SpeedySPCFan wrote:

games incompatible with Windows 7/DOSBox

Which games are you planning to play that don't work in DOSBox?

Sound Card: Creative Ensoniq AudioPCI (I prefer it over the SB16. Yes, I'm a heretic)

Heretic or not, PCI soundcards of any kind are not the ideal choice to use for DOS games and can lead to unforeseen consequences.

(and that's not scratching the surface of the infamous fake FM emulation-through-ECWpats thing the AudioPCI is known for - i'm talking detection bugs with older games and hang-ups)

SpeedySPCFan wrote:

My question is, will I run into any issues if I try and use both a Mystique 220 in PCI plus a Voodoo 3 in AGP? If so, are they so major that I should change my build plans? Thanks!

Yes because unlike the Voodoo1/2, Voodoo3 is a host card, you'd probably need a data switch (often signal degrading) or a dual monitor setup (DISCLAIMER: Never tried that) . If I were you i'd just use the Voodoo3 only, juggling an old Matrox for that 2D signal doesn't seem worth the trouble.

generally speaking there won't be any issues if you have 2 full video cards if one is AGP and the other PCI . you will just have to go into the BIOS and change the card it boots from every time you want to use that card.

can be a bit of a pain but it will work. Though if you ask me, I would go with a Voodoo2 given that CPU , and it will be more continent (Voodoo3 would be better on an early P3 system in my mind)

leileilol wrote:

Which games are you planning to play that don't work in DOSBox? […]
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SpeedySPCFan wrote:

games incompatible with Windows 7/DOSBox

Which games are you planning to play that don't work in DOSBox?

Sound Card: Creative Ensoniq AudioPCI (I prefer it over the SB16. Yes, I'm a heretic)

Heretic or not, PCI soundcards of any kind are not the ideal choice to use for DOS games and can lead to unforeseen consequences.

(and that's not scratching the surface of the infamous fake FM emulation-through-ECWpats thing the AudioPCI is known for - i'm talking detection bugs with older games and hang-ups)

I can't remember off the top of my head (inconveniently enough), though there are some. But DOS is not my main goal here, Win9x stuff is.

What issues would there be with PCI soundcards in DOS?

Darkman wrote:

generally speaking there won't be any issues if you have 2 full video cards if one is AGP and the other PCI . you will just have to go into the BIOS and change the card it boots from every time you want to use that card.

can be a bit of a pain but it will work. Though if you ask me, I would go with a Voodoo2 given that CPU , and it will be more continent (Voodoo3 would be better on an early P3 system in my mind)

Anything from around 1995 to 1999 that wouldn't run at an acceptable framerate with one Voodoo2? I was originally planning a Voodoo 2 SLI system but christ the price is steep.

The Voodoo3 is more than good enough for both 2D and 3D games. Spare yourself the hassle with going with 2 graphic cards! Also take it with a grain of salt to people saying you should have a Voodoo2 with that CPU. I never understood the "you can't run newer video cards because the CPU is too slow" argument here on Vogons (unless you're building a system for a specific year or have a cutoff year). It will be a bit more timeperiod correct to use a Voodoo2, but Voodoo3 have better performance compared to a single Voodoo2 and much better signal output and image quality. If Win9x is your target, then Voodoo3 will be a very good choice.

vetz wrote:

The Voodoo3 is more than good enough for both 2D and 3D games. Spare yourself the hassle with going with 2 graphic cards! Also take it with a grain of salt to people saying you should have a Voodoo2 with that CPU. It might be more timeperiod correct, but Voodoo3 have better performance in most cases and much better signal output and image quality. If Win9x is your target, then Voodoo3 will be a very good choice.

The Mystique already shipped so still getting that, and I'll probably use it if I run into any issues with 2D games on a Voodoo 3.

PS: Your comparsion videos on YT are fantastic, especially the Mechwarrior 2 one.

SpeedySPCFan wrote:

vetz wrote:

The Voodoo3 is more than good enough for both 2D and 3D games. Spare yourself the hassle with going with 2 graphic cards! Also take it with a grain of salt to people saying you should have a Voodoo2 with that CPU. It might be more timeperiod correct, but Voodoo3 have better performance in most cases and much better signal output and image quality. If Win9x is your target, then Voodoo3 will be a very good choice.

The Mystique already shipped so still getting that, and I'll probably use it if I run into any issues with 2D games on a Voodoo 3.

PS: Your comparsion videos on YT are fantastic, especially the Mechwarrior 2 one.

actually Ive found the Matrox Mystique has more issues in 2D than the Voodoo cards, such as choppy scrolling in Jazz Jackrabbit and Commander Keen.

