Enthusiest Pentium II motherboard

[3DNow!]

Hi everyone,

I'm looking for a Pentium II slot 1 motherboard that would have been used in a high-end setup.

Basically I want to create an old school gaming machine. I think I've got everything sorted except the RAM and PSU. Can anyone tell me how much RAM a high-end machine would have used in 1998? (I was only 8!). Also, would a modern PSU work with a slot 1 board?

I'm unsure of what the best enthusiast/gaming chipset was at the time, but it will need to decent enough for 2x Voodoo2's in SLI.

Also I'll be overclocking the CPU (celeron 300A), so the board needs to be a decent overclocker.

If anyone can shed any light on such a board I would really appreciate it

[andamus]

I think that the best solution is a PIII socket370 mobo (maybe with Tualatin support), 512 Mb ram (max if you want to use Win98) and for the vga go on a VooDoo 3000 better than a SLI of Voodoo 2.
Celeron 300A is funny to overclock but any Coppermine PIII is much more powerfull....

[Guest]

I understand a PIII would be a lot more powerful but I wanted a rig specifically from late '97/'98, as I already have the 300A (brand new )

[el_gecko]

Average RAM at the time was 64 to 128 MB. Be careful that there were a lot of differences between 97' and 98' (slot-1 Katmai's were available in 98'). I think that a high-end machine would had 256MB, maybe 512MB for whom can afford it. About graphics, nVidia TNT2 was a nice choice at the time, a couple of VooDoo 2 too

[el_gecko]

Oh and about motherboards, if I remember well the "top" in 98' were the Abit BH6 and Asus P2B with i440BX chipset. At the time I bought the BH6 because cheapest that the P2B, but if you wanted to reach the 512MB you had to buy the Asus one (4 dimm slot instead of 3). About Gigabyte, this manufacturer wasn't famous enouth in France to be compared with Abit and Asus.

[frag_]

The best chipset in your case is 440BX.
My personal favourable slot 1 mobo is Abit BF6.
While almost all slot 1 mobos at have limited freq. settings,
BF6 can vary fsb frequency up to 200 MHz with 1 MHz step,
great for overclocking!
It has only 3 DIMM slots, but IMHO 3x256 MB is quite enough for PII setup.
Another good choise - Asus P3B-F, up to 1 Gb RAM and absolutely stable under OCing.
Two months ago I overclocked PII 350 to 525 MHz using 150 MHz fsb (vCore was only 2.05 V)
and system passed SuperPi, wPrime and other tests sucessfully!
With proper slotket it can handle all PIII, even Tualatins with 512 kB L2 cache (need bios hack).

[Mixeur]

In 1998, high end was 128MB. Average was from 32 to 64MB.
Very very few had 256 and none 512.

[thomsonicus]

I agree, 128 was quite a lot back then. remember having a Slot1 Celeron300A@450, MSI mobo with agp and a SoundBlaster128 onboard coupled with a 2xVoodoo2 8MB (I had to get rid of the modem to make room for the second 3Dfx)+S3 ViRGE DX (if I remeber correctly, a 4MB ver) for 2D. Half-Life looked incredible, I spent hours trying to finish Unreal (which I never did), Fallout2 was somehow a letdown for me when comparing it to the prev part, but nobody noticed that because they were busy killing each other in Starcraft

[Wizzard1]

Go for a P2B-D with a pair of Katmai 600/133 Processors- Equip with 2x128MB PC133 CL3 and you'll have a SICK machine! For 1998.