If you have no intention of running demanding 3D games then itll be just fine, in fact even for 3D itll be ok until you hit the more demanding DX6/7 titles that take advantage of the higher AGP speeds and Memory handling. Pretty much all early AGP GPUs treated the AGP bus as a glorified 66Mhz PCI slot and the Voodoo AGP cards are well known for not even caring about AGP features or speeds.

So I wouldn't worry about it too much for DOS and basic Win98 stuff, just grab the nicest PCI card you have and enjoy it.

For those type of games, i don't think it's particularly limiting. The Trio3D is not a good 3D accelerator, but most RTS until about 1998-1999 are still 2D. I'd expect issues with something like Homeworld, and other late era 3D games, but you can always get a half-decent PCI graphics card like a Matrox G450 or Radeon 7000.

This is one of the benefits of been a cultured RTS player rather then part of the 3D-shooter horde. We are far less demanding 😉
Early windows RTS's the S3 will be fine. 3d games like Empire Earth may be pushing it a bit.
Something like a ATI Rage, or Matrox G200 - 550 can be had for not much and offer performance roughly around the TNT/TNT mark.

In dos the S3 is about as good as it gets, this is where ATI and Matrox would be a downgrade compatibility wise. However dos strategy games don't feature on the compatibility list so this may not be an issue either. (I've never noticed the Warcraft noise issue in this table)
https://gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS/

We are far less demanding

[laughs in Dungeon Keeper 2]

AlessandroB wrote on 2023-04-05, 07:23:

my only little doubt is that not having the AGP slot it is too limited... I state that it will be used mainly in DOS and windows98 in strategy games (C&C and similar) I don't like games like Quake or Unreal. onboard has a S3 Trio 3D.

As always, tnks.

For that only, the onboard video card is more then enough.

Yes just have a computer dayly use for 486 to win98 games, without using too much 486, 386 and Pentium1

Am I totally off, if I recall that a real draw back of an on-board graphics chip was not only its abysmal performance, compared to GeForce etc., but also that it really crippled the memory bandwidth of the CPU as well, making it sub-par performance wise?

I haven't seen until now a onboard s3 trio/virge/trio 3d which shares ram with the system memory and doesn't have it's own vram, but maybe i'm wrong. Anyways, if this is the motherboard, the integrated video chip has it's own vram and can be upgraded also. It'a 'standard' trio 3d soldered directly to the board. For dos and win98 2d games trio 3d should be good enough, it's super compatible with dos and for 2d in win98 it is a very good performer. For 3d, which he said he didn't care about, a pci Voodoo or a Geforce can be used. Also i see the space to populate a agp slot if you have the parts and the knowledge 😁.

bogdanpaulb wrote on 2023-04-05, 16:03:

I haven't seen until now a onboard s3 trio/virge/trio 3d which shares ram with the system memory and doesn't have it's own vram, but maybe i'm wrong. Anyways, if this is the motherboard, the integrated video chip has it's own vram and can be upgraded also. It'a 'standard' trio 3d soldered directly to the board. For dos and win98 2d games trio 3d should be good enough, it's super compatible with dos and for 2d in win98 it is a very good performer. For 3d, which he said he didn't care about, a pci Voodoo or a Geforce can be used. Also i see the space to populate a agp slot if you have the parts and the knowledge 😁.

Right, I remember now. It was the chipsets which had integrated "gpu" that suffered from sharing memory ... 😀

H3nrik V! wrote on 2023-04-05, 15:09:

Am I totally off, if I recall that a real draw back of an on-board graphics chip was not only its abysmal performance, compared to GeForce etc., but also that it really crippled the memory bandwidth of the CPU as well, making it sub-par performance wise?

I think you you're right.
And that was the primary benefit of dual channel with nForce AthlonXP.
The Athlon itself could not benefit from more bandwidth (due to its own limitations). The dual channel was said to improve the performance by only 4-6% with the doubled bandwidth. But when coupled with an integrated GeForce MX the GPU was not competing with the CPU.
(Not sure, but this may also improve performances when using GPUs with not enough memory that needs to use the system RAM)

bogdanpaulb wrote on 2023-04-05, 16:03:

I haven't seen until now a onboard s3 trio/virge/trio 3d which shares ram with the system memory and doesn't have it's own vram, but maybe i'm wrong. Anyways, if this is the motherboard, the integrated video chip has it's own vram and can be upgraded also. It'a 'standard' trio 3d soldered directly to the board. For dos and win98 2d games trio 3d should be good enough, it's super compatible with dos and for 2d in win98 it is a very good performer. For 3d, which he said he didn't care about, a pci Voodoo or a Geforce can be used. Also i see the space to populate a agp slot if you have the parts and the knowledge 😁.

yes, it's exactly this one.

You could always get a Slot 1 Pentium II IBM Aptiva system with the integrated 3D Rage Pro chipset. Those were extremely common back in 1998 and should be easy enough to find. From what I remember, the integrated rage pro chipset had really poor performance (likely related to the state of ATI drivers at the time), but then you could just put in a faster PCI accelerator if you're not satisfied.

In terms of AGP vs. PCI, I don't think it's a big deal. It basically just limits your ability to run advanced chipsets from 2000 and later. Prior to that, most chipsets had both AGP and PCI versions, and performance between the PCI and AGP variants wasn't significant, IMO.

Yah if you're patient, you should find something worth running for $50 or better in PCI , MX4000, Rage 128Pro, Radeon PCI, even the maligned FX5200 won't be bad in that. (Until you expect it to perform like a DX9 system with decent card and twice or three times the CPU of course) Maybe even score a banshee, or mis-described V3 2000.

Or you can get a pex8112 pci to pcie bridge, grab any hd5450 low profile for 10€ and be happy with anything you want.
Even FullHD, h.264 movies (with mpc-be) if you plan to use Win XP.

PIII without AGP is only good for early Windows 98 games. I would not recommend it. PIII with a good AGP 3d card works flawlessly for games up to 2001. As an alternative to PIII you can use Athlon on KT133. Don't waste your money.

AlexZ wrote on 2023-04-07, 09:01:

PIII without AGP is only good for early Windows 98 games. I would not recommend it. PIII with a good AGP 3d card works flawlessly for games up to 2001. As an alternative to PIII you can use Athlon on KT133. Don't waste your money.

this P3 is not compatible with coppermine, is just to use it instead of 486/PentiumMMX. In the IBM line the only P3 models with ISA is restricter to Slot1 with 2.0v of cpu core. but is not a problem the system speed, i not need to use it until 2000…