Pentium 4 vs Pentium III for cheap Windows 98 and DOS Retro Gaming PC

[@evertcoetzee]

The advantage of using SiS chipsets on the Socket 478 platform is that some boards have universal AGP slots, which allows you to run something like a Voodoo5.

[@kamerat7689]

One other nice thing is that you actually can have sound effects working under DOS with a Yamaha YMF7x4 PCI without any TSR. (At least if your southbridge is a 962 or older.)

[@bayviewguesthouse7126]

That's the same reason for me. A must have for V5 win98 SE period.

[@nashcomp]

I just bought soltek 478 socket with via chipset and universal agp (2x-4x), finally my 3dfx 3000 meet his new old friend

[@NJRoadfan]

The attraction of the Pentium III is that the boards usually come with soundcard friendly ISA slots (esp. if its a 440BX board) and usually work in DOS with PCI cards. The downside of Pentium 4 era hardware is that it usually has problems with caps and runs much hotter.

[@BeachTechPC]

P4 is great for winter time heating.

[@ILoveMylarBalloonsForever]

Pentium 4 is better than Pentium III. 90s sucks

[@Cube8]

Pentium 4 Prescott, to be exact.

[@miljororforsprakpartiet290]

@@ILoveMylarBalloonsForever Actually, they weren't. Clock-for-clock the P4 often performed worse than the PIII. That's why the Athlon slaughtered the living crap out of the P4, outperforming it at half the frequency.

[@Wren6858]

Almost as good as the Xbox 360.

[@hartsickdisciple]

I had a P4 rig, running Windows 98. The problem is that the AGP slot was too new for my AGP Voodoo 3, and my PCI V3 caused massive noise/crackling over the bus, no matter what I tweaked. I ended up ditching it and going with a Dell Dimension L800R, which has PCI only. 800mhz P3, 128mb RAM, PCI Voodoo 3 3000, and a Vortex 2-based sound card makes for a great Win98 gaming rig.

[@Geforcefly]

A Dell Dimension 4550 is what I use for my Win98 setup. With a 2.8GHz P4 and Radeon 9600XT, it's plenty fast for just about anything you can throw at it.

[@dialupdave6276]

For me I use a Compaq Evo D510.

[@HelghastMerc]

Cool, I used to have a Dell Dimension 4550, as well. My father used to work as a custodian, so they were getting rid of some Dell machines. My father salvaged a Dell Dimension 4550, and I used to do all sorts of modifications to it. I even installed Windows 98, in the system. I also bought different Geforce cards, for the system. The video card I used for the system, was a Geforce4 Ti 4600. It was a really good video card, and I would get around 11,000 3DMark scores, with both 3DMark 2000 and 2001 SE. Forgot to mention that the system had a 2 GHz CPU. Last year, I had to throw the system away because the capacitors capsized on the motherboard. I salvaged some good parts, from the system, before I threw it away. I plan on buying another Dell DImension 4550 from Ebay, one of these days. I would like to this time, slap in an Aureal Vortex 2 sound card (for A3D and classic SB Pro emulation) and a Creative SB Audigy 2 ZS sound card, as well as reinstall the Geforce4 Ti 4600 inside the PC.

[@KARAOTI23]

Thank you very much for doing this! Very interesting results! These early P4 systems are extremely versatile and you can have decent windows XP performance too.

[@galvinon]

I love your Channel the down side is I now regret getting rid of my Compaq PC rocking a celeron 1300 Tualatin core, I still have alot of my retro gear I refuse to Recycle mostly cause like your channel I LOVE tinkering hehe :D keep up the great work :D

[@shan2752]

Hi Phil, Thanks for sharing all your expertise on retro pc computers, you have been a huge influence on me getting back into retro!

[@ttshushkevichius]

I was just about to throw away my PIII and P4 machines both sitting in a basement for approx 10+ years. But thanks to you Phil. Your videos inspired me to take care of them and PIII 1Ghz is already running based on VIA chipset MB with FC-PGA socket, with a great SB LIVE! 5.1, with 3DLabs Oxygene VX1 workstation graphics and 10GB oldschool Qunatum HDD. Everything works liek it was yesterday... damn that's nostalgic ;)

[@Kelphelp]

I gotta tha k you for this video as well as others you have put out. I made the choice of going with a Pentium 4 and U8668-D motherboard and works wonderful. My only concern is the heat the CPU dissipates and channeling that out since I have a micro atx case for it. thanks for all your hard work and helping make my retro PC a reality

[@lukeautosymbol2668]

These videos are so valuable, and help so much in making the right decisions in my building/modification. Thanks, Phil!!!

[@soberjedi42]

I did something similar, mainly just with parts I had lying around. P4 3.2 GHz, GeForce 6800 Ultra, and an Audigy 2 ZS. Now my setup has no DOS sound support, but I’m building a different machine for that. For Win98 gaming I’m happy with it.

[@directionlessstudios7210]

Great video! Pretty much sums it up. Ubiquity of P4 makes it a major contender for retro in today’s context, despite the overall preference for high-end P3.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

Nothing wrong miwth Pentium 4 in general. Not my thing for 98 SE gaming. But especially the Northwood and Cedar Mill were decent chips.

[@genericgreensquid6669]

A couple of weeks ago I found an XpertVision Radeon 9200 SE in the original box and with the receipt at my school! Can't test it because I don't have an AGP system running, but it's a great find if it works!

[@talvisota327]

last month i found a motherboard with a 2.4 ghz northwood P4 in the trash... still works

[@talvisota327]

never, I love old hardware stuff of all kind :P

[@tassadar1977]

@@michaelperry9261 LOL ... I know what you mean. But no.

[@kennyj4366]

@cgwworldministries runs really "cough" Warm.

