so a GeForce4 MX460 might be a good replacement?

GF 4 MX460/440-8x can beat GF2 Ultra in some cases.

Is a Compact Flash with an IDE Adaptor really much faster than a regular hard drive?

Mostly yes, but Compact Flash can really suck at small reading/writing. Personally, I use small capacity SSDs through adapter.

Dont forget a ISA sound card for some DOS games!

MKT_Gundam wrote on 2020-07-02, 23:04:

Dont forget a ISA sound card for some DOS games!

I'm trying to get a Creative AWE64 Gold at a reasonable price... but they're really expensive!
BTW, the mainboard has a Yamaha YMF740C-V onboard sound card... is it any good?

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2020-07-02, 22:41:

Mostly yes, but Compact Flash can really suck at small reading/writing. Personally, I use small capacity SSDs through adapter.

Maybe I'll do that if I find a cheap enough SSD drive...

AS your focusing on DX7
I'd say any of the GF4 MX cards will be a good option.

The onboard Yamaha makes a really good dos card, can be bit of a pain to setup if booting into dos mode but if you just play your games from within windows (which a P3 is more the able to do) I 'd say its a great card.

For Windows depending on what games you want to play you may wan't somehthing with EAX or A3D 2.0 support.
For EAX you want anything from an Audigy 2 ZS down to a SB Live! Main difference is newer cards have better sound quality.
For A3D 2.0 you want something with the AU8830 chip, Most common are the Aureal Vortex 2 cards.

Storage in Win98 I'm not a fan of using CF or SD cards.
Personally I still use IDE drives as I have them. once they die out I'll use IDE to SATA converters. I prefer these over PCI SATA cards as they are invisible to the system so don't require any drivers .
PCI SATA cards would be my 2nd option if you cant get converters.
I'm sticking with spinning drives as they are cheap and plentiful and apart from load screens don't offer any performance benefits.
But understand some people like the quiet or want windows to boot in 2 seconds.

As a side note I've also got both a system stuck on 600MHz Katmai and a 1Ghz Coppermine. I play on the 600Mhz more as it's a more interesting build and plays everything just fine. Anything it cant run runs in XP anyway so your not missing much.

I have a mx-460 in my socket A build and it's on par or better than my GeForce 2 ultra. It's a great card and would compliment your build nicely.

chinny22 wrote on 2020-07-03, 09:14:

For Windows depending on what games you want to play you may wan't somehthing with EAX or A3D 2.0 support.
For EAX you want anything from an Audigy 2 ZS down to a SB Live! Main difference is newer cards have better sound quality.
For A3D 2.0 you want something with the AU8830 chip, Most common are the Aureal Vortex 2 cards.

Half-Life and the Need for Speed series are some of the games I want to run, so I guess in this case it's better to get a card with EAX support.
SB Live's are much cheaper to buy here in Argentina (I can find them for like 5USD), so I'm buying one of them.

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2020-07-03, 09:28:

I have a mx-460 in my socket A build and it's on par or better than my GeForce 2 ultra. It's a great card and would compliment your build nicely.

I just ordered a Medion GeForce4 MX460 from eBay. It will take about 1 or 2 months to arrive from Germany all the way to Argentina xD.

I had the Matrox G550 because I used this PC as a "server" and this card offers excellent 2D quality... and I expected this to be useless for gaming... but to my surprise, it can run Half-Life and NFS Porsche Unleashed at 1024x768 at playable framerates! so I'm happy using this until the MX460 arrives.

That's the same exact mx-460 I got it's a great card

A few years back I found a couple of passive Medion Geforce 3 Ti 200 and snatched one of them. Great card, but maybe a bit too much for your setup. On the other hand it would mean you could drive up the resolution and play everything on 1280x960 or something crazy like that.

The MX 460 also seems a nice match. people complare them to the GF4 Ti and maybe some lower end FX cards, and obviously they can't compare, but against something like a GF2 they're fine. Not great for games around it's release but nice for older stuff and legths better than the GF2 MX, especially the MX460 can be quite decent.
You can easily keep the G550 for some Voodoo 2 build later on.