I have nothing to contribute about sound cards, but as far as video:

I'm not sure what quality of 3D acceleration support linux has for the Radeon 9xxx cards. nVidia is good in linux, but ATI has a bad reputation there.
I have a P4 AGP machine with linux mint 17.1 installed. It has a DirectX 9 game (Flatout) installed under WINE. I've tried a few video cards under that OS, but never tried a Radeon of that generation.
When I tried a Radeon HD2600XT, it only had an open source driver available. It worked, but in 3D it was way too slow to be usable. I did some research into it and found AMD/ATI reps had said they were "working on" a linux driver for their late AGP cards, but no sign that it ever got published.
The Radeon 9500/9700 might have better support, but I have no idea.

I recently tried a Geforce FX5700 Ultra in the same machine, and it did have an nVidia driver which I enabled, but it's still very slow in 3D. It makes me think the nVidia driver (at least for Mint 17) doesn't properly accelerate that card and merely makes it "work".

The Geforce 7600GS AGP works great though. It runs very well in 3D and clearly has good support from the nVidia linux driver. I don't think any of these are fanless, but I think it's pretty quiet.
I've never tried a 6000 series under linux.

I think to get a fanless card that can match the performance of a 9700 Pro, you'd have to be up in the PCI Express era of cards.

1) I have no idea about the Audigy 2 and DOS compatibility. Someone else can chime in there.

2) Here is a 5 page thread on a similar topic: Best Fanless AGP/PCI Graphics Card

FWIW, I have a fanless AGP GeForce FX5200 256MB/128-bit. It is not very well regarded because it performed very poorly on the era (WinXP) and games that were current when it was released. However, I use mine in Windows 98, and for Win98 games, it performs VERY well. It even has great DOS performance. IMO it is a perfect Win98SE/MS-DOS mode video card. If you decide to consider it, make sure you get the 128-bit version, not the 64-bit version. It is probably slightly slower than your 9700 Pro.

Audigy 2 is compatible with DOS mode on 98SE but only in pure mode. In my opinion just get a Live! since that can do it in a dos window too. No PCI audio card will work well under pure DOS.

You could also see how DOSBOX performs. I find PCI based cards to be such a step down in terms of DOS compatibility that I doubt I'd ever bother with trying for native support..

Thank you!
How much difference there is in terms of quality between Live! and Audigy2?
And what about a Nvidia 6200 also for DOS games?

Thanks again

As your not going to run Win9x I don't think it really matters that the Audigy doesn't work in widows.
I REALLY don't know how the dos mode sb16 emulation will like free dos, They both require emm386. I've got both working in DOS in the past but they can be a real pain.
Alternate could be a Vortex based card. I hear the dos drivers are much better but haven't played with one myself.

I know Geforce 6 has issues with early direct X due to dropped features but not sure on dos compatibility. There is a really good chart here on which cards work in different resolutions for Duke3d I use to judge VESA compatibility, but cant for the life find it ATM

Hi, just a little update. 😀

Motherboard is an ASUS P4PE-X-TE with a Pentium 4 2.8Ghz processor installed on socket 478. BIOS is rev. 1006, and I have optional game port and SPDIF accessories.
Actually I have 1,5 Gb of "mixed" RAM (haven't checked yet) but I suppose I'm limited to DIMM PC2700 DDR modules 'cause of the CPU 533 FSB.
I'd like to stay in a budget: it is worth upgrading to 3.0 Ghz and to PC3200 RAM? There is a chance that the ASUS will support more than 2GB of RAM with a bios update? (latest is rev. 1009)

I'm running BunsenLabs Linux and I was able to compile DOOM Retro on it:

It runs very well, with this and native QuakeSpasm and ECWolf I'm happily covered on favourite iD games (I only miss a native Linux Qbism Super8 port). 😉

I'm also impressed by the sound quality of integrated AC 97, but since I'd like to dual-boot with FreeDOS, I'll throw in a Sound Blaster Live anyway.
Radeon 9500 Pro performs not so well with Quakespasm in 1920x1080, but I suspect it's a matter of open ATI drivers on Linux, so I'm hunting for a NVIDIA 6200 or a silent 7600.

I'd like also to get a new ATX case with an excellent value.
Any suggestion is, as usual, greatly appreciated. 😉

If you want to play any Build games, the SBL requires a patch which disables sound echos.

MrEWhite wrote:

If you want to play any Build games, the SBL requires a patch which disables sound echos.

Thank you. It is a patch applied to games or to DOS driver?

Just wondering:

- it is possible to install more of 2 GB RAM on a Asus P4PE-X-TE?
- how difficult is to make an Audigy 2 work under FreeDOS? And it has sense to use it at least on Linux, in terms of sound quality? (I could get one for 10 🤑

Scandy wrote:

MrEWhite wrote:

If you want to play any Build games, the SBL requires a patch which disables sound echos.

Thank you. It is a patch applied to games or to DOS driver?

It is applied to the games EXE.