[@sjogosPT]

I prefer the pentium III 1400. I have one and its super fast. Its more rewarding for me having a TOP Pentium III area machine than having a cheap pentium IV. It feels more correct for me, especially considering Windows 9x. For me, pentium IV is for Windows XP only. Pentium III is for Windows 98, ME, 2000 and XP.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

AGree on that. Like to have atleast somewhat period correct hardware. A fast P3 for 98 SE, a Pen4 around 2.4-3.2 GHz for the high-end singlecore range. Or an Athlon with a similar rating. Then a Fast Core 2 for the late XP era.

[@xXFlameHaze92Xx]

yeah... but are too strange and expensive Tualatin motherboards, i have 2 pc for retro gaming, a pentium 3 800mhz for windows 98 and msdos, and a pentium 4 3.4 ghz for 32 bit xp games

[@xXFlameHaze92Xx]

@@HappyBeezerStudios for the late xp i dont have problem, a mother pc can run it very well

[@wishusknight3009]

It is impressive how close the 1.4p3s can come to some P4 builds. At least on a P4 running the 845 chipset.

[@DC224gb64]

What motherboard you got? I have an ASUS TUV4x (on of the best in 2000) and 1ghz Pentium 3 Coppermine. Any chance you know anyone on ebay selling a 1.4 Pentium 3 ?

[@Citadel_Of_My_Thoughts]

I found a Compaq Evo N600c at a thrift for around $5 US. It was designed for Win2k/NT but there were drivers for Win98. Because of your videos that's the route I picked. It's got a Tualitin based P III-M @1200 MHz and a RADEONX600 with a absurd (for the time) 1400x1050 resolution and is shaping up to be a nice Win98/DOS gaming system.

[@philscomputerlab]

Nice! I always knew that a mobile Tualatin existed, but just never met anyone that had such a system! The X600 sounds quite modern though!

[@Citadel_Of_My_Thoughts]

X600 is what both Windows and CPU-Z ID the card as but it appears to be a ATI Mobility Radeon w 16 MB DDR SDRAM. I had trouble finding Windows 98 drivers that would even work but wrong ID aside, 3D acceleration seems to work fine.The sound card is even a SB compatible so I've got sound effects and music for DOS titles like Doom and Duke Nukem 3D

[@philscomputerlab]

Very nice.

[@kevinl1505]

Thank you for amazing comments and insight. Really enjoy your work.

[@jorno1994]

i see Delta Force, instant like

[@ching-chenhuang8119]

I remember buying this game, it even bundled with a MP5 BB gun.

[@Inski584]

Beautiful Voxels.

[@BlackAdder4Ever]

To get the best out of Duke Nukem 3d, I built this: P4 2.8GHz/533MHz Northwood, QDI i845 motherboard with Sb-link connector, FX 5200, Audigy 2 for SB16 emulation and Yamaha 724 for OPL3 and MIDI-Out. The result is stable, fast, dos and windows 98 compatible and finally I have use for my old heavy copper soc.478-only CPU cooler.

[@2BuckFridays]

Great video! Look at that yucky P4 IPC. xD And even when the P4 wins, I'm just way too much of a Pentium iii fanboy to care! And if I wanted newer, I'd definitely go with an Athlon, not the P4.

[@andljoy]

You have to love how in the current day intel is doing its best to relive the failure of the P4 days :). Dont get me wrong they have polished that 14nm process to a mirror shine , but its still old news .

[@retroman3075]

That Tualatin really held its own in these tests! I own a dual 1.4 ghz S-Tualatin server. It was a real beast in its day. I have built a few of these P4 win 98 game rigs and they work very well. Cheap and reliable. You should really make a video about the Pentium pro if you havent already

[@retrobrw919]

I've got a couple of old Dell P4 machines here. Should probably get around to mucking around with repairing them and installing windows 98 SE on them. Pretty sure most of them just need new hard drives and a sound card. Might have 1 or 2 that needs a motherboard recap, but I run an electronics repair shop, so that's not exactly difficult.

[@ivanconsuegra4117]

A very interesting comparisson would be a Tualatin 1.4 GHz Pentium 3 vs a Willamette 1.4 GHz Pentium 4

[@talvisota327]

P3 would win by far lol

[@nitrax8629]

Stick a 1.4GHz Athlon Thunderbird in there, should make things even more interesting!

[@GGigabiteM]

The PIII 1.4 would demolish the P4. Intel had shifted strategy with Netburst and released a weaker architecture because they thought they could make up for it with raw clock speeds. We all see how that turned out.

[@retroman3075]

1.4 Athlon would win.

[@NFreund]

Probably the reason why the P4 is even worse than Bulldozer.

[@DD-jk3nf]

Some may have already mentioned this in the comments but just in case... For your SoundBlaster sound, have a look on both your motherboard and sound card for a pin header labelled 'SB_LNK' or similar. The address ranges that PCI devices use doesn't work too well when mapping to the I/O addresses that ISA used, so PCI sound cards had issues mapping to 220h in a real mode environment. If both your sound card and motherboard have those connectors, connect them up, that will sort out the I/O problem. Many motherboards/sound cards of that era had the connector as it was a 'thing' at the time, many people wouldn't to a PCI sound card for that reason. It might be something that they found a work around for with some boards, I can remember having loads of systems that didn't need an SB link cable and their audio worked fine.

[@RetroTinkerer]

I would set up whatever can use most modern parts, while cheap and available and at the same time let me enjoy the most quantity of games with great stability! A P4 seems like a great choice! The only way I would set up a fast P3 is if already have all the parts. Nice work as always!

[@ethanator4051]

Thank you for putting the power Draw figures for the Pentium 4. The Power Draw is for some reason a thing that is of Major concern for me. Other than the heat and Power usage and Capacitor reliability, I think Pentium 4's make Great Budget windows 98 Machines. Even The Socket 478 Celerons are Pretty good For Older games. even though i'm more for authentic hardware like Slot 1 and Socket 7, I can't deny how Easy Pentium 4's are to retro fit for Windows 98 Games. As long as you keep them cool and use decent cooling solutions you should Be fine. Another thing to mention is that i think Pentium 4's Aren't Suited As well for Windows XP gaming as they are For 98 Games

[@TuberViejuner]

What do you prefer pentium 4 gaming rig or Pentium III-T DUAL gaming rig?

