A SBLive is fine too

BTW Voodoo3's a host card, you cant' have both the gf256 AGP and V3 AGP at once. V3 is definitely capable of 1024x768 gaming though

The advantages of the Geforce256 didn't really come to heavy use until late 2000, so for 1999 gaming it doesn't leave a lot of relevance (except for some Q3 benchmarks and yes it does smoke the V3 in a lot of them, but it's not a card to use over V3 if you're going to play UE1 stuff. It was mostly an expensive luxury item).

I think i can get a SBLive too.

As for the Voodoo3 i was already a bit inclined to use it instead of the Geforce 256 for sentimental reasons, and also because i can use Glide for the unreal1 engine based games.
I'm not sure about the power supply but that's one bit i might skip when it comes to "time accurate components" and get instead a modern one for safety reasons.

I have a machine from around that era that would have effectively been upgraded. Assuming cost isn't a factor, I'd just modify the spec list for that.

At present it features;
> SuperMicro P6DGU Motherboard
> 2 x 1000MHz PIII SL4BS
> 2GB PC133 SDRAM
> 2 x 18GB Quantum Atlas SCSI-2 HDDs
> 2 x 40GB IDE Drives (Maxtor or Nikimi, can't remember)
> ATI Radeon VE
> Sound Blaster AWE64
> Hauppague WinTV
> Pioneer DVD-RW
> Generic 430W PSU

To be relevant to 1999 I would make the following alterations;
> Replace GPU with GeForce 256
> Replace CPUs with 750MHz models (To get a head start saving for faster ones two years later. Today I'd just shove 800MHz ones in)
> Can't remember if 40GB drives actually existed in 1999, maybe those would be different
> If a lack of EAX or whatever ever bothered me, I would pair the AWE64 with a card that supported it as I like being able to drop back to DOS. I had a DOS compatible audio card in my PC right up until 2009!

Geforce 256 with a PIII will tear through Quake III 😀

Instead of a Live, I would find a Vortex 2-based card or a Philips Seismic Edge / Acoustic Edge (Thunderbird Avenger). Vortex 2 effectively doesn't support EAX but you get the only good A3D implementation. The Thunderbird chip is a hardware QSound implementation (which supports EAX) and is quite nifty if I might say so. Both do headphone/2 speaker vastly better than Live.

My appreciation of SBLive is pretty low these days because of noisy output that's annoying with headphones and frankly doesn't sound that great in general, and software/hardware stability issues. Audigy 1/2 on Win9x also makes me want to tear my face off with its software install and stability quirks but Audigy 2 in particular sounds a lot nicer than Live.

foey wrote:

Geforce 256 with a PIII will tear through Quake III 😀

This is highly dependent on resolution. I'd say 1024x768 is about the highest you'd want to run. But that's what you're gonna get with 1999 hardware.

thats actually a good 1999 setup , I would pick the Voodoo3 as the card of choice , even though the GF256 is faster, the Voodoo3 runs Glide games, very useful for UT99 too.

Quake 3 on the other hand will struggle a bit with the card at 1024X768.

I would say :
- Athlon slot A
- 256 MB RAM
- GF 256 DDR
- Voodoo 2 SLI
- SB AWE 64 Gold

And yes, I have one like that 😁

swaaye wrote:

My appreciation of SBLive is pretty low these days because of noisy output that's annoying with headphones and frankly doesn't sound that great in general, and software/hardware stability issues. Audigy 1/2 on Win9x also makes me want to tear my face off with its software install and stability quirks but Audigy 2 in particular sounds a lot nicer than Live.

The Live doesn't sound very bad when using the rear outputs. Unfortunately the kXDrivers (which support swapping the front and rear outputs) doesn't do EAX. Is there any trick to swap the outputs on official drivers?

It's cheating a bit, but: Pentium 4 Willamette and GeForce 2 Ultra. I like having a DVI output and not worrying too much about performance.

alexanrs wrote:

The Live doesn't sound very bad when using the rear outputs. Unfortunately the kXDrivers (which support swapping the front and rear outputs) doesn't do EAX. Is there any trick to swap the outputs on official drivers?

Unfortunately I don't think it's possible to swap outputs on the official drivers.

obobskivich wrote:

Pentium 4 Willamette

Why choose something so atrocious?

Scrapbudget-minded "high-end 1999" performance? 😀

leileilol wrote:

The advantages of the Geforce256 didn't really come to heavy use until late 2000, so for 1999 gaming it doesn't leave a lot of relevance (except for some Q3 benchmarks and yes it does smoke the V3 in a lot of them, but it's not a card to use over V3 if you're going to play UE1 stuff. It was mostly an expensive luxury item).

I had a GF2-GTS in July of 2000 and wore it out... So I think a Gf-256 is perfectly era correct (came out in Oct.'99). Seeing how DirectX was pretty well in full swing by this time, I think you'll get more utility out of going with the nvidia card, IMHO.

swaaye wrote:

alexanrs wrote:

The Live doesn't sound very bad when using the rear outputs. Unfortunately the kXDrivers (which support swapping the front and rear outputs) doesn't do EAX. Is there any trick to swap the outputs on official drivers?

Unfortunately I don't think it's possible to swap outputs on the official drivers.

CMSS 3D "Stereo Surround" will mirror 2 channel audio to the rear speaker output. The older Live! drivers that came with AudioHQ seem to do it automatically. Of course, this won't work correctly with games expecting a proper multi-channel surround speaker setup.

carlostex wrote:

obobskivich wrote:

Pentium 4 Willamette

Why choose something so atrocious?

Similar performance to a top P3 at lower cost, and Quake 3 goes like the wind on NetBurst.

From what you have I would pick:
Pentium III 733 MHz
3dfx Voodoo3

As previously mentioned this build needs either Aureal Vortex 2 or Creative Sound Blaster Live!

obobskivich wrote:

Similar performance to a top P3 at lower cost, and Quake 3 goes like the wind on NetBurst.

An Athlon XP would still be a much better choice, though i'm not sure if boards for that are easy or hard to find.

obobskivich wrote:

Similar performance to a top P3 at lower cost, and Quake 3 goes like the wind on NetBurst.

But if you're going NetBurst on Socket 478, wouldn't a Northwood be a better choice?