When things work , the quality is great (for a 1997 card anyways, Id still say the Voodoo5500 has similar or better quality at higher resolutions, but thats me)

the reason Im suggesting a Voodoo2 is primarily because you also want the Matrox, 2 full video cards can be a hassle occasionally (not to mention having to deal with 2 cables , either dual monitor , a VGA box or a monitor with multiple connectors). Its not that the V3 won't show any improvement over a Voodoo2 with that CPU , but I personally feel the benefits of going with a Voodoo3 are more limited.

just out of curiosity what games are you planning to play on this?

oh and PCI sound cards tend to use emulation to fake the sound blaster in DOS (with the result of it not always working), along with things not sounding that great at times.

the suggestion I would have is either

1) go with an ISA based Sound Blaster , preferably a SB16 or one of the AWE cards.
2) go with a Sound Blaster Live , its PCI , but its very cheap and you get things like EAX which some games will use, also the quality is better than an AudioPCI (at least from my experience).

vetz wrote:

The Voodoo3 is more than good enough for both 2D and 3D games. Spare yourself the hassle with going with 2 graphic cards! Also take it with a grain of salt to people saying you should have a Voodoo2 with that CPU. I never understood the "you can't run newer video cards because the CPU is too slow" argument here on Vogons (unless you're building a system for a specific year or have a cutoff year). It will be a bit more timeperiod correct to use a Voodoo2, but Voodoo3 have better performance compared to a single Voodoo2 and much better signal output and image quality. If Win9x is your target, then Voodoo3 will be a very good choice.

+1!

Why are you even bothering with a Matrox PCI card if you have a Voodoo3? It's faster, can do 2D and 3D, will give you performance beyond a V2, and they're cheap and plentiful (as of this writing - dig up one of the Compaq ones, they're usually no more than $20 and many are 3500s). The Matrox will either sit there and drive an additional monitor, or you can muck around with "switch in BIOS" (which won't disable the card in Windows) and hardware profiles and yadda yadda yadda; it's a big pain in the neck and what ultimately do you hope to accomplish for all that work? I just don't see it as a logical/reasonable configuration. 😊

As far as games from 1995 to 1999 - that's very broad. On the later end of that spectrum, you're well on your way to Pentium 3 territory, and if you really do have a 440BX board, I see no reason you don't just step up to a faster P3 (I'm not meaning 1GHz+ here, but 400-600MHz would be a good choice imho). 😀

obobskivich wrote:

+1! […]
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vetz wrote:

-snip-

+1!

Why are you even bothering with a Matrox PCI card if you have a Voodoo3? It's faster, can do 2D and 3D, will give you performance beyond a V2, and they're cheap and plentiful (as of this writing - dig up one of the Compaq ones, they're usually no more than $20 and many are 3500s). The Matrox will either sit there and drive an additional monitor, or you can muck around with "switch in BIOS" (which won't disable the card in Windows) and hardware profiles and yadda yadda yadda; it's a big pain in the neck and what ultimately do you hope to accomplish for all that work? I just don't see it as a logical/reasonable configuration. 😊

As far as games from 1995 to 1999 - that's very broad. On the later end of that spectrum, you're well on your way to Pentium 3 territory, and if you really do have a 440BX board, I see no reason you don't just step up to a faster P3 (I'm not meaning 1GHz+ here, but 400-600MHz would be a good choice imho). 😀

I was surprised to see Voodoo 3s so low, but my problem is that I'm looking for one with S-Video out (that does not come from China because, well... China) which is at least $80 on eBay.

I had bought a Mystique thinking that I would have issues with the Voodoo 3 in DOS. Does it? If it doesn't, at least I get to have a nice looking card laying around and MW2 Mystique. 😒

I think it's showing this is my first time building a rig like this.

Darkman wrote:

just out of curiosity what games are you planning to play on this? […]
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just out of curiosity what games are you planning to play on this?

oh and PCI sound cards tend to use emulation to fake the sound blaster in DOS (with the result of it not always working), along with things not sounding that great at times.

the suggestion I would have is either

1) go with an ISA based Sound Blaster , preferably a SB16 or one of the AWE cards.
2) go with a Sound Blaster Live , its PCI , but its very cheap and you get things like EAX which some games will use, also the quality is better than an AudioPCI (at least from my experience).

Off the top of my head:
Jane's Longbow 2 (too many instability and crashing issues on Win7)
Rogue Squadron (literally refuses to work)
I've had some more games that just flat out didn't work for me somewhere on this PC.

