jforrest1980 wrote on 2023-11-08, 08:52:

In Win 98 games I get a lot of lisp type sounds in speech, especially when a word has the letter "S" in it. For this reason, I have been thinking of dedicating my current build as my DOS and GLIDE machine, and making a new 98SE build that can play more demanding games that I normally have to play on my XP machine, and that has killer audio.

The Sound Blaster Pro is an 8-bit sound card, while most Win9x games were designed to use 16-bit audio. It's not a good fit. You can get a Sound Blaster Live! or Audigy card and use it alongside that SBPro. Use the newer card in Windows, and the older card for DOS. As long as both cards are configured to use different resources, there should be no problems.

I am very tempted to sell off some extra hardware and throw another Voodoo3 3000 in there. I do wonder though, am I really missing out on anything currently that the Voodoo3 can't provide?

On newer cards, you get 32-bit rendering compared to the Voodoo 3's 16-bit, which means less color banding. Also, more powerful cards like GeForce 3, 4, FX (or a Radeon equivalent) allow you to force Anisotropic Filtering and Anti Aliasing in older games, which can improve image quality. Here are a few screenshots from Half-Life which showcase the difference that AF can make. These cards also support EMBM, which can look nice in games that use it, although not many do.

Lastly, you can play games in higher resolutions on newer cards. Typically, the Voodoo 3 starts losing performance in resolutions above 1024x768. If you really want to max everything out, a Radeon X800 series card paired with a powerful CPU can effortlessly run Win9x games at 1600x1200 using 4xAA and 16xAF with all in-game settings fully cranked up as well, and all that while maintaining a steady 60+ FPS.

I would put the audigy 2 in the 440bx system and keep playing more demanding games on your XP machine.

The 9800pro will give you 32 bit colors/higher resolution/more filtering.

perhaps unintentionally "anti-voodoo" to say this but in answer to the question: "Do any video cards offer anything a Voodoo3 does not?", Yes - more performance at a lower price

seriously - getting even a modest but decent enough AGP card from a bit later in years will mean lots more capability and will be cheaper

so it depends really on what you want the system to do, what games you will play etc

Are you saying your soundcard has a lisp?

mothergoose729 wrote on 2023-11-08, 09:21:

I would put the audigy 2 in the 440bx system and keep playing more demanding games on your XP machine.

I would agree with that, or pick up a late ISA sound card like the AWE64 if there's a compatibility benefit to ISA.

There's something odd with the SB Pro - why would you want a 1991ish sound card in a ~1999 440BX system? Even for a nice little 486DX2/66, the SB Pro seems... less than ideal...

VivienM wrote on 2023-11-08, 23:05:

mothergoose729 wrote on 2023-11-08, 09:21:

I would put the audigy 2 in the 440bx system and keep playing more demanding games on your XP machine.

I would agree with that, or pick up a late ISA sound card like the AWE64 if there's a compatibility benefit to ISA.

There's something odd with the SB Pro - why would you want a 1991ish sound card in a ~1999 440BX system? Even for a nice little 486DX2/66, the SB Pro seems... less than ideal...

Nothing wrong with the SB Pro 2.0 card, just not great for windows.

Just use the audigy 2 in windows and the SB Pro in DOS and get the best of both worlds 😀

jforrest1980 wrote on 2023-11-08, 08:52:

Some of the hardware I recently came into is two Intel D875PBZ motherboards, an Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro w/ the audio interface, and a 256mb ATI All-In-Wonder 9800 TV AGP video card. All components I am considering for this new build.

I am very tempted to sell off some extra hardware and throw another Voodoo3 3000 in there. I do wonder though, am I really missing out on anything currently that the Voodoo3 can't provide?

There's a fellow here who has been building a 98SE system with the Intel D875PBZ and has had... quite a bit of ups and downs along the way. Mostly downs. You may want to read his threads.

My view - the Voodoo 3 is an unremarkable video card from 1999. It's not a card people in 1999-2000 really wanted; you wanted the GeForce and, to the extent you needed Glide for something, well, you already had your Voodoo 2. The ATI AiW 9800 is a card I had; it was a dreamy card in mid-2003. Very dreamy, $550-600CAD card. The reason that Voodoo 3s are popular and supervaluable in the retro community is that Voodoo/Glide is like, the James Dean of video cards. People and things that die abruptly before their time generally end up becoming legends and so it is with 3dfx/Glide/Voodoo. A NOS Voodoo 5 probably costs more than a shiny new RTX 4090. But... by 2000 or 2001, no one was releasing new Glide exclusive titles, and certainly by 2003, the Voodoo 3 was way in the rear view mirror.

The D875PBZ with a nice Northwood, the AiW 9800 Pro, the Audigy 2 ZS (or buy another one of those, as your 440BX badly needs one too) will make a super-duper-high-end 98SE system. If you already have a nice period-correct system with a Voodoo card that just needs a new sound card, I'd leave that system for the Glide games and do something centered on early 2000s, maybe an XP dual boot, with this set of parts. But it seems to me like a nice Northwood with a Voodoo 3 is going to be heavily, heavily GPU-bottlenecked.

mothergoose729 wrote on 2023-11-08, 23:12:

Nothing wrong with the SB Pro 2.0 card, just not great for windows.

Just use the audigy 2 in windows and the SB Pro in DOS and get the best of both worlds 😀

Would the SB Pro in DOS do anything better than, say, an AWE64 or other late-ISA card would?

VivienM wrote on 2023-11-08, 23:19:

Would the SB Pro in DOS do anything better than, say, an AWE64 or other late-ISA card would?

The SBPro's genuine OPL3 chip and distinct low-pass filter make it more desirable for early DOS games (1993 and older). For later DOS titles, a SB16 card might be a better fit due its support for 16-bit sound sampling and mixing.

