dionb wrote on 2025-05-18, 16:03:

gamefan_851 wrote on 2025-05-18, 14:58:

Thanks for the info. I agree that extra cooling might be useful for the piece of mind but i will try to go the full classic rout […]
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chinny22 wrote on 2025-05-15, 04:52:

Correct, no need to modify your Voodoo's although admit I like to have a bit extra just for peace of mind. […]
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Correct, no need to modify your Voodoo's although admit I like to have a bit extra just for peace of mind.

In my currant setup I'm using a modern cards with a side panel fan that more or less lines up with the cards.
Previously I just hung a small fan similar to this

Thanks for the info. I agree that extra cooling might be useful for the piece of mind but i will try to go the full classic route without extra cooling.

The project is making progress. I have 2 mainsboard to purchase.

Either a classic slot 1 intel 440bx Seatle chipset or

The socket 370 is a a MSI MS-6318.

I am more inclined towards the intel chipset because I have read that it might be hard to work with a via chipset.

In case the seatle 440bx chipset can support a p3 800mhz with a 100 mhz front side bus or even 1 ghz coppermine cpu with the same fsb I would purchase it asap.

I am aware that 800 or even 1 ghz migh ultra powerful for a vodoo 2 card but i want it that way to be honest.

These are pretty different chipsets aimed at different purposes. Firstly, all the Via FUD is overblown. The Via 686B southbridge has a known compatibility issue with the SBLive series of sound cards. So long as you don't want to use one of those, you'll be fine so long as you remember to install motherboard chipset (Via 4-in-1 or later Hyperion) drivers before installing drivers for any AGP card. All non-Via chipsets need drivers just as much, including Intel ones, only Intel got Microsoft to include the drivers in Windows so you don't need to worry about them.

i440BX can officially support any P3 with 100MHz FSB up to the fastest P3-1100E. Unofficially most boards with BX chipsets are able to run at 133MHz too, although that overclocks the AGP port (usually not a problem) and depending on the board (whether it has a 1/4 PCI divider) might overclock the PCI bus too (usually significant problems, particularly with hard disk controllers). Note that specific boards with i440BX chipset may have lower limitations due to the quality of (power supply) components or due to lack of BIOS support for faster CPUs (only really an issue on brand-name boards - Intel! - that have CPU whitelists and refuse to run with unknown CPUs).

Thanks for the info. You have a point of course. All via chips might be overblown. But the problem of some boards is quite significant. I intended to use sound blaster live card after all.

which other card that is good with win 98se games would you recommend as alternative in case I go the Via route.?

Also thanks a lot for the detailed answer about the p3 compablity of the 440bx chips. I will check the specs of the board I intend to purchase to be sure I can the p3 cpu I want.

bertrammatrix wrote on 2025-05-18, 16:30:

I think you'd want a late s370 board (not necessarily tualatin capable). It leaves more possibilities for the "ultimate" v2 with native support of 133mhz ram and proper AGP divider (which may be relevant to whatever companion video card you choose), and if you ever want to go SLI it will be easier/cheaper to get a fast CPU to tag along (slot 1 stuff around 900+ mhz is expensive/rare)

Don't get me wrong, I've been a huge slot1 440bx fan....forever. HOWEVER after using a s370 Via based board the last few years I feel like I've lost some affinity to the 440

Thanks for your reply as well. Going for a non Tualatin s370 board would be an option . There are many non Tualatin boards out here. The prospect of having more options for the ultimate v2 is too tempting to ignore.

Is there a certain late s370 board you would particulary recommend.

gamefan_851 wrote on 2025-05-18, 17:44:

[...]

Thanks for the info. You have a point of course. All via chips might be overblown. But the problem of some boards is quite significant. I intended to use sound blaster live card after all.

which other card that is good with win 98se games would you recommend as alternative in case I go the Via route.?

The obvious choice would be an Aureal A3D (2)-based card.

That said, objectively an SBLive is better and probably cheaper (although for some reason I see Turtle Beach Montego II cards - probably the second-best A3D2 card - go for very little quite regularly) and that is a good reason to avoid a motherboard with 686B southbridge.

Also thanks a lot for the detailed answer about the p3 compablity of the 440bx chips. I will check the specs of the board I i […]
Show full quote

Also thanks a lot for the detailed answer about the p3 compablity of the 440bx chips. I will check the specs of the board I intend to purchase to be sure I can the p3 cpu I want.

[...]

Thanks for your reply as well. Going for a non Tualatin s370 board would be an option . There are many non Tualatin boards out here. The prospect of having more options for the ultimate v2 is too tempting to ignore.

