I'd also stick with the Slot 1 machine 😀

The CPU is fine, a nice choice. Pentium III processors are quite cheap if you do want to get something faster.

Think 450 would be enough for Windows 98? A cursory eBay search reveals plenty of faster, 800+ Mhz options, and the swap would be pretty easy. Not sure how highly rated the board is. I'd considered getting another SE-440-BX (but maybe the P3 rated Version 2), if the Aopen board I have doesn't cut it.

Is it a AX6BC?

If so you can be assured, I'm running a Pentium III 1.1 GHz in mine 😀

Oops. Not an AOpen. An Abit BX6 (SE 440 BX). Spec sheets say it's rated for P3s between 350-450 "and above."

Should do the trick then. 😀

I'd recommend sticking with Slot 1 as well. The Intel SE440BX-2 board is also my favourite all time motherboard and the latest version supports P3 Coppermine 1ghz CPU's. It's also one of the only Slot 1 motherboards that is readily available brand new in box on eBay.

I'm using the Pentium III @450Mhz in the Abit board for now.

Sound card is a Creative AWE 64 Value, but I could try out the Media Vision Jazz 16 card for fun.

As for graphics, I'm deciding between an ATi Rage Pro Turbo AGP, or the Matrox G400 + TV (model with Zoran chip for the Matrox Marvel). I could also try to get the All-in-Wonder Radeon to work with it.

The p3 should work at 600 with 133fsb.

Might need a more robust cooling solution if I OC it, right? Currently it has the same kind of heatsink block as my P2, just a fin array w/o fan.

Are you sure it's a Coppermine PIII? I've never heard about slot 1 or socket 370 450MHz Coppermines.

If you gonna run 133MHz FSB make sure your RAM can hadle 133MHz and your graphic card can handle 89MHz AGP, I don't think the ATi Rage Pro Turbo AGP can handle 89MHz.

AidanExamineer wrote:

Might need a more robust cooling solution if I OC it, right? Currently it has the same kind of heatsink block as my P2, just a fin array w/o fan.

Prolly not a good idea to run it overclocked without a fan,unless u have a realy big cooler,u can try oc it and check the temp with your finger if it get's to hot shut it down.

Yes it's a Katmai Slot 1. I said Coppermine because I'm not very smart. 😁

It's a shame I don't have a better board for the Athlon; it would probably give me a wider range of compatible games. The current board I have it in lacks ISA, so I'd have to trade the AWE 64 for something else.

I have a 550 P3 out of a Compaq that didn't have a fan - just a tall alu heatsink. Not sure if an OC'd 450 would run hotter than that. Going up to a 600-900 wouldn't be a bad idea at all though. Any reason you can't stick a GeForce or something similar into it? I feel like Rage or G400 is on the slower side for a near-Ghz P3. Not that they're wrong choices ofc.

I would recommend to go for a S370 system or S462 KT133 platform..

The down side on Slot 1 boards is the IDE standard.. Most boards do only have ATA33 which is more slower then using ATA 66 standard.
370 cpus are a little bit faster then slot 1 ones. S370 and S462 boards do use better heatsinks. Slot A / Slot1 do make more noise.

I'm not sure I'd buy another P3 if I wanted to upgrade. I might try to find an alternate sound card and upgrade to the Socket A Athlon 900Mhz instead.

The Rage and G400 are just picking from the spare bits I have already. Which GeForce would you recommend? Or a GeForce alternative? The closest I've got on hand is a Radeon All-in-Wonder 32MB PCI or TNT2 M64 32MB.

What sound card do you have in the Athlon? A lot of the early PCI soundcards had good dos legacy support while still in windows and the Athlon has plenty enough power to run dos games in windows. Some games will still refuse to work but mostly Its just that it doesn't feel as authentic not running from true dos that lets it down.

Slot 1 boards make a good cross over DOS/Win9x platform. ISA for old soundcards, PCI for newer soundcards, networking, etc and AGP for good Win9x support as well. The GeForce Ti4600 is about as high as you can go, but this will be held back even by a 1Ghz CPU. All depends what's its main use is. DOS games only TNT2 is actually a good card but will limit Windows gaming a fair bit.

I have a Pentium II Windows 95 build that fulfills my DOS and early Win needs. I was hoping for something a bit more high performance for late 90s, very early 00s stuff, and figured 98 was better than jumping up to the NT kernel. I already have two serviceable XP machines for that sort of thing.

My PCI Sound Card options are pretty terrible unless I go out shopping.
Dell OEM Sound Blaster SB0200
AOpen AW850 Cobra

Imo if u interested in late 90's early 2000 games go for the socket A platform with the athlon 900 and a pci sound card.

The proper SB Live, even the Value had good support for dos. It would add a 2nd soundcard in device manager called sound blaster legacy or similar and worked well enough for the majority of games. (again this is while in Windows, booting to pure dos was no where as easy)
But I know some of the OEM SBLive cards were a completely different story so you may not be in luck.

Don't know anything about the AWE850, but at least there are drivers
http://global.aopen.com/products_download.aspx?auno=1106

I'm not sure if the PIII will be able to do anything the PII cant dos wise. PII is already pretty fast for Dos.
As much as it hurts to say this as I love Slot 1/ BX motherboards and the like If its more of a Win9x PC you may be better off with the Athlon 900 and leave the dos games on the PII. This is we are trying to not spend any money.

If it was me, I'd get a faster P3 CPU put in your favourite ISA sound card for dos and a Audigy 2 for windows and the 1 PC will be able play Win9x all the way down to mid 90's dos. But I am biased as that's exactly what I did 😉

With what you have there, maybe a slocket and use the 700 Celeron on the slot board - assuming compatibility and clock speeds work out