I'd choose the GF2MX out of that.

Assuming AGP2X/4X, and Athlon Classic

MX 200 was the version with 64bits SDR, half the memory bandwidth compared to the MX 400, still, I never had a good experience with Rages, if the TnT2 is not a m64 it could be an interesting card to use... but yes, I think the MX 200 is the best card of the bunch.

I like to have a lot of extra CPU horse power in my setups than most people. My voodoo 2 SLI setup is based off a 1ghz slot-A chip. My voodoo I runs on a pentium 2-333, my voodoo 5, a dual cpu 2800+

I never liked the geforce chips. Save for maybe the GF3. out of your list, I'd choose the 128 ultra.

Yup for a setup like that you can't beat a Voodoo 3 (or 4/5). You can't possibly live without Glide support, and those games even when D3D were built with 3dfx in mind. Voodoo2 is nice too but the limited texture memory causes occasional stuttering in some more advanced games like Unreal.

Otherwise NV.

Rage 128 is iffy because of the driver quality. ATI had their worst drivers in those days. It will run many games well though.

I might try the TNT2 out of curiosity, because I've never had one that worked. But then I'd switch to the Geforce2 MX. It's a good low power trouble free card.

As swaaye pointed out a V3 would be a fine choice.
I would also take into consideration a faster GF2MX, like the GF2MX400 or a GF2 GTS paired with Voodoo2 SLI. AGP stability has to be tested anyway.

I'm also trying to build a retro rig.

Of that list, I concur that you ought to forget about the ATI cards at once, as the entire Rage series can't stand the comparison with the NVIDIA cards. As for the TNT, I'd be curious about testing that one and the TNT2 should be worth considering if it has a 64 bit bus but I'd ultimately go for the GeForce2 MX even if it has a narrower 64 bit bus. GeForce2 based cards have robust 2D support, do hardware T&L (although it seems that's not so relevant under Windows 98) and come with a excellent series of drivers as well as numerous tweaks.

Let me toss this into teh ring...

Also have a 450 PII I am looking to use one of these cards on and also a Voodoo 3 card...

So would the Voodoo 3 be good in the AMD 650 and GeForce in teh PII?

That leaves teh two TNT cards and ATI cards...what would you recommend they go in?

I am builiding a bunch of old machines to basically represent each generation: have most taken care of in terms of parts..just trying to fit the last couple with the right video

8086 (Tandy 1000 SL)
286
386
486
P1 (100 and 166)
P2 (233 and 450)
AMD 650 (PIII)
P4 (1 GHZ)
AMD Athlon XP 1800+

I wouldn't put a Geforce in a PII, especially the early ones (440LX). Later ones (440BX) should be fine

The TNT2 or TNT in the P2 machine then?

Smack2k wrote:

The TNT2 or TNT in the P2 machine then?

I would suggest so. A RIVA TNT2 will provide superb 2D DOS graphics and decent 3D performance under Windows.

Back in the day, a friend bought a TNT2 card for 25000 pesetas here in Spain (like $250 adjusted for inflation) and we would go to his house just to see how amazing all 3D games looked then.

I've had similar problems with AGP TNT2s in a 440LX as well. The only driver I could use (that i've tried available from nvidia's ftp) without freezing was Detonator 12.4 and that's with AGP texturing disabled in dxdiag, otherwise I couldn't even complete one run of Final Reality.

I'm using now an ELSA Erazor II (first nVidia RIVA TNT chip) PCI on a Pentium Pro motherboard without any trouble, although I haven't tried playing much so I can't confirm AGP problems with RIVA cards on 440LX 🙁

For reference, I had a PII-450 with an AGP RIVA TNT that I eventually upgraded to a PIII-550 with a GF2MX.

It was a champ that got me through college (2003), but by the end it was too out of date to play newer 3D games like Morrowind at a decent framerate.