To cover 1989-2000 I chose to use all IBM desktops stacked each on a 2m 19” rack. I made this choice because IBM was a legend in the early PC era and because there is a lot of documentation online. In addition I wanted to have a computer for each class with a cpu for collecting. I have limited possibilities because of the IBM bios which is very limited, but having many computers I can also change cpu if necessary. So I have 8088, 286, 386, 486, Pentium60, Pentium200, PentiumII/III slot1/ Pentium4. Not to mention that all ibm have same configuration ps/2 keyboard +ps/2 mouse + vga, a kbm switch and i can controll everithing

When I had to choose a single computer (a single board computer) to insert into an Amiga2000 to have a computer that could carry out its task from 1990 to 1996 approximately, I chose one with the possibility of mounting Pentium/mmx/k6 and an S3 as an integrated video card. I don't think I made a better choice to have maximum DOS compatibility.

The photo shows the computers before being placed in the rack. Note that the PentiumII/III and Pentium4 that would arrive shortly after are missing.

AlessandroB wrote on 2024-10-31, 22:11:

To cover 1989-2000 I chose to use all IBM desktops stacked each on a 2m 19” rack. I made this choice because IBM was a legend in the early PC era and because there is a lot of documentation online. In addition I wanted to have a computer for each class with a cpu for collecting. I have limited possibilities because of the IBM bios which is very limited, but having many computers I can also change cpu if necessary. So I have 8088, 286, 386, 486, Pentium60, Pentium200, PentiumII/III slot1/ Pentium4. Not to mention that all ibm have same configuration ps/2 keyboard +ps/2 mouse + vga, a kbm switch and i can controll everithing

When I had to choose a single computer (a single board computer) to insert into an Amiga2000 to have a computer that could carry out its task from 1990 to 1996 approximately, I chose one with the possibility of mounting Pentium/mmx/k6 and an S3 as an integrated video card. I don't think I made a better choice to have maximum DOS compatibility.

The photo shows the computers before being placed in the rack. Note that the PentiumII/III and Pentium4 that would arrive shortly after are missing.

That's a nice set of computers you have there. Mine are all a bit mismatched. Haha. I see the attraction of wanting a PC for each generation. I guess I am trying to do similar but for a slightly later timeframe.

RetroPCCupboard wrote on 2024-10-31, 07:53:

I am actually reconsidering now whether I should have a Pentium II machine in the mix in place of the test bench drawer.

I donno, I think you need a test bench, I'm getting the impression you have already caught the "curse"
Many, many of us started out building computers for specific games which we still haven't played.
Instead we are having too much fun messing around with the hardware!

chinny22 wrote on 2024-11-01, 01:40:

I donno, I think you need a test bench, I'm getting the impression you have already caught the "curse"
Many, many of us started out building computers for specific games which we still haven't played.
Instead we are having too much fun messing around with the hardware!

Haha. You might be right about that! Messing with the hardware is fun! I wasn't suggesting not having a test bench. Just thinking that maybe I don't need it there. In the same room I have this area where my "Ultimate" Win98 and WinXP PCs are.

There's a 4 port KVM there and only 2 ports used. The screen though is only a 1024x768 LCD. That's fine if I want to just muck around with hardware or play games at the native screen resolution. But I would certainly miss the CRT if I try to use this screen for older games that won't run at the 1024x768 native res or if I want to benchmark games at higher resolutions.

I am thinking now that If I have the test bench in a drawer, it will make access to the CD and floppy drives harder. Unless I make that drawer more like a case and have the drives visible from the front without needing to open the drawer. As you see from the photo on my first post, the cupboard isn't fully built yet. There's no drawer and there's only two shelves at the moment. So there is still the possibility of changing the design a bit.

RetroPCCupboard wrote on 2024-10-31, 06:34:

I haven't encountered any speed issues yet that can't be resolved with SETMUL unless the title is pre-486 era. Any particular games you expect this to happen on? The primary reason for the overclock is that the Voodoo 1 and Riva 128 seem able to scale with the CPU. So I will get better framerates in those games with the overclock.