[@philscomputerlab]

Pentium 4 for life!

[@mcrazza]

Still rocking my Intel 845 (DFI NB32-SC) from way back in 2001.

[@saxxonpike]

As usual, excellent video. I've actually been using some kind of industrial P4 board with ISA. Sound cards work great in it for the most part: SBPro2 was not compatible, YMF719 DMA was weird so sound effects didn't always play correctly, but my Sound Blaster 16 and 32 cards all worked great in it. Unfortunately, I have to keep it in 400mhz FSB mode or the board simply will not boot, but I have achieved 2.6ghz in this thing. Way overkill for DOS, naturally :) But it was super cheap to build! RAM, CPU, all easy to find.

[@lucaspam]

saxxonpike Thanks for the info about these newer MB with ISA slots. Very useful!!!

[@zapzap7458]

There are some nice option for ms dos sound - yamaha ymf724-based soud card. It has SB-Link (aka PC-PCI) port, which is actually GPIO port. I've seen some modern industrial mobos based on skylake/kaby lake with PCI slot and 8-bit GPIO port. I believe that it is possibile to use that port to transfer some useful data (irq, dma). But need some programming

[@Carstuff111]

I have to say, you are one of the few people I have seen that has had little to no issues with Jetway motherboards. My roommate used to own a computer store, and he would sell computers built with Jetway boards, but we had issues with more of them than we did with most other motherboards we sold. That said, before he moved on from his computer shop, the most stable boards we sold were MSI boards, but for some reason, one particular run of AMD motherboards with Nvidia chipsets, we had more issues with those, and it was a motherboard that, up to that point, we had never had any issues with. We had several warranty claims, he even replaced boards on the affected computers a few times with the same board, only to have the computer come back yet again. In the end, what it turned out to be was not a problem with the boards, but with the new revision of the bios, which had a setting that, by default, made the boards act stupid. Once he found this issue, he went through every computer he had built with those, and changed the bios setting that was causing the issues, and we stopped having those issues.

[@supercomputing942]

I remember playing Delta Force Land Warrior on the go with my Pentium M laptop, then coming home and playing it on my Pentium 4 machine. It's such a great game. There are even some multiplayer servers still online

[@ambirbtruckdriver]

I’m a big fan of these myself, my favorite part is the chipset. Everyone hates it so much that great stable motherboards can be had for pretty much nothing.

[@endgovernmentextremism]

Any experience with the 848P chipset? I have a brand new ECS 848P-A mobo. One of the lesser boards in terms of performance (which is why I never used it when I acquired it back in the day) but I figure this might be a good application for it. It's a beautiful purple board that would look nice in a modern case.

[@kennyj4366]

Intel Chipset 865. I went back to be sure and it's a good thing I did, because I thought you said 855. Ok, thank you very much for the knowledge. 👍

[@vonhapen1]

Very nice and informing video. How about a P4-RAMBUS-project? That would be interesting...

[@starlightrevenant]

Nice video about the Pentium III and IV comparisons. I am planning on making my own retro gaming computer one day (I used to have two old computers, one with Pentium III and one with Pentium 4 HT which both gone now) and after watching this video I am going to find old retro PC parts.

[@phantasiaPT]

Excelent video as usual Phil. I'm actually curious to see your results of diving into the PCI soundcard world in terms of DOS compatibility :) Keep it up mate!

[@nitrax8629]

Quite interesting - my P4 systems are all LGA775 and are a bit too new to run W98. 2GHz seems to be a good middle ground and fairly easy to obtain. I have to agree with P3 being expensive - it socket 370 motherboards keep going up in price! Luckily the CPUs themselves (except for >= 1GHz models) are still really cheap.

[@philscomputerlab]

Yea the way I see it is that AGP systems are great for Windows 98, but PCIe Pentium 4 systems for XP.

[@CommodoreFan64]

Great video, I recently trash picked a Dell Dimension Pentium 4 system, and good to see a P4 will work well enough with Windows 98SE, but it originally came with XP, so I might dual boot. My only question is should I keep the onboard sound the DELL came with, or go with another PCI sound card?

[@alexmihai22]

How about using Pentium M 1.7GHz socket 478 CPUs on a Pentium 4 Socket 478 motherboard?

[@stutz1847]

nice video phil :) AOpen MX46-533V + Pentium IV 3.06Ghz (533FSB) + Voodoo 5 5500 AGP =

[@mattrichardson4351]

Hi Phil love the channel.. I have a 386 motherboard of ya interested ..also where did you get your test bench

[@feieralarm]

Would have loved to see one of the early Willamette socket 423 P4s in the benchmark.

[@allesbelegt]

Out of curiosity after i seen this video: Over 1,5 years ago you made a big shootout with Northwood and Prescott. Will there be somewhere in the future a similar review with Willamette vs Northwood?

[@philscomputerlab]

Not sure, I still have 1 video unlisted from that series...

[@1pcfred]

I was running a 2 GHz P4 up to about 6 years ago. I got tons of that old hardware still.

[@wishusknight3009]

I conquer with using the 865 chipset. It works great for windows 98. And if you get an Asus enthusiest board or similar brand, the performance can be varied somewhat to suet ones needs. It is really cheap to find a low end northwood or Willamette celeron, and swap it out with a Prescott should you want a wide performance range in one machine. Even using single channel 266 mhz ram to dual channel 400 makes the performance very a lot, especially when taking the celeron vs htp4 into account.

