Looks like you got almost everything except for audio solutions.
For 2000 I think MX300, MX400, AU8830, TBSC are good candidates.
For 2004 I guess Audigy 2?

I do have a Au8830 and a audigy 2 in my stash. The vortex 2 is more of a year 98 build witch i will eventually do. Is there anything else for the 2000 audio bracket?

Oldskoolmaniac wrote:

I do have a Au8830 and a audigy 2 in my stash. The vortex 2 is more of a year 98 build witch i will eventually do. Is there anything else for the 2000 audio bracket?

Are you looking for parts that are introduced exactly in year 2000? Turtle Beach Santa Cruz came in 2001 so it could be reserved for year 2001 build. Same does Fortissimo II.
MX400 and Acoustic Edge were introduced in 2000 IIRC. I prefer the precursor of Acoustic Edge, Aztech PCI368 over Acoustic Edge but PCI368 came out in 1999.
Creative has certainly released some variants of SBLive in 2000, but since I was recommending audigy for 2004 build I didn't want to recommend another creative card for 2000 build.

I tossed in a sblive 5.1. I want to save my only vortex2 for my 98 machine. Late 2000 build.

Try browsing www.sharkyextreme.com on the wayback machine. It will help you fill out your builds list from 1999ish all the way up to until they shut down. There's also wonderful articles and review to read as well.

wow that's a toughie. You sorted the machines by year, with no other criteria, like if they are to be systems the common man would use, or cutting edge machines for the respective year.

For example, in 1993 lots of people were still using 386 machines - cheap DX33 or DX40's, or even older DX25 machines that they got new back when they were cutting edge. Some upgraded the CPU to a 486 (like the 40MHz cyrix or TI), others used the machine as it is. Quite a few new machines in 1993 were 486 builds - in fact I believe those were the bulk of all PC sales. 1993 saw the launch of the P5 Pentium (Socket 4) - the wealthy would have bought that, either in 60 or 66MHz flavour.

I think for 1993 the most representative build would be:

66MHz 486DX
VLB motherboard
4-8MB of ram
250-500MB HDD
1x 3.5" FDD + 1x 5.25" FDD
VLB HDD controller
VLB Video card (cirrus logic or trident were most common, and the VLB CL cards are fantastic)
Your choice of sound card - either creative, media vision or gravis, but I think creative cards and clones were most common.

I think your 1994 machine should be a Pentium build. It was all the rage in magazines back then, tough it was still very expensive. The avarage Joe would still be using a 486, probably the same 66Mhz machine described above. Some would still stick to a 386 or slower 33MHz ISA only 486, but some (lucky few) could afford a pentium. Most new machines sold were 66, 80 or 100MHz 486. Here's how I see a 1994 build:

66MHz Pentium P5
PCI or PCI+VLB combo socket 4 board
16MB of ram
250-500MB HDD
1x 3.5" FDD
1x CD-ROM Drive
on board HDD controller
PCI video card - preferably a Matrox Millennium or S3 Vision (I'd go for the S3 for it's great dos compatibility).
Sound needs to be something fancy - preferably with build-in wavetable, like a Yamaha SW20PC, or a GUS, or a Creative card + wavetable module.

* socket 5 machines were available in 1994 (just launched), but they only really saw any significant market penetration in 1995.

1995 - P54 Pentium. Back in 1994 intel launched the socket 5 platform to replace the socket 4 pentium P5. The fastest CPU available for that platform was the 133MHz Pentium (non-MMX). The Pentium PRO launched that same year, aimed at professionals and the server market, but they were extremely expensive and adoption rate was low at launch.

1996 - Year of the multimedia and 3D graphics PC. Intel was tlking about MMX and the pentium PRO was starting to take off. This build (in my view) should be a socket 7 machine with some 3D capabilities.

200MHz pentium
Socket 7 mainboard
32MB of ram
500-800MB HDD
FDD, CD-ROM
sound card of your choice - preferably something with a wavetable sinth
PCI video card
3DFX Voodoo 1

http://www.redhill.net.au/ig.html

A good resource for early 90s builds.

1996 was the year of 3D graphics PCs? It seemed like more of a fad at that time than a reality. The Rage II and Virge cards were pretty wide spread, but I can't really recall many people with a proper 3D graphics accelerator. I think it wasn't really a thing until 97-98. Even in 1997 I didn't have much of a reason to buy a Voodoo. I was more concerned with getting 24-bit colour depth at 1024x768 so I could have a proper internet experience.

Im just trying to list everything by year and month as a guide. I have so many parts laying around that I can do a couple builds that where high end back in the day. Im using newegg reviews on windows xp motherboards to figure out what year they got released and also i have a ton of maximum pc magazines to go by. It wasn't til 97ish when people started dropping mad cash on brand new releases.

So far my 2000 build has been a headache, my p3v4x seems to have problems with my 1ghz chip and my 4 933mhz chips random hangs in bios sometimes not even posting, ive tried every trouble shooting thing. The thing that gets me is that board used to run 2GB of ram and a pin modded 1.4s on that same slocket III adapter for 2yrs. My last resort is either grabbing a intel board for that yr or grabbing a 1ghz slot processor.

Ill take break from this build til i get my slot1 cpu and move to 2003 with a Gigabyte GA-7N400 PRO2 462 motherboard witch i have everything for except for the dual raptors.

What where good sound cards in 1997?