Might be best to start with the p4 and see whether everything you are interested in plays ok on that. If so - no need for the p2/p3.

Its not surprise that a P1 is slow and glitchy with those games.
I would say there isn't any reason to build Pentium 2 since that is a high clocked Pentium 1

Personally I dislike Pentium 4 for several reasons. They are relatively slow per clock and run hot and use a lot of power.
Pentium 3 just have a lot more "mystique".

If you want fast, you might as well jump to LGA775 and PCI-E and that will give you flexibility to use modern parts

Depends if your P3 or P4 has ISA. If it doesn't,..... best wishes 🙁

I did not know we still wanted ISA in an XP build.

What will we need on the ISA in XP and DirectX era games?

leileilol wrote:

Depends if your P3 or P4 has ISA. If it doesn't,..... best wishes 🙁

Well, it is a XP gaming machine, so there is no point in having an ISA soundcard.

The thing is, if you want Glide you might have trouble getting some Voodoo cards working well on the P4 (hopefully someone more experienced with 3dfx hardware can tell you more about it). Also, some games have trouble even with WinXP. You might be better off with both the P3 and the P4, making the P4 a XP gaming machine (or even upgrading it to a C2D if its a LGA775 motherboard) and leaving the P3 as a Win98 gaming machine, where you can put Voodoos and even mess arround with a Vortex2 sound card for A3D, if you want to do so.

While Voodoo cards do scale with processing power, a lot of this "fact" is from the old days, when processors simply weren't very powerful.

Now that we have access to fast Pentium III processors we can see that Voodoo cards quickly run out of steam at higher resolutions. Sure they scale well at 640 x 480, but who wants to play at that resolution.

There is little point in anything faster than a Pentium III 800 MHz with Voodoo II SLI and Voodoo 3 cards. Voodoo 5 has more power but also drops off past 1024 x 768: http://www.philscomputerlab.com/3dfx-voodoo-s … ut-project.html

The thing is there are so many options and ways to approach this P1 to P4 problem. Personally I see the need for 3 machines. SS7 for 386 era games to Tomb Raider. Pentium III for anything Windows 9x. And a Pentium 4 with 865 chipset and Nvidia AGP card. Maybe a GF4 or FX for Splinter Cell 😀

Personally though I don't use PCs to cover a wide range of games. I have a few test bench spots and pretty much build systems on a per-game basis to have the absolute best experience 😀 I don't like to compromise.

So I took a look into the P3 machine as I have it on hand.

It's an Intel se440bx2 motherboard,
only 100mhz FSB,
3 100mhz SDRAM slots max 384MB
AGP 2x
IDE ATA 33
2 ISA slots, 4 PCI

I don't have any ram in it so I can't boot it to see what CPU is in there but the sticker on the case says its got a P3.
I'm not sure how this fares for P3 era machines but it seems pretty weak.
I'd think I'd hope for a 133 FSB and AGP 4x

I'll have to see what the P4 machine is, maybe hope for a socket 775

Pentium III is 100 MHz FSB up to 1.1 GHz. But there are also 133 MHz FSB Pentium III processors, problem is the awesome Intel BX440 chipset doesn't support it unless you overclock, which I don't recommend.

So personally I would stick with 100 MHz FSB, BX440 and a 600 to 800 MHz processor.

You could go higher with Pentium III-S 1.4 GHz but this will be harder to find parts and more expensive.

goge wrote:

So I took a look into the P3 machine as I have it on hand. […]
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So I took a look into the P3 machine as I have it on hand.

It's an Intel se440bx2 motherboard,
only 100mhz FSB,
3 100mhz SDRAM slots max 384MB
AGP 2x
IDE ATA 33
2 ISA slots, 4 PCI

I don't have any ram in it so I can't boot it to see what CPU is in there but the sticker on the case says its got a P3.
I'm not sure how this fares for P3 era machines but it seems pretty weak.
I'd think I'd hope for a 133 FSB and AGP 4x

I'll have to see what the P4 machine is, maybe hope for a socket 775

100 MHZ FSB may sound slow, but it made good use of it. However that machine does sound like a old P3
Since you are running XP (which can use multi-core), LGA 775 is definitely the best way to go for newer games. Its fast yet still reasonably priced.

As much as I love BX/Slot 1 systems (my favourite of all time) I wouldn't use one for a WinXP system.
They are ideal for late dos and Win9x games, but you'll want something with a bit more power for XP.
I would do as ratfink said, try out the P4 and see how it holds up

I was wondering this same question. 😀 So glad you asked it.

To add to it though, why would someone want to go for XP over 98? What games were made for XP that couldn't run on 98 that don't run on current hardware? I see the opposite being a problem, games made for 95/98 that may not run on XP.

Wouldn't it be better for him to aim for the best 98 machine he could get, IE the P3?

Additionally, how come no one ever talks about the AMD competition of the P3 era? What are his/my options there? I remember getting an AMD-K6 III with 3D Now back in the day and being pretty happy with it. What are the range of AMD options for this type of build?

Thraka wrote:

To add to it though, why would someone want to go for XP over 98? What games were made for XP that couldn't run on 98 that don't run on current hardware? I see the opposite being a problem, games made for 95/98 that may not run on XP.

Wouldn't it be better for him to aim for the best 98 machine he could get, IE the P3?

If I remember correctly ( I could be wrong) DirectX9 was XP only? And to that point a lot of the DOS games and early 9x games don't run well or at all in XP (WIng Commander).

Thraka wrote:

Additionally, how come no one ever talks about the AMD competition of the P3 era? What are his/my options there? I remember getting an AMD-K6 III with 3D Now back in the day and being pretty happy with it. What are the range of AMD options for this type of build?

I remember having AMDs in this era but Don't remember which.

So I found out what is in that P4 machine, MATX ASUS P4P800-VM Socket 478. Looks like I'm in the P4 world, won't be doing core era CPUs. 800mhz fsb, 8x agp, ddr 400, ata100 IDE + 2 sata ports. not a bad motherboard.

Any CPU recommendations?

I have an NVidia 6200 AGP. From what I gather it's an entry level card. I also have a sound blaster audigy.
Should I look for a better gfx card?

Haven't spun up the machine to see what cpu is in there now. I might have time later tonight.

DirectX 9 can be installed in Win98 SE/ME and 2000...

Also, you might be better off with a higher end FX or a 6600... In these forums people have told me that the FX series offer better compatibility with older games (as they support features removed in later cards).

On the AMD side, I've got no idea.

The FX series was nvidias giant flop. would it be better to get the ATI Cards from that era? The Radeon 9700 Pro?