Aim for 1MB cache ones. They ain't much more expensive than their 256KB little siblings.

For chipset, you can choose:
440FX, most common, UP or DP setup, FPM or EDO
450KX, uncommon, UP or DP setup, FPM
450GX, uncommon, officially upto QP, but ALR 6x6 managed to put 6 sockets on the board. FPM
Some 440LX, 440BX board may support ppro via slocket and so you can get AGP and SDRAM.

P-II overdrives are quite rare and expensive. A couple of them sold for 100+ on ebay in August and one got sold for 300+ last week. They also have locked multiplier so there isn't much room in downclocking.

I am not sure what your goal is, but typically an sk8 setup has 1~2 cpus, 440FX chipset, EDO RAM and PCI video card. If you just wanted to run 2k/nt4/dos/9x games a sk7 or slot 1 platform is more flexible.

Well, dual Pentium Pro with 512MB RAM works great even with Windows XP. So 2k should work fine. Most of the time black ones (1MB cache L2) are not faster than 256kB versions, but they consume A LOT more power. Overdrives are great but as mentioned - expensive.

This topic (or article) can give you some answers - Pentium Pro 256K vs Pentium Pro 1MB vs Pentium II Overdrive

I'm not really all that knowledgeable on the Pentium Pro, however I'd like to point out that I don't believe there ever were SDRAM boards on socket 8.

Also, I'd recommend avoiding early chipsets such as the 450NX. I happen to own an Intel board based on this chipset and it performs slower than the 440FX and has issues with hard-drive detection and even Matrox cards! Windows 200 will probably be sluggish with a single Pro 200, but if you own an Overdrive (or two 😜) or find a dual CPU board, then I guess that'd be pretty awesome. I had a lot of fun trying out NT4.0 on my PPro 200 and seeing what software would run and what wouldn't 😁.

Thanks for the info.
And yes there are sk8 sd ram boards out there. I seen a few on ebay ether today.

Edit:
As for my goals, basically i watn a system that can run the older apps that my c2 system cant. Just late dos games like duke3d mw2 along with a few 9x games that are buggy in vista/7. Thats all. Oh and I want a system that would be right in my server case.

Edit:
I dont care one bit about downclocking, never once ran into a point were I needed it.

Jade Falcon wrote:

Thanks for the info.
And yes there are sk8 sd ram boards out there. I seen a few on ebay ether today.

Are you sure they are not DIMMs for EDO/FPMs?

lazibayer wrote:

Jade Falcon wrote:

Thanks for the info.
And yes there are sk8 sd ram boards out there. I seen a few on ebay ether today.

Are you sure they are not DIMMs for EDO/FPMs?

No, but it sure looked like SD ram in the slots. Ill tray to find the boards.

Edit. Looks like a few of the ate 168 bin dims for edo ram.
But i sall one with 4gb of sd ram. Ill keep looking.