I'll jump in on this one as I've had fun building a few V5500 retro boxes in different configurations.
1] BCM GT133KT mobo, AMD Athlon 1100mhz [200fsb], 512mb PC133, SBlive!, Diamond V5500 [ref drivers]
2] Abit VA6 slot-1 mobo, P3-800 [on an Abit 'Slotkit'], 512mb PC133, Turtle Beach Montego [Aureal], V5.
Both builds ran well for my purposes in the target game [European Air War: Res=1152, AA=4]
BCM build: min FPS low 40s in furrball
VA6 build: min FPS high 30s in furball
I converted the BCM build to the VA6 when I ran into issues with Longbow 2 which I was not able to 'tweak' out. The VA6/P3-800 is solid. I'm not a tech wiz and can't comment on benchmarks and relative strengths and weaknesses compared to other builds, but if you are looking to build a V5500 rig with more of a 'retro' orientation rather that the fastest possible Voodoo 'glide rocket', these specs are more than acceptible.