I would advise you check the capacitors on the Soltek motherboard when you check that system out. If they are bulged or leaking pass it up. Otherwise it appears to be a Via Apollo based chipset motherboard. You should be able to use the generic Via chipset drivers to get your agp, memory controller, etc working properly and the only thing that might not work would be the onboard audio. Of course with the Live! that would not be needed 😀 in any case the Celeron system would be really good as well. The 1.3ghz Tualatin Celeron is a solid performer as far as I know.

In my experience you will end up buying all 3 systems because there is always something wrong with every old computer you buy 😀. Motherboards with bad caps, PSUs with bad caps, video cards with bad caps and so on.

All 3 systems seems to be good Windows 98 candidates, as long as you stay in Windows the lack of ISA dosnt matter. You will end up buying another video card, even the Geforce 2 MX 400 is a bit slow.

Hi and welcome.

My P3 system is more than powerfull enough to play NFS Porche 2000 when I use an Radeon9600 128mb.
Normally I run it with an TNT2 ultra, because it is build as an pure 1999 machine. (no hardware newer than 99).

The specs are:
P3-500
Intel VC-820 mobo.
256mb PC-800 Ram (RD-Ram)
Compaq TNT2 Ultra 32mb AGP.
SB-Live (original edition, gold plated connectors)

This is to give you an idea of what hardware to look for.
With the radeon, NFS can run smooth in 1024x768 and even higher.
If I try it with an GF-5200, NFS just gets all sort of issues.
Go for the radeon on this. If gaming past 2003/04 is needed.

Running late 90s to 2003/4 games is a pretty wide swath. If you can get at system the supports tualatin, you should be fine, but personally I wouldn't give up on your Northwood. If the temperatures are its only problem, just buy a stock Intel cooler for it. You can usually find them for less than $10 and they're rated up to the 3.4 Prescotts. It should stay right where it needs to be. If the board has other issues going on, then I'd probably go with the Celeron 1.3 system.

Thank you all for the replies.

@nekurahoka:
Indeed late 90's until 2003/4 is a bit spread... I wanted to avoid getting multiple systems to avoid more material spread at home (especially since I already have a computer in the living room, at least 3 laptops and nowadays using my socket 1150 Xeon E3. I know the ideal would be to get as close to "that era" hardware as possible, but at the same time and to avoid having to go through multitudes of hardware, thought that getting a 9600pro or if possible a 9800XT or even Pro, would have me served on that level.

The temperature of the Northwood is indeed strange, I took out my stock intel cooler from the box, cleaned everything up as best as I could with the Arctic termo material remover, and then the purifier. Applied new ceramique. And there it goes, stupid temperatures. I would only replace this stock cooler I already have, with an aftermarket one from Zalman or Arctic, but the prices are a bit high, and very close to a full system (as described on my post).

@brostenen:
Thanks for that feedback, it really shows that the cpu should be enough to cover most of what I want to do. I really wanted to avoid the FX line of Nvidia, that was a dark period for them... The 9xxx series from ATI were pretty solid at that time, I owned a 9600pro with my 3700+ San Diego at the time and it was very solid.

@Skyscrapper:
That's what I began to think, but I really want to avoid that. But yeah, after all these years its more than probable that some issues will arise. PSU's I recon I have my previous Corsair 620HX stored somewhere. It oughta be enough for one of these old systems! 😀
As for the motherboards, I will really have to look closer at them to understand the state things might be at.
I also read that there is a very good alternative to ISA soundcards in pure DOS, I recon it was a fortemedia FM801 ? I know it's not perfect... 😀

@ODwilly:
Capacitors will be the first thing I will look at when I get the chance to go and see the systems myself.
Thanks for the tip on the drivers. That's great that being VIA it can work that way.

Decided to look at my Celeron again.
Installed XP, setup all drivers etc.

The thing crawls a bit on XP with only 512mb Ram, 64mb stolen for the internal gpu.

It left me wondering a bit, since I've been able to run Jedi Knight Dark Forces 2 and Drakan Order of the Flame. Even though slow as hell...
What I'm wondering about is, if I really need to go Windows98 after all, and probably building a 939 system, or replacing parts of my 478 one should be enough for me. More doubts than ever now 🤣 😒

If you decide to keep it an XP machine I suggest at least a 3.0ghz Northwood p4 with Hyper Threading ( I just bought a 3.2 for $8, they are cheap) swap in 2gb of DDR400 and ditch the onboard crapics for ANY agp card past 2002 or so.

Considering how much I like Athlon systems, I'm going to sound like a big hypocrite here.

If you're going to use a P3, get a motherboard with an Intel chipset; i440BX, i815, and i815E are all good choices. VIA and NForce chipsets and drivers can sometimes be flaky. With an Athlon, you're pretty much stuck with one of those so there isn't much choice. One of the biggest advantages of the P3 CPUs is the ability to use an Intel chipset on your motherboard. They are just far better than VIA or NForce. They also run much cooler and use less power.

That said, I wouldn't bother with any of the three systems you mentioned because they all have a VIA chipset. However, if you decide to choose one of those, the drivers for them are here:

VIA 4in1 drivers v4.43

If you have problems with those, try these:

VIA 4in1 drivers v4.56

I think you should try to keep your Asrock P4VM8 system going. If it turns out to be good, then upgrade the CPU and get a better HSF. If the board turns out to be bad, then keep an eye out for a complete P3 system with an Intel chipset. Be patient; I'm sure you'll find one that is right for you eventually.

I have now ran another batch of tests.

