I about have that same setup and the Hercules 3D Prophet II Ultra AGP 64MB seems to run a lot of games 97-2002 pretty smooth. Tried some GF3's but either due to drivers or some other factors didn't work as well.

okenido wrote:

Hi, I'm finally decided about my retro build (after lots of testing!), on a 850mhz PIII (100mhz fsb), 440BX-based mobo, 256MB ra […]
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Hi,
I'm finally decided about my retro build (after lots of testing!), on a 850mhz PIII (100mhz fsb), 440BX-based mobo, 256MB ram, running Windows98SE.
I have some graphics cards to choose from, which one would you think it's best for this build ? Usage would be mainly windows-games and maybe some late DOS games. 2D and 3D titles.

I have Radeon 9200, 9200SE, 9550
Nvidia TNT2, geforce 2MX, 4MX, 6600GT, FX5200, FX5500
Voodoo3, Voodoo Banshee, Voodoo5 5500

It's hard to choose because depending on the OS, CPU and drivers, there seems to be more or less compatibility and performance problems. Which gpu would fit the best ?

That CPU would probably be best for games up to 1999 or early 2000, so I would say a 3dfx card is a good option since they were still extremely popular. Since you have a V5 5500, I'd use that. Should be a great combination for compatibility and speed in anything that won't be seriously bottlenecked by an 850Mhz P3. A Geforce 4MX (depending on the model... 440 or 460 being much better than 420) is a good card too, so that would be my second choice from that selection to pair with a P3 850. It is technically faster but most games were built with 3dfx cards in mind until 2000, so there may be some compromises or compatibility issues.

Once you start getting into the post-2000 era it starts making more sense to use a much faster CPU (P4 or Athlon XP) and a newer GPU (your 6600GT would probably work great).