Building a Pentium 3 for Windows 98 and MS-DOS gaming \ VOGONS

Building a Pentium 3 for Windows 98 and MS-DOS gaming

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First post, by ravensholt

Posted on 2019-12-11, 08:43

ravensholt Offline

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Hi everyone!

I've slowly started collecting some hardware that I'd like to put together in the future.
So far, I managed to fetch a Socket 370 motherboard with a Coppermine 866MHz Pentium 3.

The goal is to be able to play games ranging from early 90's (probably with help of disabling cache or running Mo'slo) - up until 2001-ish.

First thing i've done, is to order a Coppermine 1GHz , it'll hopefully give a tiny boost in performance when playing "newer" titles.

The motherboard, MSI MS-6309, has an ISA port, which will most likely host a Sound Blaster AWE64 Value (Great support in both DOS and Windows 98). I know there are better cards, but the AWE64 is a solid choice and i had it in the past.

I've already got a Voodoo 2 12MB for those early 3Dfx titles.
The question is - what would you guys pair this beautiful card with?

So far, I have the following cards.

- ATI Rage Fury Pro (Theater) 32MB.
- ATI Radeon 9600 Pro
- ATI Radeon 9800 Pro
- nVidia Geforce 4 Ti4200

These are my options so far .... I'm willing to consider other options, but cards such as the Radeon 8500 are impossible to find (besides the shitty LE version).

The nVidia has the best OpenGL support, and the Radeons should perform better in Direct3D, right?
The processor will probably bottleneck the 9800 Pro, and probably also the 9600 Pro...
The motherboard doesn't support any Tualatins, so those are not an option, and they're getting redicolous expensive because of collectors hoarding them on ePay.

Last but not least, I'd like some recommendations around choosing a PSU that can handle this kind of hardware - and preferably also a good quality cooler.

Thanks

Reply 1 of 5, by chinny22

Posted on 2019-12-11, 10:18

chinny22 Offline

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Looks to be a good solid base, also own a 1Ghz (but Slot 1) and it handles 95% of my dos/Win9x gaming just fine.

ATI cards dropped fog table and palatalized textures if that's important for you, Not sure how they are in dos
The GF4 on the otherhand has great dos support and pre DX9.
I think the CPU will be the bottleneck for all 3 cards.

This isn't a power hungry rig. Any modern PSU will be fine. as an example My P3 1Ghz with Ti4600, PCI and ISA soundcard, CD and 2 HDD's had a 200w PSU.

Reply 2 of 5, by dionb

Posted on 2019-12-11, 13:56

dionb Offline

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With the MS-6309 watch out for bad caps, even if it seems to work now, you might be in for a nasty surprise if some are dead or dying...

As for GPU, I'd go Gf4Ti due to the DOS requirement. In Win98 that's already overkill for the CPU, I'd not expect any difference between 9600, Gf4Ti or 9800 in this system. In DOS, nVidia provided excellent VESA compatibility, on par with S3 and 3dfx and better than ATi.

As for PSU, wattage isn't too relevant, a good 250W PSU would be enough, 300W or more even better. But go for good quality. As the P3 draws its power from the 5V line, an 'old style' PSU with fat 5V would be the most efficient match. I find AOpen (relabled FSP) to be easy to find, reliable and affordable. Alternative is a new PSU. That should work, but less efficiently as they are designed for max draw on 12V line. Here again, go for a good brand over high specs.

Cooler? I like Golden Orbs, which are surprisingly easy to find. Or if you can find one, go for a Zalman CNPS3000 or 6000 - big passive flower with a huge slow fan positioned over it.

Reply 3 of 5, by ravensholt

Posted on 2019-12-11, 15:38

ravensholt Offline

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Awesome! Thank you so much for your feedback so far 😀

Reply 4 of 5, by alvaro84

Posted on 2019-12-11, 17:35

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dionb wrote:
In DOS, nVidia provided excellent VESA compatibility, on par with S3 and 3dfx and better than ATi.

What's the problem with ATI cards' VESA compatibility? I know they can have performance issues in some boards/chipsets (write combining not functioning at 0xA000 segment and/or LFB) but the BIOS video mode list they return is usually really impressive, definitely more thorough than that of post-riva128 nVidia cards.

Shame on us, doomed from the start
May God have mercy on our dirty little hearts

Reply 5 of 5, by dionb

Posted on 2019-12-12, 01:19

dionb Offline

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alvaro84 wrote:
dionb wrote:
In DOS, nVidia provided excellent VESA compatibility, on par with S3 and 3dfx and better than ATi.

What's the problem with ATI cards' VESA compatibility? I know they can have performance issues in some boards/chipsets (write combining not functioning at 0xA000 segment and/or LFB) but the BIOS video mode list they return is usually really impressive, definitely more thorough than that of post-riva128 nVidia cards.

https://gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS/

Radeon & Rage128Pro flag up a lot more red than Gf4TI

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