First post, by bmwsvsu
Ok, so I've been working on putting together a Pentium II desktop PC with all new-old stock parts. Here is what I have so far:
Motherboard:
-dual-slot-1 CPU, each slot filled with a 300mhz Slot 1 Pentium II processor - early generation with 66mhz bus
-2 ISA slots, 4 PCI slots, 1 AGP 2x slot
-Intel 440LX chipset
I'm dual-booting Windows 98SE and Windows 2000 Professional SP4 (the latter to take advantage of the 2nd CPU).
I've spent more hours than I'd like to admit configuring this thing as I've run into IRQ headaches - particularly with my add-on PCI usb card and the onboard USB chipsets not getting along with each other in Windows 2000. I eventually figured all that stuff out and got it working properly with my add-on ISA sound card (based an ESS1869 chip), CD rom drive, floppy drive, and SD-reader.
So now I'm onto the video card. I initially tried an nVidia GeForce FX5500 but the benchmarks with DOS games were sub-par, and I'm getting slowdown in games where I wouldn't expect slowdown on a 300mhz P2 processor. such as Commander Keen 4 and Duke Nuke'em 3d on any VESA resolution. I've done a ton of reading up on this topic in this forum and elsewhere, and I've concluded that anything newer than a GeForce3 card is not optimal for DOS gaming. Is this an accurate conclusion? I also have experienced first-hand a lot of horizontal scrolling issues with ATI cards, so I'm staying away from those.
So onto my budget - I'm trying to keep the price of the card at $30 or less, and again, it has to be new-old-stock. A GeForce3 card is out of the question as it is far too expensive. Voodoo cards are obviously way out of the question as well.
So here are the cards that based on my research seem suitable for my build and are in the $20-$30 price range new:
-nVidia RIVA TNT2 Pro - 32MB
-nVidia Quadro2 EX - 32MB
-nVidia Quadro2 Pro - 32MB
-nVidia GeForce2 MX200 - 32MB
Which of those cards are best-suited for high-DOS compatibility and early Windows games and will run well in an AGP 2x slot on a dual-P2 board? Info on the Quadro2 cards is sparse, but as best I can gather they are based on the GeForce2 MX400 chip which has a 128mhz bus compared to 64 on the MX200 card. I also can't find any difference between the -EX and -Pro variant of these cards. Also, is 32MB ram sufficient, or should I be spending a little extra to get a GeForce2 MX400 card w/64MB ram?