[@tipstricksss1453]

I have a Pentium 4 motherboard left over from an upgrade and I thought that maybe the old Pentium 4 motherboard could be used for a retro Windows 98 gaming PC build but finding chipset drivers was a nightmare and after weeks of trying to hunt down drivers I was unable to get anywhere with it, no audio and the video was the ugly 16 bit color although the USB worked... I'm currently looking for a suitable Pentium III system... I also won a box of old AGP video cards on ebay, I did test them on the P4 running win98 but as usual I ran into the issue of not being able to find driver's for any of them. With a Pentium III I'm more likely to get things to work natively under Windows 98SE

[@alexmihai22]

Actually I observed that when capacitors fail on the CPU power rail, once a capacitor starts leaking, first other capacitors that goes bad are the ones closer to the bad one, and so on.

[@MasterPhil175]

I'd love to see you check out the entire series of socket 423 Pentium 4's.

[@BrainDawgs0NRG0]

Within a day of you uploading this, an old Dell prebuilt with a 1.4ghz P4. Windows ME product key and Geforce 2 MX 400 landed in my lap. It must be a sign. A sign of 9x video games.

[@philscomputerlab]

Awesome :D Would you happen to know what RAM it has? RDRAM, SDRAM or DDR?

[@BrainDawgs0NRG0]

Looks like it's got RDRAM. Two 128 meg sticks.

[@philscomputerlab]

Very nice, what a find!

[@BrainDawgs0NRG0]

I'm just glad the thing's working. Rescued it from an office that's closing soon, scrubbed the awful excuse of a thermal pad off the P4 and replaced it with some decent thermal paste, dusted it out, spent a week figuring out it only wanted Dell's OEM drivers for the GPU and here we are. Though now that I've started watching your stuff I've gotten the itch to build something myself. Keep up the quality content.

[@philscomputerlab]

We will be checking out the early Pentium 4 and RAMBUS memory soon :D

[@ZacharyNoah]

I picked up a custom-built retro desktop computer with an Intel Pentium 4 HT at 2.40 GHz and 512MB DDR-400 RAM. And since it didn't come with a hard drive, I used an SD card-to-IDE adapter with a 32GB SDHC card. It comes with an NVIDIA GeForce4 MX440 graphics card with 64MB VRAM, but it had already reached the end of its lifespan. Also, the CD writer that came with the system isn't working properly anymore. So, I went to eBay and ordered a VisionTek Xstasy 9200 (powered by the ATI Radeon 9200 VPU) AGP graphics card with 256MB VRAM. As for the optical drive, I've made plans to salvage one of my SATA DVD burners from one of my non-functioning desktop computers and connect it to a SATA-to-IDE adapter for use in my Pentium 4 build. My operating system of choice is Windows 98 Second Edition. I have no plans to install a dedicated sound card at this time.

[@3DfxAslinger]

In what resolution have you tested the 3dMark2000? I reach 12200 points (default benchmark settings of 1024x768x16) with a 1575Mhz Tualatin, best memory timings, and Ti 4600 (Detonator 44.03 and 98 SE with SP 2.1e). For evidence, I will make a video in the near future. :)

[@philscomputerlab]

I wouldn't trust 3DMark scores much, they depend a lot on the driver. 2001 SE is a lot more consistent.

[@3DfxAslinger]

In 2001 SE, the 5900XT is much better than the Ti 4600.

[@TechDave]

@PhilsComputerLab any advice on dual booting XP and Windows 98/2000? ive got a stock setup Dell Dimensions 5150 (3.0ghz pentium 4/4gb ddr2/320+500gb sata hdds/DVD ide/3.5" floppy/ATI 512mb gpu) with Windows XP Professional already installed on the 320gb drive (ideally i wud like to preserve my XP Install). any help would be hugely appreciated as i have a significant library of CD based games from the win 98- XP era and i love to mess around with older OS's! Thanks, TechDave PS: followed you for a couple of years on my other Channel (David Bradley)

[@RetroPcCupboard]

I was looking at Pentium 4 systems on ebay recently. It seems they are no longer cheap as chips. Luckily I bought mine a few years ago when a motherboard/CPU/RAM bundle could be found for £20. Now they are £80-£100+. Crazy

[@philscomputerlab]

I got so much backlash for recommending Pentium 4 gear when everyone was chasing Pentium III 😁

[@RetroPcCupboard]

@philscomputerlab You did? I thought your logic was sound. No reason to pay for a fast P3 when a slow P4 is cheaper. I think your Core 2 Quad Win98 build was a lot more controversial. Haha.

[@Audiman0aha]

I have a 3.4ghz Northwood p4 with hyperthreding with a hd 4650 and 4gb of ddr 400. It's my "Old school" gaming build as I bought the motherboard new in 2004 (its a shuttle ab60r) and was the first computer I ever fully built. Love the thing as can run games like fallout 3 with around 25-35 fps.

[@sinephase]

I've read that the Core series were a revised Pentium 3 architecture after they canned the shitty P4 netburst architecture. I wonder how the first Conroe CPUs would compare to these CPUs you looked at?

[@kamerat7689]

The Pentium M came before the Core series. Have a look at the performance for a Pentium M in a desktop board vs. a Pentium 4. Search for a review of the Asus CT-479 adapter. ;)

[@sinephase]

They were pretty low power though since they're mobile CPUs, but pretty interesting that was where the Core series actually came from :)

[@agevenisse3252]

Yes, if I remember correctly, the Pentium M was based on the PIII Tualatin, and it later evolved into the Core-CPUs. There were desktop boards (and adapters) available for the Pentium M. A 2,13 GHz M was usually faster than the 3.4GHz Prescott "Extreme Edition".

[@sinephase]

Nuts! 27 watt vs 90 watt and doing better at the same process size? No wonder P4 architecture was canned.

[@drzeissler]

use ess-solo1 and you get soundblaster to work under dos. use "cpucache on/off" to disable/enable the cpucache on the fly

[@ianide2480]

Dunno about prices but it seems that a low end Sempron socket 754 might do the trick as well.