Is there a certain late s370 board you would particulary recommend.

Well, there are a lot more options out there than just i440BX (fastest, easy to find but no official >100MHz support or AGP 2.0) and Via 694T (133MHz FSB, Tualatin core and AGP 2.0 support, also broad memory compatibility, but slower per MHz and that 686B southbridge).

Also consider:
- i815, which is almost as fast as BX, gives you AGP 2.0 (and ATA66/100 depending on southbridge) and no SBLive compatibility issues. Only drawbacks are max 512MB RAM (not an issue with Win98) and no ISA support (not an issue if you don't want DOS)
- i820, gives you AGP 2.0 and ATA66/100 too with no SBLIve compatibility issues. It does support up to 1GB of RDRAM. Back in the day this was very very expensive, now this chipset is unloved and so affordable. With PC800 RDRAM it's almost as fast as BX (and faster than Via694X/T)
- SiS 635(T) is unobtainium, but the single fastest So370 chipset. Also supports DDR-SDRAM, up to 1GB.

There's an Abit SA6 currently available for a very reasonable price on Amibay, a nice Abit i815EP board. It would be a very nice pairing with an SBLIve.

dionb wrote on 2025-05-18, 23:23:

The obvious choice would be an Aureal A3D (2)-based card. […]
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gamefan_851 wrote on 2025-05-18, 17:44:

[...]

Thanks for the info. You have a point of course. All via chips might be overblown. But the problem of some boards is quite significant. I intended to use sound blaster live card after all.

which other card that is good with win 98se games would you recommend as alternative in case I go the Via route.?

The obvious choice would be an Aureal A3D (2)-based card.

That said, objectively an SBLive is better and probably cheaper (although for some reason I see Turtle Beach Montego II cards - probably the second-best A3D2 card - go for very little quite regularly) and that is a good reason to avoid a motherboard with 686B southbridge.

Also thanks a lot for the detailed answer about the p3 compablity of the 440bx chips. I will check the specs of the board I i […]
Show full quote

Also thanks a lot for the detailed answer about the p3 compablity of the 440bx chips. I will check the specs of the board I intend to purchase to be sure I can the p3 cpu I want.

[...]

Thanks for your reply as well. Going for a non Tualatin s370 board would be an option . There are many non Tualatin boards out here. The prospect of having more options for the ultimate v2 is too tempting to ignore.

Is there a certain late s370 board you would particulary recommend.

Well, there are a lot more options out there than just i440BX (fastest, easy to find but no official >100MHz support or AGP 2.0) and Via 694T (133MHz FSB, Tualatin core and AGP 2.0 support, also broad memory compatibility, but slower per MHz and that 686B southbridge).

Also consider:
- i815, which is almost as fast as BX, gives you AGP 2.0 (and ATA66/100 depending on southbridge) and no SBLive compatibility issues. Only drawbacks are max 512MB RAM (not an issue with Win98) and no ISA support (not an issue if you don't want DOS)
- i820, gives you AGP 2.0 and ATA66/100 too with no SBLIve compatibility issues. It does support up to 1GB of RDRAM. Back in the day this was very very expensive, now this chipset is unloved and so affordable. With PC800 RDRAM it's almost as fast as BX (and faster than Via694X/T)
- SiS 635(T) is unobtainium, but the single fastest So370 chipset. Also supports DDR-SDRAM, up to 1GB.

There's an Abit SA6 currently available for a very reasonable price on Amibay, a nice Abit i815EP board. It would be a very nice pairing with an SBLIve.

Many thanks for naming some alternative mainboards/chipsets. I will check them out as soon as I can.

Also thx for naming some alternatives on the sound card sector. I will check them out as well but I think not many cards can bet the pricing, quality and avaibility of the soundb blaster live versions.

Another question abou the potential partner cards for the v2. I have 2 parts I could go. Either getting something contemporary to the v2 like the tnt 1 or 2 or getting a futurstic card of the geforce 2 or even geforce 3 line.

I am more inclinded towards the futuristic way but I am unsure if there might be some compability issues with older games when using something way of the future from the v2.

gamefan_851 wrote on 2025-05-19, 09:39:

[...]

Another question abou the potential partner cards for the v2. I have 2 parts I could go. Either getting something contemporary to the v2 like the tnt 1 or 2 or getting a futurstic card of the geforce 2 or even geforce 3 line.

I am more inclinded towards the futuristic way but I am unsure if there might be some compability issues with older games when using something way of the future from the v2.

Compatiblity issues? Not likely. You can use pretty much anything, even a Voodoo 3 if you want (V2 and V3 have separate drivers and D3D / OpenGL can use different devices).

