I have a PIII 933(sig machine), tried loads of cards, Voodoo 5 and geforce 2Ti have both been a good match. got a RIVA TNT in right now tho, just for fun 😀
Here's my thread for the machine and the many and varied video cards i have tried in it.
New coppermine build starts tomorrow

I would go with a GeForce 3 as a compromise 😀

well Ive got a Voodoo5500 in my 1Ghz Tbird Athlon (more or less the same as a 1Ghz PIII) and that runs pretty well , you could also go with a Geforce2 , although try and get one of the higher end 64MB variations like the Pro , Ti or Ultra.

Geforce3 would also be good , if a little over powered. don't bother with lower end cards like the TNT2 and such since they won't really make the most of that CPU

I just thought that you may also try PowerVR Kyro II as an alternative. But it all depends on what games you gonna play 😀

4200 is OK, a little to powerful, but just force a Super Sampling Anti-aliasing mode with Riva Tuner with it, to take advantage of its extra performance that the P3 won't.

The GF2 is definitely more period-correct, but I'd go with the GF4. I used to run Radeon 9000s in most of my P3 boxes, which are from around the same era as the Geforce 4, and they went together pretty nicely. The CPU will definitely be a bottleneck, but you're going to have a bottleneck either way whether it's with the video card or the CPU.

My P3 1GHz started life as a Dell, and came with some sort of GeForce 2 best I can tell from the service tag look-up. It has a WildcatVP 880Pro (3DLabs' answer to Quadro4/GeForce 4) in it currently, and I've got a Radeon 9550 that will be replacing that when I get around to it. Any of the other suggested cards (GeForce 3/4, R200 Radeons, Voodoo5, etc) would be fine too depending on what you want out of the machine. I think the biggest question you have to answer is whether or not you want or need pixel shaders and how important AA/high resolution support is to you.

I had a Ti200 with my 1200MHz Celeron, it was a pretty good match.
You get GF2 power in standard games + a bit of AA if you so desire and morrowind has good looking water 😀

VooDooMan wrote:

I just thought that you may also try PowerVR Kyro II as an alternative. But it all depends on what games you gonna play 😀

Kyro2 can work on a P4, seems kind of a waste to dedicate a P3 for one.

geforce 2 and 3 are a good match. Geforce 4 ti4200 has power to spare so like said before: use the geforce 4 and enable AA in the driver to make perfect use of its power.

I use a Slot 1 P3 1Ghz cpu with 100FSB on a SE440BX-2 motherboard combined with a Geforce 4 TI4600 and it works great.

Here's a couple of benchmarks if it helps:

Quake III Timedemo: 95.8 fps - 1280x1024, All settings at maximum.

3DMark 2001. This was run using Direct X 8.1 and Nvidia drivers 45.23. 1024x768, no AA and game detail high.

Just to throw another data point out - borgie83's system is scoring around 1k pts higher than my P3 S370 on i815 board with the WildcatVP. So there is "headroom" there between a somewhat slower card and the Ti 4600.

And if you go higher say to a 5700 Ultra.
You'll only get around 7k-72xxish in 3dmark 2001.
That is about what I got on a 1.2ghz 100fsbmhz P3 with one in it.
A Stock geforce 3 depending on drivers will get about 5500ish in 3dmark 2001se.

It depends on the chipset that your motherboard has. If it's a BX chipset then GeForce FX 5970 Ultra, or ATI Radeon 9700 Pro will be the fastest graphics card that the AGP port will support for the BX chipset boards.

FX5200 won't hurt.

Stick with the Geforce 4 ti4200. It would probably be best combined with a geforce 3 ti200-500 but a Geforce 4 ti is like the same thing (just a bit better). I wouldn't go with anything less, even if your CPU bottlenecks about 20fps in lower resolutions.

I have a similar dilemma, so let's ask a more specific question:

My final Win 98SE retro rig will be a Celeron 533A overclocked to 800MHz/100 FSB with 256megs of ram on an MSI 440BX slot1 motherboard (with CPU voltage control).
It will receive SB Live! SB0060 PCI sound and probably a NEC USB 2.0 controller. Storage will be dual 80GB HDDs from Western Digital.
Monitor will be a Hitachi CM772E 19" flat, which is capable of 1600x1200@85Hz but I'm probably going for 1280x960@desktop and the highest playable resolution in each game.
I'm particularly interested in games of the pre-2k/XP era, as the newer ones play fine on my main i5-2500K rig, which supports XP. So let's say games 1995-2000.
For glide, I have a single Voodoo2.
So, what VGA to choose for it? I was going to use a Radeon 9600SE, but it doesn't support AGP 2x. I find it silly to install a Voodoo3 3000 as there is already glide support, the same goes for an Nvidia 6800 AGP 2/4/8 in such an old system.

It all depends on the games. It's a combination of finding a card that is compatible (drivers matter here also), doesn't break any features and has the performance you need at the settings you want to play.

Some games, like Splinter Cell, make it easy: GeForce4 Ti. But that game runs best on XP anyway.

A Voodoo3 isn't a bad choice. It will run basically everything and performs on the level of V2 SLI without the issues and having to use 3 cards. But it's DX6 only, so again: it depends on the games. It also has really good signal quality.

The GeForce4 TI gets mentioned a lot here so I would give that a go.

Voodoo 3, Voodoo Banshee, Voodoo2, TNT1 , TNT2, Even a Ati rage pro 128 can be ok for DX5\6 games on a mid level P3\Celeron, if you don't care about AA\AF.

Geforce 1\2 is a Good trade off, you can use the Older Det2 and 3 drivers which have less issues with many DX5-6 games, and you still get AA.
GF1's can be had dirt cheap, but most of them you need to freeze pry the heatsink off (usually glued on), and add a custom one.
The default sinks on most of them are junk.