Games like Alien Carnage (Halloween Harry), Jazz Jackrabbit, and Tyrian are a few that I know have this issue. There are also utilities that can patch these games to resolve this issue. I'm not sure the extent of other games that might have this issue or whether every game can be patched.

There are also games like Descent that are speed sensitive with respect to the in-game ship movement. I find a Pentium 100 to 200 MHz to be a good target speed for that game.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-10-31, 00:08:

I have never heard of bumpgate! I assume I may as well use this GPU whilst it's working. It has an aftermarket Arctic Cooling heatsink on it. Not sure if that makes a difference. The next fastest GPU I have is a GTX 580. I think that's probably going to have compatability issues with some XP games and is overkill for the CPU. Do you agree? What GPU would you suggest?

GPUs in general from that era tend to be a bit of a wild card. If you have the card already and it's working, I would just make sure to keep it as cool as possible (which is generally a good idea for anything really).

It's just something to be aware of that GPUs like the 8800 seem to have higher-than-average failure rates.

RetroPCCupboard wrote on 2024-10-31, 12:27:

I've been looking into this bumpgate thing. I've seen posts on vogons implying that it's an issue from some 5000 series cards up until some 200 series cards. So it would seem that a 300 series card would be the oldest that's likely to be free from this issue? But, from what I see, it was most common on 7000/8000 series. Is that correct?

I've generally read the same information you probably have. I've never seen stats on how prevalent it really is among those cards, but the consensus seems to be that the 8000-series (particularly the G80 chips) were the most at-risk.

Again, it's just something to be aware of it and take preventative steps to keep your card running cool to reduce risk of failure.

[By the way, my 8800 GTS 512mb is one that I have had since it was new in 2008. The Arctic Cooling replacement heatsink has been on it the entire time. Its a fanless design, but I always had airflow going past it.

I'd probably rig an extra fan just to be on the safe side.

A lot of this depends on how much you use the card and how much stress it will be under. I would monitor temps and just try to keep it cool as possible.

I did things quite differently:

Early DOS (1985-1992)
20Mhz 286 / 4MB of ram
WD Paradise 512k VGA card
Sound Blaster Pro 2.0 (or Possibly Soundblaster 16 CT2230)
Working turbo button

DOS / Win95 / Early Win98 (1992-early 1998)
Version 1 - Super socket 7
AMD K6-2+/K6-III
Super 7 motherboard, 64MB of ram
3DFX Voodoo 3
Sound Blaster 16 + Roland SC55 MK2

Version 2 - Socket 370
VIA C3 1200MHz (Nemiah core)
Socket 370 VIA 694t motherboard (EPOX EP-3VSA)
Geforce 2 GTS
Voodoo 2 12MB
Guillemot Maxi Gamer Studio (ESS + Dream)

*both versions can be slowed down via SETMUL and other software.

Win98 era (1997-1999)
Pentium III-S 1400MHz
MSI MS-6309 (VIA 694T, ISA), 256Mb ram
Radeon 8500 + Voodoo 2 SLI (Feb 1998)
Aureal Vortex 2 + Roland SCC-1

Overkill Win98 rig (1997-2002)
Athlon XP 3200+ (FSB 333, 2.333 GHz)
ASUS A7V880, 512MB ram (2x256MB dual channel)
Geforce 6800LE unlocked to 16/8/16
Yamaha DS-XG

*win9x era games have very optimistic system requirements. I tend to overbuild '98 machines a bit, especially in the CPU department.

WinXP (2001-2009)
Core i7 2600k
Asrock Z68 Extreme3, 4GB ram (3.5GB available to the OS)
Gigabyte Radeon 7970 Windforce 3x
Sound Blaster X-Fi

*There is very little point in going period correct with winXP era games. If it will run on a Cedar Mill P4, it will run just as well on an i7.

