Hi, I express my thoughts that it does not respect the correctness of time but what I think can be better.
Premise: when I talk about Win9x support, I am referring to games released by max 1998.

Voodoo3000 I believe would be an ideal choice for VESA mode support for DOS games, Win9x games support, Glide games support.

Riva TNT / TNT2 is also a great choice for VESA and Win9x support.

For S3 cards, I suggest Savage 4 which is a great card in VESA compatibility, but must be supported for 3D with at least one Voodoo1 card.

I hope it may have given you food for thought.
😉

If it has PCI X then .. A Matrox Parhelia ?

Unless it has AGP then you have better options.

Given the gaming performance of Pentium Pro processors a PCI Banshee or Voodoo3 is probably the best solution that's still somewhat reasonable and period correct.
They also usually have very decent 2D picture quality.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-03-13, 09:36:

If it has PCI X then .. A Matrox Parhelia ?

Unless it has AGP then you have better options.

Actually when I answered I had also given two AGP solutions, but if I remember correctly, Pentium PRO did not have motherboard with AGP support, and so I modified the post by removing the AGP solutions.

There were Slocket type adapters that allowed to use PPro on slot1 systems (therefore with AGP), but honestly I have never seen any live.

The system for which support is requested is a native PPro server / workstation so I believe it has no AGP support.

Matrox is a great choice for video signal quality and good driver reliability in Win9x environment, however with QuakeEngine or UnrealEngine based 3D games it's a pain 😅
The speech changes for everything else, where the quality of the video signal and the 2D performance of the Matrox cards are absolutely out of the question (read they are flawless) 😉

igna78 wrote on 2022-03-13, 10:10:

Actually when I answered I had also given two AGP solutions, but if I remember correctly, Pentium PRO did not have motherboard w […]
Show full quote

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-03-13, 09:36:

If it has PCI X then .. A Matrox Parhelia ?

Unless it has AGP then you have better options.

Actually when I answered I had also given two AGP solutions, but if I remember correctly, Pentium PRO did not have motherboard with AGP support, and so I modified the post by removing the AGP solutions.

There were Slocket type adapters that allowed to use PPro on slot1 systems (therefore with AGP), but honestly I have never seen any live.

The system for which support is requested is a native PPro server / workstation so I believe it has no AGP support.

Matrox is a great choice for video signal quality and good driver reliability in Win9x environment, however with QuakeEngine or UnrealEngine based 3D games it's a pain 😅
The speech changes for everything else, where the quality of the video signal and the 2D performance of the Matrox cards are absolutely out of the question (read they are flawless) 😉

I recently bought a Matrox Parhelia 256 PCI X because it was both cheap and the board it is heading too has dual PCI X and no AGP, PCI variants of the Voodoo3 are like hens teeth and come with a stupidly high cost, usually a good 100 USD over their AGP brothers, lately its been more due to their rarity.

Same applies to the Banshee, the AGP versions are fairly inexpensive compared to the Voodoo3 but I expect the PCI versions to have crazy prices too again due to rarity.

The crazy prices for anything with 3DFX attached to the name is one of the reasons I dont recommend them any more, they are just too expensive for the majority of people.

I mean . .there is always a good old GeForce 2 MX200/400 PCI which would quite honestly work beautifully in a Pentium Pro system, its also very cheap to acquire and likely give a better all round experience than the Voodoo3.

@TrashPanda
I fully agree with what you say about the prices of any 3dfx card especially if PCI, however not even finding something cheap nVidia PCI compatible with the Win9x era is easy: I would say that almost all good retro hardware is expensive! 😅

Parhelia 256 if I am not mistaken does not have support for Win9x, so WinXP should be used as OS..of course I forget that it is a quad PPro system, it was not born to play but to act as a server / workstation 😄

It was discussed extensively here: Graphics card for Pentium Pro build

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2022-03-13, 16:47:

It was discussed extensively here: Graphics card for Pentium Pro build

I did not know this discussion: as always superb work of @feipoa
😉

Well, I am at an impasse here because this thing is very picky about what hardware it will take. So I am going to have to think hard about this.

Winman486 wrote on 2022-03-13, 22:20:

Well, I am at an impasse here because this thing is very picky about what hardware it will take. So I am going to have to think hard about this.

