Gabriel-LG wrote on 2022-02-01, 20:01:
I think I will replace the Viper V550 a nice 2D card like a Matrox G100.
Diamond made cards with excellent quality VGA output. Plus G100 is limited to 16bit color above 1280 × 1024 while V550 will happily produce 32bit 1600x1200 @75Hz - perfect for selected monitor. You also get MPEG 1/2 motion compensation acceleration. G100/G200 have no real Video acceleration, only framebuffer scaling and VESA port for external accelerators.
http://web.archive.org/web/19990504204144/htt … rel/mgag100.htm (same text for G200 https://www.matrox.com/en/video/media/press-r … 0-graphics-chip) "The MGA-G100 integrates a video engine which supports both horizontal and vertical interpolation to scale video to full screen..... Providing high performance interfaces for external Video Decoder, Video Encoder, hardware Motion-JPEG and hardware MPEG-2 CODECs make the MGA-G100 the centerpiece of a fully multimedia upgradeable solution." is pathetic when compared to Nvidia TNT shipping motion compensation acceleration (not even present in Marvel G400 released a year later) in a chip faster and cheaper than G200.
Matrox also means broken opengl and barely accelerated D3D 5 while TNT gives you top of the line D3D 6.
Diamond Viper V550 16MB $200 September 1998 https://www.anandtech.com/show/195/5
Creative Labs Graphics Blaster TNT 16MB $169 September 1998, $125 November 1998 https://www.anandtech.com/show/182/5
MATROX G100 8MB $99 April 1998
optional DVD Upgrade Module (Hardware MPEG2 decoder) for G100/G200 $79 April 1998
MATROX MILLENNIUM G200 8MB $230 August 1998 https://assets.hardwarezone.com/2009/reviews/ … /g200/g200.html
STB Velocity 128 4MB $129 June 1998
Creative Labs 3D Blaster VooDoo2 8MB $229 June 1998 and dropping fast after TNT release
Diamond Monster 3D II 8MB $249 June 1998 and dropping fast after TNT release
Just for fun 1996 launch price of Voodoo Graphics 4MB $299, came down to $199 in 1997 after ram got cheaper.
Gabriel-LG wrote on 2022-02-01, 20:01:
Maybe an upgrade to a Pentium II-450 (nothing says 1998 like a Pentium II imho).
$650 CPU in volume orders in 1998 https://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/relea … 98/dp082498.htm
Gabriel-LG wrote on 2022-02-01, 20:01:
But why splurge on the 3D redundancy? The budget for either would have been spend on a faster CPU or more RAM.
Glide. With V2 + TNT combo you got best of both Glide and OpenGL/D3D worlds for $50-150 more than buying any other 2D card.
Going generic $50 i740/S3 and SLI Voodoo2 would deliver beast gaming experience, but hurt picture quality on the desktop.
https://www.cnet.com/news/450-mhz-chip-spurs-price-cuts/ has a nice table
450-MHz Pentium II $665*
400-MHz Pentium II $589
350-MHz Pentium II $423
* Not out until August.
You would need to save $250 to bump this config from 350 to 450 without overclocking. This is why $149 Celeron 300A was such a crazy bargain. All of a sudden you had $300-550 to spend on other stuff and simultaneously same-better CPU performance.
as for ram 64 was enough for everything in 1999 https://www.anandtech.com/show/267/6
128MB DIMM was ~$200, 64MB ~$70-80 pre earthquake https://www.edn.com/panic-buying-sets-dram-pr … s-on-wild-ride/
If I was building this system at the end of 1998 with hindsight of current knowledge I would go:
Pentium II 350MHz -> Celeron 300A@450MHz = +$270
Diamond Viper V550 -> generic $50 i740/S3 = +$150
Diamond Monster 3D II 8MB -> 2xCreative Labs 3D Blaster VooDoo2 12MB = -$300 means 60fps 1024×768 gaming all day
or
Diamond Monster 3D II 8MB -> nothing = +$200 and swallow ~10% fps drop in Glide optimized games on TNT compared to single V2
generic "better" Taiwanese speakers -> Cambridge Soundworks 2.1 = surprisingly cost in the same ballpark, maybe ~$20 difference worst case.
A4Tech OK-720 -> IntelliMouse Optical = -$50 You get first good optical mouse with scroll wheel.
Sound Blaster PCI 128 -> Diamond Sonic Impact S70 = -$20 Cheapest A3D Vortex card with great audio quality
or
Sound Blaster PCI 128 -> Sound Blaster Live! Value = -$30 for EAX and same great audio quality
About the speakers:
Juster At 95A https://twitter.com/StevesTechShed/status/645317830586564608 https://i.pinimg.com/originals/39/81/be/3981b … a7b52db2981.jpg
Juster At 95B https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5SfTCVEd-w
SDTA G-401A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37rNwi8iUJ4
Active 75 https://twitter.com/foone/status/1230769894595026946
ESCOM branded https://twitter.com/McLambo/status/1034198048602128384
Target TRG-S100 https://www.reddit.com/r/vintagecomputing/com … cal_midend_90s/
As mentioned on Reddit depending on the lottery same case could house from LM386 and pcspeaker quality transducers to TDA-2020 with proper heavy internal shielding and actual 10W of RMS audio. My friend lucked out in 1996 and got the good kind. Which kind are yours? Hard to tell from the picture. Can you open them up and take a picture of the pcb just for fun? 😀