VivienM wrote on 2024-09-21, 00:01:

I don't think I said anything about "stopping sending chips", although Anand (in the article I linked - https://www.anandtech.co […]
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ElectroSoldier wrote on 2024-09-20, 12:00:

The reason why is because there are several "mistakes" that keep coming up. […]
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VivienM wrote on 2024-09-20, 02:22:

I'm not even sure what we're arguing about anymore. […]
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I'm not even sure what we're arguing about anymore.

In September/October 1999, they launched the 133MHz FSB Coppermines with the i820 chipset. They did not offer an SDRAM option for the 133MHz FSB chips, at least not one with AGP. They expected the middle-to-high-end of the market to adopt RDRAM. But RDRAM was priced out of contention while the price of SDRAM was just plunging.

By late January 2000, they were launching the ugly MTH hack. And recalling it by April.

Finally, in late June, they launch the i815 and put the whole thing behind them. (Until they recreated a similar mess with the P4... starting in November, six months later)

You may want to read the great Anand Lal Shimpi's take on 2000's chipset situation - https://www.anandtech.com/show/693/5 . And actually, Anand wrote that Intel was threatening to cut 440BX shipments to Taiwanese board makers.

How did they not "starve" the market of SDRAM chipsets?!? If they weren't obsessed with pushing RDRAM, they would presumably have launched the 133MHz coppermines with an i815-like SDRAM chipset and have avoided this weird awkward mess for 8 months, not to mention the MTH recall. Not to mention putting some of their most loyal large OEMs like Dell in a bit of a bind - hard to market an RDRAM i820 system against a high-end SDRAM Athlon. And I could be wrong about this, but I think this was the time when other large Intel-only OEMs like Gateway started offering AMD.

Honestly, the whole thing reminds me a bit of x64 vs Itanium - Intel had their dumb stubborn idea, someone else comes out with a more practical alternative, Intel is forced to adopt the more practical alternative, except in this case it's VIA's SDRAM chipsets playing the role of AMD's x64.

And believe me, I remember that period well too. I ordered one of Dell's last 440BX Slot 1 systems in late June 2000. And everybody was talking about this situation, the impending i815 launch, etc.

The reason why is because there are several "mistakes" that keep coming up.

Ill just concentrate, this time, on the first paragraph and show you what I mean.

"In September/October 1999, they launched the 133MHz FSB Coppermines with the i820 chipset."

Right thats technically true. The rest of the statement is also true.
You make it sound like Intel have done something wrong there in doing that.
I cant find anything that shows PC-133 RAM actually on sale until 2000...

"Anand wrote that Intel was threatening to cut 440BX shipments to Taiwanese board makers. "

Where does he write that?

Because that and what was actually happening isnt the same thing.
The way you say it Intel was threatening to stop sending chips to manufacturers. Where as it was telling manufacturers it will be stopping production, and so supply would dry up.

I don't think I said anything about "stopping sending chips", although Anand (in the article I linked - https://www.anandtech.com/show/693/5 ) suggested that Intel would indeed slow down/stop shipments of the 440BX. (Which, in itself, isn't that nefarious - the 440BX was old, it just... didn't have a proper replacement in the lineup until June 2000)

What chips would they stop sending?

The problem is the chip they didn't launch. They shipped exactly zero chipsets that could support 133FSB, 4X AGP, UltraATA 66 with native SDRAM support between October-November 1999 and June 2000. They didn't stop shipping it because they never launched it.

If you were Dell in December 1999 and you had a nice little shipment of 133MHz FSB Coppermines and you called up Intel and said "hey guys, we'd like to buy some motherboards/chipsets to pair those processors with SDRAM and have some AGP slots", Intel did not have a product for Dell to order until the i815 launched in June 2000. Dell ended up selling a ton of XPS Txxxr 440BX 100FSB systems until June 2000; many others paired their 133MHz Coppermines with VIA chipsets.

Isn't there something a bit "odd" about the fact that Intel, which has dominated the market for chipsets for its own processors since, oh, I don't know, one of the earlier Pentium chipsets like the Triton or maybe even before did not have a passable chipset to offer to go along with its flagship processors for eight months?

I don't understand what is so controversial about this: the market wanted an SDRAM chipset with AGP 4X, 133MHz FSB support, etc to pair those lovely Coppermines with. Intel told people "you're going to use RDRAM and you're going to like it", at least until VIA came along with their own SDRAM chipset (and "coincidentally" at a time when the Slot A Athlons made AMD a player at the high end.). Then they scrambled, launched the i815 in June 2000 with a few weird face-saving quirks trying to pretend it wasn't a high-end chipset, and that was the end of RDRAM on the PIII platform.

