Celeron 800-1000MHz are cheap alternative, $5-10 in Poland. Celeron 566-733 usually runs at 100MHz fsb with minimal fuss.
Coppermine Celerons are ~10% slower than full P3, so 1GHz Celeron = 900MHz p3.
Then again ordinary PENTIUM III 850 MHz SOCKET 370 FSB 100 MHz is $20
Of course you will need fcpga slotket, preferably with Voltage jumpers.
As for the games. Nowadays I would just play them on my win10 computer 😀, and they wont scoff at 2GHz K7/3GHz P4, but 2x faster P3 CPU will definitely help.

Try to get a Pentium III 800 (or faster), but as you already mentioned, 100MHz FSB models are pricy and a bit rare.

It also depends on your budget and where you look for them (the bay = $$$), where you live, et cetera.

What about a high clocked Celeron in combination with a slotket?

Edit: great to see rasz_pl has the same look at it. 😁

Clockspeed ain't going to help Quake3's texture thrashing (which is especially bad on 3dfx cards with less than 16MB - such as the Velocity 100). Your video card is the bottleneck, and this must change if you expect to hit 40fps with the presented gamut of 1999-2001 games. Perhaps a Geforce2MX is more ideal when the CPU's upped a bit to 800ish...

leileilol wrote on 2024-02-25, 06:45:

Clockspeed ain't going to help Quake3's texture thrashing (which is especially bad on 3dfx cards with less than 16MB - such as the Velocity 100). Your video card is the bottleneck, and this must change if you expect to hit 40fps with the presented gamut of 1999-2001 games. Perhaps a Geforce2MX is more ideal when the CPU's upped a bit to 800ish...

This seems reasonable.

Also asking about what price-performance ratio to go for... I would say go for a dual core. P2 market is dry and now you are competing with collectors with deep pockets.

Maybe instead look at local listings and set up some searches on facebook market and practice you social skills as you drink tea with the elderly and buy their old computers gathering dust.

leileilol wrote on 2024-02-25, 06:45:

Clockspeed ain't going to help Quake3's texture thrashing (which is especially bad on 3dfx cards with less than 16MB - such as the Velocity 100). Your video card is the bottleneck, and this must change if you expect to hit 40fps with the presented gamut of 1999-2001 games. Perhaps a Geforce2MX is more ideal when the CPU's upped a bit to 800ish...

What is "texture thrashing", exactly? I think I've seen you mention this on other threads before, but I might be misremembering...

As much as I'd like to upgrade to say a Voodoo 3 2000 or 3000, the prices are absolutely disgusting on ebay. I do have a TNT2 M64, which was in the rig previously. While it has a full 32MB of RAM, the problem with that card was that the VGA signal was pretty bad (horizontal ghosting), which seems to be a recurring problem for a lot of Nvidia cards from that time (not to mention drivers are a complete toss-up per-game). I don't know if there's a way to be able to use both cards just through the Velocity 100's VGA port (highly unlikely I imagine), but if there's somehow a feasible way to do something like that, then I'm open to suggestions, I suppose.

OpenRift wrote on 2024-02-25, 20:48:

leileilol wrote on 2024-02-25, 06:45:

Clockspeed ain't going to help Quake3's texture thrashing (which is especially bad on 3dfx cards with less than 16MB - such as the Velocity 100). Your video card is the bottleneck, and this must change if you expect to hit 40fps with the presented gamut of 1999-2001 games. Perhaps a Geforce2MX is more ideal when the CPU's upped a bit to 800ish...

What is "texture thrashing", exactly? I think I've seen you mention this on other threads before, but I might be misremembering...

Texture thrashing is when a given scene in a game requires more memory for its textures than is available on the graphics card. When this happens, some of the textures have to be located in main memory and the GPU accessing them via the bus. Or worse, the driver will evict one texture and upload the other one as needed resulting in massive transfers on the bus (and the gpu waiting a lot).

