3dfx released the Banshee right at the very end of 1998, so one of those might work and still fit your 96-98 theme. I'm also wondering why you're not considering making this a V2 Sli rig instead of V1 since the V2 was also released in 1998.

A most excellent suggestion and I did consider the V2 but id want to do sli and I'm out of slots. Also I'm building an sli V2 setup already with a g200 max in my tulatin PIII in order to justify holding on to the thing. I'll probably be using this rig for more stuff that wants a V1 anyways. I did read the thread on v1 games on a v2 which some involve batch files and patches and what not and really I just want the v1 games to "just work" without the fiddling around.

Thi thing drawing me to the Intel i740 besides it matching with the Intel board is ill be mostly playing period stuff on this so say 95-early 98. All the reviews for the i740 with the exception of vintage 3d say its a pretty lackluster card but I'm thinking it does suck for games from 98 up but paired with a v1 would make a great 95-97 card.

Given that the deschutes 350 & 400 were released simultaneously, id go with either of the following;

8mb TNT
8mb V2
Banshee
G200

My Deschutes 400 was running the high-end parts of the era, ie: V2 12mb sli & 16mb TNT. Then I decided to go a Katmai 500 for that rig.

Hmm, as a matter of curiosity does anyone know what month the g200 was released? Also besides blood and reality into dreams for dos are there any windows v1 games that are not compatible with the v2? I think I can free up a PCI slot if I ditch the MEM expansion on the awe64 which I'll probably never take advantage of.

swaaye has some i740 videos on Youtube you should check out.

soviet conscript wrote:

Hmm, as a matter of curiosity does anyone know what month the g200 was released? Also besides blood and reality into dreams for dos are there any windows v1 games that are not compatible with the v2? I think I can free up a PCI slot if I ditch the MEM expansion on the awe64 which I'll probably never take advantage of.

Anandtech has a review from August 1998, so it was probably released thereabouts or maybe became generally available a little later.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/189/3

soviet conscript,your rig is really nice.
I have a Pentium 2 rig too,but a funny thing is that while the motherboard is AT,I had to install it in my old ATX case (which housed a Pentium 4 previously,but I needed a AGP board,no matter what it was,it could have been even a 486,just to have a AGP slot! 😀) )because I didn't had any AT case!Thank god at least the motherboard has a 20pin ATX slot and I could use the PSU!
Here are the specs,if you want to know:
Pentium 2 350MHz CPU(stock frequency)
Luckystar 6BX2 ver1.0 motherboard (shares kinda same layout as my previous Slot1 AT board,an Acorp 6BX/VIA/ZX86 mobo,except the front panel is placed horizontally,and the battery is next to the AGP slot instead of next to the front panel,like on the previous board)
384MB RAM (I was surprised that it recognized the PC133 double sided 512MB RAM stick I hid in there,but probably recognized only 128MB of all the RAM)
2 CDROM drives (a BTE (part of Samsung corp BTW)CDRW IDE5224 drive and a ASUS CD writer that I need to give a good cleaning as it only recognizes certain CDs,not all of them)
400W ATX PSU (came with the case,and still holds strong!)
ATI Radeon 7000 (32MB VRAM,and it can even run Crazy Taxi 3,even though I'll play Oddworld the most on it)
Sound Blaster 16 Value (CT2770,if anyone is interested in it it uses a OPL chip,not OPL3 or anything else,and it dates back 1994)
160GB Samsung SP1603N (IDE,still trying to get XP SP3 on it using a USB pendrive and PLOP boot manager,seems I had made the USB wrong and it didn't see the EULA,even though it was there)

thanks for the tips. I think final specs will be a cpu bump to the 400mhz since its the contemporary of the 350mhz. for main video I'm going to go with a matrox g200 MAX. partly because I already have one but after some research it seems to of released mid 1998 so it fits with my time frame. I know the MAX probably came later but its really just a faster g200. the DOS capabilities kinda suck comparatively but i doubt I'll do to much DOS gaming on this rig and the picture quality is top notch.

I have mauled over the V2 option but I think i'll stick with the v1 to save space in the machine and hold with compatibility for old windows v1 games with the lowest hassle and save my v2 SLI setup for my 1.4ghz PIII tulatin win98/xp duel boot rig.

more semi related questions/observations on this subject though. the multi disc changer cd-rom just fascinates me. its hard to picture 4 cd's and the internal ability to shift them around in such a small space. also apparently there's even a 6 disc version! also as another matter of curiosity whats the highest CPU speed OEM "made for windows 95" machine you've ever come across? for me I think it was a IBM Aptivia with a 300mhz PII. it had the "made for win 95" sticker on it which I'm fairly sure was factory. my one friend was really surprised by it and said that was unusually fast for a win 95 machine. first time I ever really heard anyone refer to a PC as a "screamer" too.

the mpeg decoder card and 5 1/4 inch floppy are probably mostly useless on this machine but I feel it competes the image and spirit of what I was going for.

soviet conscript wrote:

for main video I'm going to go with a matrox g200 MAX. partly because I already have one but after some research it seems to of released mid 1998 so it fits with my time frame. I know the MAX probably came later but its really just a faster g200. the DOS capabilities kinda suck comparatively but i doubt I'll do to much DOS gaming on this rig and the picture quality is top notch.

I didn't know a G200 MAX existed. I thought they just got a die shrink later in production.