And it seems clear enough to me that if it wasn't for i) the VIA chipset, and ii) AMD being a serious competitive threat (and doing so using SDRAM), they probably... would have eventually discontinued the 440BX (and/or the 100MHz Coppermines) without an SDRAM replacement. And really, the 440BX was becoming obsolete, the world was going to move towards the P4 anyways, etc., so whether it remained available or not was less important...

As I said earlier, the more I think about this, the more this reminds me of Itanium vs x64. Same story - Intel has some bold aggressive plan to just abruptly end the evolution of the existing stuff and force people to something new and different and expensive. And AMD/VIA/etc come along and undermine that plan, forcing Intel to adopt the lower-priced, lower-disruption path instead.

You said
"Anand wrote that Intel was threatening to cut 440BX shipments to Taiwanese board makers."

They actually said
"With the threat of the BX chipset supply drying up"

That isnt the same thing.
Intel was threatening to stop the production of the chipsets and so the supply would dry up.

When you say "cut 440BX shipments" it makes it sound like Intel had then to send but wouldnt be sending them because they wanted to boaard makers to use the I820 instead.

Intel did have a flagship chipset that supported their new 133FSB CPUs. It was the i820.
The only reason your argument stands up is you add the caveat that it must support SDRAM.
That is a limitation that you set for it, not Intel.

They did have a passable chipset it just that you dont want it because it isnt cheap. It didnt give all the frills you want with a bargain cost. If you wanted that then there was the 810 chipset.
And it wasnt even that the chipset was expensive, it was the RAM you put with it that was more expensive than SDRAM. Had RDRAM been the same cost as SDRAM then this conversation might never have happened.

Yes I think it is like the IA-64 vs AMD64. Intel had an idea and pushed on with it, then somebody showed a cheaper alternative and it took Intel some time to change course and follow.

VivienM wrote on 2024-09-21, 00:01:

As I said earlier, the more I think about this, the more this reminds me of Itanium vs x64. Same story - Intel has some bold aggressive plan to just abruptly end the evolution of the existing stuff and force people to something new and different and expensive. And AMD/VIA/etc come along and undermine that plan, forcing Intel to adopt the lower-priced, lower-disruption path instead.

I just learned that Intel made similar mistakes with Optane / 3D Xpoint and even dragged Micron with them.

Anyway, there might be no Intel in the foreseeable future: https://www.wsj.com/business/deals/qualcomm-a … t-days-fa114f9d

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2024-09-21, 14:07:

Intel did have a flagship chipset that supported their new 133FSB CPUs. It was the i820. The only reason your argument stands up […]
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Intel did have a flagship chipset that supported their new 133FSB CPUs. It was the i820.
The only reason your argument stands up is you add the caveat that it must support SDRAM.
That is a limitation that you set for it, not Intel.

They did have a passable chipset it just that you dont want it because it isnt cheap. It didnt give all the frills you want with a bargain cost. If you wanted that then there was the 810 chipset.
And it wasnt even that the chipset was expensive, it was the RAM you put with it that was more expensive than SDRAM. Had RDRAM been the same cost as SDRAM then this conversation might never have happened.

No, it is a limitation that the market set for it. The market did not want to pay for RDRAM at a time when the price of SDRAM was plunging.

Just earlier today, I was looking at an IBM system on eBay. One of those white business desktops, I forget the name now. A P3 933 system. There were photos of the motherboard in the listing, and you could see a VIA chip. So even IBM's business desktops in ~2000 were using VIA chipsets. Why would they be doing that, if it wasn't for this whole mess?

The world is littered with VIA 133MHz FSB socket 370 boards. Honestly, go and look for Coppermine stuff on eBay, the majority of what you'll find is probably VIA, or maybe i815. Including in many non-Dell large-OEM systems like IBM or HP. The ONLY reason those boards were made/sold in the first place is because people didn't like the "expensive RAM on i820, no AGP on i810" dichotomy Intel tried to impose.

And yes, if RDRAM had been the price of SDRAM, I presume the market would have embraced it. (Although it had additional quirks like the requirement for continuity RIMMs in otherwise empty slots) But unfortunately for Intel's strategy, i) the price of RDRAM did not fall quickly enough, ii) Rambus' attempts to levy royalties on SDRAM failed, and iii) Via/AMD were able to offer alternatives using cheaper SDRAM.