Neither scenario is good for fps 😉

Things that consume gpu memory:
- Frame buffer (back and main buffer)
- z buffer (and stencil data too if used)
- light/shadow maps (depends on game)
- vertex and index buffers (the triangle data)
- texture memory

There are likely other consumers of memory and some overhead & bookkeeping.

The bottom line is if you don’t have enough you will get thrashing as the driver attempts to work around the memory limits.

Reducing texture quality can help, as can reducing resolution, or world detail levels. Or just get one of those 32mb or higher gfx cards 😀 Even if it’s only 64 bit (e.g. budget card), fps should be much higher than with thrashing to main memory. PCI cards work great, because if you’re not thrashing, the driver can park everything on the card, meaning the reduced bandwidth of PCI (vs AGP) isn’t really an issue.

So I just saw a ebay listing last night for a Pentium III 800MHz for like 35 bucks and was thinking about bid-sniping it near the end of the auction, and it was still around there this morning but when I go back to check on it again, and it goes up to 84 DOLLARS. So much for that upgrade, better luck next time, I suppose 🤣

I dont know other country here in spain i will not paid much more than 5 euro for almost ANY pentium 3 cpu, even tualatin are cheap but not common

I have a pentium 3 1ghz 133mhz bus in my DOS build and is best in my opinion

Try to get a 933mhz cpu. Thats what I'm running and all those games you mentioned run well. I'm using a voodoo 3 2000.

Law212 wrote on 2024-02-26, 21:57:

Try to get a 933mhz cpu.

not on this board

rasz_pl wrote on 2024-02-26, 22:02:

Law212 wrote on 2024-02-26, 21:57:

Try to get a 933mhz cpu.

not on this board

I assume it doesn't have a 100Mhz FSB variant?

theelf wrote on 2024-02-26, 21:50:

I dont know other country here in spain i will not paid much more than 5 euro for almost ANY pentium 3 cpu, even tualatin are cheap but not common

I have a pentium 3 1ghz 133mhz bus in my DOS build and is best in my opinion

The Socket 370 PIIIs are pretty cheap, but of course, the Slot 1 versions are not, unfortunately.

there are $12 slotkets on US ebay, will need ripping out one pin and soldering two wires to make them coppermine ready

OpenRift wrote on 2024-02-26, 22:11:

theelf wrote on 2024-02-26, 21:50:

I dont know other country here in spain i will not paid much more than 5 euro for almost ANY pentium 3 cpu, even tualatin are cheap but not common

I have a pentium 3 1ghz 133mhz bus in my DOS build and is best in my opinion

The Socket 370 PIIIs are pretty cheap, but of course, the Slot 1 versions are not, unfortunately.

Here in spain slot 1 P2/3 are cheap too, i will not pay more than 5 euro only cpu and 10-20 for cpu+motherboard,and 20 only if very good one both cpu and mb

theelf wrote on 2024-02-26, 22:40:

Here in spain slot 1 P2/3 are cheap too, i will not pay more than 5 euro only cpu and 10-20 for cpu+motherboard,and 20 only if very good one both cpu and mb

Mmm maybe he refers to the high-clocked Coppermines in Slot format these are not very usual, not the typical Katmai 450 or 500mhz.

Otherwise you're right, I've just got P2 and P3 in a slotket for 10€ in Wallapop xD

mmx_91 wrote on 2024-02-27, 10:02:

theelf wrote on 2024-02-26, 22:40:

Here in spain slot 1 P2/3 are cheap too, i will not pay more than 5 euro only cpu and 10-20 for cpu+motherboard,and 20 only if very good one both cpu and mb

Mmm maybe he refers to the high-clocked Coppermines in Slot format these are not very usual, not the typical Katmai 450 or 500mhz.

Otherwise you're right, I've just got P2 and P3 in a slotket for 10€ in Wallapop xD

jeje wallapop is not about "Coppermine" or "tualatin" etc is about "cpu viejo" "pentium" etc. and check every image one by one.. jeje is like going to flea market but in cellphone! jeje

Last dicember i bought a tualatin 1.4ghz, with motherboard and a live 5.1 for 15 euro plus shipping... but the listing was "placa vintage creative"