mothergoose729 wrote on 2021-01-06, 05:11:

Weasel_Pleasel wrote on 2021-01-06, 04:52:

Looks like I'm stuck with one of those options. Voodoo prices make me uneasy though. I don't want to put up that much money, at […]
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mothergoose729 wrote on 2021-01-04, 08:29:

A voodoo 1 or voodoo 2 is easily the best match for such a system.

If you are more interested in early 3d games then I would recommend just getting a faster platform. A pentium MMX is good for DOS because it has so many degrees of speed stepping. For early 3d, it will do ok up through maybe 1997, but it will struggle hard with anything newer regardless of what GPU you pair it with.

Looks like I'm stuck with one of those options. Voodoo prices make me uneasy though. I don't want to put up that much money, at least not right now.
On top of that I could easily get a new motherboard, faster CPU, and a decent video card for around the same price some of these things are going.
I guess this project will need a bit more planning and research until I fork over anything.

It really depends on what you are trying to play. The early windows transition period is a hot mess. A voodoo card is still recommended because early D3D titles can be really spotty and glitchy compared to glide. IMO the voodoo 3 is the ideal card for windows 98. If you are more interested in games that came a bit later like half life or unreal engine games things get a lot easier.

If you want to do mostly windows with some DOS, a socket 370 machine with VIA chipset is a good choice. Most of them have one or two ISA slots. If you don't care about DOS at all, I would get a socket 478 board with an intel 845 or 865 chipset. It is way overkill for that period, but the intel chipsets are completely rock solid and the platform is very affordable and very compatible with modern stuff like cases and power supplies.

A Pentium 4 machine might be fun, but maybe an AMD CPU of some kind would be better? I'd have to do more research.

Weasel_Pleasel wrote on 2021-01-09, 03:25:

mothergoose729 wrote on 2021-01-06, 05:11:

Weasel_Pleasel wrote on 2021-01-06, 04:52:

Looks like I'm stuck with one of those options. Voodoo prices make me uneasy though. I don't want to put up that much money, at least not right now.
On top of that I could easily get a new motherboard, faster CPU, and a decent video card for around the same price some of these things are going.
I guess this project will need a bit more planning and research until I fork over anything.

It really depends on what you are trying to play. The early windows transition period is a hot mess. A voodoo card is still recommended because early D3D titles can be really spotty and glitchy compared to glide. IMO the voodoo 3 is the ideal card for windows 98. If you are more interested in games that came a bit later like half life or unreal engine games things get a lot easier.

If you want to do mostly windows with some DOS, a socket 370 machine with VIA chipset is a good choice. Most of them have one or two ISA slots. If you don't care about DOS at all, I would get a socket 478 board with an intel 845 or 865 chipset. It is way overkill for that period, but the intel chipsets are completely rock solid and the platform is very affordable and very compatible with modern stuff like cases and power supplies.

A Pentium 4 machine might be fun, but maybe an AMD CPU of some kind would be better? I'd have to do more research.

I have a socket 754 machine and a socket 478 machine. Both are completely overkill, and work great in windows 98, but my intel machine performs better and it was a lot easier to find drivers.

mothergoose729 wrote on 2021-01-09, 06:03:

I have a socket 754 machine and a socket 478 machine. Both are completely overkill, and work great in windows 98, but my intel machine performs better and it was a lot easier to find drivers.

What are the actual specs of the two PCs? In my experience, unless we are talking about an apples to oranges comparison, The P4 is clock for clock (or, more accurately, clock for PR rating) much slower than the Athlon 64 (particularly with a fast video card, that does not bottleneck the CPU). The PC also feels much snappier with the Athlon 64, runs cooler, and consumes less power. And speaking of cooling, you can also use modern coolers on sockets 754/939, which will really make things cool and quiet.
Also, as a sidenote, if you also want DOS gaming, the P4 is out of the question - I could not find any viable way of slowing it down. On the other hand, the Athlon 64 + a VIA K8T800 chipset makes for a great time machine.

bloodem wrote on 2021-01-09, 06:17:

mothergoose729 wrote on 2021-01-09, 06:03:

I have a socket 754 machine and a socket 478 machine. Both are completely overkill, and work great in windows 98, but my intel machine performs better and it was a lot easier to find drivers.

