It all depends on the graphics quality requirements. If you set the goal to enjoy the gameplay, and not suffer from poor graphics quality, have a comfortable refresh rate of 100FPS, while eliminating the terrible "stairs" at low resolutions, installing AA\AF x16 or at least x8, you will need GeForce FX 5800 Ultra and higher. As well as a better processor.

I'd also say it depends on what you want. I have a Voodoo 3 200 agp and socket 370 pentium 3 800mhz (133 fsb)and it works well for games from 97,98 and 99.

you can get a nice period-correct gaming experience with solid but not the highest framerates.

If you want to run these games to the max I would either get a system with a rather powerful CPU 1 GHz or more and one of the GeForce or Radeon cards.
Many old games also run very well on modern-day PCs with the highest settings.

Second that. My 2000-ish build is a Tualatin 1400S with GeForce4Ti. Is it period correct? No, the GPU is massively OP and even though the CPU is the relative bottleneck, it is still far faster than anything in 2000 itself, so everything actually plays like I'd want it to. The Gf4 ensures GPU simply is never the bottleneck and it conveniently has a DVI out for modern screens with digital input. It even plays nice with DOS VESA, although I have different system(s) for that.

But...

Tbh I play far more on my Ryzen, either native (anything made for XP or up) or in DOSbox. The only irritating gap I have is 16b Windows games.

sofakng wrote on 2023-10-02, 14:45:

I want the best performance and cost but don't care too much about period accuracy. However, I want to play the games as intended and accurate as possible without any hacks or fan patches.

For example, I've heard that Unreal is best (??) with Glide. I know there are wrappers (nGlide, etc) but how accurate are they?

My one comment - some of those "hacks or fan patches" are actually quite excellent. e.g. OldUnreal's patches for the original Unreal Tournament. Game works/looks great on a modern system, widescreen monitors, absolutely flies on any kind of a modern GPU (I've mostly run it on a 3070 so... yeah, major overkill... at 3440x1440). I think they have an upgraded texture pack too.

Hell, I can play it natively on my M1 Max MacBook Pro. How many games, vintage or otherwise, can one say that about?

sofakng wrote on 2023-10-02, 13:34:

My current spare hardware includes a Pentium 3 500 and an AWE64 which both seem period accurate.

I don't think anyone has asked this (if anyone else did, sorry, missed it), but do you have a motherboard for that PIII 500? Assuming it's slot 1, might be worth exploring what faster CPU options there are that would fit in that motherboard and what their cost may be. (Oftentimes, the fastest CPU for a particular socket/etc tends to be highly, highly priced, but the second-fastest is affordable and the third-fastest is sold on eBay at near e-waste pricing.)

If you don't already have a motherboard for that CPU, that opens up a lot of other options 😀

Thanks again everybody the advice ...

I'm looking into buying a GeForce Ti 4200 and a Voodoo 3 3000. The prices are insane on eBay and I've never seen anything like that in yard sales near me 🙁

I'll keep looking and if anybody is selling one please let me know!!

EDIT: @VivienM - The Pentium 3 500 is inside an IBM 300 PL desktop I received a few years ago... I think it supports up to 600 or something like that but I need to check.

Socket3 wrote on 2023-10-02, 14:32:

If you're targeting period correct hardware, then the Best builds you can have are Athlon 1200 + VIA KT133A chipset board or a Pentium 4 1500 + Intel i850 chipset board.

Former owner of a s. 478 1.9GHz Willamette and an i850 board here. Would discourage the i850 platform, especially on socket 423 (which is the more period-correct of the two sockets here). Need RDRAM, four modules or two modules + continuity RIMMs, finding socket 423-friendly coolers may be a challenge, also wasn't there something about cases for the early P4? I remember seeking a P4-friendly case that my 478 didn't end up needing - I think 423 expected to have HSFs mounted behind the board in some weird way or something. Now, if you can find a full system, or least case/CPU/HSF/RAM/motherboard, that's a different story...

How much better does a 1.5GHz Willamette perform compared to say, a PIII 933 with an i815 and some PC133 SDRAM?

Socket3 wrote on 2023-10-02, 14:32:

If you're using an LCD monitor, especially a 20-21" 1600x1200, then you'll want a Geforce 4 Ti4200 or a Radeon 9500/9700. Out of the two I prefer the ATi alternative for it's superior image quality, lack of driver "performance tricks" and excelent DVI support.

I had a 1600x1200 LCD starting in late Dec. 2001 (you don't want to ask how much those cost back then), and I was always happy with the gaming performance, but I went GF3 Ti500 (which died less than two years in...), ATI 9800 Pro, then (now getting much outside the OP's time range) 7900GT and 8800 GT. IMO, that level of high-endness were the cards you wanted for 1600x1200. Switched to 1920x1200 monitors after that.... and somewhat late.

