The Motherboard is a BX motherboard made by Intel themselves, so rock stable
Officially it supports 100Mhz FSB slot 1 CPU's so fastest is a 1Ghz Coppermine (which is what I have in my T500)
You wont find one of those cheap but maybe something around 700 or 900Mhz? you can also get a slocket adapter and use Socket 370 CPU's but stick with ones with 100FSB, I don't think you can run 133 FSB CPU's on intel boards?

GF4 Ti or the GF FX are the fastest you can get of this system. I have the top tier GF4 Ti 4600 in mine and is definitely held back by the CPU so feel free to drop back 1 or 2 levels.
You don't mention which sound card your using, this is probably the cheapest upgrade. While the Creative X-Fi does support Win2k drivers might be a bit heavy for a P3. I'd go with something like an Audigy or Audigy 2 ZS and covers any EAX version a Win9x era game would want.

and just 1 clarification you would have a P3 500 not Xeon.
Xeons of the era used Slot 2 which is different.
Slot 1 was strictly Pentium 2,3 or Celeron, We know you have a P3 500 due to the model number, If you had a XPS T700 for example that would show it originally came with a 700Mhz P3

chinny22 wrote on 2024-05-22, 07:10:

The Motherboard is a BX motherboard made by Intel themselves, so rock stable
Officially it supports 100Mhz FSB slot 1 CPU's so fastest is a 1Ghz Coppermine (which is what I have in my T500)
You wont find one of those cheap but maybe something around 700 or 900Mhz? you can also get a slocket adapter and use Socket 370 CPU's but stick with ones with 100FSB, I don't think you can run 133 FSB CPU's on intel boards?

My best bet is to get a 733MHz CPU for it not to melt my wallet.

chinny22 wrote on 2024-05-22, 07:10:

GF4 Ti or the GF FX are the fastest you can get of this system. I have the top tier GF4 Ti 4600 in mine and is definitely held back by the CPU so feel free to drop back 1 or 2 levels.
You don't mention which sound card your using, this is probably the cheapest upgrade. While the Creative X-Fi does support Win2k drivers might be a bit heavy for a P3. I'd go with something like an Audigy or Audigy 2 ZS and covers any EAX version a Win9x era game would want.

I would get Geforce FX cards as those seem to be the cheaper option as of now. The Ti 4600 is mad expensive. As for the sound card my local shop has a Creative soundcard (for free), I would have too look into the driver support though, but if it does not support Windows 2K I would make sure to check out the Audigy cards.

And I made a typo, I was going to write Slot 2. Can I use Slot 1 CPUs inside Slot 2? Also, what is the best CPU I can get with the adaptor?

This era of PC is very sort after now as it can run both Win9x and dos games really well.
I built my PC about 10 years ago when prices weren't as crazy, no way could I do it now!

You can use this list on wiki for an idea on CPU's as long as the FSB is 100Mhz your ok.
It maybe you can get a faster S370 CPU and slocket adapter then a slot 1 CPU, I doubt it but maybe?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_P … _III_processors

Slot 1 isn't interchangeable with Slot 2 but the XPS range never had slot 2 You defiantly have a Slot 1 system.
If you want to double check read the numbers of the top of the CPU cartridge and google it and it'll tell you the CPU spec

chinny22 wrote on 2024-05-22, 07:58:

You can use this list on wiki for an idea on CPU's as long as the FSB is 100Mhz your ok.
It maybe you can get a faster S370 CPU and slocket adapter then a slot 1 CPU, I doubt it but maybe?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_P … _III_processors

So from that wikipedia article can I conclude that I can just install a Pentium III 1100? That runs at 1.1GHz with a 100MHz FSB.
I hope I get this over with because the prices are rocketing up really fast.

AAVVIronAlex wrote on 2024-05-22, 08:03:

chinny22 wrote on 2024-05-22, 07:58:

You can use this list on wiki for an idea on CPU's as long as the FSB is 100Mhz your ok.
It maybe you can get a faster S370 CPU and slocket adapter then a slot 1 CPU, I doubt it but maybe?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_P … _III_processors

So from that wikipedia article can I conclude that I can just install a Pentium III 1100? That runs at 1.1GHz with a 100MHz FSB.
I hope I get this over with because the prices are rocketing up really fast.

