I think Slot-1 was common up to P3-500's after which socket P3s pretty much took over.
A decent TNT2 Ultra or early Geforce 256 AGP with a Voodoo 2 would do well at 800x600 resolution or you can just get a Voodoo 2 2000/3000/3500. Aureal sound cards would probably be better for that date then a soundblaster.

Yuuker wrote:

Something semi-period accurate either in the 98, or 99 ish range.

1998 means slot-1, 1999 could be slot-1 or socket 370. Unfortunately during that period many things changed so it might be better if you choose a motherboard platform from that era and then start from there.

Quake 3 launched in December 1999, Half Life started in 98 and had xpacs until HL2 in 2004, Descent 3 was June of 99, etc so it just depends what kind of experience you want.
I built my first all-new-parts PC in late 2000 and had a socket 370 Celeron 566 in a socket370-> Slot 1 adapter card since the MB I could afford was slot 1 even at that time (IIRC it was a Shuttle board with a VIA chipset) but you could have already had over 1ghz Pentium 3's if you weren't stuck to teenager's summer job budget. At that time I had a GeForce DDR-DVI graphics card but I think the GeForce 2's were already out as well.

and not the early 2000s that a high end P3 would entail.

Coppermine 800mhz was released in 1999, so it's absolutely pointless endevour.
But if you want to build real authentic machine of a mere mortal in late 90s, you'll end up with AMD K6-2 or Celeron Mendocino at best, paired with ATI Rage Pro or other crap. Period accurate computer must be bundled with authentic suffering.

My family bought a 500MHz PIII PC in late 1999. It was sold by Aldi in large scale and in this particular branch it sold out on the first day so I guess many people bought it. This might make it representative for a newly bought late 99 multi media / office PC in Germany.
It cost 1998DM (~1000USD at the time) and came with a 17inch CRT, keyboard and mouse. It had an onboard Riva TNT2 M64, 64MB of RAM, some onboard Creative sound chip, a 14,2GB HDD, a 40x CDROM drive and a modem. I believe the CPU was an "old" Katmai.
I remember it ran all games I was interested in fine but then again I was a kid and generally you had lower expectations towards frame rate and graphical detail. 😁 Having a "real" Riva TNT2 or maybe a Voodoo 3 2000 would have been realistic for a multi media / office PC as well but I guess the manufacturer saved where many wouldn't notice right away - plus a narrower memory bus makes for a simpler PCB design since everything was onboard.

I have a P3-450MHz with Windows 98. Granted my graphics card is a little beefed up compared to what would have been available at the time this computer is otherwise dated (early 1999), but Half Life runs liquid smooth on it.

One day I'll get a Voodoo 3...one day...

Hm. Out of the 8-10 people from our core LAN party roster in 2000/2001 there was only one single person with a PIII (pretty sure it was that Aldi one...); everybody else had either a K6-2/K6-3 or Celeron afair. The same guy also got a Voodoo 5500 for that PC and that was considered somewhat of a big deal 😀

henryVK wrote:

everybody else had either a K6-2/K6-3 or Celeron afair.

If you were doing LAN parties in 2000/2001 chances are you knew how to configure a gaming PC to get the best bang for your buck. I suppose none of those Celerons ran at default clocks? 😁
Really this is the only valid reason I see for OCing retro hardware: to recreate a period correct enthusiats's tuned gaming PC. OCing a Celeron 333 to 500MHz is slower than simply getting a 500MHz Coppermine for your build but the Celeron has that 1337 factor you can't make up for in FPS. 😎

I think I had a Celeron 400 MHz running at maybe 600 and a TNT2 Pro running at 175 MHz (which, admittedly, didn't make a vast difference in performance).

So, yeah, that was pretty much the standard rig in our little circle, and that was somewhat valid across the board for that time period, I think.

^^ Almost noone really builds truly "period-correct" machines. In most cases going "period-correct" means "let's get the top parts that were available in year X" and that is absolutely fine.

As to OP's original question: Slot1/440BX motherboards are better for 90s builds because they have ISA slots. You can get them on a Socket 370 as well, but that usually means getting a VIA chipset. I know many people use such boards, but personally I would advise you to stick to Intel stuff.

I have a pretty similar machine as my primary retro rig. PIII@800 MHz + Voodoo 5 (doesn't fit your criteria as it was released in 2000). Fast enough for all Glide games (up to 1600 x 1200 resolution in many cases), but also compatible with most DOS games (since I have AWE32 and GUS Max installed). You can read about it here. (I was making lots of builds at the time because I was between jobs, so I've decided that not each one of them deserves a Vogons post).

