Building a 1996/97 Pentium Gaming PC

Brassic = has no money.

As part of the #SocketToMe7 series of videos, join me while we take a quick look at the platform's history, select parts for a socket 7 gaming PC from 1996 (upgraded in 1998), then build it, then play some games and run some benchmarks!

Featuring hardware such as the Pentium MMX, white ISA slots and Voodoo SLI graphics, plus games such as Tie Fighter, Grand Prix 2, Swiv 3D, Fatal Racing and GTA.

Check out the #SocketToMe7 playlist for more videos from other great creators.

00:00 - Intro
01:14 - History of Socket 7
06:53 - Choosing parts
10:25 - Building it
11:13 - Peripherals and OS
12:04 - Game selection and some history
13:48 - Swiv3D
15:34 - Formula One Grand Prix 2
16:55 - Hi-Octane
17:55 - Grand Theft Auto
19:16 - GTA London
19:57 - Screamer
20:54 - Fatal Racing / Whiplash
22:00 - Quake
22:37 - Tie Fighter
23:57 - 3DMark 99
25:15 - Outro

Uses an excerpt of a video by RetroCompaqGuy (used with permission):

[vswitchzero]

Really awesome video and build! I loved the look at the historical progression of all the boards you have in your collection. Very nice clean AT case too, and who doesn't love Voodoo 2s in SLI. "I've heard people say they prefer the blocky software renderer, but that sounds a lot like someone without a pair of Voodoo 2s" LOL. Great game choices. I've never played SWIV 3D - looks like a lot of fun and reminds me of Terminal Velocity a bit. I also had no idea there was a 3dfx enhanced version of Tie Fighter! I played a ton of the original on my 486 back in the day. I definitely need to revisit that one too. Awesome work!

[chrisducati]

Suberb built! Never heard of that dual permedia 2 vga..great video and presentation

[supermario]

A Voodoo 2 SLI on a P1 200 mhz system is like a Ferrari engine in a Lada !!!

[UncleMikeRetro]

I was waiting for this one. I was not disappointed!
That was a hella history lesson and quite a hardware collection you have.
You have my respect, sir! 😎

[FOIL_FRESH]

nice vid. btw as of right now, you have 586 subs :)

[supermario]

This system can perfectly run much newer games from 97-99 like: Tomb Raider 1/2/3, Ultimate Race Pro, Motorhead, Quake 2, NFS 2/3, Superbike 98/99, Redline Racer, Fifa 98/99, Klingon Honor Guard, Sin, Turok 1/2 Kingpin, Star Wars Rougue Squadron, Monaco GP Racing 1998 and many many others. Would be nice to see a video with those games on this system :).

[GameTechRefuge]

Very cool machine. Love the parts selection. That case is very nice. Crazy how hard it's getting to find nice cases.

[modernandretrogaming]

Beautiful build, my first PC I built myself was Pentium 133 on ABIT AB-TX5, 64 MB RAM, S3 Virge and with 3DFX Voodoo 2. On Glide games that PC worked great, only some Direct3D games like Blood 2 slowed there. I also had a AMD K6-2 500 on Gigabyte GA-5AX which I also liked a lot. For me its a great era of PC gaming with one side of tons of great DOS games and other side first 3D accelerated games like Quake, Tomb Raider, Unreal and so many others.

[stevecps]

Loved the video! Well done :) I almost just bought some kit off eBay to do my own build, but have refrained so far as AT cases are rather expensive and tatty

[TechAmbr]

Very nice! I've not heard of most of those games... The UK vintage gaming market had very different tastes to North America. I was also completely unaware that a 3dfx-enhanced version of TIE Fighter existed... I may have to give that a whirl!

Great video, and thanks for showcasing your build!

[O.Shawabkeh]

Amazing effort and lovely presentation

[HighTreason]

Ah, so this is what became of the idea. It almost comes off as something they'd have sold at Makro, but with upgrades from the end user.

[christopherjackson]

Baby at form factor has a special place in my heart

[lazibayer]

Set the multiplier jumper to 1.5x and with a good chance your MMX 233 CPU will run at 233mhz.

[RetroTinkerer]

Hello!
Damnit you are putting together some pretty impressive systems and videos, I love your style dude!
One question ❓
I checked Wikipedia and they also stated that 50Mhz FSB was removed on VX/TX but I have a Jamicon KM-T5-T1 Intel TX board that have this option as it's perfect to downclock my 200MHz MMX to 75MHz and turn off features as stated by the 136in1 guide from Phil computer labs, is this board uncommon or the 50MHz wasn't really removed, but just not featured?

[dfxvoodoocards]

Voodoo 2 SLI is overkill for a P200 MMX. The only advantage over a single Voodoo 2 is the possibility to use 1024x768 compared to just 800x600 with a single Voodoo 2. With a Voodoo Banshee everything would run identical as with the V2 SLI because even the Banshee is totally limited / bottlenecked by the P200 MMX. Still a very nice retro PC, like!