The above 5 configurations should be able to run any game from 1985 to 2009. There is an optional Vood0o 1 build, for easy compatibility with early 3dfx games:

Pentium 233 to Pentium 2 333Mhz
64MB of ram
S3 Virge GX or VX 4MB
3DFX Voodoo 1
Creative AWE32 or AWE64

This setup has two problems:
1. The Voodoo 1 is SLOW. In my experience, it only provides a "cinematic" experience in most games (Carmageddon, Tomb raider, Descent, Mechwarrior 2, Uprising, etc). Not a very smooth experience in my opinion
2. Most early 3dfx games have official or unofficial patches that make them support later 3dfx hardware like the much faster voodoo 2 and voodoo 3. One game that I could not find a V2 patch for is Pandemonium. I could only get it to run on a Voodoo 1.

Socket3 wrote on 2024-11-02, 21:33:

This setup has two problems:
1. The Voodoo 1 is SLOW. In my experience, it only provides a "cinematic" experience in most games (Carmageddon, Tomb raider, Descent, Mechwarrior 2, Uprising, etc). Not a very smooth experience in my opinion

It works well in Whiplash (Fatal Racing) in my experience. Also interestingly Fatal Racing seems to not have speed sensitive issues with the Voodoo 1 card, as I've run it on a Pentium 4 with a Voodoo 1.

I tried it with a modified Voodoo2 config, but found that it resulted in cars randomly disappearing.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-10-31, 06:41:

RetroPCCupboard wrote on 2024-10-31, 06:34:

I didn't add the Live until the high-end Windows 98/early XP machine, as I think that the Vortex 2 isn't as well supported in XP.

The SBLive was a bit outdated by the early WinXP era. You want an Audigy for that, since it supports EAX 3.0 while still having Win9x drivers as well.

Games started using EAX 3.0 in 2002, but the benefits of having 64 hardware voices on the Audigy (vs. 32 on the SBLive) can be noticeable even in some older titles.

since you're talking EAX do you mean channels rather than voices, the audigy can mix 64 directsound3d channels over the lives 32, but the live has a 64 voice midi synth, is there a list of games i can try out, i have a couple of live cards, one i use on later Os's/games up to current year, i thought it would give me problems with a lot of games being such an old card, as some games require a 24bit sound card or one thats directx9 compatible, both of which the live isn't, though so far ive not had any problems even with the games that have those requirements, the fact im using the later kx project drivers may have someting to do with that.

it would be interesting to try out some games to see if i should upgrade to an audigy, im not too bothered about EAX as i mainly use win7 for XP games, so Alchemy does the job in that sense, ive been quite surprised by the live in terms of sound quality considering its age and the fact it has drivers for 95 thru to win 11, though if it turns out im missing out on something it might be worth upgrading

DudeFace wrote on 2024-11-02, 22:24:

since you're talking EAX do you mean channels rather than voices, the audigy can mix 64 directsound3d channels over the lives 32

Should be the same thing. Creative used the term "hardware voices" in their documentation, and some games adopted it as well. For example, here's a screenshot from Doom 3:

There are other advantages with Creative's later products, like the superior sample rate conversion on X-Fi cards and the improved CMSS-3D implementation when using headphones. IMO, the SBLive is fine for Win9x, but it falls off quickly once you get to the WinXP era.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-11-02, 22:34:

Should be the same thing. Creative used the term "hardware voices" in their documentation, and some games adopted it as well. Fo […]
Show full quote

DudeFace wrote on 2024-11-02, 22:24:

since you're talking EAX do you mean channels rather than voices, the audigy can mix 64 directsound3d channels over the lives 32

Should be the same thing. Creative used the term "hardware voices" in their documentation, and some games adopted it as well. For example, here's a screenshot from Doom 3:

There are other advantages with Creative's later products, like the superior sample rate conversion on X-Fi cards and the improved CMSS-3D implementation when using headphones. IMO, the SBLive is fine for Win9x, but it falls off quickly once you get to the WinXP era.