What are the actual specs of the two PCs? In my experience, unless we are talking about an apples to oranges comparison, The P4 is clock for clock much slower than the Athlon 64 (particularly with a fast video card, that does not bottleneck the CPU). The PC also feels much snappier with the Athlon 64, runs cooler, and consumes less power.

The athlon 64 is faster, but you won't see the full potential of either machine in windows 9x.

Intel Machine

Asus P4P 800-E Deluxe 865p chipset
3.06ghz 800mhz fsb Northwood p4
2x256mb DDR

AMD Machine
Asus 754 VIA chipset (I can't recall exactly)
Athlon 64 3400+
2x256mb DDR

Both with a Quadro 2000 FX AGP Graphics cards, Audigy 2ZS/Vortex 2 sound cards.

I got about 185 fps in quake III 1024x768 on the AMD machine, and I think I got about 220fps on the Intel machine. The built in SATA controller was easy to get going at 120MB/s in windows 98, while the ultra IDE on my 754 machine is of course capped at 66mb/s and I think I only saw 33MB/s anyway (could be a limitation of my adapter though). The 754 machine also had 100mb LAN compared to the gigabit on the intel machine, and I couldn't find any drivers for the 754 machine but it was rather easy to track down drivers for the 865p chipset.

As for heat, they are pretty similar. A lower clocked P4 would run cooler and so would a sempron.

Performance on either case is way over the top, so it doesn't matter. The thing I really value on the intel platform is the stability and the I/O performance.

My recommendation for P1 system would be Riva 128 PCI or TNT PCI or TNT2 M64 PCI. All of these cards have good 3D capabilities for 97 titles and excellent DOS support. If you'll stick with Win95, you could try Ati Rage Pro PCI. Should be very cheap and similar to Riva 128 or Voodoo 1 performance wise. I even have Matrox G200 PCI, this card has good compatibility with 3D games.

mothergoose729 wrote on 2021-01-09, 06:37:

I got about 185 fps in quake III 1024x768 on the AMD machine, and I think I got about 220fps on the Intel machine.

Both your scores in Quake 3 are low, so you are probably facing a bottleneck / driver issue. With a fast video card you should see 400+ FPS in Quake 3 at lower resolutions.

mothergoose729 wrote on 2021-01-09, 06:37:

As for heat, they are pretty similar. A lower clocked P4 would run cooler and so would a sempron.

It depends. With the Athlon 64, you have the option of going with the 90nm Venice/San Diego cores. In this case, P4 (both Prescott and Northwood) are not even close when it comes to heat, noise and power consumption. 😀

mothergoose729 wrote on 2021-01-09, 06:37:

Performance on either case is way over the top, so it doesn't matter. The thing I really value on the intel platform is the stability and the I/O performance.

Agreed regarding performance being overkill with both. Don't really agree with Intel's theoretical stability advantage in the Athlon 64 / P4 battle. In my experience, when you use high quality boards for both platforms, they are both rock solid stable.

bloodem wrote on 2021-01-09, 07:28:

Both your scores in Quake 3 are low, so you are probably facing a bottleneck / driver issue. With a fast video card you should s […]
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mothergoose729 wrote on 2021-01-09, 06:37:

I got about 185 fps in quake III 1024x768 on the AMD machine, and I think I got about 220fps on the Intel machine.

Both your scores in Quake 3 are low, so you are probably facing a bottleneck / driver issue. With a fast video card you should see 400+ FPS in Quake 3 at lower resolutions.

mothergoose729 wrote on 2021-01-09, 06:37:

As for heat, they are pretty similar. A lower clocked P4 would run cooler and so would a sempron.

It depends. With the Athlon 64, you have the option of going with the 90nm Venice/San Diego cores. In this case, P4 (both Prescott and Northwood) are not even close when it comes to heat, noise and power consumption. 😀

mothergoose729 wrote on 2021-01-09, 06:37:

Performance on either case is way over the top, so it doesn't matter. The thing I really value on the intel platform is the stability and the I/O performance.