Be careful when selecting a CPU, check the S-Spec (i.e. SL5QW) against that list to make sure you're getting a coppermine P-III rather than a tualatin which isn't compatible without modifying the CPU or the slot1>370 adapter. Though you can buy pre-modded ones from someone in Korea and the 1.4ghz tualatin celeron with the adapter seems fairly priced "Intel Tualatin Celeron 1.4GHz(256K) include On-chip Socket Adapter!! SL6C6 SL64V"
I bought one of those tualatin adapter/interposer PCBs and know how awkward that is to install.
That could then go into a P-III compatible slotket (equally tough to find) and you'd have a faster CPU. It took a while but I found an SL5QV and I got an MS-6905 slot>370 adapter for cheap several years ago so I've at last got a 1GHz P-III that can be used in any BX system.

You could however skip all of that palava and switch out the motherboard for a socket 370 dell motherboard, which has an Intel 815 chipset and is compatible with your computer's case and Dell-specific PSU. The two I can see come with decently fast 133mhz FSB CPUs and heatsinks. But then what do you do about sound and do the ATX backplate holes match up?
If you swap out for another brand make sure to swap the PSU as well, the power supply in your PC is dell specific and will fry standard ATX motherboards.
I have the same quandary btw - my Dell Dimension XPS D233 looks fantastic but is rather slow and being a 440LX board the upgrade path is quite limited.

Or you could find a faster slot 1 / SECC processor without the slot>370 adapter using the S-Spec codes from the wikipedia page, equally tricky since fast ones are now either very rare or priced high.

Attached are some vintage benchmarks I found from THG showing the performance of a bunch of CPUs with a Radeon 9700, but the 9700 is also not really available anymore because they all failed. So the nvidia equivalent is probably an FX5700-ish. The thing is Q3A is not going to use pixel shading so the Geforce 3 and later won't benefit so much.

I think that for video cards for Q3, you should try out the Geforce 4 MX-440 which is essentially a faster Geforce 2 GTS / Pro card and afaik those all have notches for both AGP 3.3v (1x/2x) and 1.5v (4x) operation
https://vgamuseum.info/index.php/component/k2 … geforce4-mx-440
That should be able to achieve your target performance - check out Thandor's benchmarks of Q3 with different cards, the MX440 with a faster CPU gets over 100FPS 😀 https://thandor.net/benchmark/17
The main thing to look for is that it's a card with 128-bit memory

However UT2004 might be heavily CPU bound and a 64MB card would probably require turning textures down since 128mb / 256mb was getting more common by 2004-ish. The FX5700 might do better there.

Thermalwrong wrote on 2024-05-22, 12:55:

You could however skip all of that palava and switch out the motherboard for a socket 370 dell motherboard, which has an Intel 815 chipset and is compatible with your computer's case and Dell-specific PSU. The two I can see come with decently fast 133mhz FSB CPUs and heatsinks. But then what do you do about sound and do the ATX backplate holes match up?

Why would you want to replace a 440BX board with an ISA slot for a Dimension 4100 with no ISA slot (and less RAM capacity)?

AAVVIronAlex wrote on 2024-05-22, 07:40:

My best bet is to get a 733MHz CPU for it not to melt my wallet.

733MHz is going to be 133FSB, so that's a problem. You want 700 or 850MHz on 100MHz FSB.

One other thing I want to raise that I don't know the answer to. Dell sold XPS Txxx systems with Katmai processors and XPS Txxxr systems with Coppermines. (I had a T700r and... still regret e-wasting it over a decade ago) I don't know whether the Txxxr systems might have a newer revision motherboard/BIOS/something, or whether the Coppermines will work fine on the Txxx systems.

AAVVIronAlex wrote on 2024-05-22, 06:14:

My goal with the system is to run Quake III Arena at 60+ FPS and if possible run UT2004 too.

My OS would be Windows 2000.

Quite honestly, that's the wrong machine. Why are you going into the sweet spot of 98SE, even DOS, machines (ISA, PIII, etc) to run Win2000 and try to play a game that is four years newer than those systems?

Assuming you want to run Win2000 because, well, Win2000 was the greatest version of Windows ever, you want to go for something much, much newer.