VivienM wrote on 2024-09-21, 21:00:

No, it is a limitation that the market set for it. The market did not want to pay for RDRAM at a time when the price of SDRAM wa […]
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ElectroSoldier wrote on 2024-09-21, 14:07:

Intel did have a flagship chipset that supported their new 133FSB CPUs. It was the i820. The only reason your argument stands up […]
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Intel did have a flagship chipset that supported their new 133FSB CPUs. It was the i820.
The only reason your argument stands up is you add the caveat that it must support SDRAM.
That is a limitation that you set for it, not Intel.

They did have a passable chipset it just that you dont want it because it isnt cheap. It didnt give all the frills you want with a bargain cost. If you wanted that then there was the 810 chipset.
And it wasnt even that the chipset was expensive, it was the RAM you put with it that was more expensive than SDRAM. Had RDRAM been the same cost as SDRAM then this conversation might never have happened.

No, it is a limitation that the market set for it. The market did not want to pay for RDRAM at a time when the price of SDRAM was plunging.

Just earlier today, I was looking at an IBM system on eBay. One of those white business desktops, I forget the name now. A P3 933 system. There were photos of the motherboard in the listing, and you could see a VIA chip. So even IBM's business desktops in ~2000 were using VIA chipsets. Why would they be doing that, if it wasn't for this whole mess?

The world is littered with VIA 133MHz FSB socket 370 boards. Honestly, go and look for Coppermine stuff on eBay, the majority of what you'll find is probably VIA, or maybe i815. Including in many non-Dell large-OEM systems like IBM or HP. The ONLY reason those boards were made/sold in the first place is because people didn't like the "expensive RAM on i820, no AGP on i810" dichotomy Intel tried to impose.

And yes, if RDRAM had been the price of SDRAM, I presume the market would have embraced it. (Although it had additional quirks like the requirement for continuity RIMMs in otherwise empty slots) But unfortunately for Intel's strategy, i) the price of RDRAM did not fall quickly enough, ii) Rambus' attempts to levy royalties on SDRAM failed, and iii) Via/AMD were able to offer alternatives using cheaper SDRAM.

But in that time frame (1999-2000) the prices of RAM were not plunging.
It wasnt until 2001, nearly a whole year after all this finished that RAM prices started falling at a dramatic rate.
I have the historical figures, you can track the prices. So it wasnt because the prices of RAM was falling.
And looking at those same figures you can also see when PC-133 SDRAM hit the markets in any appreciable quantity too, so your example of Dell wanting to sell a PC133 based Pentium 3 system at the end of '99 but having no good chipset to base it on was a bad one.

Again I would disagree with you on the rise in use of the VIA chipsets, where I disagree is

VivienM wrote on 2024-09-18, 00:42:

They basically starved the market of non-RDRAM chipsets.

They didnt, there were plenty. It is just that those chipsets didnt have the features you want to see on them.
And even there, baring in mind back then people lived from monthly magazine to magazine this only lasted a few months before the PC133 Pentium 3 was last years old news. Because it was already starting to be about the Pentium 4.

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2024-09-22, 14:19:

But in that time frame (1999-2000) the prices of RAM were not plunging.
It wasnt until 2001, nearly a whole year after all this finished that RAM prices started falling at a dramatic rate.
I have the historical figures, you can track the prices. So it wasnt because the prices of RAM was falling.

I remember a huge decrease in 2001, will take your word about the first half of 2000.

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2024-09-22, 14:19:

And looking at those same figures you can also see when PC-133 SDRAM hit the markets in any appreciable quantity too, so your example of Dell wanting to sell a PC133 based Pentium 3 system at the end of '99 but having no good chipset to base it on was a bad one.

Why would the memory companies ship PC133 SDRAM in late 1999 when there were... essentially no chipsets for it?

I don't know what percentage of memory sales is OEM systems vs retail, I assume OEM is the wide majority. In late 1999, Dell and Gateway and IBM and Compaq and HP are needing PC66/PC100 or RDRAM. That's what the chipsets can take. They're not building a ton of systems with VIA chipsets that might support 133MHz SDRAM just yet. Did the i820/MTH support 133MHz SDRAM?