This time with an old Asus A6V (if not mistaken) laptop. It has a Pentium M cpu, dedicated X800 ATI mobile gpu and only 512mb ram with Windows XP installed.
The thing flies, compared to my Celeron. Unfortunatelly, my wife still uses this laptop from time to time and it has a lot of her stuff there, so I can't "steal" it. Dark Forces 2 works perfectly with 3d acceleration!
Now I have another laptop, a Toshiba P100, with a Core 2 Duo, 7900GS Mobile GPU and 2Gb of RAM. It has Windows 7 Installed, but it's very possible to install Windows XP on it. I'm going to give it a go and see how it works. It even has an SSD I installed there some time ago, so this should be a great candidate.
So the above just reinforces what you stated ODWilly, the P4VM8 system, needs more ram and the igpu to go away totally. The Celeron might handle it for some time.

UPDATE: I made a mistake on the first post and mentiond the Celeron as a Northwood, wrong! It's a Prescott... That might be the reason it's hot all the time...

I actually dislike the VIA chipsets too. So I have to agree with you KT7AGuy.
That's why I'm not paying too much attention to my P4VM8, that and they are asking 20€ minimal for Zalmans and Arctic coolers for 478 around these parts... For that price I can almost get a full system, so I refuse to go that way.
Another interesting route is trying to find parts for socket 775. CPU/Motherboard. I have a Thermalright Extreme, that was sitting on my old Q9500 (Damn it I've sold that old system...) it should work wonderfully... I believe some motherboards, even might support Windows98, if I want to set it up as dual boot.

I would like to go the AMD route, I loved my 939 system with the San Diego 3700+... It was such a great experience and so smooth and stable. I used it at the time with an Asrock 939Dual-Sata2 and later on on an Asus A8N-E. But It's really difficult to find parts for the 939 socket...

So altough a bit more sure of what route to follow, there's still a long way for me to make a decision.
Another low point of the old P3 systems I'm looking at is that there are no sata ports. I know I can get a sata controller, or one of those IDE/SATA converters from ebay. But it adds up complexity and probable hassles.

phantasia:

In your original post, you stated that you wanted to be able to run games up into the 2003/2004 period. Take this into consideration when choosing systems:

(Also take into consideration that I'm a pretty cheap bastard. I did not [and still don't] buy cutting/bleeding edge hardware due to high cost.)

In 2003, I was running an Athlon 1200 T-Bird with a GF3 Ti500. It wasn't until TRON 2.0 came out that it started having some trouble keeping up with modern games. Even then, TRON 2.0 still ran well enough to play. It just got a bit sluggish with max graphics at 1024x768.

In early 2004, I upgraded to an Athlon XP 2100+ and a GF4 Ti4800SE (aka Ti4400). With those upgrades, I could run TRON 2.0 at max graphics at 1280x1024 without any hiccups. IL-2 Sturmovik: Forgotten Battles also ran perfectly with this configuration.

It wasn't until late 2006 that I finally upgraded to a 754 Athlon 64 3400 and a Radeon 9800XT. At the time, I was quite impressed with this system as well. (Although, I recommend sticking with NVIDIA GPUs. ATI/AMD has driver issues).

Anyway, I just wanted to give you an idea of what might have been common for a "cheap bastard" during those years.

Sadly, I never got to own a 939 system. Nowadays, due to silly prices and a lack of interest, I probably never will. I may someday upgrade the 754 A64 3400 to a 3700, but prices there are ridiculous too.

The 754 and 939 are great in that they run Win98SE, WinME, Win2K, and WinXP all equally well. You have alot of flexibility there if you go that route. Go with 1GB RAM and a GF6 6800GT and you're all set!

Maybe 2004 and 2003 is pushing it a bit too far... I'm still browsing through lists and lists of games trying to decide what to grab, etc.
I'm not sure what build I was using at that time... I perfectly remember using my 486 DX4-Plus until I tried to overclock it and puff... Got a P133 afterwards and lasted me until the XP era! I perfectly remember it running 24/7 for the uptime project... I miss both the 486 and the P133...
Afterwards I had a borrowed P3 from a friend for quite a while, only after some time I got a Celeron 478 with a 9600pro and afterwards the 3700+ with a 6800gs. Then it was Q9500 and recently the Xeon E3 and 280X...
I guess it was either the borrowed P3 or the Celeron. 😀

The 754 and 939 are insanely expensive indeed! It's a shame for true... I would love to build my nostalgic 939Dual-Sata2 with the 3700+ 😁 And I'm fairly sure that with the 6800GT would take everything up to Doom3...

The Asus a6v after testing further, has a locked bios (no idea on the password), cd drive not working, keyboard with some of the keys not working... So I just backed up everything from there and this thing is going to be put for sale. I recon the Pentium M and the dedicated GPU X800 mobile bit be worth something for people repairing this stuff.
The Toshiba P100 will have to be worked and everything backed up before I try the XP build there, I got my hopes high on that machine. I remember playing Doom3 on it several years ago and even played World of Warcraft at the time with it, using my Samsung 2233RZ monitor and 3d glasses 😁 So it should be more than enough for the challenge.

I might in the meantime get my hands on the Celeron Tualatin, which includes everything I need (in case capacitors are ok etc...) for a Win98 build. 😀

For now I will start the backup process on the Toshiba and go watch some Game of Thrones 😀

Feels I struck gold with the Toshiba Laptop!
The T7600, 2Gb of Ram and the 7900GS allow me to way back to Jedi Knight 2 and Drakan. I need to begin now grabbing the old games I wanna play 😀
I can even plug it in to my only spare monitor, which is DVI.

I think that for now I'm good, when the moment to go earlier back, to Win98 or even before, I will come back 😀