More for the OP's benefit, 1280x1024 LCDs were expensive until... 2004-5ish. And I think most serious gamers stuck to CRTs in part so they could go lower resolutions...

Socket3 wrote on 2023-10-02, 14:32:

If you want period correct and top end hardware, it will cost you. If you just want to be practical, then any Socket A or 478 DDR motherboard with a fast CPU, even socket 754/939 and LGA 775 (Intel 865/VIA KT800 only) boards with AGP are great budget options. Mostly any 754/939 CPU will work well for these games, same for most single core LGA775 CPUs.

Question as someone who is about to pull the trigger on one such motherboard - in the practical category, what about the rareish boards with AM2 and the VIA K8M800 chipset? Seems to me like it's the AMD equivalent of the i865/LGA775 combo (i.e. plentiful/cheap CPUs but better-than-expected-for-the-time backwards-compatibility) with the additional benefit of using DDR2 RAM, yet I don't see those talked about anywhere.

sofakng wrote on 2023-10-02, 14:45:

Thank you so much for that detailed response! It also helped me think about what I actually want or was trying to ask. […]
Show full quote

Thank you so much for that detailed response! It also helped me think about what I actually want or was trying to ask.

I want the best performance and cost but don't care too much about period accuracy. However, I want to play the games as intended and accurate as possible without any hacks or fan patches.

For example, I've heard that Unreal is best (??) with Glide. I know there are wrappers (nGlide, etc) but how accurate are they?

I'd love the option to play at 1600x1200 with 60 fps (if possible) but not if that sacrifices accuracy or completely changes how the game looks... if that makes sense?

I'm planning to play on a CRT (Nokia 445ZA, 1600x1200@88 Hz max) but might use an LCD or upscaler (OSSC). I like to have different options to experience things period-accurate (ie. 640x480) but then also higher resolution, etc.

My personal thoughts on the best experience for Unreal is a CRT with an SLI Voodoo2 setup. With a Pentium III around 900MHz- 1GHz@800x600 you can achieve a solid 85fps with VSYNC disabled, and 60fps @1024x768 regularly with a reasonable 5MHz overclock. Even relative to the Voodoo 3/4/5, there's just something about the way the game looks on a Voodoo2, which isn't replicated anywhere else.

Otherwise, I just play unreal on my regular PC with the Old UnrealEngine 227j patch.

sofakng wrote on 2023-10-02, 13:34:

I'd like to build a PC for the late 1990s to play Half-Life, Unreal, Quake, American McGee's Alice, etc. […]
Show full quote

I'd like to build a PC for the late 1990s to play Half-Life, Unreal, Quake, American McGee's Alice, etc.

My current spare hardware includes a Pentium 3 500 and an AWE64 which both seem period accurate.

What kind of video card should be used? Is it possible to achieve 800x600 60fps or is that too much?

I have found memories of my Canopus Pure3D card but they are very expensive and I think there are better options available. (it seems like the 3D acceleration on those early 3D cards were often blurry and smeared so I'd rather have something nicer)

sofakng wrote on 2023-10-02, 14:45:

Thank you so much for that detailed response! It also helped me think about what I actually want or was trying to ask. […]
Show full quote

Thank you so much for that detailed response! It also helped me think about what I actually want or was trying to ask.

I want the best performance and cost but don't care too much about period accuracy. However, I want to play the games as intended and accurate as possible without any hacks or fan patches.

For example, I've heard that Unreal is best (??) with Glide. I know there are wrappers (nGlide, etc) but how accurate are they?

I'd love the option to play at 1600x1200 with 60 fps (if possible) but not if that sacrifices accuracy or completely changes how the game looks... if that makes sense?

I'm planning to play on a CRT (Nokia 445ZA, 1600x1200@88 Hz max) but might use an LCD or upscaler (OSSC). I like to have different options to experience things period-accurate (ie. 640x480) but then also higher resolution, etc.

The first and the second are completely at odds with each other.

Going on that basis then youre looking to build a high performing XP system then, which means you can go all the way up to an Intel i7-3770k (3770k because it can be over clocked to outperform a higher clocked CPU with the Ivy bridge architecture but stay on the LGA 1155 platform) with an nVidia GTX 960.
That combo will give you a motherboard that has WinXP drivers and a video card with official drivers from nVidia. Anything more and you will need to use hacks and patches to make it work.

Or you could do anything lower than that, a high performing P4, a AMD on socket 939 maybe, or LGA 775 Core and Core 2 CPUs.

