Hmm. 2.8 GHz P4s didn't arrive until 2002, right?

I wish I could remember. The aforementioned Dimension 8100 was the fastest one you could purchase at the time and it shipped with Windows Me, meaning we bought it in 2001 (I think). I think it sported a 1.3 GHz processor (and it was one of the ones running off RDRAM).

But this board is Me-compatible so that was what I was going to put on it (so as to keep it somewhere that wasn't too old but not too new either, even though this is a decent XP setup as well).

The best you could get in 2000 was P4 1.6 GHz. The fastest card was GeForce 2 Ultra, but more realistically GeForce 2 GTS.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2025-04-14, 15:15:

The best you could get in 2000 was P4 1.6 GHz. The fastest card was GeForce 2 Ultra, but more realistically GeForce 2 GTS.

The GF2 GTS is pretty well-priced too, would you recommend one?

You can look for geforce 4 ti 4200 its faster version of geforce 3

Nope. I don't recommend to pursue any "period authentic" builds, but that's what you've asked. There are certain benefits of owning GeForce 2 cards specifically, but they are very arguable.

You could try an early Radeon. The Radeon 7200 is a rebrand of cards released in 2000, and I bet you could find one at a reasonable price.

If I could be so bold, the Radeon 9000-series is more age-appropriate for your P4 2.8GHz and compatible with Windows Me. I don't know your budget, but the mid-range cards are still pretty well priced.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2025-04-14, 15:15:

The best you could get in 2000 was P4 1.6 GHz.

That was mid-2001. 2000 was 1.5GHz and that's debatably "best" when there's Athlon 1.2GHz around...

SolidSonicTH wrote on 2025-04-14, 15:39:

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2025-04-14, 15:15:

The best you could get in 2000 was P4 1.6 GHz. The fastest card was GeForce 2 Ultra, but more realistically GeForce 2 GTS.

The GF2 GTS is pretty well-priced too, would you recommend one?

I run a Geforce 2 GTS in my only retro build. It's pretty damn good.

Geforce 2 is more of a Pentium 3 era graphics card. Your Pentium 4 would pair better with something in the Geforce 4 to Radeon 9700 era (and Windows XP).

smtkr wrote on 2025-04-15, 01:04:

SolidSonicTH wrote on 2025-04-14, 15:39:

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2025-04-14, 15:15:

The best you could get in 2000 was P4 1.6 GHz. The fastest card was GeForce 2 Ultra, but more realistically GeForce 2 GTS.

The GF2 GTS is pretty well-priced too, would you recommend one?

I run a Geforce 2 GTS in my only retro build. It's pretty damn good.

Geforce 2 is more of a Pentium 3 era graphics card. Your Pentium 4 would pair better with something in the Geforce 4 to Radeon 9700 era (and Windows XP).

I paired my Pentium4 with RageXL AGP and i get score from 1750 up to 2300@3DMark99 Max defult settings 800x600x16, more sensible is to use Pentium 3, but Rage XL limit is 2300-2400 with good drivers or more if vga mem gets oc, my VIA P4 chipset is bit slow and i dont use latest ati drivers, i use modified 3dcif compatible driver from around 1999 time, card core is from year 1997 @ Rage Pro, very underrated cards for many. It has 3DCIF/D3D/OpenGL/DVD and it all works also with my original Rage Pro + my Rage XL AGP, maybe even old Brenders API possible. Loads of OS support, best is Win9x of course.

marxveix wrote on 2025-04-15, 01:27:

smtkr wrote on 2025-04-15, 01:04:

SolidSonicTH wrote on 2025-04-14, 15:39:

The GF2 GTS is pretty well-priced too, would you recommend one?

I run a Geforce 2 GTS in my only retro build. It's pretty damn good.

Geforce 2 is more of a Pentium 3 era graphics card. Your Pentium 4 would pair better with something in the Geforce 4 to Radeon 9700 era (and Windows XP).

I paired my Pentium4 with RageXL AGP and i get score from 1750 up to 2300@3DMark99 Max defult settings 800x600x16, more sensible is to use Pentium 3, but Rage XL limit is 2300-2400 with good drivers or more if vga mem gets oc, my VIA P4 chipset is bit slow and i dont use latest ati drivers, i use modified 3dcif compatible driver from around 1999 time, card core is from year 1997 @ Rage Pro, very underrated cards for many. It has 3DCIF/D3D/OpenGL/DVD and it all works also with my original Rage Pro + my Rage XL AGP, maybe even old Brenders API possible. Loads of OS support, best is Win9x of course.