So basically 440BX is one of the most versatile platforms for late DOS/Win9x gaming, but you need a good board and preferably a Coppermine for 100MHz FSB (because 133MHz models tend to give some stability issues). You can also use a slotket and use a Socket 370 chip, but I would still advise you to stick to 100MHz.

how about Slot A? 😁

scnr

how about Slot A?

Cewl stuff, but rare and pricy nowadays (mostly working motherboards). Not very flexible for older games though.

I've seen several CPUs for around 10-15€ lately (and I got myself a 700 and 750 for that... still no thunderbird unfortunately)
motherbaords usually range between 30-100€ ye they're a bit pricey unfortunately 🙁

idk why but the higher PIII range before tualatin doesn't have that much of an appeal to me, so I'd lean more towards Slot 1.

The Serpent Rider wrote:

...But if you want to build real authentic machine of a mere mortal in late 90s, you'll end up with AMD K6-2 or Celeron Mendocino at best, paired with ATI Rage Pro or other crap. Period accurate computer must be bundled with authentic suffering.

Yes, and it would have cost about £1300 for the privilege too!

The Serpent Rider wrote:

bundled with authentic suffering.

This, though.

I totally see why people would choose the best build over the most "authentic", i.e. what they wish they had back than over what they actually got 🤣

henryVK wrote:

I think I had a Celeron 400 MHz running at maybe 600

Truly a gentleman

henryVK wrote:

and a TNT2 Pro running at 175 MHz

and a scholar.
😁

imi wrote:

I've seen several CPUs for around 10-15€ lately (and I got myself a 700 and 750 for that... still no thunderbird unfortunately)

Why use a Thunderbird on Slot A anyway? Back in late 2000 as an upgrade to your 1999 Argon or Pluto, ok. But when you're doing a whole new build why not go Socket 462? Better chipsets and mainboards, better coolers, lower prices. And most importantly for overclocking you no longer need a soldering iron or a golden fingers device but a simple pencil! 😁
To me the whole appeal of having Slot A motherboards is using Athlons with asynchronous cache. (Not saying you have to share this view, just saying you're not missing out. 😀)

The PC I bought in late 1999 had a Coppermine 650MHz Slot 1 PIII. At the time I was looking for a 700MHz PIII, but the 650 system was overall the better deal. It had an AGP TNT2 32MB Graphics Card, with an Aureal Vortex 2 Sound Card. Along with monitor, keyboard, mouse & 4.1 speakers it cost around £1,200.

Most of the PIII CPUs I encountered at that time were all Slot 1, I didn't see a Socket 370 PIII until much later into the 2000s.

With regards to Voodoo cards, I got a Voodoo 3 around 2000/2001, but that was to upgrade an older AMD K6-2 PC. Lots of people talk about using Voodoo cards for a PIII build, but I'd always find it a bit of a compromise having to suffer 16-bit colour & dithering in games. I always preferred the TNT2 over the Voodoo (V3, at least) for that era hardware.

With UT and Q3A, anything short of a P3-1GHz is going to be painful unless you want to really do the retro experience of low detail, low frame rate and high frustration (yes, I played UT on a Celeron 366@562 with a TNT2-M64 back in the day). Now, you have Slot 1 P3-1GHz CPUs (although they are much rarer than So370 and consequently more expensive), and you can either use a high-end BX board (such as P3B-F) that will probably handle the 133MHz FSB, or go for the slower but more certain (apart from SB/PCI related bugs) route of a Via ApolloPro133A board such as the P3V4X or MS-6199VA. That way you can get this stuff well-playable, keep an ISA slot for DOS and do your Slot 1 thing.

But basically you have a mismatch between software requirement (the games you want to play) and hardware requirement (the type of system you want to build). Move one or both of those goalposts until they coincide, then get building. Or do what many of us do here- just turn it into two separate systems, in this case a P2 system for DOS and early Win9x, and a SoA/early P4 system for the late Win9x games like UT and Q3A you want to play.

Doornkaat wrote:

Why use a Thunderbird on Slot A anyway? Back in late 2000 as an upgrade to your 1999 Argon or Pluto, ok. But when you're doing a whole new build why not go Socket 462? Better chipsets and mainboards, better coolers, lower prices. And most importantly for overclocking you no longer need a soldering iron or a golden fingers device but a simple pencil! 😁
To me the whole appeal of having Slot A motherboards is using Athlons with asynchronous cache. (Not saying you have to share this view, just saying you're not missing out. 😀)

because socket A is "boring" ^^
but yeah I plan to use the 700 pluto because of the higher cache speed, but I don't have a lot of experience with Slot A because I never had one back in the day so I really don't know much about all that yet.

I played UT99 on a PII400 with TNT2 ultra :p