Where would you like to go with it? ... You could take it up as far as a dual E5-2697v2 Xeon system if you want an Ultimate XP system.

Would a Voodoo work with a GTX 960?

Best value card for that era ,though from 2002, is when the quadro 4 NVS AGP or MX440 cards pop up on eBay for $10-$20 a pop, though I think they need specific drivers to do their best on older Dx7 stuff. Could use 750Mhz or so behind them.

sofakng wrote on 2023-10-02, 22:00:

I'm looking into buying a GeForce Ti 4200 and a Voodoo 3 3000. The prices are insane on eBay and I've never seen anything like that in yard sales near me 🙁

I'll keep looking and if anybody is selling one please let me know!!

I think it takes an incredible amount of luck to find these things locally/cheaply. Most of them got e-wasted 10-15 years ago. The remaining ones are likely in the hands of collectors who are not going to sell them cheap.

The best way, I think, to get lucky is to find someone with a big house where their kid's computer, say, got left behind 15 years ago and there was enough room that the system just sat in a corner until the parents are now trying to downsize. But even then, most of those systems will get e-wasted - it's just so unlikely that someone would bother paying attention to the fact that inside that tired case, there happens to be some really rare thing that now goes for $300+ on eBay. Especially when it's equally likely that in that case is an LGA775 i945 with, say, a 6600 GPU, which is... not exactly the most prized hardware today.

I suspect most people around here have stories of both themselves and their friends/family e-wasting parts that, 10-15 years later, would actually... have given you a lovely retro system or two. It's probably even more true with laptops... how many Toshibas with excellent DOS compatibility went to the e-waste pile being seen as just a generic meh WinMe laptop?

But honestly, this is true of all collectible things - ask any older car guys about cars they miss/regret selling and they'll tell you about the car they sold for a meh price 35 years ago because it wasn't anything that special, and today that car in good condition with the options that it had would almost sell for biggish bucks at Barrett-Jackson, or at least would have major cool factor at cars & coffee...

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2023-10-02, 22:14:

Going on that basis then youre looking to build a high performing XP system then, which means you can go all the way up to an Intel i7-3770k (3770k because it can be over clocked to outperform a higher clocked CPU with the Ivy bridge architecture but stay on the LGA 1155 platform) with an nVidia GTX 960.
That combo will give you a motherboard that has WinXP drivers and a video card with official drivers from nVidia. Anything more and you will need to use hacks and patches to make it work.

And that combo will be dirt dirt cheap for the performance. With the general stagnation of processors in the last 5-6 years, there are plenty of people who are only now upgrading from those systems. Looking at sold listings on eBay, a GTX 960 is substantially cheaper than a Ti4200... and something like 1/4 the price of a Ti4600. And let's not even talk about Voodoo pricing.

3770ks are relatively pricy too, but non-K 3570s sell for $6 + shipping on eBay. Not that bad for one of the fastest officially-supported XP Intel CPU out there...

But... how 'retro' is an ivy bridge with a GTX 960, really? (And I say this as someone planning to acquire a 3570k maybe next weekend) I guess the software is what makes the system retro...

VivienM wrote on 2023-10-02, 22:23:

I think it takes an incredible amount of luck to find these things locally/cheaply. Most of them got e-wasted 10-15 years ago. T […]
Show full quote

sofakng wrote on 2023-10-02, 22:00:

I'm looking into buying a GeForce Ti 4200 and a Voodoo 3 3000. The prices are insane on eBay and I've never seen anything like that in yard sales near me 🙁

I'll keep looking and if anybody is selling one please let me know!!

I think it takes an incredible amount of luck to find these things locally/cheaply. Most of them got e-wasted 10-15 years ago. The remaining ones are likely in the hands of collectors who are not going to sell them cheap.

The best way, I think, to get lucky is to find someone with a big house where their kid's computer, say, got left behind 15 years ago and there was enough room that the system just sat in a corner until the parents are now trying to downsize. But even then, most of those systems will get e-wasted - it's just so unlikely that someone would bother paying attention to the fact that inside that tired case, there happens to be some really rare thing that now goes for $300+ on eBay. Especially when it's equally likely that in that case is an LGA775 i945 with, say, a 6600 GPU, which is... not exactly the most prized hardware today.

I suspect most people around here have stories of both themselves and their friends/family e-wasting parts that, 10-15 years later, would actually... have given you a lovely retro system or two. It's probably even more true with laptops... how many Toshibas with excellent DOS compatibility went to the e-waste pile being seen as just a generic meh WinMe laptop?