In some ways, that's like SATA ODDs. You could not find a single SATA ODD in a shop in spring of 2006. Then Intel removed PATA from the chipset, and magically, SATA ODDs turned up in large OEM systems... and within a few weeks started showing up at enthusiast shops. ODD makers were fully capable of making SATA ODDs, they just didn't, presumably because the demand was not there for as long as PATA was around.

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2024-09-22, 14:19:

Again I would disagree with you on the rise in use of the VIA chipsets, where I disagree is […]
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Again I would disagree with you on the rise in use of the VIA chipsets, where I disagree is

VivienM wrote on 2024-09-18, 00:42:

They basically starved the market of non-RDRAM chipsets.

They didnt, there were plenty. It is just that those chipsets didnt have the features you want to see on them.
And even there, baring in mind back then people lived from monthly magazine to magazine this only lasted a few months before the PC133 Pentium 3 was last years old news. Because it was already starting to be about the Pentium 4.

Okay, I think we're completely arguing about semantics here.

Would you prefer I have worded it: "they basically starved the market of non-RDRAM chipsets with the features the middle/high-end of the market was desiring"?

They offered SDRAM chipsets that lacked the feature set the market wanted to see. They offered those features on RDRAM chipsets. (And VIA offered those features on SDRAM chipsets) Do we agree on that?

Do we also agree that Intel's strategy in Q1/Q2 2000 was to tell anybody (e.g. Dell, or Joe Schmoe going to the computer store down the street) who wanted to build a system with a 133FSB Coppermine with AGP that they should get an i820 with RDRAM? And, indeed, that Intel did not offer any other options for that particular scenario?

I call that "starving the market of SDRAM chipsets". You... apparently... do not.

And the fact that the market was starved is further shown by the enthusiastic, enthusiastic response towards the i815, including the number of surviving PIII systems that are i815/Coppermine/SDRAM. I have been looking at new listings on eBay with the word 'Pentium' for weeks, and i815/socket 370 Coppermines are by far the most plentiful thing that comes up from the PIII era (sadly, they are... not... what I am looking for.), followed by 440BX Katmais.

And my guess is that a good number of these i815/socket 370 Coppermines on eBay are actually from the early P4 socket 423/Willamette era because, again, there wasn't any kind of SDRAM option for P4 until fall 2001.

VivienM wrote on 2024-09-22, 17:15:

I remember a huge decrease in 2001, will take your word about the first half of 2000. […]
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ElectroSoldier wrote on 2024-09-22, 14:19:

But in that time frame (1999-2000) the prices of RAM were not plunging.
It wasnt until 2001, nearly a whole year after all this finished that RAM prices started falling at a dramatic rate.
I have the historical figures, you can track the prices. So it wasnt because the prices of RAM was falling.

I remember a huge decrease in 2001, will take your word about the first half of 2000.

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2024-09-22, 14:19:

And looking at those same figures you can also see when PC-133 SDRAM hit the markets in any appreciable quantity too, so your example of Dell wanting to sell a PC133 based Pentium 3 system at the end of '99 but having no good chipset to base it on was a bad one.

Why would the memory companies ship PC133 SDRAM in late 1999 when there were... essentially no chipsets for it?

I don't know what percentage of memory sales is OEM systems vs retail, I assume OEM is the wide majority. In late 1999, Dell and Gateway and IBM and Compaq and HP are needing PC66/PC100 or RDRAM. That's what the chipsets can take. They're not building a ton of systems with VIA chipsets that might support 133MHz SDRAM just yet. Did the i820/MTH support 133MHz SDRAM?

In some ways, that's like SATA ODDs. You could not find a single SATA ODD in a shop in spring of 2006. Then Intel removed PATA from the chipset, and magically, SATA ODDs turned up in large OEM systems... and within a few weeks started showing up at enthusiast shops. ODD makers were fully capable of making SATA ODDs, they just didn't, presumably because the demand was not there for as long as PATA was around.

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2024-09-22, 14:19:

Again I would disagree with you on the rise in use of the VIA chipsets, where I disagree is […]
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Again I would disagree with you on the rise in use of the VIA chipsets, where I disagree is

VivienM wrote on 2024-09-18, 00:42:

They basically starved the market of non-RDRAM chipsets.

They didnt, there were plenty. It is just that those chipsets didnt have the features you want to see on them.
And even there, baring in mind back then people lived from monthly magazine to magazine this only lasted a few months before the PC133 Pentium 3 was last years old news. Because it was already starting to be about the Pentium 4.