Does anyone know whether PCI-E GPUs from 2006ish are supported under Win2000? Given the huge premium for 98SE-friendly AGP stuff, I wonder if something like, say, a 7900GT would work under Win2000. (There seems to be a 94.24 WHQL driver at nvidia.com so... maybe) A 7900GT was an absolutely outstanding card in 2006, and they're dirt cheap on eBay (I'm seeing some for like under USD$30 + shipping to Canada). Pair that with a hotburst on an i915 or a C2D on a 965 board (if 965 has decent Win2K support still) or a socket 939/AM2 AMD, and you have yourself a whole system that'll dramatically outperform the XPS T500 for the price of a top-of-the-line 100MHz FSB Slot 1 CPU.

Let the DOS people spend big money on ISA-friendly motherboards and Slot 1 CPUs to put on them; let the Win98 people spend big money on AGP Ti4600s and FX5900s (and i865 LGA775 boards); you're not aiming to run any of those OSes, so you can get some much higher-performance parts without competing with them.

And then, think about turning the T500 into a DOS, early Win98 machine. An ISA sound card, whatever video card you have in there now, some kind of modern storage (a CF to IDE adapter? maybe that's a bit too slow for a P3) and you're probably... good to go.

AAVVIronAlex wrote on 2024-05-22, 08:03:

chinny22 wrote on 2024-05-22, 07:58:

You can use this list on wiki for an idea on CPU's as long as the FSB is 100Mhz your ok.
It maybe you can get a faster S370 CPU and slocket adapter then a slot 1 CPU, I doubt it but maybe?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_P … _III_processors

So from that wikipedia article can I conclude that I can just install a Pentium III 1100? That runs at 1.1GHz with a 100MHz FSB.
I hope I get this over with because the prices are rocketing up really fast.

I'm guessing your looking at the SL5QW CPU from the list which in theory should work (nothing is 100% sure in this game) You'll also need a slocket adapter that supports Coppermine CPU's not all of them did.
I don't know of a list of confirmed working adapters. your best bet is to find one and create a new post here asking if anyone else with the same adapter has had success.

While I was answering your original question on what's the best upgrades I also agree with some of the above. Personally I'd keep things simple and forget about messing around with slocket adapters and get whatever compatible Slot 1 CPU your budget allows. It's the cartridge style CPU that makes these special after all and enjoy this PC for what it is.

VivienM wrote on 2024-05-22, 21:37:

AAVVIronAlex wrote on 2024-05-22, 07:40:

One other thing I want to raise that I don't know the answer to. Dell sold XPS Txxx systems with Katmai processors and XPS Txxxr systems with Coppermines. (I had a T700r and... still regret e-wasting it over a decade ago) I don't know whether the Txxxr systems might have a newer revision motherboard/BIOS/something, or whether the Coppermines will work fine on the Txxx systems.

This is a good point and I'm not sure either! and with my PC in storage I can't check if I have the R or not.

Although I slightly disagree that Win2k is a bad choice of OS. I dual boot Win98 and 2k on my slower P3 600 and only use 98 for games that don't work as 2k is so much more stable

chinny22 wrote on 2024-05-23, 01:16:

This is a good point and I'm not sure either! and with my PC in storage I can't check if I have the R or not.

Although I slightly disagree that Win2k is a bad choice of OS. I dual boot Win98 and 2k on my slower P3 600 and only use 98 for games that don't work as 2k is so much more stable

I have a feeling that Dell put together a list somewhere of which speeds are the 'r' Coppermine and which are not. I might be wrong about this, but I think all 500MHz systems and maybe 600MHz systems were Katmais, and then everything above that was 'r' Coppermines.

To be clear, I have nothing against Win2000. My T700r is the machine that soured me on 98SE (biggest mistake I ever made ordering that machine was picking 98SE instead of 2000) - the machine itself was very stable, but you'd run out of system resources after potentially a few hours of 'heavy' multitasking, whereas with enough RAM, Win2000 could stay up for months (this was before Patch Tuesday too...).

And actually, I would agree that in general, Win2000 is the best OS for a Txxx/Txxxr, at least for daily use rather than retro use. 98SE loves to run out of system resources, XP runs fine but is a lot more hardware-intensive and 768MB of RAM isn't going to cut it for post-2003-4ish XP stuff, so 2000 is in many ways the sweet spot. For retro use, if I hadn't stupidly e-wasted my T700r (and the TNT2 M64 it originally had) a decade ago, after hanging out here, I... probably would have tried to turn it into a DOS machine 😀

But... I just don't see the point of throwing money at high-end parts into a Slot 1, AGP 2X, etc. system to run Win2000. There's just too much demand for those parts. Run Win2000 with what you've already got, or if you want to build a higher-performance Win2000 box (or one with any chance of running UT2004... which has a minimum CPU requirement of 1GHz, recommended 1.5GHz, which means it'll crawl on most things below 1.8-2GHz), go newer. If I was the OP, I'd look for some underappreciated hardware from the end of the Win2000 era that's largely been overlooked by the retro community because everybody is looking at 98SE or XP...