Forevermore wrote:

soviet conscript wrote:

for main video I'm going to go with a matrox g200 MAX. partly because I already have one but after some research it seems to of released mid 1998 so it fits with my time frame. I know the MAX probably came later but its really just a faster g200. the DOS capabilities kinda suck comparatively but i doubt I'll do to much DOS gaming on this rig and the picture quality is top notch.

I didn't know a G200 MAX existed. I thought they just got a die shrink later in production.

it doesn't. all the video cards being thrown around i got confused. I do have a g400 MAX but its beyond the scope of this build. I do have a g200 though

PcBytes wrote:

soviet conscript,your rig is really nice. I have a Pentium 2 rig too,but a funny thing is that while the motherboard is AT,I had […]
Show full quote

soviet conscript,your rig is really nice.
I have a Pentium 2 rig too,but a funny thing is that while the motherboard is AT,I had to install it in my old ATX case (which housed a Pentium 4 previously,but I needed a AGP board,no matter what it was,it could have been even a 486,just to have a AGP slot! 😀) )because I didn't had any AT case!Thank god at least the motherboard has a 20pin ATX slot and I could use the PSU!
Here are the specs,if you want to know:
Pentium 2 350MHz CPU(stock frequency)
Luckystar 6BX2 ver1.0 motherboard (shares kinda same layout as my previous Slot1 AT board,an Acorp 6BX/VIA/ZX86 mobo,except the front panel is placed horizontally,and the battery is next to the AGP slot instead of next to the front panel,like on the previous board)
384MB RAM (I was surprised that it recognized the PC133 double sided 512MB RAM stick I hid in there,but probably recognized only 128MB of all the RAM)
2 CDROM drives (a BTE (part of Samsung corp BTW)CDRW IDE5224 drive and a ASUS CD writer that I need to give a good cleaning as it only recognizes certain CDs,not all of them)
400W ATX PSU (came with the case,and still holds strong!)
ATI Radeon 7000 (32MB VRAM,and it can even run Crazy Taxi 3,even though I'll play Oddworld the most on it)
Sound Blaster 16 Value (CT2770,if anyone is interested in it it uses a OPL chip,not OPL3 or anything else,and it dates back 1994)
160GB Samsung SP1603N (IDE,still trying to get XP SP3 on it using a USB pendrive and PLOP boot manager,seems I had made the USB wrong and it didn't see the EULA,even though it was there)

thank you, but why XP? that machine screams win 98se (or lower). I think those specs seem a bit underpowered for XP. It meets the minimum requirements but that doesn't mean its going to run at anything enjoyable. maybe windows 2000 if your dead set on a "newer" OS? I think its a little lighter on requirements.

I'm liking my 95 rig now that I've got some issues sorted out with it. its a interesting period piece and it serves as a in between computer for my 486 and my slightly overpowered win 98se machine,,,both of them.

384MB RAM is way more than the minimum XP requires.(64MB)
Also,the Radeon 7000 came from a Athlon XP system and was running Crazy Taxi 3 and 3D games really good.(even tried Total Immersion Racing,and it ran really good,save for an audio problem,which was because of my soundcard.)
I chose XP not only because it's newer but Windows 2000,98 or anything lower would be ridiculous for me.
For the video card,I need to check if the HIS Radeon 9250 (128MB AGP)works.If it works,then it will replace the Radeon 7000.

PcBytes wrote:

384MB RAM is way more than the minimum XP requires.(64MB) Also,the Radeon 7000 came from a Athlon XP system and was running Craz […]
Show full quote

384MB RAM is way more than the minimum XP requires.(64MB)
Also,the Radeon 7000 came from a Athlon XP system and was running Crazy Taxi 3 and 3D games really good.(even tried Total Immersion Racing,and it ran really good,save for an audio problem,which was because of my soundcard.)
I chose XP not only because it's newer but Windows 2000,98 or anything lower would be ridiculous for me.
For the video card,I need to check if the HIS Radeon 9250 (128MB AGP)works.If it works,then it will replace the Radeon 7000.

I dunno, that CPU is going to be a bottleneck regardless of the video card you have installed. are you just going to play older games on it? I just looked through a small pile of XP games I have and they all wanted at least a 1ghz Pentium 4 and most of that stuff wasn't even graphics intensive.

why would anything lower be ridicules? personally id forget the radeon and save it for a more powerful machine and by a $4-$10 card off ebay from the late 90's and have a nice windows machine.

Well,the games I would run date back 2003-2002,and were made for the Pentium 3,but I guess they could run on a Pentium 2 too.
Only the Oddworld games date back 1997-1998.

soviet conscript wrote:

I think final specs will be a cpu bump to the 400mhz since its the contemporary of the 350mhz.

Or u could get a p2-300 and oc to 450,thats what i did to have the fastest p2,since 450 mhz p2's are hard to find.

Nahkri wrote:

soviet conscript wrote:

I think final specs will be a cpu bump to the 400mhz since its the contemporary of the 350mhz.

Or u could get a p2-300 and oc to 450,thats what i did to have the fastest p2,since 450 mhz p2's are hard to find.

I see them on eBay for under $10 pretty often. actually I just bought one for $6 shipped. the 450mhz was released a month or 2 past my self imposed deadline but...what the heck.

You can hide a Pentium 3 450MHz in the P2 CPU case and say it's a P2 450,nobody will know. 🤣

PcBytes wrote:

You can hide a Pentium 3 450MHz in the P2 CPU case and say it's a P2 450,nobody will know. 🤣

🤣, no no, I'm done boosting the power. i'm setteling with my 450mhz PII.

my P3 fix is satisfied by my duel CPU P3 1.4ghz Tulatin I mentioned earlier.