Okay, I think we're completely arguing about semantics here.

Would you prefer I have worded it: "they basically starved the market of non-RDRAM chipsets with the features the middle/high-end of the market was desiring"?

They offered SDRAM chipsets that lacked the feature set the market wanted to see. They offered those features on RDRAM chipsets. (And VIA offered those features on SDRAM chipsets) Do we agree on that?

Do we also agree that Intel's strategy in Q1/Q2 2000 was to tell anybody (e.g. Dell, or Joe Schmoe going to the computer store down the street) who wanted to build a system with a 133FSB Coppermine with AGP that they should get an i820 with RDRAM? And, indeed, that Intel did not offer any other options for that particular scenario?

I call that "starving the market of SDRAM chipsets". You... apparently... do not.

And the fact that the market was starved is further shown by the enthusiastic, enthusiastic response towards the i815, including the number of surviving PIII systems that are i815/Coppermine/SDRAM. I have been looking at new listings on eBay with the word 'Pentium' for weeks, and i815/socket 370 Coppermines are by far the most plentiful thing that comes up from the PIII era (sadly, they are... not... what I am looking for.), followed by 440BX Katmais.

And my guess is that a good number of these i815/socket 370 Coppermines on eBay are actually from the early P4 socket 423/Willamette era because, again, there wasn't any kind of SDRAM option for P4 until fall 2001.

There was a decrease in price in 2000 but that was the month they changed from PC100 to PC133.
A 64Mb stick of RAM was selling for $99.99 at the start of the year in March it had dropped to $69 and then April it was $54 (in march of '99 it was $79, RAM prices go down and up and down and up)
PC133 started selling and had reached retail volume sales by July. It was PC133 that caused PC100 prices to start dropping, but it was only the price of PC100 RAM that dropped, the price of PC133 was stable. It wasnt until February 2001 that PC133 prices dropped and by October they had fallen off a cliff.

Which one motherboard do you recommend?

Most of them based on chipset 440bx

Socket370

GIGABYTE 6BXC
Abit BE6-II
GIGABYTE 6BXC REV 2.0
MSI BX Master
Asus CUBX
ASUS P2B
QDI Advance 10T
ECS P6S5AT

Slot1

Abit BE6
AOpen AX6BC
Abit BH6
MSI MS6119
Gigabyte GA-6BXC
EPoX EP-61 BXA-M

I would like to remind you that I am interested in P3 Coppermine 800-866mhz.

I heard that Radeon drivers are problematic and it's better to buy a Geforce graphics card.

If you want to use P3 with FSB 133 MHz, then it's probably safer to choose i815 (max 512 MB of RAM, no ISA if you care) or VIA Apollo Pro 133A/T (...694X/T) based motherboard.

i440BX might have issues with overclocked AGP and some models also have troubles with more power hungry AGP cards. Eg. my ABIT BE6 and BH6 both have issues with my Prolink GF2 Ti while this card works flawlessly in KT266A or i845/875 motherboards.

ECS P6S5AT is also interesting motherboard as it supports FSB 166 with proper divider, but it's pretty rare and rather expensive.

How do you think, does performance P3 733mhz is clearly weaker than P3 866mhz?

I know that earlier I wrote about install WinXP but, now I find that since I met P3 in 2001 on Win98 I should choose W98.

But is a little problem. I prefer install drivers by Usb. I don't think that Win98 can use usb-stick without drivers.

That's why I keep nusb33e.exe on a diskette.

PD2JK wrote on 2024-09-25, 20:40:

That's why I keep nusb33e.exe on a diskette.

But I don't want floppy drive 😜

I can use a CD drive. I Install W98 later I put Cd with nusb33e.exe and then flashdrive is open.

GreenBook wrote on 2024-09-25, 20:46:

But I don't want floppy drive 😜

I can use a CD drive. I Install W98 later I put Cd with nusb33e.exe and then flashdrive is open.

You don't have to use floppy disks daily or even install an FDD on your chassis, but having a working drive and a few working disks can make retro computing much easier.

I had an IBM thinkpad T43 laptop almost 20 years ago. With the cpu of PentiumM 1.73GHz, and up to 2G DDR1 RAM.
The factory OS was WinXP sp2. Fairly speaking, it was quite nice at first.
However, after the sp3 released, everything went to slow. Not unacceptable slow, but obviously slower compared to the original os version. Especially when I installed the Microsoft Office.
The Pentium M series is basiclly a high frequency Tualatin CPU. Therefore I think the older P3 CPU belongs to the Windows98 era.

