I can only speculate (since during that time I was poor, didn't even have a Voodoo 1 card 🙁 ), however I would imagine that people with very big pockets, those who simply wanted the best of the best, would've had no problem buying a Pentium 2 400 (which launched in April 1998 for more than $800), and pairing it with 2 x Voodoo 2 cards (2 x $299).

I'm not sure if adding a Voodoo 2 at a later time was a common thing, but I would imagine that there were quite a few people that did that too.

Upgrading to SLI in '99 makes a lot of sense even for a high end '98 build. A single Voodoo 2 plus a 350 MHz Pentium II on a 440BX board would be considered high end in 1998. Upgrading to SLI was popular in '99 as well because prices really came down for Voodoo 2 cards.
A hardcore enthusiast's 1998 gaming build would certainly feature SLI though and probably a preselected/overclocked Celeron 333@5xx MHz rather than a Pentium II.

It's no different then it is today.
Plenty of people are willing to go out and buy the flagship graphics card from AMD on Nvidia today even with the crazy asking prices going on at the moment as long as they have the funds.
"normal" people have to balance price vs performance.

Normal is boring though. I'd go with SLI

As reference I got a PII 400 Christmas '98 but got a 16MB TNT as it was cheaper then a Voodoo 2

As nice as “period correctness” is, Voodoo IIs in SLI actually scale pretty well with CPU speed. As such you can get much better performance out of the cards by NOT staying period correct.

It’s for this reason that my Voodoo IIs are SLI’d in my Tualatin system.

Thanks for the replies folks - interesting to get a perspective on it.

I may stick to my PII for the Voodoo2 build. Already have the parts so why not. I do have a PIII 450 too but can’t see anyone running that with the SLI setup back in the day. I don’t need any of these systems for functionality, it’s more about the hardware, my ‘00 build has a Voodoo5 and is getting either a PIII 933 or a 1.4GHz Tualatin so plenty of power there. May just have to bench the SLI build with the 933 though.

Think the only 2 that actually make any sense are my ‘97 socket 7 build for DOS stuff and the voodoo5 build but you know what it’s like haha

If its more about the hardware I'd definitely have SLI
SLI is pretty special even Nvidia's version of it but unlike modern SLI you don't get any of the negative side affects.
Plus its just nice having 1024 × 768 as an option

chinny22 wrote on 2021-06-28, 15:52:

If its more about the hardware I'd definitely have SLI
SLI is pretty special even Nvidia's version of it but unlike modern SLI you don't get any of the negative side affects.
Plus its just nice having 1024 × 768 as an option

Definitely - so in a nutshell now I’m running the following

‘97 build - Voodoo1 and a PII 350
‘98 - Voodoo2 SLI and a Celeron 733
‘99 - Voodoo3 and a PIII 450 (will probably finish and sell this one after the others are done)
‘00 - Voodoo5 with 1.4GHz Tualatin

Once a few bits have arrived I’m changing it around a bit
‘97 build - P1 MMX 233
‘98 - the PII 350 I think
‘00 - possibly a 933 Coppermine

Think the SLI setup wins for me just for how special it feels yeah

This is the Alienware Area 51 from 1998, which is a pretty good example of what a high-end gaming system was in that year (despite the questionable choice of an Intel i740 as the main/2D graphics card):

Alienware Area 51 (July 1998)

TheMobRules wrote on 2021-06-28, 17:25:

This is the Alienware Area 51 from 1998, which is a pretty good example of what a high-end gaming system was in that year (despite the questionable choice of an Intel i740 as the main/2D graphics card):

Alienware Area 51 (July 1998)

That's awesome. I had no idea the alienware brand was that old.

TheMobRules wrote on 2021-06-28, 17:25:

This is the Alienware Area 51 from 1998, which is a pretty good example of what a high-end gaming system was in that year (despite the questionable choice of an Intel i740 as the main/2D graphics card):

Alienware Area 51 (July 1998)

Oh, man, so beautiful! I wonder if anyone still has one of these in pristine condition... I don't remember seeing one anywhere.
So my guess was correct 😀 Rich people were going the "Pentium 2 400 & Voodoo 2 SLI" route.

Still, can't complain, my Pentium MMX 166 with an S3 Trio gave me some of the best memories... and ignited the passion for computing that is still burning in me to this day. 😀
It still bothers me, though... that PC was screaming for a Voodoo 1 card and it never got one. 🙁 I never asked for one, though. I already knew that my single mother had made a superhuman effort in order to buy me that PC, so there was no way I would have asked for more.
Great, now I'm depressed... 😁

bloodem wrote on 2021-06-28, 18:27:

That’s crazy, I didn’t know Alienware was that old either, I always see their early 2000s stuff, way cool. […]
Show full quote

TheMobRules wrote on 2021-06-28, 17:25:

This is the Alienware Area 51 from 1998, which is a pretty good example of what a high-end gaming system was in that year (despite the questionable choice of an Intel i740 as the main/2D graphics card):

Alienware Area 51 (July 1998)

That’s crazy, I didn’t know Alienware was that old either, I always see their early 2000s stuff, way cool.

Oh, man, so beautiful! I wonder if anyone still has one of these in pristine condition... I don't remember seeing one anywhere.
So my guess was correct 😀 Rich people were going the "Pentium 2 400 & Voodoo 2 SLI" route.

Still, can't complain, my Pentium MMX 166 with an S3 Trio gave me some of the best memories... and ignited the passion for computing that is still burning in me to this day. 😀
It still bothers me, though... that PC was screaming for a Voodoo 1 card and it never got one. 🙁 I never asked for one, though. I already knew that my single mother had made a superhuman effort in order to buy me that PC, so there was no way I would have asked for more.
Great, now I'm depressed... 😁

Sound like that’s the way I’m going for it then, it’s got a 350 in there so I might wait for a 400 or a 450 to come along but for now its all good.

That’s the type of memories I have from mine…. I wasn’t very old but this is the sort of stuff that really kicked off my interest in computers. It’s exactly the era I grew up with them before the P4 era came in which was just never the same

TheMobRules wrote on 2021-06-28, 17:25:

This is the Alienware Area 51 from 1998, which is a pretty good example of what a high-end gaming system was in that year (despite the questionable choice of an Intel i740 as the main/2D graphics card):

Alienware Area 51 (July 1998)

Looking at the Voodoos it appears Alienware used 8MB cards. Probably no real difference in 1998 games but weird how the Voodoos' video memory isn't mentioned in the article.

Doornkaat wrote on 2021-06-29, 04:52:

TheMobRules wrote on 2021-06-28, 17:25:

This is the Alienware Area 51 from 1998, which is a pretty good example of what a high-end gaming system was in that year (despite the questionable choice of an Intel i740 as the main/2D graphics card):

Alienware Area 51 (July 1998)

Looking at the Voodoos it appears Alienware used 8MB cards. Probably no real difference in 1998 games but weird how the Voodoos' video memory isn't mentioned in the article.

Definitely, they go into a lot of detail with everything else. Mine are both 12MB so it should be better than the period Alienware once it’s done 😁

I like how Alienware kept the SB16 for dos gaming.
I did that on my P2 as I was playing lan games against our 486. Didnt think many people would have bothered though.