i was just reading up on it to see what benefits i'd get from it, as i'm using alchemy and stereo speakers it probably wont make much difference even if i did upgrade, i'd probably only see the benefits if i were using hardware based EAX and some kind of multipositional speaker/headphone setup, as for sound quality, the KX drivers on win7/10 compared to the creative drivers on win98 is night and day, it sounds that good i haven't had a reason to switch, i guess the KX drivers are much more advanced than anything creative can put out, prob goes without saying considering DanielK did a better job with creatives drivers than they did.🤣

Socket3 wrote on 2024-11-02, 21:33:

I did things quite differently: […]
Show full quote

I did things quite differently:

Early DOS (1985-1992)
20Mhz 286 / 4MB of ram
WD Paradise 512k VGA card
Sound Blaster Pro 2.0 (or Possibly Soundblaster 16 CT2230)
Working turbo button

I really like the idea of this. Given that a 286 was what got me into PCs in the first place. The nostalgia would be strong! However, I think it was pointed out that all of the games I mentioned playing on it would also work on a 386. Hopefully my slowed down Pentium MMX would cover that period and support big enough HDD that I can store all of my compatible games library on it. I didn't play any games from the Intel 8086 era so I don't think I need the ability to run those. I guess the question is, are there any games I want to play that are too fast on my slowed Pentium MMX but would run on a 286.

Socket3 wrote on 2024-11-02, 21:33:

DOS / Win95 / Early Win98 (1992-early 1998) Version 1 - Super socket 7 AMD K6-2+/K6-III Super 7 motherboard, 64MB of ram 3DFX V […]
Show full quote

DOS / Win95 / Early Win98 (1992-early 1998)
Version 1 - Super socket 7
AMD K6-2+/K6-III
Super 7 motherboard, 64MB of ram
3DFX Voodoo 3
Sound Blaster 16 + Roland SC55 MK2

Yes, makes sense. Other than the Roland, I do have the parts to do the rest. Although I think V3 can benefit from a slightly faster CPU than K6III?

Socket3 wrote on 2024-11-02, 21:33:

Version 2 - Socket 370 VIA C3 1200MHz (Nemiah core) Socket 370 VIA 694t motherboard (EPOX EP-3VSA) Geforce 2 GTS Voodoo 2 12MB […]
Show full quote

Version 2 - Socket 370
VIA C3 1200MHz (Nemiah core)
Socket 370 VIA 694t motherboard (EPOX EP-3VSA)
Geforce 2 GTS
Voodoo 2 12MB
Guillemot Maxi Gamer Studio (ESS + Dream)

My understanding is that the Geforce GTS introduced some graphical differences that made some games look worse. I think Incoming is one example. This is why I had a build with the TNT2.
But, yes, I like this card and did want to use it in one of my builds. I am not familiar with the C3 CPU. What's the advantage in using it?

Socket3 wrote on 2024-11-02, 21:33:

Win98 era (1997-1999) Pentium III-S 1400MHz MSI MS-6309 (VIA 694T, ISA), 256Mb ram Radeon 8500 + Voodoo 2 SLI (Feb 1998) Aureal […]
Show full quote

Win98 era (1997-1999)
Pentium III-S 1400MHz
MSI MS-6309 (VIA 694T, ISA), 256Mb ram
Radeon 8500 + Voodoo 2 SLI (Feb 1998)
Aureal Vortex 2 + Roland SCC-1

Nice. I have that CPU in my collection. But so far haven't found a motherboard that supports it, at a price I am willing to pay. For me, its a collectors item. An early P4 will obviously beat it performance-wise and is much cheaper. Likewise with the Radeon. I have one in my collection but couldn't think of any games that would be better on it than a geforce 3-4? Are there any? But, you are correct that there is a gap in my CPU choices here. I don't have any P4 slower than 2.8ghz. I do have some Athlon and Athlon XP but I avoided those as my SFX 450W PSU in the microatx cases has a weak 5v rail.