[@philscomputerlab]

Of course, I did videos on this as well :)

[@playtech7165]

I have a soyo firedragon motherboard with a 2.0ghz Pentium 4, very good system

[@theonemouse]

I was trying to find a laptop that runs windows 2000 but also has the capacity to play most games of the time (most powerful game would be Civilization 4). Was there such a laptop and what kind of things should I be looking for?

[@broderperdurabo]

I loved the the game shown. But it only worked via ipx on on network play

[@joaquinbonavita2214]

Some boards actually let you reduce the multiplier so it can be running at much lower speeds

[@philscomputerlab]

I believe the Pentium 4 has a locked multiplier.

[@joaquinbonavita2214]

PhilsComputerLab well, I would have to check in some of the boards, but I remember having that option in the bios, some real cheap ones like Pc Chips and the like

[@enzito_sdf6978]

i'm more of a p3 guy, but you should check out the mobile p4s with speedsteps, not sure how they work but they might be interesting. i think only some motherboards support them, my 845gv detects my 2.4g mobile as a 1.6 and i cant change it, kinda weird. plus, it's cool as hell. i never thought i would see a fanless p4 in my entire life lol

[@NightSprinter]

Phil, for a Soyo SY-5EHM Super Socket 7 board, why would an ATX PSU have issues with the floppy controller? Before my AT supertower had its power supply go out, the PSU in it gave me working floppy drives.

[@dolphhandcreme]

I once had a dual P3-board with over 20 dead capacitors. It didn't post and, beside of fans, did nothing. After replacing the board works fine. And for around 10 bucks with 2 fast P3S and 512meg of ram was a great deal. When many capacitors are dead, the board maybe won't post, but will work fine after replacing. In your case, only around 50% are dead, so yeah, it will do something anyway.

[@FaSMaN]

Nice Jetway Board :P Evert would be proud :)

[@evertcoetzee]

HPZeta : Oh! You're so funny.

[@FaSMaN]

Evert Coetzee Lol just joking with you, did you try that Jetway slot 1 board I sent you?

[@evertcoetzee]

HPZeta : I'm going to use it as a base for a PII 400MHz, Matrox G200 (or ATi Rage Pro) Voodoo2 SLI system. Still waiting for a P2 of the right price.

[@FaSMaN]

Evert Coetzee very nice , I will keep my eyes open for one :) PS you don't want a Celeron 300A and just overclock it to 450mhz?

[@evertcoetzee]

HPZeta Well, it is a legendary processor, but I'd rather not overlock an old CPU. I prefer to preserve them.

[@DAVIDGREGORYKERR]

a DAA781 motherboard +A10-7800k and 256GB of DDR3 RAM no graphics card required as that and the sound card are integrated into the A10 -7800K

[@dm_kael]

I had build my retroPC with P4 2GHz (easy to find today) and it works very well with Windows 98 and DOS in all retro games. For DOS sound i bought Creative SB Live! 5.1 for 8$ which have DOS driver and it works well. Built-In AC97 sound don't have native SB support and its easier to buy SB card instead of try to configure AC97. And i tryed GeForce 6600 and GeForce Ti4200 and last has better compatibility for old games. This video was interesting for me for comparing my build with your results. Specs i'm using is: MB: Gigabyte GA-8IPE1000-G on i865PE CPU: P4 Northwood 2GHz RAM: 2 x 256MB DDR @266MHz DualChannel Video: ASUS GeForce Ti4200 AGP8X 128MB 3D Accelerator: 2 x 3DFx Voodoo 2 12MB @ SLI Sound: Creative Live! 5.1 HDD: IDE Seagate Barracuda 40GB + IDE Seagate Barracuda 80GB PSU: Thermaltake TR2 600W

[@Crazy_Borg]

I had an Pentium 4 2.6 GHz (northwood) with just a cheap cooler for years, never had any trouble regarding heat. Singlecore Northwoods aren't bad, even the later HT modells can be cooled easily. Only the prescott modells produce way to much heat for the performance. I still have a P4 board with CPU somewhere lying around.

[@ElNeroDiablo]

I'd be interested in seeing how a 3GHz Northwood P4 on S478 with DDR1 compares to a Prescott P4 on LGA775 with DDR1 Vs. DDR2 to a Cedar Mill P4, maybe with a Pentium D in the mix for comparing HT'd P4's to native dual-core P4's under the same workloads

[@philscomputerlab]

We will for sure check this out at some point. This time period is super interesting, but I haven't found a good format or approach yet as there are just so many systems and chipsets.

[@TheDemocrab]

Should test some Athlon Thunderbirds, XPs and 64s. I really think the Athlon64 Socket 939 Platform is one of the best for retro gaming as the chips are based off common ones of the era as opposed to a brand new design like the P4, you have easy compatibility for PCI Express, PCI and AGP ports (meaning you could theoretically have any GPU swapped in as you need/want it among other things) and SATA. Personally I think they make a lot more sense than a P4, they did back in the day after all...And the P4s power consumption here would clearly be the more modern, more efficient PSU which could also run an A64 system. (Would be very interesting to compare to old school reviews to see how much difference the PSU alone can make with a few years difference)

[@philscomputerlab]

The thing is, I do, and did. You really got to check out previous videos, or run a search or something :)

[@TheDemocrab]

Oh, sorry. I've seen those videos. I meant in a big comparison of CPUs or something, kinda like get a reference score across a whole variety of benchmarks for each major CPU arch at common speeds and the like in a single video so the information is centralised. Should have explained myself better.

[@philscomputerlab]

Yea that's likely not going to happen as the work involved is too much. I rather do more specific and narrow comparisons. But after a while a broader picture should emerge anyway.