But honestly, this is true of all collectible things - ask any older car guys about cars they miss/regret selling and they'll tell you about the car they sold for a meh price 35 years ago because it wasn't anything that special, and today that car in good condition with the options that it had would almost sell for biggish bucks at Barrett-Jackson, or at least would have major cool factor at cars & coffee...

The best anecdote I have on that topic was a coworker at a gas station back in the early nineties. He was retired Air Force, and he had a 1968 Camaro SS big block car. During the 1973 Arab oil embargo, money was tight, gasoline was expensive, and he was a family man. So he traded it in and bought a Ford Pinto, and he regretted that decision very, very much.

VivienM wrote on 2023-10-02, 22:23:

sofakng wrote on 2023-10-02, 22:00:

I'm looking into buying a GeForce Ti 4200 and a Voodoo 3 3000. The prices are insane on eBay and I've never seen anything like that in yard sales near me 🙁

I'll keep looking and if anybody is selling one please let me know!!

I think it takes an incredible amount of luck to find these things locally/cheaply. Most of them got e-wasted 10-15 years ago. The remaining ones are likely in the hands of collectors who are not going to sell them cheap.

The V3-3000: yes (tip: the -2000 is much easier to find for much lower prices and you can just flash the BIOS up to 3000 speeds in most cases), but a Gf4Ti 4200 shouldn't be too much of a problem. The 4600, now that's unobtainium, but the 4200 is relatively common. There's one available near me for EUR 45 now, and I've seen them sold recently for a lot less than that.

As always, the prices you see on eBay 'buy it now' are exactly the prices nobody else were prepared to pay. Cheaper stuff appears on eBay too, it just gets snapped up quickly. YMMV, but with attention and persistance you'll find good deals.

Edit: just checked and yep: Gf4Ti for EUR 35 buy it now. It'll be gone soon, but there will be more.

Make a list of games you want to play. Are there any Glide exclusives? If not, don't spend top dollar on 3dfx. Are there a few Glide exclusives? Decide if they are so important that you need to build an entire system around them. Otherwise, just get a Geforce or Radeon. They are cheaper and they perform better.

smtkr wrote on 2023-10-02, 23:35:

Make a list of games you want to play. Are there any Glide exclusives? If not, don't spend top dollar on 3dfx. Are there a few Glide exclusives? Decide if they are so important that you need to build an entire system around them. Otherwise, just get a Geforce or Radeon. They are cheaper and they perform better.

One related question for the OP that I don't think was asked/answered: what OS is the OP looking at and aiming for?

There are some 1998-era games that are quite forward-looking and there are others that are quite backwards-looking...

Yeah, there aren't too many Glide exclusives but I was hoping to find a Voodoo card for cheap to pair with something like the Geforce 4...

It seems like the Voodoo3 PCI cards (2000 or 3000) are $300+ which is much too expensive.

However, the Voodoo3 2000 AGP doesn't seem crazy... is there any way to know if one of these can be flashed up to a 3000?

If you aren't scared off by the idea of having to replace capacitors a Quadro 700 XGL (equivalent to a Ti4400) is another card to look out for. For that matter, my Chaintech Ti 4600 blew a capacitor not too long ago (no warning, they looked fine), and gave me a good scare. Thankfully it survived, and I had spare capacitors left over from replacing the ones on the Quadro card so I had it fixed in no time.

sofakng wrote on 2023-10-02, 22:00:

I'm looking into buying a GeForce Ti 4200 and a Voodoo 3 3000. The prices are insane on eBay and I've never seen anything like that in yard sales near me 🙁

I'll keep looking and if anybody is selling one please let me know!!

AFAIK trading on VOGONS is discouraged at least, if not completely forbidden. Other than eBay or yard sales, try e-waste or simply asking around friends: most people don't even realize vintage computers can be collectible and simply recycle them or even leave them on roadside. I've personally picked up FOUR computers on roadside (three of them working) and "intercepted" one from a neighbor.

VivienM wrote on 2023-10-02, 22:34:

Looking at sold listings on eBay, a GTX 960 is substantially cheaper than a Ti4200...

Well that really depends on location and/or condition: I got my tested GTX 960 (Gigabyte GV-N960WF2OC-4GD rev. 1.0) for NT$1000 from a dealer/repairman of vintage computer parts, while my untested GF4Ti4200-8X (ELSA Gladiac 528) cost me only NT$150 at an e-waste recycler. That makes me feel kinda guilty by storing it in my closet at this moment.

VivienM wrote on 2023-10-02, 22:23:

I think it takes an incredible amount of luck to find these things locally/cheaply. Most of them got e-wasted 10-15 years ago. T […]
Show full quote

sofakng wrote on 2023-10-02, 22:00:

I'm looking into buying a GeForce Ti 4200 and a Voodoo 3 3000. The prices are insane on eBay and I've never seen anything like that in yard sales near me 🙁

I'll keep looking and if anybody is selling one please let me know!!

