First post, by rkrenicki
So, I am building two retro rigs. The Pentium 3 Win98 machine is cake.. but the other will be a Pentium based DOS gaming box. I have a couple of options when it comes to socket 7, and I am having difficulty deciding. I am looking for some input.
First let me start with what I intend on putting in the machine. I will likely be using a Matrox Millennium and 3dfx Voodoo 2 for video, and a Sound Blaster Pro 2 for sound. I also have an MT-32 and SC-55mkII. My primary goal for this box is to play Sierra games and other old DOS RPGs, as well as the typical Quake, Doom, etc.
First is the CPU. I have a Pentium 200, and a Pentium MMX 166. I know that there are some builds of Quake optimized for MMX, but I do not know if the benefit of MMX will outweigh the drop in CPU frequency. I am very open to opinions here.
Now, on to the board itself. I have two different ATX socket 7 boards. The first one is an Intel AN430TX. It is obviously a TX motherboard with surprisingly has Yamaha YMF704 and YMF715 on board.


The second board came out of the Sony VAIO machine that I picked up this week. It has a 430HX chipset, Yamaha YMF701-S audio, and an ATI 3D Rage on-board video.



I know very little about Yamaha audio, but given that these have the OPL and (for one at least) General MIDI logos.. to me, that indicates that I may not need to use my SBPro2 and/or the MT or SC units? Possibly?
I know that the HX is an older chipset, but not by much. The Sony board also only has 72pin SIMM slots, but it is loaded with 4x32MB modules. The TX board takes normal PC100 DIMMs, which I have plenty of but currently has 2x128MB modules.
I welcome any and all input. In the meantime, I will put together my P3 box.