Socket a athlon build thoughts

Somewhat posting this for my own thoughts but happy to hear opinions too.

I’m gathering pieces to relive my first gaming pc plus a few tweaks from the wish list/modern items.
It will be a Kt133a chipset based athlon a build, sporting a axia stepping 1200mhz cpu, 512mb ram, possibly a pci sata adaptor to run a modern hdd (if I can figure out windows98 compatibility).
I am just in two minds about video cards, I’m fairly sure I had a very underwhelming geforce2 mx at the time which I won’t be reliving. From what I can see the Radeon 8500 didn’t quite hit the mark at the top either. It seems that geforce2 gts cards and geforce3 ti200’s can be bought for not exorbitant money.

So the question is really Geforce2 or Geforce3?

 

The best you can afford I would say.

 

I don't see value in GeForce 2 GTS cards as the GeForce 4 MX is essentially the same in terms of performance and features.

The GeForce 3 has lots of nostalgia for me so that would be the winner.

If you have patience, I'm sure a suitable AGP card will be listed on here eventually - just note the KT133A does have some AGP compatibility issues.

 

As long as it’s compatible, a GeForce 4 Ti4200 can be had for less than a GF3, and ultimately will allow you to cover more games from the era. I’d overclock the CPU while you’re there

 

AXIA stepping Thunderbird overclocked from 100->133Mhz FSB was my first self-built proper gaming PC, and I had a Triplex Ti4200 in there (which I think I got a little later than the machine build, but still definitely when it was current, ie. parts spanning 2001-2002ish).

 

yup, 4200 would be my choice too.

 

Yep, Ti4200 is awesome!

Prices are not too awful for them on ebay either (still awful, but not like trying to buy a voodoo card!)

 

I’ve noticed that I sold a voodoo 5500 in 2017 on here for $150 lol

 

Hahaha lol that's awesome.. wasn't to me was it?

 

Psycoticorc, I think he sold it on after that, I had planned on trying to find a pci card but life took over. I played around with the voodoo in a slot a and a matx p3 system but never really did what I wanted it to.

Ive just bought a winfast a350xt for cheap (I think) which probably won’t see the light of day in this system, have been eyeing off a itx p4 system that it should slot right into though.

 

This is going to be a rad system.

My vote for video card is gf3, or maybe gf4ti of that's cheaper. Probably don't bother with gf2.

 

I’ve acquired the foundation to this build, a Msi K7T Turbo V3, comes with a cpu (some type of xp I think) and a magical deafening coolermaster heat sink.
Now it’s time to sit next to the mail box and wait.

 

So I put a deafening fan on my heatsink, which was the style at the time

 

Oh I remember having a 80x38mm delta on a swiftech mcx462-v, I think I had rocks in my head at the time.

 

Those were the days...

 

Instead of a pci sata adaptor which you will need to jump through hoops to get working in dos and w98, why not get a ide to sata adaptor like this https://www.startech.com/en-au/hdd/pata2sata3 (which is also bidirectional if you want to plug a ide drive to a modern machine). It will make the sata drive appear as a ide drive natively in dos and windows so you dont need to do any hacks to get it working.

 

So long as it's a proper controller with a dedicated BIOS, both Win98 and DOS will work just fine.

 

I’ve got a sil3114 based pci card, seems the best option from google. Lucky enough to find a red coloured card on eBay to follow some kind of colour theme.

 

Absolutely. Didn't matter who made the CPU fan on the athlon XP, they were all universally noisy.

I remember putting my finger into one of the stock fans back when I had my original Athlon XP 2000+. That .... umm ... hurt .... and it also broke a fan blade off the fan due to how much energy the fan had. I did try to stick with the Athlon despite it's new disability, but was forced to put it aside for a short while and use my old celeron 333 until I had bought a new HSF unit for it.

So yeah, morale of the story ... don't put your fingers into an Athlon XP fan!

 

After endless nights on eBay driving my partner absolutely mad I have realised what card I had with this build originally. Turns out I was way off thinking it was a GeForce2 MX it was actually a Leadtek Winfast GeForce2 Ti. Along this train of thought the only one I’ve found would cost just shy of $300 delivered I think I’ll leave that idea alone. I will start with the Sapphire 9600xt I bought for $10pp off Facebook until I can justify a GeForce variety.