Pretty sure you are severely CPU limited in Oblivion with the Pentium D.

The Audigy 2 Value (SB0400) is not using the same chip as the other Audigy 2 cards. Pretty sure that one is not really hardware accelerated.

Hard to complain about a zero cost parts built, and if it does everything you ask of it then its a great build!
According to Wikipedia the SB0400 is fully hardware accelerated, It just lacks Firewire and DTS-ES 6.1 which doubt are a big deal.

AGP does feel more retro but later AGP cards are overpriced and hold back performance vs cheaper more powerful PCie cards.
Same with S478 vs later CPU's really.

My 775 based XP rig is my most used. XP doesn't feel retro for me but most things just work which is hard not to love when all you want to do is play a game.

Ah, ok. I was thinking the "Value" versions were not be accelerated.

I really wanted the socket 478 build to work. It felt a lot more retro but finding a good but also cheap AGP card is really difficult. I wish I hadn't sold my Radeon 9800pro 🙁 However if you disable a core of the pentium D you get just a pentium 4! Yeah the audigy 2 is fully hardware accelerated (hardware eax1-4) but just lacks a few bells and whistles. I started oblivion but it was too late to play more than a few minutes, but in the caves at least in the beginning it felt ok. Maybe outside scenes will be a different story. I also have a 486dx2 system and a k6-2+. However not so much space and can't decide which one to keep up and running in my apartment. 🙁

I had to double check myself. Some value cards are good value (Like this one) others have nothing in common with the non value version accept the name but I struggle to remember which is which.
Honestly I think this is the better option then the S478. cool hardware is cool but been able to play games without limitations is a lot more fun in the end.

Get a KVM, then maybe you can keep all 3 PC's setup? otherwise you can use one a month. Mine are setup permanently but find thats what I do anyway. This month I'm into Doom so out comes the 486. Next month might be Need for Speed on the Win98 box.

chinny22 wrote on 2021-08-09, 16:12:

I had to double check myself. Some value cards are good value (Like this one) others have nothing in common with the non value version accept the name but I struggle to remember which is which.
Honestly I think this is the better option then the S478. cool hardware is cool but been able to play games without limitations is a lot more fun in the end.

Get a KVM, then maybe you can keep all 3 PC's setup? otherwise you can use one a month. Mine are setup permanently but find thats what I do anyway. This month I'm into Doom so out comes the 486. Next month might be Need for Speed on the Win98 box.

Oh I love the way you think! Maybe that's what I should do!