VivienM wrote on 2024-05-23, 04:07:

To be clear, I have nothing against Win2000. My T700r is the machine that soured me on 98SE (biggest mistake I ever made ordering that machine was picking 98SE instead of 2000) - the machine itself was very stable, but you'd run out of system resources after potentially a few hours of 'heavy' multitasking, whereas with enough RAM, Win2000 could stay up for months (this was before Patch Tuesday too...).

And actually, I would agree that in general, Win2000 is the best OS for a Txxx/Txxxr, at least for daily use rather than retro use. 98SE loves to run out of system resources, XP runs fine but is a lot more hardware-intensive and 768MB of RAM isn't going to cut it for post-2003-4ish XP stuff, so 2000 is in many ways the sweet spot. For retro use, if I hadn't stupidly e-wasted my T700r (and the TNT2 M64 it originally had) a decade ago, after hanging out here, I... probably would have tried to turn it into a DOS machine 😀

But... I just don't see the point of throwing money at high-end parts into a Slot 1, AGP 2X, etc. system to run Win2000. There's just too much demand for those parts. Run Win2000 with what you've already got, or if you want to build a higher-performance Win2000 box (or one with any chance of running UT2004... which has a minimum CPU requirement of 1GHz, recommended 1.5GHz, which means it'll crawl on most things below 1.8-2GHz), go newer. If I was the OP, I'd look for some underappreciated hardware from the end of the Win2000 era that's largely been overlooked by the retro community because everybody is looking at 98SE or XP...

The fact you said Win2k was the greatest version of windows ever I wouldn't have thought you had anything against. I'm still not sure what my favourite is but agree Win2k is overlooked and underappreciated even for retro use. As you say Win98 on a BX motherboard is about as stable as you can get but it'll still blue screen every now and then. It's why I tell anyone that'll listen Win2k is a better choice unless something isn't compatible.

Really depends on what the OP is after. I wanted to upgrade my XPS T500 just because I like slot 1 systems and wanted one that was "upgraded to the max" not for any specific software.
My slower P3 600 with GF2 MX and V2 SLI is alot more sensible and honestly more fun to use.

If your building the rig around Win2k or specific games then yes it's probably worth something a bit newer

VivienM wrote on 2024-05-22, 21:35:

Thermalwrong wrote on 2024-05-22, 12:55:

You could however skip all of that palava and switch out the motherboard for a socket 370 dell motherboard, which has an Intel 815 chipset and is compatible with your computer's case and Dell-specific PSU. The two I can see come with decently fast 133mhz FSB CPUs and heatsinks. But then what do you do about sound and do the ATX backplate holes match up?

Why would you want to replace a 440BX board with an ISA slot for a Dimension 4100 with no ISA slot (and less RAM capacity)?

I Have seen the prices on these things and they do not look pleasing, apparently my Pentium III is 50 dollars now. I have a local research centre which agreed to hand their old stock over to me, as they do not need it anymore. There apparently are loads of Pentium IIIs there, at this point I do not know which exact Pentium IIIs they have there, but it it worth a shot ether way (as they can send my whole systems with Pentium IIIs).

VivienM wrote on 2024-05-22, 21:48:

AAVVIronAlex wrote on 2024-05-22, 06:14:

My goal with the system is to run Quake III Arena at 60+ FPS and if possible run UT2004 too.

My OS would be Windows 2000.

Does anyone know whether PCI-E GPUs from 2006ish are supported under Win2000? Given the huge premium for 98SE-friendly AGP stuff, I wonder if something like, say, a 7900GT would work under Win2000. (There seems to be a 94.24 WHQL driver at nvidia.com so... maybe) A 7900GT was an absolutely outstanding card in 2006, and they're dirt cheap on eBay (I'm seeing some for like under USD$30 + shipping to Canada). Pair that with a hotburst on an i915 or a C2D on a 965 board (if 965 has decent Win2K support still) or a socket 939/AM2 AMD, and you have yourself a whole system that'll dramatically outperform the XPS T500 for the price of a top-of-the-line 100MHz FSB Slot 1 CPU.