I think it takes an incredible amount of luck to find these things locally/cheaply. Most of them got e-wasted 10-15 years ago. The remaining ones are likely in the hands of collectors who are not going to sell them cheap.

The best way, I think, to get lucky is to find someone with a big house where their kid's computer, say, got left behind 15 years ago and there was enough room that the system just sat in a corner until the parents are now trying to downsize. But even then, most of those systems will get e-wasted - it's just so unlikely that someone would bother paying attention to the fact that inside that tired case, there happens to be some really rare thing that now goes for $300+ on eBay. Especially when it's equally likely that in that case is an LGA775 i945 with, say, a 6600 GPU, which is... not exactly the most prized hardware today.

I suspect most people around here have stories of both themselves and their friends/family e-wasting parts that, 10-15 years later, would actually... have given you a lovely retro system or two. It's probably even more true with laptops... how many Toshibas with excellent DOS compatibility went to the e-waste pile being seen as just a generic meh WinMe laptop?

But honestly, this is true of all collectible things - ask any older car guys about cars they miss/regret selling and they'll tell you about the car they sold for a meh price 35 years ago because it wasn't anything that special, and today that car in good condition with the options that it had would almost sell for biggish bucks at Barrett-Jackson, or at least would have major cool factor at cars & coffee...

VivienM wrote on 2023-10-02, 22:34:

And that combo will be dirt dirt cheap for the performance. With the general stagnation of processors in the last 5-6 years, the […]
Show full quote

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2023-10-02, 22:14:

Going on that basis then youre looking to build a high performing XP system then, which means you can go all the way up to an Intel i7-3770k (3770k because it can be over clocked to outperform a higher clocked CPU with the Ivy bridge architecture but stay on the LGA 1155 platform) with an nVidia GTX 960.
That combo will give you a motherboard that has WinXP drivers and a video card with official drivers from nVidia. Anything more and you will need to use hacks and patches to make it work.

And that combo will be dirt dirt cheap for the performance. With the general stagnation of processors in the last 5-6 years, there are plenty of people who are only now upgrading from those systems. Looking at sold listings on eBay, a GTX 960 is substantially cheaper than a Ti4200... and something like 1/4 the price of a Ti4600. And let's not even talk about Voodoo pricing.

3770ks are relatively pricy too, but non-K 3570s sell for $6 + shipping on eBay. Not that bad for one of the fastest officially-supported XP Intel CPU out there...

But... how 'retro' is an ivy bridge with a GTX 960, really? (And I say this as someone planning to acquire a 3570k maybe next weekend) I guess the software is what makes the system retro...

Exactly that.

Going back to your first. Yeah I think that is exactly why those cards are so hard to find. Its not that they wernt common, because I know they were, its that they were ditched 20 years ago. Because everbody knew the graphics card world was going in a completely different direction and retro was then was all about larva lamps and tie dyed shirts.
I remember my mate had a PC shop in my town, he had a cube shelf full of used PCI cards of all types, he had several Voodoo 2 cards with the cables in them, both the SLi and patch cable.
They were all bundled up together and sold when he sold his shop. Years later the guy who bought them was gushing as he told me how he made a killing when he sold them for like 50 quid each or something (it was a while ago now). Little did he know all he had to do was keep hold of them a few more years for them to be worth as much as a mid range PC.
It was from him that I got a good portion of the tech I have now. He used to buy a lot of his used stock from what we would not call an IT reclaimer. 17 and 19" Eizo monitors, Compaq Deskpro, AST 486 and Pentium 166 PCs etc etc etc.
I remember getting a deskpro that was a dual Pentium pro 200 from him. God knows what that would be worth now, but then it was cheap as chips, I bought it as something to play with... that was close to 20 years ago now.

It wouldnt have to be a 3770k, an i7-3770 would do just as well and costs half as much as the k model. Which as its mentioned I would recommend over the k model as it will be more than enough if all you want to do is play games on it, especially if mated to a GTX 960. A 750Ti would rip apart any XP game, but as they cost the same right now then theres no point in not going for the 960.

I think those systems, an i7-3770k/GTX 960 etc, will be the ones to buy and keep hold of them because they represent the pinnacle of XP. Which is what people pay through the nose for with Win98 now.
Im in the planning stage of building such a system now, and I will be making it with one eye on its future value. In 2045 it will be the system they all want.

Windows XP is retro aparently.
I was asked the other day why I still use it, because its so old.