Check out keenermaster's post near the bottom of page 1:
Top hardware by year
He put up a Google sheet that everyone contributed to for awhile. It's fairly well filled out for many years, including 2000. 😎

I have checked that out but no suggestions for a Sound Card for 2000 on there.

Some form of Soundblaster live or Aureal vortex.

But why are you going for an early Pentium 4? an Athlon Thunderbird 1400 will mop the floor with that P4. Pentium 4 didn't start to become competitive until well past the 2Ghz mark and arguably good only once they got to 2.6 or higher. Those low clock speed P4 are even beaten by 1.2Ghz+ Pentium 3 Tualatins.

So would you say the Thunderbird 1400 would be the best cpu of the 2000 then?

pretty much that.

The pentium 4 was designed to reach high clock speeds and nothing else, sacrificing IPC in the process. It was always inferior to AMD CPus or even the P3 at comparable clock speeds.

Koltoroc is probably right. And as far as sound cards go, a SoundBlaster Live is probably entirely kickbutt enough for 2000. Maybe a 5.1 version, and wasn't there a Gold one too?

(@clueless1, I'd forgotten about that google sheet! Kind of cool how it came together. There ought to be a sticky thread for it.)

keenmaster486 wrote:

Koltoroc is probably right. And as far as sound cards go, a SoundBlaster Live is probably entirely kickbutt enough for 2000. Maybe a 5.1 version, and wasn't there a Gold one too?

(@clueless1, I'd forgotten about that google sheet! Kind of cool how it came together. There ought to be a sticky thread for it.)

I'd also agree on the SB Live! or A3D 2.0. As I recall PhilsComputerLab really likes A3D 2.0.

@keenermaster486 - I agree! It needs more visibility (which it's probably getting now that it's been brought back up again)! 😊

edit: When was the Audigy released? SB0090. I found a review for it in 2001, but that doesn't mean it wasn't released in 2000...

The Audigy came out in 2001; the new EAX was more advanced and it's also the first year Aureal was no longer on the market. For 2000, it's still between the SB Live! and Vortex2.

A3D 2.0 is a lot cooler than EAX 2.0, but even in 2000 you had major games like Thief II: The Metal Age that only had EAX support beyond DirectX.

If it's strictly a year 2000 build, I think TBird 1200 is the fastest Athlon available. A 1.5 Willamette doesn't fair bad against it, specially in quake3 😉

In any case, dual p3 would get my vote for best PC at that time.

Now you've got me thinking of a 2001 build for a system I've got parts for:
Dell Dimension 4100 with a build date of 2001
P3-933 (a little slow for 2001, but it's the closest I've got)
GF3 Ti-200 (no Ti-500's here )
Audigy (hence my question a few posts up)
Windows Millenium

In the year 2000, an Aureal Vortex 2 SQ2500 was probably the most desirable sound card for gamers. There are a few cards generic cards that use similar Vortex 2 chips though, as well as cards from other brands (like the Turtle Beach Montego II), look them up. Look for a PCI sound card with a Vortex 2 AU8830 chip. AU8820 and AU8810 are the older or somewhat stripped down models. The SQ2500 is blue and square but most other AU8830 cards are small green cards with an odd angled PCB. They stand out pretty well if you're looking at old unmarked boards at thrift stores or on eBay.

You could get a Live! but, meh... they don't really do anything interesting IMO and they are so common that won't feel that special. At least the Vortex 2 will give you A3D 2.0 in a lot of games from that time period, which can't be done with any other cards or via emulation.

For the rest of the specs, I think a Socket A Thunderbird 1.2Ghz or the 1.5Ghz P4 you have are both good options. At the time, enthusiasts would have generally gone with the Athlon since it performed better in most games, but the P4 certainly wouldn't be bad, and Socket 423 is fairly uncommon to find now and would make for a more unique build.

For video, the Geforce 2 Ultra was certainly the king at the time. An original Radeon DDR (no numbers, not a 7200 or 7500) might be interesting too, since they traded blows with the higher end Geforce 2 models but I never had one so I can't comment on how usable the drivers are\were at the time. I remember ATI having a bad reputation back then, but I'm not sure if it was legitimate or just a left over from the Rage days.

I had a 2001 rig almost complete. Had everything I wanted but an Audigy sound card. But my Gf3 Ti 500 bit the dust after I left in on for a couple hours messing around with it. I was pretty bummed out about that.

I do believe that the Audigy was released in 2001. So I suppose my question would be which SB Live! should I be looking for? I have found it hard to find good, accurate, info on the SB Live! when it comes to release dates.

How much are the Aureal Vortex SQ2500's going for these days? It sounds like I should be looking into those as well.

clueless1 wrote:

Now you've got me thinking of a 2001 build for a system I've got parts for: Dell Dimension 4100 with a build date of 2001 P3-933 […]
Show full quote

Now you've got me thinking of a 2001 build for a system I've got parts for:
Dell Dimension 4100 with a build date of 2001
P3-933 (a little slow for 2001, but it's the closest I've got)
GF3 Ti-200 (no Ti-500's here )
Audigy (hence my question a few posts up)
Windows Millenium

Nope, the best PCs of 2001, 2000, 1999.... still had 98SE on 😁

Edit: The way I remember the sound thing in that era was that Live, Audigy etc was nothing special, you kept your AWE64 PCI if you had one, Creative Labs had entered a particularly dickish phase I think where they wanted you to register plus give up firstborn for the right to download less fucked up drivers, and everyone was saying screw it then, because onboard surround is getting to be a thing and you guys suck donkey balls.

The SQ2500 will be quite expensive unless you find one that is poorly listed and are able to identify it. There's a card labeled as an SQ2500 in box on ebay right now but it definitely is not what they say it is.

Another popular card from the time would be a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz, of which there are millions out there because Dell used them for a while. I had one and it was a great card. It will probably give you a lot of the same features of a Vortex 2 in games, though I don't know how accurate the effects are compared to an AU8830.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/OEM-Dell-Turtle-Beac … BIAAOSw63FZ7QkY

EDIT: Here's a good discussion about sound cards from this era. A3D 2.0 and EAX cards together in one machine? (also CS4624 & CS4630 differences, and Sensaura 3D config)

Ozzuneoj wrote:

Another popular card from the time would be a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz, of which there are millions out there because Dell used them for a while. I had one and it was a great card. It will probably give you a lot of the same features of a Vortex 2 in games, though I don't know how accurate the effects are compared to an AU8830.

I actually have a couple of these but didn't know if they were a good alternative to the more mainstream ones. I will give it a try and see how my ear holes enjoy what they put out 🤣.

Just came across this book on the SB Live!. Have any of you taken a look at this or own it? Just curious how it is and if it is helpful at all?

https://www.amazon.com/Sound-Blaster-Live-Boo … e/dp/1886411735

BitWrangler wrote:

Nope, the best PCs of 2001, 2000, 1999.... still had 98SE on 😁

Millennium turns out to be a pretty good OS as long as you're not playing DOS games. 😀

Besides, my P2-400 with Voodoo2 SLI already has 98SE. And DOS games.

Well "turns out" is what happened by the time it got enough fixes and the IE 6.0 SP1 update in 2002, which is basically the same time XP became usable. As released, it was nasty for at least 2 years, until fixes and driver updates got it under control. However, since you start having to do a lot of workarounds for speed, RAM size, USB, networking support for 98 as you get into 1ghz plus era systems, it could be nicer now with the full availability of updates.

Whatever you do the OS has to be Win2K. The best OS MS ever made.