Sorry to hear the Rage 128 is a bust also 🙁 , but wider Google searches for add-in PCI video cards on this chipset (450GX Orion) returns virtually zero, save for that one HP forum link re. success with a Matrox Mystique. If you're still up for it this is probably where I would give it one last try; maybe a Matrox card from say the original Millenium (MGA-2064W) upto the Mystique / possibly G200 series (most similar 450GX server boards seem to stick to OB Cirrus Logic video, although there are ones from Intergraph with a 2MB MGA-2064W). They seem more in keeping with the servers mid to late 90s vintage.

PC Hoarder Patrol wrote on 2022-03-14, 10:05:

Winman486 wrote on 2022-03-13, 22:20:

Well, I am at an impasse here because this thing is very picky about what hardware it will take. So I am going to have to think hard about this.

Sorry to hear the Rage 128 is a bust also 🙁 , but wider Google searches for add-in PCI video cards on this chipset (450GX Orion) returns virtually zero, save for that one HP forum link re. success with a Matrox Mystique. If you're still up for it this is probably where I would give it one last try; maybe a Matrox card from say the original Millenium (MGA-2064W) upto the Mystique / possibly G200 series (most similar 450GX server boards seem to stick to OB Cirrus Logic video, although there are ones from Intergraph with a 2MB MGA-2064W). They seem more in keeping with the servers mid to late 90s vintage.

What causes this chipset to be such a hard arse when it comes to graphics adaptors ?

PC Hoarder Patrol wrote on 2022-03-14, 10:05:

Winman486 wrote on 2022-03-13, 22:20:

Well, I am at an impasse here because this thing is very picky about what hardware it will take. So I am going to have to think hard about this.

Sorry to hear the Rage 128 is a bust also 🙁 , but wider Google searches for add-in PCI video cards on this chipset (450GX Orion) returns virtually zero, save for that one HP forum link re. success with a Matrox Mystique. If you're still up for it this is probably where I would give it one last try; maybe a Matrox card from say the original Millenium (MGA-2064W) upto the Mystique / possibly G200 series (most similar 450GX server boards seem to stick to OB Cirrus Logic video, although there are ones from Intergraph with a 2MB MGA-2064W). They seem more in keeping with the servers mid to late 90s vintage.

Well, I thought I could try an older rage 128 honestly if I had raid I would just use the 9250 it works.

How about a Matrox MGA-2164W Millennium II PCI?

I just checked what a 450GX based IBM PC Server 704 had and the BIOS Option ROMs were as below.

Winman486 wrote on 2022-03-13, 08:16:

So I just got a rage 128 from 03 no video from it. And the Ati 9250 will show video but the scsi card will not work so I am using an S3 virge I want something that would be the best period 3D accelerator so I can hopefully get it working.
Other post I made Compaq ProLiant 5000 pci video card makes the SCSI card not detect drives

There is always the trusty pci radeon 7500 that seems to just work in everything

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2022-03-13, 16:47:

It was discussed extensively here: Graphics card for Pentium Pro build

I’m now realllly curious to see results of a 7500 on that roundup graph edited into OP I’m thinkin it might beat out that gf2

Well I hate to revive the post but I just acquired a Voodoo 3 2000 PCI will be giving it a try and I will let you all know.

The Voodoo 3 2000 PCI is one of my favourite cards, good choice, just make sure to keep it cool.

I would suggest a Quad CPU Pentium Pro should have a Quad output video card:

https://www.vgamuseum.info/index.php/cpu/item … nimo-pro-4-port

I have a couple of these cards with the breakout cables and was thinking of putting one in a PPro setup. Permedia 2 chips came out a few years after the PPro did.

mwdmeyer wrote on 2023-05-24, 07:51:

The Voodoo 3 2000 PCI is one of my favourite cards, good choice, just make sure to keep it cool.

Thanks! Sadly I got it out and the PSU died after the second power up so I found some on ebay sadly they are $350 bucks. I did make an offer and I intended to get a new one. I thought about looking at the board diagram and reversing the pinout to ATX but there is a ribbon cable of sense wires running to the motherboard so I do not know if fixing it that way would work.

The remote ilo 2 or RILOE 2 is an officially supported option and has am ATI Rage II chip, as a bonus you can access the server from old old browsers.
Part# 237496-001 / SP#232386-001

but seems like its least of your troubles now, Good luck on the power supply!