If you're playing a wide range of DOS games, you likely want both a SB16 and a SBPro compatible card in your system.

Late DOS games (from 1995 onward) do sound worse with the SBPro2 and compatible clones using that mode.

With the low-pass filter enabled, the output gets muffled if sample rates above 11 kHz are used. But it isn't that better when disabled where the dry output is apparent.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-11-08, 23:39:

VivienM wrote on 2023-11-08, 23:19:

Would the SB Pro in DOS do anything better than, say, an AWE64 or other late-ISA card would?

The SBPro's genuine OPL3 chip and distinct low-pass filter make it more desirable for early DOS games (1993 and older). For later DOS titles, a SB16 card might be a better fit due its support for 16-bit sound sampling and mixing.

If you're playing a wide range of DOS games, you likely want both a SB16 and a SBPro compatible card in your system.

Then isn't the answer that the OP should take that SB Pro and build a nice 486DX2/66 early-90s DOS system? 😀 Or... would you potentially want to go even older for 1993 and older DOS games?

VivienM wrote on 2023-11-08, 23:55:

Then isn't the answer that the OP should take that SB Pro and build a nice 486DX2/66 early-90s DOS system? 😀 Or... would you potentially want to go even older for 1993 and older DOS games?

It depends on whether the games that you want to play are speed sensitive or not. Ideally, you want 386, 486 and Pentium levels of speed to properly cover the 1990-1996 DOS gaming timeframe. All of that can be achieved with a single Pentium MMX CPU by disabling L1 and/or L2 caches and toggling some test registers. Other platforms based on the VIA C3 and AMD K6-2/3+ CPUs can offer similar slowdown ranges.

For DOS titles from the early to mid 80s, you likely need to go even slower. Those games fall outside of my interest zone, so I can't really comment on them in more detail.

Voodoos are the only things in the retro community that are more meme than Windows 98.

My Slot one build had both Audigy 2 ZS and AWE64 until recently.
I've since removed the Audigy and sound quality in windows games is noticeably worse on the AWE so also strongly recommend at the very least a SBLive! for windows gaming.

Given you want a 2nd machine for lan games I would build something different allowing you to experience best of both worlds.
Make one PC a strong D3D rig with a card from Nvidia or ATI
Make the other a strong Glide rig with your Voodoo.

Make one a strong EAX rig with the Audigy 2
Make the other the A3D 2.0 rig with a Aureal Vortex 2 based card.

486's are fun but not really necessary. That said I own 3 and love them

Gmlb256 wrote on 2023-11-08, 23:46:

Late DOS games (from 1995 onward) do sound worse with the SBPro2 and compatible clones using that mode.

With the low-pass filter enabled, the output gets muffled if sample rates above 11 kHz are used. But it isn't that better when disabled where the dry output is apparent.

Very few games actually made use of 16bit audio, and the handful that did often did a shitty job at it. It's not that there is no benefit, but there are other tradeoffs with later cards.

mothergoose729 wrote on 2023-11-09, 00:57:

Very few games actually made use of 16bit audio, and the handful that did often did a shitty job at it. It's not that there is no benefit, but there are other tradeoffs with later cards.

Some of these games did take advantage of it very well: DOS Quake and the Crusader series. 😀

Regardless, I agree with you that there are trade-offs with other sound cards and the usage of 16-bit samples (which is different than 16-bit mixing support) is way less common.

There exists DOS MSS games with 8-bit sounds that just cut their frequency down for non-16bit soundcards for some reason.

Thanks for the help everyone, I really appreciate it! Especially those of you that took the time to make a long post. I have definitely learned a few things.

I built my GLIDE PC about 8 years ago. It was my first legacy PC build, so I had no idea what I was doing. I tossed that SB Pro 2.0 in there because it was cheap, and I wanted something that just worked in DOS. I never had a PC growing up, because my parents could not afford one. I am one of the people that built this thing because it was always a dream of mine to have a killer Win 98/DOS PC back in the day. I played Doom on my aunts boyfriends 486 when they still sold the shareware at Walmart, and used to watch my best friends brother play Everquest on his 98 machine in high school. I always told myself one day I would build one. Turned out to be about 17 years later. Now it's turned into an obsession. I love messing around and researching old hardware, and learning how PC's really work.

I don't play many early DOS games. The only thing I have played older than Doom is Wolfenstein 3D. For that reason, I am thinking of replacing the SB Pro 2.0 with something more appropriate.

I think I will set the Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro up in my main GLIDE PC this weekend. Then I am going to research that guys post about my motherboard. I was recently given 2 HP Kayaks (XA & XU). I really like these PC's, but I'm not sure I want to build a new 98 machine in them. The XU has dual processors anyway, so that's out. They are also very tight inside, with the PSU right next to the CPU which has a shroud covering it.

I ripped both of them apart and cleaned them up really good, but I can't figure out how the motherboard comes out of them. They have some sort of tray that looks like it slides out, but i'm afraid I'm going to break the tray. They both have rechargeable batteries in them, which I assume I need to replace with a standard CR2032 holder, but it seems risky when I could simply sell them and buy one or 2 killer components.

I kind of like the idea of making a D3D rig, and tossing an Aureal Vortex 2 in there. I have been doing a little bit of research. Is the Diamond Monster MX300 the card you all would recommend for a late 98 build? Shits expensive! I thought they were uner $50.00 awhile back on eBay. Looks like they are in the $150.00 range now. I see there are many different versions, and I don't want to go through what I did before buying bad Dell models of the Live! card.

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2023-11-08, 14:08:

Are you saying your soundcard has a lisp?

Yes.

Maybe that's not the correct term, but voices sound weird. Especially words that start with "S", sound scratchy and create a noise that kind of extends longer than it should. It's very present and annoying.