Socket3 wrote on 2024-11-02, 21:33:

Overkill Win98 rig (1997-2002) Athlon XP 3200+ (FSB 333, 2.333 GHz) ASUS A7V880, 512MB ram (2x256MB dual channel) Geforce 6800LE […]
Show full quote

Overkill Win98 rig (1997-2002)
Athlon XP 3200+ (FSB 333, 2.333 GHz)
ASUS A7V880, 512MB ram (2x256MB dual channel)
Geforce 6800LE unlocked to 16/8/16
Yamaha DS-XG

I made a build like this on my test bench. Was great for WinXP. But under Win98 I found many games didn't work. 3DMark worked well though. What's your experience on compatability with this?

Socket3 wrote on 2024-11-02, 21:33:

*win9x era games have very optimistic system requirements. I tend to overbuild '98 machines a bit, especially in the CPU department.

Yes. I found the same. How anyone ran Unreal on the stated min requirements is beyond me. Its barely playable on double the speed CPU. Haha. My general initial aim was to try to keep the builds fairly period correct. Perhaps with a CPU a bit faster than was available at the time, but not massively so. If I need a faster machine, then hopefully that game would run on the next build up. But when I tweaked my list in order to remove a Win9x build to add a pseudo 386 I have ended up pairing some GPUs with slightly older CPUs. My thinking with the TNT2 is that it's basically just a fast TNT1 (for which the CPU I chose, 550Mhz PIII, is a good match with).

Socket3 wrote on 2024-11-02, 21:33:

WinXP (2001-2009) Core i7 2600k Asrock Z68 Extreme3, 4GB ram (3.5GB available to the OS) Gigabyte Radeon 7970 Windforce 3x Sound […]
Show full quote

WinXP (2001-2009)
Core i7 2600k
Asrock Z68 Extreme3, 4GB ram (3.5GB available to the OS)
Gigabyte Radeon 7970 Windforce 3x
Sound Blaster X-Fi

Nice build and should run anything you throw at it.

Socket3 wrote on 2024-11-02, 21:33:

*There is very little point in going period correct with winXP era games. If it will run on a Cedar Mill P4, it will run just as well on an i7.

CPU-wise you are probably right. I can't think of too many games that were speed sensitive in the XP era. GTA III and the two sequels were, but easly solved with frame limiter. Simpsons hit and run also has some physics issues on faster hardware without vsync. In XP era I think the GPU (or drivers) was more important than the CPU?

Socket3 wrote on 2024-11-02, 21:33:

The above 5 configurations should be able to run any game from 1985 to 2009. There is an optional Vood0o 1 build, for easy compa […]
Show full quote

The above 5 configurations should be able to run any game from 1985 to 2009. There is an optional Vood0o 1 build, for easy compatibility with early 3dfx games:

Pentium 233 to Pentium 2 333Mhz
64MB of ram
S3 Virge GX or VX 4MB
3DFX Voodoo 1
Creative AWE32 or AWE64

Yes, very similar to one of my builds.

Socket3 wrote on 2024-11-02, 21:33:

This setup has two problems:
1. The Voodoo 1 is SLOW. In my experience, it only provides a "cinematic" experience in most games (Carmageddon, Tomb raider, Descent, Mechwarrior 2, Uprising, etc). Not a very smooth experience in my opinion
2. Most early 3dfx games have official or unofficial patches that make them support later 3dfx hardware like the much faster voodoo 2 and voodoo 3. One game that I could not find a V2 patch for is Pandemonium. I could only get it to run on a Voodoo 1.

Agreed. I also found it slow. Certainly for later games like Unreal. I mostly wanted the V1 for early games that support it.

DudeFace wrote on 2024-11-02, 23:57:

i was just reading up on it to see what benefits i'd get from it, as i'm using alchemy and stereo speakers it probably wont make much difference even if i did upgrade, i'd probably only see the benefits if i were using hardware based EAX and some kind of multipositional speaker/headphone setup

Yeah, stereo speakers won't give you the full EAX experience, but a pair of decent headphones is a good alternative. Positional audio works great that way, especially on X-Fi cards. You can even get a sense of elevation in some games by using CMSS-3D with headphones.