Is there any way to have them not emulate the SB in DOS? I'm not really a fan of how the SB or any of its variants sound, so I'd like to avoid that if possible.

smeezekitty wrote:

I don't think there are many problems with the V3 in DOS
The mystique is meh at best in Windows. So keep that in mind if you want to run Win

Alright, thanks. I can't seem to find much info about it, but hopefully I have no issues.

Wait, really? I thought the Mystique was supposed to be pretty good in Windows.

I don't think there are many problems with the V3 in DOS
The mystique is meh at best in Windows. So keep that in mind if you want to run Win

SpeedySPCFan wrote:

I was surprised to see Voodoo 3s so low, but my problem is that I'm looking for one with S-Video out (that does not come from China because, well... China) which is at least $80 on eBay.

Be aware of the image scrambling issue with it on some games.

leileilol wrote:

SpeedySPCFan wrote:

I was surprised to see Voodoo 3s so low, but my problem is that I'm looking for one with S-Video out (that does not come from China because, well... China) which is at least $80 on eBay.

Be aware of the image scrambling issue with it on some games.

Is that an issue with the V3 in DOS in general, or just an S-Video problem?

Any reason you're stuck with 3dfx? Finding an NV1x card with S-Video should be easy-peasy...

obobskivich wrote:

Any reason you're stuck with 3dfx? Finding an NV1x card with S-Video should be easy-peasy...

Playing games in Glide. And what exactly is an NV1x? The card by Nvidia that was similar to the Saturn?

A Geforce256/Geforce2

(which have blurry video signals BTW, and would be heavily bottlenecked by the P2 anyhow, and doesn't have good compatibility with early AGP chipsets some P2 motherboards have)

There's lots of video cards and everything has a compromise. If there was a perfect PC, Marvin wouldn't exist

but from the top of my head is these:

3dfx V3: All the games work; paletted texturing (natively supporting games like Unreal will go fast); Limited texture size, limited color depth (16) and limited texture color depth (note that the 3dfx has internal DAC filters to compensate for this issue by smoothening the dither)
Geforce256/2: Fast; FSAA, Texture compression, T&L, DOT3 enough to run Doom3; Blurry picture; sometimes iffy DirectDraw compatibility; palette slowdown
Matrox Mystique: Nicest quality picture. Stutters in Keen, crappy 3d featureset
Radeon7x00: Transform & Lighting and AntiAliasing! SmartGART works well in P2s; No table fog or paletted texturing may make some VERY FEW games upset
PowerVR KYRO: excellent 16-bit dithering; filtering squiggle; drivers are a little difficult to find; some VGA signals may appear a bit blue; does not support the SGL api

leileilol wrote:

A Geforce256/Geforce2

(which have blurry video signals BTW, and would be heavily bottlenecked by the P2 anyhow, and doesn't have good compatibility with early AGP chipsets some P2 motherboards have)

There's lots of video cards and everything has a compromise. If there was a perfect PC, Marvin wouldn't exist

Ah, thanks. I wasn't considering getting one, and the blurry video signals is even more of a turn off.

Matrox Mystique: Nicest quality picture. Stutters in Keen, crappy 3d featureset

Well, looks like it was worth getting one since I like good picture quality.

On a Mystiquey Matrox (and similar G100) those dithered blendings can REALLY stand out on the screen

leileilol wrote:

On a Mystiquey Matrox (and similar G100) those dithered blendings can REALLY stand out on the screen http://leileilol.mancubus.n […]
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On a Mystiquey Matrox (and similar G100) those dithered blendings can REALLY stand out on the screen

I don't know what to think of that. On one hand, it's so old looking that it's endearing. On the other, it looks atrocious.

NV1x also includes GF4-MX, which is generally what I'd suggest because it adds LMA and MSAA. I know that some GF2s have the "wavy output" from VGA at high resolution (so obviously on the Internet this means all GF2 products have massive, world-shattering problems all the time in every situation) - from reviews it tends to be centered on GF2Ultra and GTS but I've heard of MX boards exhibiting it too; I know the MXs I've had don't exhibit it (at least at 1280x1024 and under). The issue is not actually in the GPU - it's the analog output filter quality (or lack thereof). And there should be no reason to go with an Ultra or something like that for this machine - a 2 MX 200 or 4 MX 440 would be an easy route to S-Video with good performance though, and a 4 MX has a better chance at having better output filtering (and DVI, if your monitor can take digital).

Here's a thread that addresses GF2/3 VGA output:
Wavy horizontal lines with Geforce2 Ultra (and if you're not going to read the text, note that the author states the image is an exaggerated mock-up, not a screen-grab).

And an article from Anand:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/869/5