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Which Video Card

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Smack2k

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Jan 8, 2013
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Which Video Card would you put in a Pentium 100 MHZ Machine with 128 MB RAM?

Diamond Stealth 64 PCI Card (4 MB RAM) (1994)
ATI 3D Rage MACH64 GT PCI (1996)

Or Both? If both, is there a certain setup I'd need to do?

Thanks!
 
Well for DOS it will probably not make any difference.

It depends a bit on which Diamond Stealth64 you have but iirc thats all S3 based.
For Windows gaming I'd try the ATI.
Make sure you get some good drivers- maybe even try Win98
 
Thanks, I also have a 4 MB TSENG ET1000W32 PCI card I could toss in the mix for the P100.

Are there ANY 3D type games that would run on a Pentium 100 in any decent way?

After this would be my P2-233 and P2-400/450 machines that I would most likely play the earlier 3D games on as it will have an ATI card as well as the Voodoo1 in it.
 
I played quite a few games on a P133 equipped with a Voodoo 1 and ATI 3D Rage II+DVD. Its certainly doable although the games were definitely happier with a faster MMX CPU. Period games all ran on Windows 9x.
 
I always liked ATI stuff...used to work for a place that built machines...sold many Mach 64's and Rage II+, etc. Also sold a bunch of S3 Virge based cards too. Not sure what the Diamond Stealth 64 was based around...

My experience with the early "3D" cards was that they were pretty much worthless. I guess if you had a game tweaked for them or something, but I never saw anything that seemed to take advantage of their capabilities. Now once the Voodoo (original) came out, that was a game changer. When they came out, I eventually bought one, but really only so I could play racing games and get a good frame rate out of them. Significantly better than anything before it... Pretty sure I had that in my P-166...well actually a P-150 that I overclocked to 166.

Wesley
 
OK,

But for my Pentium 100 MHZ machine, I dont think 3D will be the ultimate goal..just the best 2D I can get for games of that era (late 486 / early Pentium) DOS / Windows Games...
 
I've settled on a Matrox Mystique in my P166MMX and think it's great. I've tried various cards - ET6000, #9, and a Diamond Stealth - and the Matrox looks better and handles SVGA pretty well (has VESA 2.0 so doesn't need Univbe)
 
The Tseng card is usually considered the best for DOS. It's fastest, but sometimes needs some compatibility hacks. The Diamond Stealth has an S3 chipset which is extremely compatible and plenty fast. For Windows, both the Tseng and the ATI card should accelerate 2D. I think the ATI does 3d acceleration, but I have no idea about the driver situation in Windows. I do remember running GLX gears on an old laptop with a mach64, FWIW.
 
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