a few suggestions

1 ) I wouldnt bother with an ATA133 card, ATA100 is plenty fast as it is and its highly doubtful that you will see any real difference, a 10K RPM SATA or SCSI drive would make more difference.

2) I would go with a Geforce 5900 or 5950 , mainly because it has better compatibility with older games, as well as running Splinter Cell correctly.

3) try and find the 1.4Ghz Tualatin with the 512K of cache.

4) A heatsink I like is the Zalman CNPS3100 , its a copper heatsink thats meant more for an Athlon , but its very nice , also means you can use one fan to cool down both CPUs, getting 2 of them might be a bit difficult though.

5) remember that whichever heatsink you get , Tualatins can have some issues with normal PIII heatsinks because of the heat spreader, meaning alot of S370 heatsinks are not tall enough. Later heatsinks designed for the Athlon XP will generally work better.

6) Empire at war on a Pentium III ? cant imagine it would be fun , but might be an interesting experiment.

(yes I know its in the minimum requirements for empire at war , but I cant imagine it would run that well)

I've always liked the Copper Silent 3's. Cheap, silent and effective.
I'm not 100% certain they will fit the higher Tualatins though but it's a good cooler to have around anyway (I bought over a dozen NIB a couple years ago, they can cool anything silently unless you go into extreme overclocking perhaps).
For CPU HSF another of my favorites is to use copper-based stock AMD HSF's (you can swap HSF fans around if they still are too loud for your taste). A while ago these were very cheap and you can bend the mounting clips quite easily so they will fit Tualatin chips.

For a graphics card, I've used a modded 7600GS for years (used the card in 3 rigs). It was a passive cooled card, but it did get hot if I left it that way.
I somehow mounted a silent 8cm case fan onto it and it ran cool no matter what I had it run.

I had a friend remove the honeycomb little tiny holes and mounted 8cm fan grills (scavenged from vroken PSU's so they were free) in place, it was much more silent that way and cooled better as well.

1- A modern SATA drive + a SATA->IDE adapter will probably work fine, as long as you do some research and get one that lets you enable DMA. But if the only OS you are running is Windows XP you might as well get a SATAII controller card (and disable the onboard controllers to free up IRQs).
2- If you want to splurge, get a fast SSHD. The SSD caching is transparent to the OS (it just sees a normal HDD) but you still get the improved loading times for frequently used stuff.
3- Stay with FX cards if you want better compatibility with older games. I think later Radeon cards had better backwards compatibility than GF6 and beyond, but double check before getting anything.
4- Look into Athlon heatsinks/coolers, but be sure your board has enough clearance, as some Athlon coolers can be pretty big. Try getting heatsinks that use standard 80mm fans, as you can get plenty of silent modern fans to replace the old noiser ones, and get stuff with at least a copper base.

Thank for the tips guys. Also I had a system with a 6600gt and never had any problems with the games I play. If I did I'd used the voodoo2 thats in the system. I'm more conserned about the CPUs not being able to drive the card so to say.
Also empire at war plays grate on the system at medium video settings. The gpu is toping out believe it or not. The game is using both CPUs. About 80% of one and 20% of the other one.

I did not thing think a 133 card would help much. I rather not deal with a sata to pata thing. Looks like a good simple idea but I reather get a Sata card that and I'm running Win2k. The idea about the latter amd cooler seem like the way to go. I have a dual setup so I'm abit limited on space.

I have used some cheap SATA2IDE adapter years ago when I upgraded the harddrive of my XP rig and it worked without errors..but I somehow had the idea that it was actually a lot slower than using a real IDE drive (board had no SATA ports iirc). So it worked for me (never any issues), but just so damned slow 🤣

Tetrium wrote:

I have used some cheap SATA2IDE adapter years ago when I upgraded the harddrive of my XP rig and it worked without errors..but I somehow had the idea that it was actually a lot slower than using a real IDE drive (board had no SATA ports iirc). So it worked for me (never any issues), but just so damned slow 🤣

The adapter you had probably did not support UDMA. I also have one adapter, but whenever I plug an HDD in it, it gets stuck in PIO mode, and that is slow as hell.

alexanrs wrote:

Tetrium wrote:

I have used some cheap SATA2IDE adapter years ago when I upgraded the harddrive of my XP rig and it worked without errors..but I somehow had the idea that it was actually a lot slower than using a real IDE drive (board had no SATA ports iirc). So it worked for me (never any issues), but just so damned slow 🤣

The adapter you had probably did not support UDMA. I also have one adapter, but whenever I plug an HDD in it, it gets stuck in PIO mode, and that is slow as hell.

