>> glad to know it's not a disorder of some sort

It is. 😉

>> Pentium 233MMX

These things have been discussed very recently. 😀 If you're in to OC'ing, they can go up to 300, but it's a bit risky!

Ep. 1 High/800x600??

I would go for a Voodoo1, perfect match for the CPU. Uhmm..Theme Hospital, is that good? I remember Theme Park was pretty fun back then.

I'd love a Voodoo1 but they seem to be a bit scarce now. Plenty of Voodoo3 2000's though.... might get one for the PIII system I'm building. But I'm kinda split between that or a Matrox G400/ TNT2.

Theme Hospital is hilarious. Loaded it up for a bit of nostalgia....IMO it's aged well and is still as fun as before.

sgt76 wrote:

I'd love a Voodoo1 but they seem to be a bit scarce now. Plenty of Voodoo3 2000's though.... might get one for the PIII system I'm building. But I'm kinda split between that or a Matrox G400/ TNT2.

Theme Hospital is hilarious. Loaded it up for a bit of nostalgia....IMO it's aged well and is still as fun as before.

I'm using a 32mb Matrox G400 Max in my old PIII system and it's a great card 😎

I use a Matrox G450 32mb card. I don't know how it compares to a G400 Max card. It's very good, and has DVI output. I believe you can flash the BIOS on those Matrox cards (G200/G4xx), for some general overall improvements.

Two strong recommendations for Matrox? Hmm, will definitely give that serious thought now.

Here are some not very clear (to say the least) pics of my MMX rig and assorted hardware in it- vid card, the aftermarket cooler, etc...

and some pics of my WIP Project '99 Pentium III screamer, with parts c. 1999-2000. First the case, plenty of room in there for lots of stuff...its an old HP Vectra VL600 case from 2000. The original internals are long gone though, but this case has seen some varied hardware over the years!

As for the checklist...So far I've got an SL35 stepping Katmai chip that should be good for 600mhz (these have the same cache memory as the 600mhz chips). And a couple of 1Ghz socket 370 chips as well. Got the ram, NICs, PSU, CD drive, floppy... but missing a motherboard, hard disk and period correct sound and video cards. This will soon be remedied in the next few days with a few visits to the junk shops and a few bucks.

and sorry for the pictures, I used my phone cam in a hurry...

retro games 100 wrote:

I use a Matrox G450 32mb card. I don't know how it compares to a G400 Max card. It's very good, and has DVI output. I believe you can flash the BIOS on those Matrox cards (G200/G4xx), for some general overall improvements.

The G450 is basically a die shrink of a G400 and is also equipped with DDR memory... but it is slower than the plain G400 for gaming (i think the release of the G450 was when Matrox left the gaming market!) 😒

G450 is a 180nm G400. G400 was 250nm. G450 is clocked lower and has less memory bandwidth than G400 MAX. The G450 is similar to a regular G400. The DDR RAM let them switch to a narrower (cheaper) 64-bit memory bus and maintain similar performance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrox_G400

Matrox isn't all that great for DOS VESA gaming, btw. You should look for a NV card for better compatibility there.

My opinion of Matrox G400 has worsened over the years because I've been exposed to all of the other options. G200/G4x0 have buggy OpenGL & D3D. No anti-aliasing or anisotropic filtering. The EMBM feature causes a big performance drop and only works in like 3 games anyway. The 2D is not tangibly faster than a ATI Rage 128 or TNT2. Sometimes it's not even clearer. Radeon has better TV out quality IMO. I'd rather have a Voodoo3 or 5 for sure.

I would also prefer a Voodoo 5 over a G400 Max but not a Voodoo 3! I've not run into any problems yet with my G400 Max.... i prefer this compared to my old ATI Rage Fury Maxx and i personally think it has better image quality and 2D performance over the TNT2. I'm sure it may have driver bugs like most old card's but i've not run into any major issues so far 😀

As far as i remember it was only the early Matrox G400 drivers that had a buggy crap OpenGL ICD... I have no issues with OpenGL as it runs all the old games fine 😁

G450 is a 180nm G400. G400 was 250nm. G450 is clocked lower and has less memory bandwidth than G400 MAX. The G450 is similar to a regular G400. The DDR RAM let them switch to a narrower (cheaper) 64-bit memory bus and maintain similar performance.

Interesting..never knew that. In any case, I only have a plain vanilla G400 available to me, which has never been used for playing a single game in its entire existence (wifey's rig). I've been using Nvidia and ATI only for gaming since forever. Missed the Voodoo boat completely for some strange reason which I can't think of now.