[@philscomputerlab]

With DOS stuff, this is doable, as benchmarking is a breeze. But Windows 98? Just the Windows re-installations, even with images, it takes much, much longer.

[@legendareNz]

MoHAA ftw! Remember having an AMD thunderbird 1ghz, went to an p4 with an 9800.. finally getting 40-60fps on the map bridge on 1024 res! was epic experience!

[@cdoublejj]

plop boot loarder on floppy disk will let you boot just about potato or rock off of stuff like usb. did that for a pentium 3 laptop once.

[@mrscsi6472]

my problem with pentium 4 is that I can't find a motherboard with any isa slots. dos games sound like nails on a chalkboard when not using a proper isa sound card.

[@philscomputerlab]

Yes that is true. What about Adlib sound? A cheap C-Media card will do that and should work on a Pentium 4. Socket 754 and 939 with VIA chipset are great options for DOS compatible PCI sound cards.

[@Xaltar_]

Damn, I bought a P4 2.4b new back in the day. I overclocked it to 3.65ghz on it's stock cooler. In benchmarks it outperformed the HT capable P4 3.2 Prescott (years later) and ran cooler too. Makes me feel so old haha.

[@alpzerlaken]

What kind of unlocked motherboard are you using to achieved 3.65 ghz? I'm looking to build a retro XP Gaming PC

[@rhysholdaway]

I really need to rationalise my collection... Have a P2, P3, P4 and a Core 2 Duo. Great for a LAN Party. Cumbersome for a Dinner Party.

[@osgrov]

Very interesting, and timely video! I have a struggling P3-733 that I really need to replace, and maybe I should have a hard look at some P4s. :) SoundBlaster issues scare me a bit though. Is this something you are going to look into further? Maybe there's some card & drivers that'll work great that we just don't know of? Top marks Phil, keep it up.

[@philscomputerlab]

What Sound Blaster issues specifically?

[@osgrov]

Didn't you mention you had SB issues in DOS and had to run from within Windows?

[@philscomputerlab]

Oh in DOS. Well any PCI sound card will have issues with some games! So if you're coming from a system with ISA Sound Blaster, yea it's a step down.

[@Mr_Meowingtons]

my first P4 was a 2.6Ghz TH 800mhz FSB chip. it was FAST for its day! i even started playing World of Warcraft on that with a 6600GT i got lucky and scored 3GB of ram for it a guy i know that worked in IT gave them to me in 2003 that was like winning the lottery... had to get a E8400 with a 8800GTS to play wow as some point..

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

When I remember my 2.66 GHz P4 nothing good comes out of it. Well it was faster than what I had before, but nowadays I'd rather take a Celeron 420 insteadl.

[@acresir]

Heh, my first PC was way slower than these: A single Slot1 500MHZ P3. Unfortunately I don't remember much else, than a DVD drive, SB Live and a Soltek Mobo. I... think it was a VIA chipset. 17" AOC monitor. 4.1 Cambridge Soundworks (I still have this set!). Rock solid pc! I thought about rebuilding it, or some other SLOT1.

[@TheOnlyHero91]

I have builded a basic powerpoint , excel , word pc with Pentium 4 641 (3.2ghz) 775 socket with HT , 2gb ddr2 ram and a radeon 2600xt 256mb card. I am impressed how well it handles basic tasks and web browing , even using windows 7 for operating system it runs stable. Recently i updated the sata hdd to a 120gb ssd,now its even faster , ofcourse the cpu bottlenecks the videocard and the ssd,but its stil useable in 2019.

[@BastetFurry]

AMD K7 3000+ forever! Fanboyism aside, i haven't checked prices yet what can be gotten cheaper, but back then AMD beat the crap out of the P4s with its K7 XP CPUs. A 2000+ had around 10% more power at 1/3 the price when compared to a P4-2000 back then.

[@philscomputerlab]

Bastet Furry Well I'm having a hard time finding older Socket A boards. Got KT266, but missing an early KT133 with SDRAM.

[@BastetFurry]

Hmm, one i found on ebay.de, if you don't mind the horrendous shipping costs that is: 372219591146

[@philscomputerlab]

Bastet Furry Yea way too expensive.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

Nah XP-M 2500+ @ 2.4 GHz will be way faster. Even leaving the XP 3200+ behind.

[@patrikmckane4903]

I hlave Like 5 old kt133 boards with sdram and I can not get rid of it.nobody wants the..

[@3800S1]

I reacently (finnaly!) got my obscure dual socket Opteron workstation based retro gaming PC. Specs are. Dual AMD Opteron 250 CPUs (2.6Ghz) server version of the FX-55 but only cost $14 each :D MB Fujitsu-Siemens D1692-Bxx (still supported on Fujitsu's site, bios, drivers, manual etc..) 16Gb of DDR400 ECC Audigy 2 ZS AGP 8x BFG branded nvidia 6800 Ultra Integrated broadcom Gb ethernet IDE DVD drive IDE 500Gb Hitachi CinemaStar New EVGA 430W semi modular PSU I had all kinds of issues trying to get an OS to work on it. XP worked sort of except it was limted to 3ish GB of ram and I could not get the Audigy 2 ZS to work correctly regardless of driver, same issue with win2k 98SE and win 7 on another PC with this card. Had to use 3rd part drivers with reduced functionality. In the end i got a copy of win 2k3 server standard x64 edition and my god is it a great OS, everything installed out of the box and even nvidia supported driver up to version 307.xx with AGP support and 64bit. Newest 32 bit on XP was 175 or there abouts, anything newer did not support AGP, let alone 64 bit. Not only that, the standard XP drivers from creative for XP worked out of the box on 64 bit 2k3 server lol, and ever worked correctly for the first time. Go figure! creative don't even support this OS so got me beat how it ended up working better than the supported OSs Result are epic! plays all my old 1999-2004 games and really high performance. My next project with this system is to laser cut some custom brackets to adapt Noctua NH-9US coolers as they are meant for socket AM2 and newer but AM2 have 4 mounting holes where socket 940 has 2 holes slightly closer to the CPU. The stock server coolers are like jet engines.

