First post, by guyjin37
Hi All, looking for advice and anecdotes!
My retro journey has taken me to a dark and confusing place lately. I am nostalgic most for the Pentium - Pentium MMX era, but just like back in the day, I find myself wanting to play a wider range of games and, long story short, I have 2 motherboards on the way: an Aopen Slot 1 AX63PRO and a Gigabyte GA-6VX7-4X. I can play with both for a day or two but can only keep one...so the question is: which?
I love my DOS gaming though I don't go too early (really only as early as like 92/93) and I still haven't run into a big problem with being too fast for anything on Socket 7 (using the usual mid-range Pentiums on up to K6-2 400). But I do miss being able to play Quake 3, UnrealT, Half-life, and other later 90s games. They'll all run on my machine, sure, but the experience isn't what I crave. So I'll be bumping up my main retro rig from Win95osr2 → 98se along with the platform upgrade.
I'll be using a Voodoo Banshee (again for nostalgic reasons, I just love it) so I'm not expecting the moon, just a flexible, capable retro rig. I'll have faster cards around as I need.
I have a Coppermine P3 1GHz laying around and of course I can get a slocket adapter somewhat cheap. I also have just a plain Slot 1 P3 600MHz.
So I can use the Coppermine in either, giving the Aopen a point for that Slot1-Socket370 flexibility and a minus for the added cost if I do.
Both boards have at least 1 ISA slot for my dear Orpheus I, so that's not a problem. Everything else is just a wash, with the Aopen on the VIA Apollo Pro 133 chipset and the Gigabyte on Apollo Pro 133A.
Both boards seem to have good reputations for stability and quality.
So it just comes down to Slot 1 vs Socket 370. All else being equal, which is the better route (or the better board)?