The Upgrade Path
As thoroughly enjoyable as the Pentium machine was, it did show its lack fo muscle in some respects. Sim Copter was a bit of a slide-show, unless you played with lower detail settings. Quake was pretty good at 320x200, but forget anything higher. Newer titles like Unreal were just out of the question.
I could choose to be satisfied with the way it was, OR I could do what had to be done. Time for some upgrades!
CPU selection was easy. The Pentium MMX 233 was the fastest of the line, so that's what I grabbed. Sure, I could've used any number of even faster K6-2 or -3 chips, but without the Super Socket 7's 100MHz bus, that's leaving a lot of performance on the table.
The CPU upgrade was a noticeable improvement. Everything felt snappier. Sim Copter was now quite playable, even with higher detail settings.
I still had that itch for wavetable MIDI, so I headed over to Serdashop for a DreamBlaster X2GS. That particular model has an officially-licensed Roland sound bank pre-loaded. It wouldn't sound EXACTLY like a SoundCanvas, but it's remarkably close. It sounded fantastic and works perfectly with any game that supports General Midi output.
A CD-ROM drive made it easier to load software. A Filco mechanical keyboard made typing a WHOLE lot nicer. A Logitech Wingman Precision Gamepad... well... wasn't great, honestly. It would eventually be replaced by an Interact MÄkoPad, which is quite good.
Still... the system wasn't quite perfect. Newer titles like Quake and Unreal were still pretty tough.
This was the dawn of the era of 3D acceleration. The system had an S3 Virge DX on-board, but that didn't really help matters much, so I largely ignored it. Back in the day when I had this problem, I pestered my parents non-stop until they eventually gave in and got a Diamond Monster 3D for the family computer.
I knew a Voodoo card was the best option for the time period, but I really didn't want to pay the "3Dfx tax" that these cards command on the current market. I waffled. I looked at other cards. I tried to justify things.
I'm not sure how it happened (total mystery, I swear) but a 4MB Diamond Monster 3D suddenly appeared in my mailbox. Just like the one I had back in the 90s. I wasted NO time popping that sucker in and getting drivers installed.
Ahhhhhhh...
What else could you want at this point?
And did you notice I snagged a bit of a monitor upgrade along the way too? It's a Nokia 710C 17" flat CRT with built-in speakers. It matches the size of the desktop case perfectly and not needing external speakers is a real convenience.