[@3800S1]

Yeah 2k3 server is great, I like it as its much like my other fav being win2k and the fact everything works out of the box (hardware/driver wise) is nice. I have a question actually. Is there a way to disable in 2k3 the reason prompt when shutting down? So that it is a bit more desktop friendly. It always asks what the reason for shutting down is which is kinda annoying. Also is there something that blocks the installation of 3rd part browsers? a policy maybe? as I can't get any of the popular browser installers to start. they just do nothing when doubled clicked or run as admin. I even tried old versions of FF, chrome and opera that state support for 2k3 64 and XP 64 but they also don't start.

[@3800S1]

Thanks heaps for that. I was aware of the windows component that needs to be removed to use IE, but I didn't think that would effect installing other browsers. I will try it out and see if it fixes it. yeah win2k I was using up until 2006 or so. I gave XP heaps of goes but it was always causing me issues with stability over the few systems I had, so I always revered back to 2k. Then vista came out and I loved it. it ran great on my 4 core AMD with 2 way SLI 9800GTXs and 8Gb ram, that was in 2008. I ran vista ultimate X64 and I had 0 issues despite people saying it was bad. In fact I was able to play some games for the first time since win 98 as I could not get them to work on 2k or XP for years of trying but vista worked out of the box, go figure.

[@3800S1]

Disabling the shutdown event tracker worked nicely. Thanks for the tip. However removing IE enhanced security component from windows didn't help, in either installing another browser or running the included IE6. In IE it now complains that the enhanced security is not installed and stops me from loading any sites. FF, chrome and Opera still fail to start the installer. Same split sec hourglass on the pointer and then nothing. Have no idea why?

[@SpeedySPCFan]

Hey Phil, do you know what Pentium IIIs are compatible with the SE440BX-2? I've been using a Pentium II 300 for a while in my Win98 computer and have been considering upgrading to a P3 for later games, but I don't know which ones are surefire compatible - I hear some of the later 1ghz CPUs are incompatible. What's the fastest I can get while still assuring that I won't have to worry about compatibility?

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

In theory all the chips with 100 FSB. But many good 440BX boards can be run at 133 FSB, which would enable even the 1 GHz Coppermine to run on them. People mod them to run Tualatins on them. at 133 FSB the 440BX is still faster than i815, but the later can reack 150 FSB easily.

[@nitrax8629]

Just have to watch out with the AGP bus, some graphics cards don't like the overclock.

[@SpeedySPCFan]

I think the 100FSB models should be enough for me - I'm not trying to run anything super crazy on it, and if I want amazing performance I'll use my XP Celeron laptop for that. I just want a nice performance boost for some late 90s games like Battlezone and Heavy Gear

[@2dfx]

Phil why didn't you go with Willamette core Socket 423-based P4's?

[@philscomputerlab]

The idea is to have a cheap alternative to a high end Pentium III.

[@r.f.s.8766]

Hello Phil, first I love your videos! Second, I was instantly hooked after your video about the Pentium III Tualatin so I bought all the parts I liked and gave the setup a little finish with more modern cooling from arctic to make it look better and to be more silent. But then I thought about making it totally fanless because of the low powerneeds of all the parts. It seemed easily achievable so I thought.... I never had a fanless system and I always wanted one and I wanted to try it out after I saw the two silent cpu heatsinks on the arctic homepage. But I ran into some troubles, the two heatsinks from arctic won`t fit on my ASUS TUSL2-C which I choose for the Tualatin. So I need a suggestion for passive cooling the cpu and gpu. And I would like to know which silent graphics card would be the "best"/fastest for a win98SE setup with the Tualatin or in general. Also I would be interested in your oppinion on the best fanless power supply on the market? I would be very happy if you could help me out and more than happy if this would be worth to you making a video about it. A silent win98SE system is in my oppinion a very good idea because of the low powerneeds of the pre-pentium4 -era. So what do you think? Thanks and regards.

[@SuperCookieGaming_]

Can you check out dgVoodoo 2? its a dx11 wrapper for older api's that lets you play old games on newer operating systems. I used it to get railroad tycoon 3 (which you should add to your test suite) working in windows 10. its great and it would be a fun video for it to compared to actual retro hardware with retro games.

[@InfiniteClouds]

Hey Phil -- what would you say are the advantages of a Pentium 4 over a S939 Athlon for Windows 98?

[@philscomputerlab]

They are very similar, the Intel chipset and its stability and compatibility are one reason. So you get SATA ports that work with modern gear, especially VIA chipsets struggle with this. But the Athlon has cooler running CPUs and you can play around with the multiplier.

[@everx7]