I own a lot of Core 2 Quads Duos and motherboards for them, so I want to explore other eras of computing. So, no that will not work. I also have Athlon X2s, 64s and etc.

chinny22 wrote on 2024-05-23, 01:16:

You'll also need a slocket adapter that supports Coppermine CPU's not all of them did.

Exactly what does this slocket adaptor do? Is this the one that converts the slot into the pga? So, to coclude I should maybe wait and see what the folks at the research centre hand over and then make the plans, because as I said, the CPU I have is apparently 50 dollars on eBay.

VivienM wrote on 2024-05-23, 04:07:

And actually, I would agree that in general, Win2000 is the best OS for a Txxx/Txxxr, at least for daily use rather than retro use. 98SE loves to run out of system resources, XP runs fine but is a lot more hardware-intensive and 768MB of RAM isn't going to cut it for post-2003-4ish XP stuff, so 2000 is in many ways the sweet spot. For retro use, if I hadn't stupidly e-wasted my T700r (and the TNT2 M64 it originally had) a decade ago, after hanging out here, I... probably would have tried to turn it into a DOS machine

I am currently installing 2000 on the system. I would put another HDD into it for 98SE down the road. I get your other points about sticking to other eras too, I will if I do not get valuable results from the research centre.

Thanks again for the replies.

AAVVIronAlex wrote on 2024-05-23, 08:58:

Does anyone know whether PCI-E GPUs from 2006ish are supported under Win2000? Given the huge premium for 98SE-friendly AGP stuff, I wonder if something like, say, a 7900GT would work under Win2000. (There seems to be a 94.24 WHQL driver at nvidia.com so... maybe) A 7900GT was an absolutely outstanding card in 2006, and they're dirt cheap on eBay (I'm seeing some for like under USD$30 + shipping to Canada). Pair that with a hotburst on an i915 or a C2D on a 965 board (if 965 has decent Win2K support still) or a socket 939/AM2 AMD, and you have yourself a whole system that'll dramatically outperform the XPS T500 for the price of a top-of-the-line 100MHz FSB Slot 1 CPU.

I own a lot of Core 2 Quads Duos and motherboards for them, so I want to explore other eras of computing. So, no that will not work. I also have Athlon X2s, 64s and etc.
[/quote]

Yes Win2k supports later (and cheaper) hardware so not a bad idea at all.

AAVVIronAlex wrote on 2024-05-23, 08:58:

chinny22 wrote on 2024-05-23, 01:16:

You'll also need a slocket adapter that supports Coppermine CPU's not all of them did.

Exactly what does this slocket adaptor do? Is this the one that converts the slot into the pga? So, to coclude I should maybe wait and see what the folks at the research centre hand over and then make the plans, because as I said, the CPU I have is apparently 50 dollars on eBay.

Basically yes slot 1 to pga. I'd defiantly wait to see what you can get from the research centre first no point spending money unnecessarily.

chinny22 wrote on 2024-05-24, 01:26:

Basically yes slot 1 to pga. I'd defiantly wait to see what you can get from the research centre first no point spending money unnecessarily.

Yes and I have found a cheap Radeon HD 2400 Pro listing which connects via PCI rather than PCI-E. Should I also consider that, as it is quite cheap?

I do have PCI Slots.

Also do you know a place where I can get drivers for old hardware like this?

So quick update, I got 2 Radeon 9250s and an FX5500 from the research centre. I will keep them all and I will use the 9250 for the PC. All of them work. They also had Pentium IIIs, but they did not time to unveil them so that would have to be delayed until another time. Overall I can keep my hopes up, the only problem I really have now is that my HDD looks like it died on me, right after the drivers got installed. I rebooted and rebooted again to see some system files were not loading up and now even the Windows 2000 installation disc cannot format the drive. I would have to try to repair that, I know someone who does it for fun (and has done it successfully in the past), so I will take a go at that, if it does not come back I will get a new one or just tell the centre to include that with the Pentium III they will be giving away.

Forgot to mention that all the cards are AGP 2X/4X so they work like a charm.

I also saw an FX5200 for just 2 dollars in my local Craigslist alternative, so I will be getting that as well (just for safe keeping). I also found an extremely cheap listing of a high-midrange Socket A, so I will be getting that too.

Thank you all for your support.