Voodoo 3 gets my vote. Built-in support for palleted textures and fog table ensures full compatibility with early Win98 3D accelerated games. You also get excellent overall performance, Glide support under Windows, as well as partial support for some (not all) DOS Glide games. The VGA output of the card is fairly sharp and gives a great 2D image for DOS gaming.

On a side note, the STB Velocity 100 drivers can be used for a Voodoo 3 2000 under Windows 3.1 giving you access to higher resolutions and a 24-bit color palette, should you decide to go for an old-school DOS 6.22 + Win3.1 setup.

Word of caution: some Voodoo3 cards exhibit artifacting in DOS games i.e. 320x200 resolution. It can be resolved by turning off a setting in the motherboard BIOS, but not all boards support that.

First of all, I would recommend a K6-2/3+ (Plus) CPU. It's extremely versatile for a DOS/early Win98 machine. You can dynamically change the CPU's frequency from within Windows and DOS. You can also disable the L1 / L2 cache, which means that you can emulate practically any CPU down to a 386.

Regarding video cards, I've tested A LOT of them on my three SS7 platforms and I found that THE ABSOLUTE BEST performance is achieved with a GeForce 2 GTS / Pro, however those are rare and a bit expensive. The second best (and actually more suitable for SS7) would be a GeForce 2 MX / MX 400 card (the ones with a 128 bit memory bus width, because there are too many OEM cards out there which have a 64bit bus, but they are also marketed as GeForce 2 MX 400). For the best performance, nvidia driver version 7.76 is the one to go with. Unfortunately, this one has a few issues on some cards (for example, persistent Win98 visual glitches after quitting an OpenGL game such as Quake / Quake 2). You can go with a more recent driver to fix these problems, but there will be a performance hit (between 10 - 30%).
Now, and this is more tricky, many GeForce 2 cards suffer from a very known issue at the time: extremely poor 2D quality. Which is why you will probably need to get your hands dirty and modify them a bit (I modified all my GeForce 2 cards this way and their 2D quality went from complete blur to extra sharp & clear, almost like a Voodoo 3): http://web.tiscalinet.it/creeping_death/guide/aamodifica.htm

Which brings me to the other option: a Voodoo 3 (if you want to play glide games). However, keep in mind that Voodoo 3 is quite power hungry when compared to GeForce 2 MX (10 - 15 watts, compared to 4 - 5 watts on a GeForce 2 MX). This is a gamble on SS7 boards - some can handle the extra AGP power, others not so much, resulting in freezes / restarts during gameplay.

As for sound cards, I definitely recommend a PCI Yamaha YMF7x4. It's absolutely incredible, and I never found a game that doesn't work with it (I'm sure there probably are some, but all the games that I tested work perfectly). I find that the most common ISA sound cards are a bit too noisy for my taste when using headphones.

Thank you for your informative replies.

Now, I have a chance to buy a AMD, K6-2 450Mhz for around $13 (calculated from Danish currency). Would that suffice or would it be better to buy a K6-3 to tinker with?

I can also get hold of a Geforce4 440MX or a 440MX SE, each for around $7-9, but I seem to recall the 440MX having a pretty bad reputation? Is that true?

Hmm.. found an ASUS Geforce2 MX400 64mb, the ASUS V7100PRO/SE/PURE for €15 euro. Maybe I should get that.

You're welcome!
As I said above, I would only buy the PLUS versions of AMD K6-2/3, because of the aforementioned advantages.
Forget about GeForce 4 MX 440 or any other newer cards - they only work with much newer drivers and the driver overhead is way too extreme for the poor SS7 platform. Performance will be much slower compared to GeForce 2.
So, yeah, the GeForce 2 MX is the better choice. And that card is an 128bit card, which is what you should be looking for 😀

Does your M577 have a SB link port? You'll need that to get good sound from a PCI card in DOS.

Otherwise I advise using an ISA sound card. I use a Sound Blaster 16 with a genuine Yamaha chip in mine.

You CAN have two sound cards in the same system (one for DOS and another for Windows) disable one in Windows and only install drivers for the other in DOS. 😉

Sadly no, I didn't even think about that. Thanks for reminding me.

Just a question, I know that DDMA should be able to do the job, but I have a hard time finding out if my board supports DDMA, it is a VIA MVP3. And I know VIA had okay support for DDMA. It probably doesn't.

However, I just came to find out, that the board has a CMI 8330 ISA sound chip, I didn't really think about it, because it's an AT-board.

EDIT: From this it seems like the VIA MVP3 has "Distributed DMA": https://www.datasheet.live/index.php?title=Sp … %2FVT82C596.pdf

Would that be sufficient?

abasak wrote on 2020-04-06, 21:04:

Sadly no, I didn't even think about that. Thanks for reminding me.