Re: the Matrox G400 MAX & G450 cards, there's a group test here -

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/g450/default.asp

Looks like the GeForce2 MX is the champ in this test. I still like the Matrox G450, because it's DVI image quality is good. For fast 3D games such as Quake 3 etc, I now play them on my 'non-retro' XP-based system. (Even windows quake 1 @ 1280x1024 looks good on my XP box!)

Hmm, Nvidia or Matrox/ Voodoo/ ATI? The dude whom I was supposed to get the Voodoo3 from was a no-show...my Matrox now resides in my mum's PC....and I also just decided that I will be dual booting this system with Linux. this is all starting to look very Nvidia indeed...

Just one thing to mention about the GeForce 2s - I *think* the general image quality is a little bit on the blurry side, from what I've heard. I don't own one, so I can't say for certain, but I'm sure a few people have mentioned this.

retro games 100 wrote:

Just one thing to mention about the GeForce 2s - I *think* the general image quality is a little bit on the blurry side, from what I've heard. I don't own one, so I can't say for certain, but I'm sure a few people have mentioned this.

Yes i also agree the Geforce 256 DDR and Geforce 2 have slightly degraded image quality and i also found this with the TNT and TNT2.... I'm not sure if it's the same with all brands of Nvidia cards? and i suppose it could also depend on the monitor used.

If you are going to run any Glide games then get a Voodoo 3.... but that's all they are good for as they only run in 16-bit and have poor texture resolutions resulting in games looking blurry... they are fairly fast but at the expense of visual quality!

In the end i just stuck with my G400 Max as i've had no issues with it at all... but i'm not saying it's perfect as other people may have had problems with it? I find it faster and better quality than the TNT2 and ATI cards ofaround the same age 😎

Ah, don't forget that the Voodoo3 cards have excellent 2D VESA performance - I managed to get pcpbench (1280x1024x8) to run at 55+ fps with one of them, on an Athlon thunderbird box. The general image quality looked excellent too.

Ooo err, 😖 I've just settled my dilemma and bought an Nvidia 4200Ti. Whoops! There goes the period correct build I was aiming for...but I just couldn't resist .... The other available alternative was a Radeon 7500LE...this woulda been better from an accuracy perspective but ...

Yes, I know this thing is massive overkill for my PIII, with CPU bottlenecks and what not...but c'mon...4200Ti vs Radeon 7500 vs Vanta and some other assorted nonsense the vendor had?

Guess I'm going to have to rename this project "Muttley"

All parts 1997-2005 😊

Your Nvidia 4200Ti is featured here -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Nv … eForce_4_series

Release date April 02, DirectX 8 card. I've got a GeForce4 MX 440 8x card, release date Oct 02, DirectX 7 - fillrate's a lot less than your 4200Ti card.

A Voodoo3 is superior to G400 Max because:

• Glide. Some of those '97-99 games do Glide much better than anything else.
• Somewhat better VESA VBE compatibility. There's a TSR can make it darn near perfect.

retro games 100 wrote:

because it's DVI image quality is good.

DVI is either perfect or blank screen. 😀

OK, it's been a productive couple of days. Obtained all parts, tested them and assembled the lot. Currently formatting, system posts OK and everything looks good so far.

Specs wise, it came out a bit unusual as I had to make do with the best of a junk pile. Here we go:

Motherboard: Matsonic MS7112C. A very obscure piece of hardware indeed, almost impossible to find any info on it. VIA combo chipset capable of PPGA Celeron / Slot Pentium II/III support. Some overclocking functions, which was really surprising- fsb in 66,83,100,103,112,133 I think, voltage, multiplier and ram.

CPU: Pentium III 650E, 100mhz bus. Heard this one overclocks pretty well to 866mhz with a touch more volts. We'll soon find that out....

Video card: Nvidia 4200Ti, sheer bottlenecking nonsense, but as it only cost another $10 compared with a Radeon7500, I figured that getting the optimum performance out of it wouldn't be as critical as compared to if it was used for a new build in 2002 😜 . By sheer chance, I managed to pick an MSI 8870 model which has 3.3/3.6 ns ram or something like that. Supposed to be a good overclocker too, right up to near 4600Ti territory.

Other bits:
Ram: 2 x 128mb 133mhz sticks. Might add in another 128mb maybe.
HD: Maxtor 40gb 7200rpm
CD rom: some generic brand 48x which is really, really silent
NIC: 3Com 905b ISA 10mbs

Here's a pic of the whole lot:

<a href="http://s724.photobucket.com/albums/ww245/sgt7 … t=IMAGE_699.jpg" target="_blank"><img

<a href="http://s724.photobucket.com/albums/ww245/sgt7 … t=IMAGE_699.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i724.photobucket.com/albums/ww245/sgt76/IMAGE_699.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>