Instead I'd consider what you want to acheive. I could propose a number of possible ideas:

- fastest possible performance (anything from Gf4 onwards will be completely bottlenecked on CPU)
- has features that the Voodoo doesn't have (Matrox G4xx/5xx with EMBM, S3 Savage with S3 MeTaL etc)
- has the best possible analog image quality (Matrox or a good brand GeForce/Radeon)
- good DOS VESA support (nVidia, S3 or 3dfx good, ATi or Matrox bad)
- PCB & components look cool in your system

Personally I run my Voodoo 2 alongside a GeForce 4, opting mainly for performance, although image quality is good enough for the CRT I feed with it. I have a separate (dual) P3 system with Matrox G400Max for that EMBM 😉

dionb wrote on 2025-05-19, 11:25:

Compatiblity issues? Not likely. You can use pretty much anything, even a Voodoo 3 if you want (V2 and V3 have separate drivers […]
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gamefan_851 wrote on 2025-05-19, 09:39:

[...]

Another question abou the potential partner cards for the v2. I have 2 parts I could go. Either getting something contemporary to the v2 like the tnt 1 or 2 or getting a futurstic card of the geforce 2 or even geforce 3 line.

I am more inclinded towards the futuristic way but I am unsure if there might be some compability issues with older games when using something way of the future from the v2.

Compatiblity issues? Not likely. You can use pretty much anything, even a Voodoo 3 if you want (V2 and V3 have separate drivers and D3D / OpenGL can use different devices).

Instead I'd consider what you want to acheive. I could propose a number of possible ideas:

- fastest possible performance (anything from Gf4 onwards will be completely bottlenecked on CPU)
- has features that the Voodoo doesn't have (Matrox G4xx/5xx with EMBM, S3 Savage with S3 MeTaL etc)
- has the best possible analog image quality (Matrox or a good brand GeForce/Radeon)
- good DOS VESA support (nVidia, S3 or 3dfx good, ATi or Matrox bad)
- PCB & components look cool in your system

Personally I run my Voodoo 2 alongside a GeForce 4, opting mainly for performance, although image quality is good enough for the CRT I feed with it. I have a separate (dual) P3 system with Matrox G400Max for that EMBM 😉

Thanks again for the detailed reply. what I want to achieve is quite simple. fastest possible performance. that is the reason why I am more inclined towards the more modern geforce 2 or 3. Going for geforce 4 would also be an opition. maybe not the best iedea due to the potential bottleneck of the cpu.

The only way to be completely sure you won't bottleneck on GPU is to bottleneck on CPU - the system will always bottleneck on one or the other. The only potential reason it might hurt to have a newer GPU is that it forces you to use newer drivers with more overhead - but GF4 isn't that different to GF2 or 3, so I'd not expect issues there.

I have been collecting Tualatin capable boards lately, there are only a few options currently available for sale at high price, $150.00-$250.00 range for NOS and used. If I did not already own a handful of SL6BY cpu's, I would consider Pentium lll (SL5B3) Coppermine 1GHz/256/133 CPU paired with a VIA chipset board. VIA chipset vs the Intel 815 chipset allows increased max ram, 1.5GB compared to 512MB in example for one aspect to consider. I am currently having an especially difficult time finding an mATX Tualatin compatible board. At the end of the day getting a top rated Coppermine vs Tualatin is the best way forward, I don't believe the difference in performance is worth the price or headache. GPUs are another headache. I gave-up on the 5950 Ultra and settled for 9800 Pro. Probably better off using the Pro anyway, less heat issues.

Kittyboy wrote on 2025-05-19, 21:01:

I have been collecting Tualatin capable boards lately, there are only a few options currently available for sale at high price, $150.00-$250.00 range for NOS and used. If I did not already own a handful of SL6BY cpu's, I would consider Pentium lll (SL5B3) Coppermine 1GHz/256/133 CPU paired with a VIA chipset board. VIA chipset vs the Intel 815 chipset allows increased max ram, 1.5GB compared to 512MB in example for one aspect to consider. I am currently having an especially difficult time finding an mATX Tualatin compatible board. At the end of the day getting a top rated Coppermine vs Tualatin is the best way forward, I don't believe the difference in performance is worth the price or headache. GPUs are another headache. I gave-up on the 5950 Ultra and settled for 9800 Pro. Probably better off using the Pro anyway, less heat issues.

Yes it is really hard now to get tualatin board in general. Getting it cheap is even harder. I was tempted to get tualatin system for a short time until I saw the price point and the avaibility issues. I am certain now that going with high clocked p3 coppermine is the way to go.