This is why I don't want to bother with one. Nice idea but not worth it to me.

alexanrs wrote:

Tetrium wrote:

I have used some cheap SATA2IDE adapter years ago when I upgraded the harddrive of my XP rig and it worked without errors..but I somehow had the idea that it was actually a lot slower than using a real IDE drive (board had no SATA ports iirc). So it worked for me (never any issues), but just so damned slow 🤣

The adapter you had probably did not support UDMA. I also have one adapter, but whenever I plug an HDD in it, it gets stuck in PIO mode, and that is slow as hell.

Good call. I think you are correct in this. But at least it wasn't too much slower then the loud WD IDE drive it replaced and it had more room (and the old drive was fragmented very badly) 😁

saturn wrote:

This is why I don't want to bother with one. Nice idea but not worth it to me.

Its more of a Win98/DOS thing. SATAII controllers do not have Win9x drivers and Promise SATA I cards have issues with SATAII+ drives, and some SATA I controllers have DMA issues under Windows 9x. For 2K/XP you can just get a good SATAII controller and call it a day.

Faster:

- Get some PCI SATA card, plug in some cheap SSD, install OS in the SSD. Even handi-capped by the PCI bus the system will fly.

- Get a couple Tuallys 1400-S, hack until they run, and OC the hell out of them.

Quieter:

- Get some case with provision for at least one 120mm fan front intake and one 120mm rear top exhaust.

- Get decent quiet 120mm case fans that will move lots of air with little or no noise, v.g. Noctua S-12A ULN are awesome (if expensive).

- With overkill case ventilation, good enough CPU heatsinks can go passive, no CPU fans (PIIIs generate little heat even OCed).

- Cut out all case fan grilles. Don't even think about fan filters. Do at least some basic cable management. Let the air flow.

saturn wrote:

... Put passive heatinks on eavry chip/part thats gets warm. I have a lot of old heatsink I can cut up and up. But no thermal tape ...

Cool (pun intended) idea. If you look carefully you'll see many small homebrew heatsinks all over the place 😉 (56K warning):

. . .

saturn wrote:

... But no thermal tape ...

Who needs that? I just super-glue them. 😎

Super glue? I'll pass. It's a desktop case, you know the kind you put a crt on top of. I have thermal pads. I bet I could get away with them. I have a 10k rpm wb drive maybe I could use it with a sata card, I don't remember it being to nosy.

Thermal paste on the center and drops of super glue on the corners work like a charm.

http://www.overclock.net/t/163286/old-vram-he … ck#post_1809264

Make my PC faster and quieter.

Wrap it up in foam and put it in the trunk of a Ferrari. 🤣

I've used those 'funnel' fan adapters so I could install larger diameter fans that turn slower (quieter) but still put out enough air.
Done so on both cases and CPU coolers.
.

TELVM wrote:

Thermal paste on the center and drops of super glue on the corners work like a charm. […]
Show full quote

Thermal paste on the center and drops of super glue on the corners work like a charm.

http://www.overclock.net/t/163286/old-vram-he … ck#post_1809264

Why do I always forget you can use it that way. 😒 just make sure you leave room for the air to be pushed out by the tim.

PCBONEZ wrote:

Make my PC faster and quieter.

Wrap it up in foam and put it in the trunk of a Ferrari. 🤣

That only works for a short wile, until the Ferrari brakes down. That is if you can fit it in the trunk. Now a jag would be q better idea. 😁

saturn wrote:

PCBONEZ wrote:

Make my PC faster and quieter.

Wrap it up in foam and put it in the trunk of a Ferrari. 🤣

That only works for a short wile, until the Ferrari brakes down. That is if you can fit it in the trunk. Now a jag would be q better idea. 😁

I like Jags too. Used to cut wrecked ones up to salvage their IRS for hot rods.
Just that after seeing all the resident beamer lubbers in the "what do you drive" thread I didn't want to suggest a Ford product.

PCBONEZ wrote:

I like Jags too. Used to cut wrecked ones up to salvage their IRS for hot rods.

Same, here. I usually scavenge the engine and transmission, too. Haha can be had for next to nothing, typically.

PCBONEZ wrote:

Make my PC faster and quieter.

Wrap it up in foam and put it in the trunk of a Ferrari. 🤣

I've actually used cardboard once to make my 486 a bit more quiet by adding 2 "plates" on both sides of the case. The difference wasn't enormous, but it was noticeable enough for me to keep it that way (and no, it did not catch fire 🤣! ). I've also experimented a bit with the foam often used as packaging material for computer components, the result was similar to using cardboard but it's easier to work with. Cardboard can be gotten very cheaply though 😁

Cut to shape pieces of camping mat also work fine as DIY sound dampening material.