IMO, the best platform of WinXp should be socket 775. They're quite powerful, good compatibility, quite cheap, and very easy to find.

SP3 and all the .Net stuff makes it a bit sluggish, but with 2 GB RAM there shouldn‘t be a problem - replacing the HDD with a newer one (f.e. a 1 or 2 TB with 7.2k) would give it a good boost.

But yes…on a PIII I also recommend Win98SE!

kind regards
soggi

quigonhu wrote on 2024-09-26, 12:06:

I had an IBM thinkpad T43 laptop almost 20 years ago. With the cpu of PentiumM 1.73GHz, and up to 2G DDR1 RAM. The factory OS wa […]
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I had an IBM thinkpad T43 laptop almost 20 years ago. With the cpu of PentiumM 1.73GHz, and up to 2G DDR1 RAM.
The factory OS was WinXP sp2. Fairly speaking, it was quite nice at first.
However, after the sp3 released, everything went to slow. Not unacceptable slow, but obviously slower compared to the original os version. Especially when I installed the Microsoft Office.
The Pentium M series is basiclly a high frequency Tualatin CPU. Therefore I think the older P3 CPU belongs to the Windows98 era.

IMO, the best platform of WinXp should be socket 775. They're quite powerful, good compatibility, quite cheap, and very easy to find.

Seconded. Your T43 had a Pentium M 740 right? I got an X32 with Pentium M 735 at 1.70 GHz and felt about the same.

Most single-core Pentium 4 or Athlon XP had similar performance (including desktop variants) so running either WinXP SP3 or Vista (released more than a year earlier) on them would be far from satisfactory. Those OS were made for a new generation of CPU (with dual-core and 65 nm or less lithography).

SP3 and all the .Net stuff makes it a bit sluggish, but with 2 GB RAM there shouldn‘t be a problem - replacing the HDD with a newer one (f.e. a 1 or 2 TB with 7.2k) would give it a good boost.

But yes…on a PIII I also recommend Win98SE!

Hi, our family PC in 2000 was a Pentium 3 @733 MHz and it shipped with Windows 98SE..
Insofar, I agree there's nothing wrong with choosing Windows 98SE here.

Windows 2000 and XP are also fine, though.
Their minimum requirements are not that far away from that of Windows 98SE.
And both 98SE and XP are merely about a year apart from Windows 2000, so they're all pretty close in term of period-correctness.

In the end, it depends what the system is supposed to do.
Windows 2000/XP are far more stable and also running "smoother", provided that RAM is being expanded.
On other hand, Windows 98SE drivers (VXDs) are more powerful and some graphics cards like ATI Rage Fury Maxx need Windows 9x to function properly.
So if a high FPS rate is important, Windows 98SE might be a little bit ahead.

PS: There are also dual Pentium II or Pentium III mainboards. On such mainboards, Windows XP might be the OS of choice.
While games themselves that era don't do much multi-threading, the Windows scheduler might be able to move heavy load (disk i/o, networking etc) to the other processor.
Which in turn might improve overall performance. On other hand, an SCSI or hardware RAID controller might also help to improve performance on a single CPU system.

Jo22 wrote on 2024-09-27, 14:13:

PS: There are also dual Pentium II or Pentium III mainboards. On such mainboards, Windows XP might be the OS of choice. While ga […]
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SP3 and all the .Net stuff makes it a bit sluggish, but with 2 GB RAM there shouldn‘t be a problem - replacing the HDD with a newer one (f.e. a 1 or 2 TB with 7.2k) would give it a good boost.

But yes…on a PIII I also recommend Win98SE!

PS: There are also dual Pentium II or Pentium III mainboards. On such mainboards, Windows XP might be the OS of choice.
While games themselves that era don't do much multi-threading, the Windows scheduler might be able to move heavy load (disk i/o, networking etc) to the other processor.
Which in turn might improve overall performance. On other hand, an SCSI or hardware RAID controller might also help to improve performance on a single CPU system.

I can let the rest slide but that I cant.

From a 450 up to 750 you are better on a version of NT4. It runs like a dream on any of them.
800 to 1400 then it has to be Windows 2000, its as smooth as silk and solid as bedrock.

You can run XP on the higher speed Coppermine and Tualatins of course, but they do run lovely on 2000.
You can set affinity of processes to processors and handle the threads that way, it works well but it is a bit of work.