The radeon 9800pro is good card for sure. Have read many good things about it. Maybe I will check out the avaibility of the card as a potential alternative to my planned gf2, 3 or 4 purchase.

The geforce fx series cards have not been on my radar.

@dionb Thanks for the further information. I need to check the avaibility of the gf cards but in general getting something like gf4 4200 ti should fit my system nicely.

Cbb wrote on 2025-05-16, 11:18:

chinny22 wrote on 2025-05-15, 04:52:

Correct, no need to modify your Voodoo's although admit I like to have a bit extra just for peace of mind. […]
Show full quote

Correct, no need to modify your Voodoo's although admit I like to have a bit extra just for peace of mind.

In my currant setup I'm using a modern cards with a side panel fan that more or less lines up with the cards.
Previously I just hung a small fan similar to this

just want to ask what ISA card needs a such brutal cooling?

Nah I have a fan here to help exhaust the hot air as it's right where the case vent is.

After doing some more research I came to the conclusion that the socket 370 path with the intel 815ee is way to go. In order to make things simpler I will discard the pontial use of radeon cards and will either go with geforce 4 4200 or the geforce 3 ti 200.

For the mainboard I have the change to get a Abit ST6 board or a intel 815 board made by gigabyte. The seller did not mention the modell number so I was asking for pictures. He has not replied yet.

When there is a choice between a unknown gigabyte board and the abit board the Abit would be the much better choice? Am I correct?

Depends on the condition of the boards. The ST6 is just about the ultimate i815 board for tweaking, with Tualatin support and Abit's Softmenu III overclocking options. Downside it that Abit's build and component quality wasn't the best: if the caps haven't already been replaced, they'll need to be. Gigabyte had less tweaking options, but the quality was generally bulletproof. If you don't want to overclock it could be a better choice - if it supports Tualatin. Only a minority of i815 boards do, so if you want Tualati it's quite a gamble.

dionb wrote on 2025-05-22, 11:27:

Depends on the condition of the boards. The ST6 is just about the ultimate i815 board for tweaking, with Tualatin support and Abit's Softmenu III overclocking options. Downside it that Abit's build and component quality wasn't the best: if the caps haven't already been replaced, they'll need to be. Gigabyte had less tweaking options, but the quality was generally bulletproof. If you don't want to overclock it could be a better choice - if it supports Tualatin. Only a minority of i815 boards do, so if you want Tualati it's quite a gamble.

Thanks for the extra info abou the abit. Overclocking is going to be point of interest for me in the future but not now. The fact that the gigabyte board board would have less tweeking options is not a big con for now.

Having a Tualatin is nice bonus. In case I can find board with native Tualatin support I would take it without hesitating but only if the chance. If not a board with a coppermine pentium 3 support would also be worthful purchase.

Got word from the seller meanwhile. It is GIGABYTE GA-6WMMC7 with new caps. The new caps is another plus point for that board. the state of the caps for the abit board is uncertain.

The only drawback of the board is that is integrated sound and graphics. Should be no problem to turn the stuff off in the bios though.

I will use 2 real gpu the v2 and the geforce 4 4200 or the geforce 3 ti 200 and a aural vortex sound card.

That Gigabyte board does not have an 815 chipset and I do not think many people would advice you to get one because of its limitations. See:
https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/gigabyte-ga-6wmmc7

For a better orientation on what you want/need check this out:
https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/List_of_ … 70_motherboards

gamefan_851 wrote on 2025-05-22, 12:37:

[...]

Got word from the seller meanwhile. It is GIGABYTE GA-6WMMC7 with new caps. The new caps is another plus point for that board. the state of the caps for the abit board is uncertain.

The only drawback of the board is that is integrated sound and graphics. Should be no problem to turn the stuff off in the bios though.

Don't touch, not even with a barge pole!

That's not i815 but i810.

So:
- no AGP slot
- max 100MHz memory clock, even when using 133MHz FSB CPU

I will use 2 real gpu the v2 and the geforce 4 4200 or the geforce 3 ti 200 and a aural vortex sound card.

Not with the GA-6WMMC7, there's no AGP slot to put the GeForces into 😮

Having said that, I never get why people are so focused on turning off integrated VGA. A computer can have multiple VGA adapters and pretty much any BIOS has an option to select primary VGA, so no need to turn off, and if you have trouble getting your external VGA working, it's almost never to do with the integrated VGA being active. If you don't want it, just don't use it, that's all.

Thanks for the correction guys. I really should double check and not rely only on the describtion. Te describtion can be wrong as seen here. I I will keep looking somehwere else then.

thanks for the link @parke I will use at as reference point now.