A Radeon 9500 Pro would score closer to 20,000...just saying... 😊

fosterwj03 wrote on 2025-04-15, 01:40:

A Radeon 9500 Pro would score closer to 20,000...just saying... 😊

Yes i know, my K8 Athlon64 gets over 20 000 with ATi Radeon 9600XT. 😀

I was running an Athlon (non-Thunderbird) Slot A 750Mhz and a Voodoo 3 2000 PCI in late 2000. In late November or early December I bought a Visiontek Geforce 2 GTS 32MB.

This was a solid PC at the time, but if you want to play games from 1999-2001 with max graphics settings, high resolutions and high frame rates, you'll want something a lot faster than what was available at the time. A high end Athlon XP, Athlon 64\X2, or high end P4 would be a minimum. I'd also say a Geforce 4 Ti 4x00, higher end FX series (a 5900 or better or any "Ultra" higher than a 5200... though they'll be expensive).

1999-2002 was probably the most tumultuous time for PC gaming... stuff changed SO fast. One year you had the best card on the market (Geforce 2 GTS\Ultra) and you were speeding along at 1024x768 or better, and within two years you were running the latest games at 640x480 with low settings just to make them playable (Morrowind...).

EDIT: Wow, after posting that I did a Google search for some old benchmarks and found this scan from a PCGamer review of Morrowind back in 2002...
https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/x9DnriONxHg … 2ebe99663d0bf77

... so yeah, there you go. If you figure in that "barely tolerable" in 2002 likely meant 15-20 fps (which I would call totally unplayable now), then you get the picture.

I have a Radeon 9600 TX (a factory overclocked 9500 Pro) in my Presler-based Pentium D computer. I'm tempted to slap an Audigy into it, down clock the CPU to 2.8 GHz, and test Windows Me for fun. Unfortunately, I have a low-profile 486 in my test setup right now. I'm also out of time this evening. Maybe later this week.

ciornyi wrote on 2025-04-14, 16:33:

You can look for geforce 4 ti 4200 its faster version of geforce 3

Probably this.

GF2 mx are really cheap for a reason. They would be a good match for like a fast k6-2 or something, but even on a fast P3 they are a bottleneck. I have a GF2 GTS and its obviously a lot better, however a GF3 will blow it out of the water, especially when there are any fancy effects involved.

I'm a big fan of the GF3 having owned one as a kid (on a horribly underpowered k6-2 setup). They are hard to find for a decent price, I've had the best luck looking for improperly labeled ones on Ebay by just pictures- sometimes one slips through. Note, a regular GF3 (not ti200) is actually a faster card, though many a ti200 can overclock to normal GF3 clocks.

Hi, I *think* our family PC in 2000, a Pentium III 733 MHz running 98SE, had a GeForce 2 MX.
According to Wikipedia, it was technically available since January 2000.
Not exactly sure if it was a GeForce 2 MX card, though. It was an Nvidia, though.
In an AGP slot. And it was not a gaming PC. So logically, the 2 MX was very plausible.
But these are just my two cents and I'm not into then-famous 3D first-person kill sim games, either.
So maybe the 2 MX isn't good enough. It ran an early version of Celestia, though, I remember. Which uses OpenGL.

Edit: About GeForce 3 Ti.. It was ahead of its time. It had shaders already, but a type not really supported by DirectX 8.1.
On Power Macintosh platform, the GeForce 3 Ti was very rare and sought after.
Some tried flashibg PC cards, with varying results.

Some product info: https://developer.download.nvidia.com/assets/ … ureOverview.pdf

PS: About 15 years ago or so I way into flashing PC graphics cards to Power Mac.
From what I can tell is that the GF 2 and GF 4 MX were very forgiving, didn't need excessive cooling yet.

The cards before GeForce FX could be re-flashed quite easily, still.
Beginning with the GeForce 5 (GeForce FX), things like memory specification are part of firmware.
Not just simple memory clock/GPU clock speed things, but more.

Then there's the AGP 2x or 4x compatibility.
GeForce 2/2MX and 4MX ran in both modern and AGP old slots (not AGP 1x though).
They were "in-between", generation wise. Sorry for my poor English!

they could run at 1x, which is what can be forced on some non-intel chipsets.

i've never seen an explanation why intel even specified the 1x mode given that 440LX already supported 2x, but it might have been to give early products some leeway.