athlon 2500@1.8ghz, (was gt6800, but now only fx5200), 1gb ram, 80gb hdd, and a 40gb hdd, it ran doom3 on 1600x1200 max without problems :), good machine, but not this old, i had a amd k6 i think 450mhz once (first pc) with it think 64mb ram, later upped to 96 :), believe ot or not, those 32mbs of ram, helped a lot, played blade of darkness, which back then was a new game, for me :) not so new when i installed it, but new for me, meaning, just got the pc, so :) and with 64mb ram, it loaded forever, it felt very long as i can remember but then my friend first lent me his ram, to try if itll make diff. he doubted it, i was optimistic, and in the end, it made hell of a diff. the loading was a lot quicker, and the game ran also a bit better, i struggled with 800x600, or so. With the upgrade it was almost flawless, hic ups here and there but, anyways. Sold the PC, bought a newer DURON 1.4ghz i think, but it wasnt a good choice, and had it for only a short time, and then i switched to my athlon 2500+ barton PC, first i had only the fx5200 gpu, (couldnt afford the higher tier). Later i made a deal with the same friend who lent his ram (i bought it from him in the end). He showed me kinda mercy u might say, he needed a gpu, but he wasnt much of a gamer so, he said he would be ok with my gpu and he bought me the fx5900xt i think, i payed him back still the diff. cause it wasnt ok to just get it like that (fx5900 was lot more expensive). So i was ok with it, untill came TES Oblivion and FX5900 struggled to get playable fps in 800x600 med/low details, Bruma was the worst with this gpu :), but luckily for me, the warranty was still strong when the graphics card gave up and i could return it, for another one or the price, but they couldnt get me one of those, cause i learned that they stopped producing it, so i did get a gt6600 LE, i was skeptical at first, but they assured me, itll be better then the 5900, and for the same price. I took it home, installed it, drivers etc. Oblivion ran great even on High details, it was great :). It lasted for a while. Then i sold the whole PC, and get myself my first intel, e6600, with 2gb ram, and 8800gts 640mb (first card was faulty, only 320mb ram :)), untill i waited for a replacement, i was frustrated of waiting so i bought for me a cheap ati x1650 512mb ram i guess it was. Bioshock did play very nicely in 1280x1024 (19" monitor), it was ok, until the 8800gts came back, gamed all sort of things. The gts got too old, replaced it with an hd 5770soc. And like 2yrs after that i bought myself an i5 4670k machine, and i have it right now as well ( no need to replace, still runs everything) The GPU needs replacing r9 270x is not good enough now. Was ok ish in 2016-2017. Now some of the games i want to play, well it can manage playable fps, but at costs of details, and i dont like it. :) MY story of PCs etc. in short with this and that. These videos takes me back in those days. Quite nice when a 32mb memory stick did make a diff. SOrry for the long nostalgia filled text. I felt like i need to write it down. Also sorry for my bad english.

[@zapzap7458]

I have both p3-1,4 and p4-3.0. I like p3 more than p4. P3 has less peak powerdraw, small cooler, some boards has isa slots (p4 also has, but rare and expensive, more buggy). P3 has everything I need for w98-dos time machine. Honestly I like p4 when I need more power for some AA+AF win98 tests. Very good image quality, but no benefits in dos

[@bartjuhhh6416]

Nice video I did grow up with a pentium d

[@PaulsComputerEmp]

IMO the best pentium 4, socket 478 is (2.8ghz 800mhz FSB 512), as the TDP is 69.7 compaired to 87-103 for the 3.0/3.2/3.4. it is fast enough for any windows 98/dos game Unreal 2004, Tribes vengeance etc, lower heat so less fans needed and still can support Dos Via ICH5 also just about removes then need for a xp retro system.

[@RediscoveringRetro]

Just to throw a question out there, what's the availability of PIII with AGP and ISA vs P4 with AGP and ISA? I was always an AMD person.

[@georgez8859]

Thanks for the Video Phil I like the Pentium 4, The Pentium 3 Motherboards cost too much right now. the only problem i have is some of the newer Pentium 4 CPU`s have Hyper-Threading and Windows 98 does not have support. have you had any issues with this or do you just use the older P4`s that don`t have it?

[@philscomputerlab]

Many BIOSes have an option to disable it. But even if the don't, Windows 98 just ignores the second thread :)

[@GGigabiteM]

You can lose as much as half the performance of the CPU with HT enabled on Windows 98 if you can't turn it off. Not being able to disable HT is pretty rare in practice though, I only ever came across a handful of machines that couldn't turn HT off, mostly relegated to OEM machines.

[@smiththers2]

gigabyte 8i865GME here with celeron D 3.3ghz and 512mb ram. probably the absolute highest clock speeds win98 would ever see lol what a pain getting all the drivers in order though, up until a random event recently, i couldnt seem to get the sata (running in ide mode) to have transfer speeds higher than 5.5MB/sec. now it pulls at least 111MB/s with ssd. for graphics im running a Quadro fx3000 to use nGlide 3dfx emulation and WOW its good for that. for sound im running a SB live ct4830 (pain to find drivers for too) but i havent tried dos games with it yet.

[@harryshuman9637]

Have you tried those OEM Pentium 4s for socket 478 clocked at 2.8Ghz? It's the fastest 400Mhz FSB CPU you can get, and it costs next to nothing on eBay.

[@ironinquisitor3656]

I got one for less than 10 bucks.

[@harryshuman9637]

@@ironinquisitor3656 Yeah I did the same, got one from China. Idk, maybe they had a lot of those.

[@Disobeyedtoast]

lmao I wish this came out yesterday. I just bought a Pentium III yesterday.

[@philscomputerlab]

LOL Was it something high end and expensive?

[@malvage0]

Disobeyedtoast At least it won't burn your house down

[@Disobeyedtoast]

no, luckily 800Mhz Coppermine.

[@2BuckFridays]

Don't worry, you made the right choice. :D

[@chanakasat1]

Hell I bought a Tualatin 1.4 with a FCPGA adapter after watching this!! :D and now I have 3 coppermins and a tualatin! (only 1 P4)

[@jrherita]

Phil - If you're able to get your hands on one, there are also Pentium M "on desktop" setups too : www.anandtech.com/show/1610 (and OC results: www.anandtech.com/show/1610/18 )

[@philscomputerlab]

I heard of them, they are very premium and really not something I could use for more than just one video or so. So yea, likely not going to happen unless I find one super cheap.

[@jrherita]

Not mine - but here's a new socket 479 board: www.ebay.com/itm/Axiomtek-SBC86807-V2-0-Intel-Socket-479-Dual-LAN-Mini-ITX-Embedded-Motherboard-/182280770175 "make an offer" and processors (P-M 770) are as cheap as $4 shipped. Just add a DIMM. I believe all P-Ms are single channel. You should put a paypal link on your page ..

[@AnonyDave]

Netburst is just a space heater. It's hot enough here as it is