Just a question, I know that DDMA should be able to do the job, but I have a hard time finding out if my board supports DDMA, it is a VIA MVP3. And I know VIA had okay support for DDMA. It probably doesn't.

However, I just came to find out, that the board has a CMI 8330 ISA sound chip, I didn't really think about it, because it's an AT-board.

Exactly - and that's a very decent chip for onboard sound - or indeed for a sound card:
+ full SBPro2 and SB16 compatibility
+ bug-free UART mode MPU401 MIDI
+- decent (but not perfect) compatibility; I've never hit a game it doesn't work with, but they exist.
- does not have a real Yamaha OPL3 or full clone; personally I can live with how it sounds.

Now, you can have as many sound devices in a computer as you want, so long as you can manage the resources. This chip would in itself be a good all-rounder for both DOS and Windows. If you want to add more, you could consider:
DOS: adding something with real OPL3 and potentially better compatibility. An early SB16 would fit the bill nicely. SB16 MIDI bugs and stereo issues with SBPro2 stuff don't matter because you can still use the CMI 8330 for SBPro2 and MIDI.
Windows: adding 3D audio support (A3D or EAX) would be nice to have. Added advantage: these are PCI cards which won't cause you resource headaches in DOS if you don't initialize them.

EDIT: From this it seems like the VIA MVP3 has "Distributed DMA": https://www.datasheet.live/index.php?title=Sp … %2FVT82C596.pdf

Would that be sufficient?

It has DDMA, but why mess with that stuff if you have two ISA slots *and* a decent onboard ISA sound chip anyway?

I'm having some problems with my other system, so I was thinking, would it make sense to put my Voodoo2 SLI's in this SS7 system? So my SS7 is a DOS/98-system, and dedicate my dual-slot 1 system with the 5900 Ultra to be a XP-system?

My P3 was intended to be a jack of all trades, with the Voodoo2s able to give my the DOS/Win98 experience and the 5900 Ultra the XP part of the equation, but it seems to be problematic having everything playable. So I'm wondering if the V2s would be better suited in the SS7. Or would they be constrained? I have a k6/III 450mhz on its way and the Geforce 2 MX400 as suggested above.

abasak wrote on 2020-04-11, 19:45:

I'm having some problems with my other system, so I was thinking, would it make sense to put my Voodoo2 SLI's in this SS7 system? So my SS7 is a DOS/98-system, and dedicate my dual-slot 1 system with the 5900 Ultra to be a XP-system?

My P3 was intended to be a jack of all trades, with the Voodoo2s able to give my the DOS/Win98 experience and the 5900 Ultra the XP part of the equation, but it seems to be problematic having everything playable. So I'm wondering if the V2s would be better suited in the SS7. Or would they be constrained? I have a k6/III 450mhz on its way and the Geforce 2 MX400 as suggested above.

5900 ultra better with a high-end P4 or Athlon XP. Leave the V2SLI in the dual-slot sytem, and get a voodoo1 for the ss7. That's how I do it anyway (except s370 instead of dual slot).

So in other words a 2xV2 or V3 would be over-powered for the system?

It depends on what CPU are you using. I think, for a K6-III+, a Voodoo 3 (2000 or 3000) should be good enough. Or, a Riva TNT + Voodoo 2 SLi.

Maybe, if you want to focus more on DOS, I'd get a Riva 128 and a Voodoo 1. The 128 have great DOS compatibility.

On the sound card question, I recommend an AWE 32 or 64.

Win98 games: Half-Life and Quake II should be okay, Deus Ex have much higher system requirement. I recommend that to be played on your PIII build. Oh, and I think that dual Slot system is so interesting... would you like to share its parameters with us? 😀

DanielChief wrote on 2020-04-17, 08:41:

. Oh, and I think that dual Slot system is so interesting... would you like to share its parameters with us? 😀

Thanks for your thoughts, much appreciated, and sure!

It is a Tyan Tiger 133 S1834D. I currently have it running two 667Mhz P-IIIs and 384 Mb RAM, with the FX 5900 Ultra and two Voodoo 2s in SLI and a Audician32 installed. I am using it more as an early 2000s XP machine. But I do have Windows 98 installed to experiment with the Voodoo2s.

I haven’t explored the dual CPUs enough, but hope I get the time! 😀

abasak wrote on 2020-04-06, 17:48:

...
There’s 384mb of RAM on the board by the way.
...

Have you checked whether your RAM is fully cacheable in L2?

It will be with the K6-3 installed, right?

Oh by the way I dialed it back to 256Mb, however this happened 🙁

https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f= ... 4#p843754