Depends on what the machine is for...

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2024-09-27, 15:05:

From a 450 up to 750 you are better on a version of NT4. It runs like a dream on any of them. 800 to 1400 then it has to be Wind […]
Show full quote

From a 450 up to 750 you are better on a version of NT4. It runs like a dream on any of them.
800 to 1400 then it has to be Windows 2000, its as smooth as silk and solid as bedrock.

You can run XP on the higher speed Coppermine and Tualatins of course, but they do run lovely on 2000.
You can set affinity of processes to processors and handle the threads that way, it works well but it is a bit of work.

Depends on what the machine is for...

Win2000 is... less hardware-hungry than people remember. I put it on a K6 266 with... I forget how much RAM... to give an aging Aptiva-nee-Acer to my aunt, and it was perfectly passable in 2002, I think she used it two years or so before getting one of the ubiquitous Celeron Dell 2400/3000s with XP. I was actually very surprised...

VivienM wrote on 2024-09-27, 20:47:

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2024-09-27, 15:05:

From a 450 up to 750 you are better on a version of NT4. It runs like a dream on any of them. 800 to 1400 then it has to be Wind […]
Show full quote

From a 450 up to 750 you are better on a version of NT4. It runs like a dream on any of them.
800 to 1400 then it has to be Windows 2000, its as smooth as silk and solid as bedrock.

You can run XP on the higher speed Coppermine and Tualatins of course, but they do run lovely on 2000.
You can set affinity of processes to processors and handle the threads that way, it works well but it is a bit of work.

Depends on what the machine is for...

Win2000 is... less hardware-hungry than people remember. I put it on a K6 266 with... I forget how much RAM... to give an aging Aptiva-nee-Acer to my aunt, and it was perfectly passable in 2002, I think she used it two years or so before getting one of the ubiquitous Celeron Dell 2400/3000s with XP. I was actually very surprised...

2k first edition was a dream on almost anything as long as you had plenty of ram.

Ppros ran 2k quite well with 256mb of ram

VivienM wrote on 2024-09-27, 20:47:

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2024-09-27, 15:05:

From a 450 up to 750 you are better on a version of NT4. It runs like a dream on any of them. 800 to 1400 then it has to be Wind […]
Show full quote

From a 450 up to 750 you are better on a version of NT4. It runs like a dream on any of them.
800 to 1400 then it has to be Windows 2000, its as smooth as silk and solid as bedrock.

You can run XP on the higher speed Coppermine and Tualatins of course, but they do run lovely on 2000.
You can set affinity of processes to processors and handle the threads that way, it works well but it is a bit of work.

Depends on what the machine is for...

Win2000 is... less hardware-hungry than people remember. I put it on a K6 266 with... I forget how much RAM... to give an aging Aptiva-nee-Acer to my aunt, and it was perfectly passable in 2002, I think she used it two years or so before getting one of the ubiquitous Celeron Dell 2400/3000s with XP. I was actually very surprised...

I think the "lowest" CPU I ever had it installed on was a Pentium II 266.
It was so long ago I cant really remember how well it ran, but I do remember it on a P3 733 and I was happy with it. Anything more and it only gets better.

rmay635703 wrote on 2024-09-28, 00:49:

VivienM wrote on 2024-09-27, 20:47:

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2024-09-27, 15:05:

From a 450 up to 750 you are better on a version of NT4. It runs like a dream on any of them. 800 to 1400 then it has to be Wind […]
Show full quote

From a 450 up to 750 you are better on a version of NT4. It runs like a dream on any of them.
800 to 1400 then it has to be Windows 2000, its as smooth as silk and solid as bedrock.

You can run XP on the higher speed Coppermine and Tualatins of course, but they do run lovely on 2000.
You can set affinity of processes to processors and handle the threads that way, it works well but it is a bit of work.

Depends on what the machine is for...

Win2000 is... less hardware-hungry than people remember. I put it on a K6 266 with... I forget how much RAM... to give an aging Aptiva-nee-Acer to my aunt, and it was perfectly passable in 2002, I think she used it two years or so before getting one of the ubiquitous Celeron Dell 2400/3000s with XP. I was actually very surprised...

2k first edition was a dream on almost anything as long as you had plenty of ram.

Ppros ran 2k quite well with 256mb of ram

It did get bogged down with Service Packs as the years went by thats for sure.