Agreed, regarding performance being overkill with both. Don't really agree with Intel's theoretical stability advantage in the Athlon 64 / P4 battle. In my experience, when you use high quality boards for both platforms, they are both rock solid stable.

Both machines will get around 300fps in the same benchmark in windows XP. That isn't the point. There is no reason to put on our red and blue jerseys. If you like AMD by all means build AMD. I have tried a number of different platforms in windows 98 and the intel 865p chipset has definitely worked the best for me.

If you look at my signature you'll notice two things:
1. Overall, I probably have more Intel systems than AMD (so, no, I don't "like" AMD in particular)
2. I only have one Socket 478 PC.

Why do I have only one Socket 478 PC? Well, because based on empirical data & my overall experience, it's one of the least exciting platforms. This does not mean that it's not fast, or that it's not stable (because it's both of those things), but it doesn't have anything special going for it; even though it is fast... it's not the fastest, it's not noticeably more stable than the competition (gone were the days of the 440BX chipset), it runs hotter, louder, there's no speed flexibility, and... let's face it, the whole Netburst architecture is something that Intel itself would like to forget it ever happened.
Now, AMD platforms from the 2003 - 2005 period are not without their own weaknesses (like the buggy SATA controller on VIA chipsets), but once you overcome/work around those issues, you end up with a fast, stable and extremely flexible PC, that works great as a DOS / Windows 98 / early Windows XP time machine.

chinny22 wrote on 2021-01-06, 10:10:

About 15 months ago I decided I wanted a Voodoo 1 Keeping and eye on prices over the year the average 4MB Voodoo 1 will sell for […]
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About 15 months ago I decided I wanted a Voodoo 1
Keeping and eye on prices over the year the average 4MB Voodoo 1 will sell for around £30-£45
Not cheap but far better then the BIN prices. In teh end I won a bid for a pair of Diamond Multimedia V1's so a desirable brand for £78 or £39 each which is about the going rate.

I'd imagine average USA prices are in the same ballpark as UK? So not exactly cheap but shouldn't bankrupt you if you can wait.

With all that said I'd also say your money is probably better spent on a faster system, Your expectations are reasonable as you admit Quake 2 is pushing it by why limit yourself? If you got the space I'd keep this as a kick ass dos machine and say a P3 as a Win9x PC safe in the knowledge you have horsepower to spare.

I've been looking for a reasonably priced voodoo card on and off for over a year in the UK and don't think I've ever seen any model for less than twice that price! Where an earth are you shopping?

charliegolf wrote on 2021-02-04, 10:11:

chinny22 wrote on 2021-01-06, 10:10:

About 15 months ago I decided I wanted a Voodoo 1 Keeping and eye on prices over the year the average 4MB Voodoo 1 will sell for […]
Show full quote

About 15 months ago I decided I wanted a Voodoo 1
Keeping and eye on prices over the year the average 4MB Voodoo 1 will sell for around £30-£45
Not cheap but far better then the BIN prices. In teh end I won a bid for a pair of Diamond Multimedia V1's so a desirable brand for £78 or £39 each which is about the going rate.

I'd imagine average USA prices are in the same ballpark as UK? So not exactly cheap but shouldn't bankrupt you if you can wait.

With all that said I'd also say your money is probably better spent on a faster system, Your expectations are reasonable as you admit Quake 2 is pushing it by why limit yourself? If you got the space I'd keep this as a kick ass dos machine and say a P3 as a Win9x PC safe in the knowledge you have horsepower to spare.

I've been looking for a reasonably priced voodoo card on and off for over a year in the UK and don't think I've ever seen any model for less than twice that price! Where an earth are you shopping?

Just ebay,
The secret is to set up saved searches with email notifications. I've deleted most of these now but 2 that were still kicking around in my inbox.
August
3DFX Voodoo 1 Maxi Gamer 3D A…
Buy it now: £35.00

Diamond Monster 3D (3Dfx Voodoo 1)
Current bid: £56.00
Postage: £2.49
Ends on 06 Sep, 2020 22:45 BST

I also keep a spreadsheet noting how much stuff sell for for a while before I start bidding, get an idea of true value of items first.
Wasn't uncommon to see a lesser known brand card without the passthrough cable sell for more then a Diamond card with pass though cable few months later.