DudeFace wrote on 2024-11-02, 23:57:

as for sound quality, the KX drivers on win7/10 compared to the creative drivers on win98 is night and day, it sounds that good i haven't had a reason to switch, i guess the KX drivers are much more advanced than anything creative can put out, prob goes without saying considering DanielK did a better job with creatives drivers than they did.🤣

From what I remember, KX drivers don't support EAX, so they aren't that great for gaming. At least that was the case when I tried them several years ago. But yeah, they do offer superior audio quality compared to Creative's stock drivers.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-10-31, 00:08:

1) Why the overclock of the Pentium MMX 233 in the DOS 7 / Win95 (1990-1997) system? It seems a bit redundant given the overlap with the more powerful systems. It may also cause issues with some speed sensitive games (e.g. Runtime error 200).

Just checking my super socket 7 motherboard. It has jumpers rather than dipswitches for changing bus clockspeed. It should be trivial to add one DPDT switch to my case to switch it between 66.66mhz and 100Mhz bus. This means I can easily switch between 200Mhz and 300Mhz if required. I may be wrong but I think I recall reading somewhere that Pentium MMX runs better on Socket 7 rather than super-socket 7 at stock speeds. Something to do with chipset. If that is correct then it should perform slightly slower than a Pentium MMX 200Mhz on socket 7 if I flip that switch....

Hmm. The sound blaster pro 2.0 that I was intending for the Pseudo 386 seems to have developed a fault. Only one audio channel works. I have two of this card. One always had this problem since I bought it. The other used to work.

On the one that always only had one working channel I did attempt a repair by changing a cap that was indicated as being a cause of this on a thread on vogons. However that didn't resolve it, so I gave up and bought the second card.

Anyhow. Both don't work now. I can either put an SB16 in there, or I have an ISA YMF719E-S based card and an ISA Aztech AzT2320 based card. Both have wavetable headers. I also have a modern clone of the Adlib card but I decided against that due to no digital audio. I also have two ES1868F ESS audiodrive ISA cards. One with wavetable header, one without. Which would you use from the above?

I guess I could try a full recap of the SB Pro 2.0 board(s) but my soldering skills are poor to say the least, and I don't have a very good desoldering tool. So getting the existing ones out without damaging the board is rather frustrating.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-11-03, 07:06:

Yeah, stereo speakers won't give you the full EAX experience, but a pair of decent headphones is a good alternative. Positional […]
Show full quote

DudeFace wrote on 2024-11-02, 23:57:

i was just reading up on it to see what benefits i'd get from it, as i'm using alchemy and stereo speakers it probably wont make much difference even if i did upgrade, i'd probably only see the benefits if i were using hardware based EAX and some kind of multipositional speaker/headphone setup

Yeah, stereo speakers won't give you the full EAX experience, but a pair of decent headphones is a good alternative. Positional audio works great that way, especially on X-Fi cards. You can even get a sense of elevation in some games by using CMSS-3D with headphones.

DudeFace wrote on 2024-11-02, 23:57:

as for sound quality, the KX drivers on win7/10 compared to the creative drivers on win98 is night and day, it sounds that good i haven't had a reason to switch, i guess the KX drivers are much more advanced than anything creative can put out, prob goes without saying considering DanielK did a better job with creatives drivers than they did.🤣

From what I remember, KX drivers don't support EAX, so they aren't that great for gaming. At least that was the case when I tried them several years ago. But yeah, they do offer superior audio quality compared to Creative's stock drivers.

i only use the KX drivers for win7-11 and the standard creative drivers for everything else, since the live only supports EAX2.0 i just use Alchemy for everything after, it would be nice to have full hardware based EAX upto 4.0 tho, i know the KX drivers also support the Audigy so that will at least cover me on later Os's up to win11 as well as giving EAX3.0, and for 4.0 i'd prob have to add an X-Fi as a secondary card, ive been thinking about putting together a single system with an X58 board to cover all Os's with multiple GPU's, so multiple sound cards may be an option for that. might also be worth investing in some decent headphones as well 😀

RetroPCCupboard wrote on 2024-11-03, 09:12:

Hmm. The sound blaster pro 2.0 that I was intending for the Pseudo 386 seems to have developed a fault. Only one audio channel works.

