About the AWE cards, are you sure you have an ISA slot on your motherboard? Not too many Pentium 4 boards had those.

Currently the site is down but I believe it had one ISA, one AGP, and three PCI slots. When it works again, I"ll update the OP with the motherboard specs.

http://pc4u.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/SL … -voodoo-2-1.jpg

Here is how a Voodoo2 setup looks like(This is an SLI one though). You could pair a Geforce FX series card with the Voodoo2. Or, just buy a Voodoo 3 AGP and that card has 2d support for DOS Games. Great compatibly, but not sure if you want to run games from 2002/2003 cause thats where the card will not work great at all. (Seems you are mostly interested in the 90s)

In short, a Voodoo 3 2000 or 3000 could be the easiest and cheapest way to get the most of your system for that era.

Also when it comes to the Pentium 4 slow downing, while it will work in my opinion its the worst way to handle getting good compatibly. There are better ways to get good performance and great compatibly like with a AMD k6 III. Though the P4 is a lot cheaper and will do the job actually pretty good.

If you get an AWE get an ISA one by the way.

With the P4, while it can work, I would build a dedicated Windows 98 PC, and leave DOS out. It can get a bit tricky.

Get the slowest P4 you can find, and then you will still run into some games that will run too fast. Windows 9x games range from games than need a Pentium and a Voodoo 1 to a fast Pentium III with a GeForce2.

The way I see it, very early Windows 9x 3D games are indeed best played with a Voodoo card. Compatibility is great, they are always mentioned in the readme files, many games have native Glide support and so on.

But anything more recent, let's say DirectX 6 games such as Shogu, Expendable, Drakan, IMO, you are better off with a GeForce. You get 32 bit colours and can muck around with AA and AF for eye candy. OpenGL games also work great on GeForce cards such as GLQuake, Quake II, MDK 2 and so on.

For sound, Aureal Vortex 2 sound chip for that awesome A3D surround over headphone 😀

Yeah a Diamond Monster Sound MX300 paired with a SB16 if you really need your DOS games would work great.

Alright, so maybe try and downgrade to a Pentium III if I come across one? Also yeah dedicated 98 might be better. MS-DOS mode is probably good enough, now that I think about it. Based on your suggestions it sounds like the best way to go video wise is pair up a Voodoo2 and a Geforce FX, mostly because I've seen lots of threads where later Voodoos have had compatibility issues. Thanks for the help 😀

Well you bought the P4 mobo already yeah? I would try to get a slower P4. Something around 1.8ghz maybe. Also not sure if you know but be sure you only have 512mb ram at most.

Neonstar wrote:

Based on your suggestions it sounds like the best way to go video wise is pair up a Voodoo2 and a Geforce FX

The FX is so new that you have to use very modern drivers which introduce all sorts of glitches.

I would start with a cheap GeForce2 MX type card, try out the games and see how it all runs before hunting down specific hardware and potentially spending lots of money.

I'm not familiar with the games you mentioned, but if they support Glide, then a Voodoo 2 is a good addition. Because you got a P4, likely AGP Voodoo cards won't work for you I'm afraid.

Basically, the P4 is not the best choice for the type of games that you're after.

NVIDIA GeForce FX 5800 Ultra
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5800
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600 Ultra
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600SE
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200SE

Can all use 45.23 Nvidia Drivers which most here will agree work perfectly. Also i forget about the old AGP thing with P4 boards. But it wont matter since a FX 5200 with a Voodoo 2 wouldn't be bad at all.

It all depends on the games you are playing.

Quake II? Well that runs fine under Windows 7 anyway. Incoming? Only works correctly up to TNT2.

I found that the further away you go with drivers and graphics card from 1999, the more likely you run into an issue. You might never though, so it all depends on the games.

That is true too. The further you go the worst it gets. But thats why having the Voodoo 2 there for those picky 3d games will work great.

I use a MX460 for games like Final Fantasy 7, X Wing Alliance that have issues with Texel Alignment.

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

It all depends on the games you are playing.

Quake II? Well that runs fine under Windows 7 anyway. Incoming? Only works correctly up to TNT2.

Yeah that era but not specifically Quake II (Although I might install my copy of it now that it's in my head.)
This is more for games that don't run properly under Vista/64bit and above systems. Mechwarrior 2, Wasteland, Mechbrigad, and Galactix, although I plan to chuck OG Quake, and other early Glide supporting games on as well.)

I might have scored a RIVA TNT2, so that could be good to go with a Voodoo?

I wish I was familiar with these games, but as for the TNT2, absolutely! That is my go-to Windows 98 card from Nvidia. It competes with the Voodoo 3. Can't go wrong 😀

I think he will be better off, getting a GF4-ti4200 as the fastest card.
4200's are not running that hot, have plenty of performance for Win98 gaming.
And because they run more cold, they will last a bit longer than the faster GF4's.
FX cards seem to have some trouble at something.
If faster than GF4 is wanted, then I have had good luck with Radeon-9600/9800's.

TNT2's to GF2-GTS/Pro/whatever (just not mx) seem to be good cards.
Voodoo3 are good too, so is Voodoo2. For really early Glide, then go for V1.
Just keep in mind, that Voodoo1 have a barrier when looking at clockspeed.
(something I can not remember what exactly is, other members might help on this)

For soundcards, then try looking for something that you will need.
If OPL chip is a must, then be aware that AWE64 does not have it.
Shure AWE64 (standard/value) are cheap, so it will not hurt the budget getting one.
Just to test, if you like the emulated OPL part of the AWE64.

Else.... Go for something like SB16/YMF-718/YMF-719 and a daughterboard.
Wich is more geared towards older Dos games.
When looking for PCI soundcards, people usually prefer three options, wich are:
YMF-724, Vortex2 and SB-Live. Personally I prefer YMF-724 cards.
The waters are more or less devided on PCI soundcards, here on Vogons.

I'd shoot for something like this for pure 9x gaming

Athlon XP
512mb Ram
32gb SSD
PCI Sata Card
Large 250gb+ Sata drive for ISO/File Storage
Geforce FX/4/3 Radeon 8500/7500
Voodoo 2 SLI

You will find you will run any game for Windows 9x up to about 2004 games like Call of Duty or other Quake 3 engine games that have issues with multicore.