I would recommend the PIII Tualatin 1.4 first, and if you have any speed/compatibility issues, have the Pentium 200MMX as a good second choice. Just make sure that you have a 2D card as well, as the Voodoo 1 and 2 only do 3D graphics.

Voodoo 2 SLI maxes out at about 700Mhz so lots of picks there.

The Tualatin runs much cooler than the Athlon so it can be a quiter system.
As for RAM, 512MB is fine for games up to about 2004/2005 so dont worry about the I815.

Since you already have a 845G board, why not use it though?

The Voodoo 1 can have some problems with systems faster than about PII 300Mhz. The Pentium 200 MMX is a perfect fit.

enigmo wrote:

I find myself planning a rebuild of my retro box and after digging through my spares I'm faced with a few choices. I'm most inte […]
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I find myself planning a rebuild of my retro box and after digging through my spares I'm faced with a few choices. I'm most interested in Voodoo1/2 era games, so that pretty much means 98se or ME, and a rig that me from 1998 could both be amazed by but crucially still use. So, given that this machine will be VooDoo 2 SLI based and be intended for things like MechWarrior 2, Descent 1/2, Carmageddon, what CPU and platform would you choose?
Athlon Thoroughbred 1.4GHz - No board yet. Abit KG7-RAID died.
PIII Tualatin 1.4 - No board yet. Via for more RAM, Intel i815 for stability?
P4 1.7 - i845G chipset. 98SE seems to support it OK
P4 2.2 - Unknown board
P4 2.8 - No board yet
Pentium 200MMX - In a Dell Dimension
Pentium 133 - In a Dell Dimension

Is it sensible to just go as fast a CPU as will sit on a 9x-supported chipset, or is too modern a platform too much of a good thing?

I have a PSU that has a 20A 5V rail, so any CPU should be good to go.
Gotek for floppy emulation.
Stacks of spare RAM from 1MB 30pin SIMMs upwards, so 512-768MB of SD133 or DDR-2100 fine.
Orchid Righteous VD1, pair of Canopus 12MB VD2 cards, and a VD5 something.

Authentic for 1998 is a 550mhz katmai P3 on a slot 1. That will do ok, but I would upgrade to a socket 370 with a 1ghz copper mine or a Tualatin instead. A pentium MMX 200 won't scale SLI at all, you need a p3 or faster PII to see any benefit.

When it comes to price and availability, socket 478 boards are the cheapest, and intel chipsets are really good. After that, Socket 370 boards without Tualatin support are easier to find and less expensive. I have a socket 754 with an athlon 64, not at all period appropriate and definitely overkill for voodoo2 sli, but it works great and I only paid 20$ for the board and CPU.

lost77 wrote:

As for RAM, 512MB is fine for games up to about 2004/2005 so dont worry about the I815.

I did hear rumours of even 512MB sometimes being troublesome with 98, so that or less was a target, just considering higher limits for any future projects.

Since you already have a 845G board, why not use it though?

The 845G board has the P4 1.7 in it at the moment. It works, but has limited slots. I can choose between either the on board sound and discrete 2D graphics, or SB card for sound and Intel graphics. Not ideal, but could work. Would that platform and chip throw up any known issues vs the Tualatin approach?

512MB should be ok as well but as always there are acceptations to the rule which is what you may have seen.
Personally I've run 768MB fine on a 845 board with a stock Win98 install with 0 issues, and had loads of issues on another (cant remember which motherboard/Chip set)

As this is a Glide box I'd go with on board video and a decent sound card.
I cant see any problems with the this setup but only testing will show for sure. At least this wont cost anything rather then spending money on the Tualatin maybe needlessly.

Voodoo1 below 400Mhz in order to get no problems with textures in d3d games.
Voodoo2 around 700-1000Mhz and you will be fine.

For machines from 700Mhz I would add a pixelshader-gfx-card like the gf3 to the voodoo2.
That is a very nice combination.

A very good combination is a voodoo3 with a voodoo1 for the low run with a e.g. p2-450.

You go for high FPS in low resolution or why the heck 1 GHz CPU for Voodoo 2? That is even for a Voodoo 5 5500AGP a good strong processor. I use a Pentium Pro 200MHz for Voodoo 2 SLI and I can enjoy both’s best at 1024x768 resolution.

you are right, it should have been voodoo2-sli for 700mhz.
a voodoo2 is good above 200mhz though.

Atom Ant wrote:

You go for high FPS in low resolution or why the heck 1 GHz CPU for Voodoo 2? That is even for a Voodoo 5 5500AGP a good strong processor. I use a Pentium Pro 200MHz for Voodoo 2 SLI and I can enjoy both’s best at 1024x768 resolution.

No special reason other than those are the parts I have. I'd rathe use a Tualatin that I've got and it be way over-specced than have to buy more parts to resurrect a machine in between the P1 200MMX and the P3 1.4

dr.zeissler wrote:

For machines from 700Mhz I would add a pixelshader-gfx-card like the gf3 to the voodoo2.
That is a very nice combination.

A very good combination is a voodoo3 with a voodoo1 for the low run with a e.g. p2-450.

Voodoo 3 and Voodoo 1 in the same machine?

And 2D card is the next thing to tackle. I know I've got a GF2 Ultra somewhere, but I have been looking for a mid range GF4 for something all singing all dancing for the era.

Edit: Turns out I have a VD3 3500 as well.

Yes Voodoo1 for the 100% backwards compatibility and the voodoo3 for performance (and the excellent 2d image quality and the win3x driver)
A nice combination is a gf3-ti200 (passiv cooled) and a Voodoo2 SLI bundle.

dr.zeissler wrote:

Yes Voodoo1 for the 100% backwards compatibility and the voodoo3 for performance (and the excellent 2d image quality and the win3x driver)

Must admit I'd never considered that. I never thought VD1 and 3 in the same machine would work. How would you force games that need VD1 to use that and not the VD3? Or as these games are statically mapped would it just work?

There are different approaches to this. I always did it that way:
Install the drivers only for the voodoo3 and copy the dll's from the early voodoo1 drivers into the directory of the game you would like to play with the voodoo1. That worked for me.

piii 800eb, 6x multiplier, fsb @ 66mhz = 400 mhz. Also the piii 866 & 933, 433, 466 /w 66mhz fsb.

Nice! Seems neat and tidy.
So faced with another choice: VD1+3, or VD2 SLI + GF2/3/4. Given a bucket of parts, which would you pick?
I did find a GT220, but that's a PCIe card so not overly useful.

what games do you want to play?

I think the AXP gives you a lot of flexibility in terms of motherboards and clocks configuration (likely unlocked multiplier, official FSB range for the platform from 100 to 200MHz, easy to find chipsets with DDR and SDR, ISA slots on older boards, AGP8x and sata on newer), so it's quite a nice CPU overall for retro stuff.

realistically Vooodoo 2 makes sense with basically anything from MMX and beyond, if you paired it with a MMX it would give a huge boost for those early accelerated games, while the CPU is a bottleneck in many games the Vooodoo 2 can handle,
with a faster CPU you can run games completely on the limit for the voodoo, or play newer games that you really shouldn't with such a card.

dr.zeissler wrote:

what games do you want to play?

First up would be the 3dfx-enabled games I remember liking, like GlQuake, Quake 2, MechWarrior 2, Carmageddon, MDK, Tomb Raider, Unreal, Descent, then go in search of any others I never played.