enemies appears on screen. It becomes a slideshow.

So it appears that yours was a case of CPU bottleneck, those celeron weren't at all made with gaming in mind.

Yes, PCI GPUs are completely not for gaming, can't even display Win7's Aero effects smoothly.

P3SSSSS wrote on Yesterday, 10:04:

Yup, that would be what I experienced too.
I had a 370 with a Celeron 700 and a TNT2 M64. Going from that CPU to a PIII 1000 improved 3dMark scores by a lot. Helped by the fact it also had a 133mhz FSB, that would take 133mhz ram.
Also, using a PCI GPU for early 2000 games, especially if 64bit bus, will be painful. I have one of those in my 462 rig, 9250 PCI 64bit, and playing Max Payne becomes dreadfull at 1024x768 the second mutliple enemies appears on screen. It becomes a slideshow.

So it appears that yours was a case of CPU bottleneck, those celeron weren't at all made with gaming in mind.
[/quote]
Yes, PCI GPUs are completely not for gaming, can't even display Win7's Aero effects smoothly.
[/quote]

🤣, consider I am complaining about a 64bit PCI GPU on a 462 system running Windows Me. I can't even imagine the dreadful experience it could be on Windows 7.