Good news! (Kinda). I tried swapping the SB Pro 2.0 with the Aztech card and the issue was the same! So that means the issue is with the speakers or cable to it. I tried another set of speakers and there is sound from both channels with the SB Pro 2.0 that was previously working.

I am still interested to hear though if anyone thinks one of those other ISA cards will be better in that machine. I recall that I had trouble with Prince of Persia 2 on clone soundblasters in the past. But haven't tried any of these with that game yet.

DudeFace wrote on 2024-11-03, 09:14:

it would be nice to have full hardware based EAX upto 4.0 tho, i know the KX drivers also support the Audigy so that will at least cover me on later Os's up to win11 as well as giving EAX3.0, and for 4.0 i'd prob have to add an X-Fi as a secondary card

All Audigy cards (even the first one) support EAX 4.0 and any lower versions as well, when using the latest official WDM drivers from Creative. To be clear, I'm referring to the normal models of these cards, as I'm not sure how the cut down SE/LS/LE varieties fare in that regard. That said, hardware support for EAX 5.0 remains exclusive to X-Fi cards.

If you're interested in EAX, you may want to take a look here: EAX appreciation thread

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-11-03, 09:47:

DudeFace wrote on 2024-11-03, 09:14:

it would be nice to have full hardware based EAX upto 4.0 tho, i know the KX drivers also support the Audigy so that will at least cover me on later Os's up to win11 as well as giving EAX3.0, and for 4.0 i'd prob have to add an X-Fi as a secondary card

All Audigy cards (even the first one) support EAX 4.0 and any lower versions as well, when using the latest official WDM drivers from Creative. To be clear, I'm referring to the normal models of these cards, as I'm not sure how the cut down SE/LS/LE varieties fare in that regard. That said, hardware support for EAX 5.0 remains exclusive to X-Fi cards.

If you're interested in EAX, you may want to take a look here: EAX appreciation thread

thats good to know, i was reading on the wiki and it said the audigy 1 had hardware support for EAX3.0 i assumed anything higher was done through software and thought the audigy 2 was the same, thought it does say audigy 2 is EAX4.0, i wouldnt be buying an audigy 1 anyway so dont know why i didnt say 2ZS, and i'd definitley be avoiding any cut down versions or any made by dell.🤣, i think the reason i've had a good experience with the live is because both are creative CT models with gold jacks, and ive seen others with cut down version having trouble finding the right drivers and just getting them to work,

when i source an audigy 2 it would have to be a gold version, as for the x-fi i dont know much about them aside to avoid the extreme models without an EMU chip, i always thought EAX 5.0 was only obtainable though software, the fact its hardware based has changed my mind about them, i just passed up on one local to me, thought it was strange it had a gameport but no 9X drivers, shame as it could have been a 1 card solution to cover 9X/xp, i've had a read on the Appreciation thread a few times, i think i need to go back and have a good read right the way thru, anyway thanks for the advice 😀 once ive settled on an X58 ill have to decide whether to go pci or pcie on the X-fi.

EDIT: also sorry RetroPCCupboard for highjacking your thread with EAX talk.😀

DudeFace wrote on 2024-11-03, 11:45:

i just passed up on one local to me, thought it was strange it had a gameport but no 9X drivers, shame as it could have been a 1 card solution to cover 9X/xp

Quick note on this. Even though the connector on the X-Fi might look like a gameport, it's not. That's an AD_LINK port used to hook up an additional I/O unit.

Also, there are no Win9x drivers for any X-Fi cards.