Sorry, I don't have an answer to your question, but let me ask a preliminary other question - what is your goal with this machine?

Unless you want to go sideways into 3dfx land, for example, what video cards are there that are better than the MX 4000 and won't be CPU-bottlenecked on a P3? And same with the RAM - 384 megs is plenty for 98SE, which I presume is the newest OS one would want to run on a retro P3 system. (Back in the day, of course, plenty of people ran 2000/XP on PIIIs with 768 megs of RAM on 440BX boards... but that's very very early XP era stuff)

(I'm just wondering if perhaps the answer to your question is not let's try and upgrade this system by 100-150MHz here or there but rather let's build a 'new' retro system that's a lot better at doing what this one struggles to do while this one is left as is for late-DOS, early/mid-98SE era applications.)

CaelThunderwing wrote on 2023-10-14, 13:51:

I don't think I can potentially upgrade anything better than this P3 700 as a quick googling shows this was uncommon in the TB3 700, mostly 500 650 mhz options are showing up,

But anyone got an idea how far I can further upgrade the CPU? I know from here I can do better with a newer GPU than the GeForce mx 4000, I could max out the memory ( has 384 now. ) opt to move to n SSD over the mechanical drive that's in it now,

As I posted in your other thread - Re: Looking for Final BIOS for Gateway TB3 700 - with the later BIOSes (P14 is the latest of these) you should be fine to P3 800, although you may be lucky with 850MHz to 1GHz cpus if using a decent slocket adapter / socket 370 combo. Are you currently using a slot 1 or a slocketed cpu?

VivienM wrote on 2023-10-14, 15:26:

Sorry, I don't have an answer to your question, but let me ask a preliminary other question - what is your goal with this machine?

Unless you want to go sideways into 3dfx land, for example, what video cards are there that are better than the MX 4000 and won't be CPU-bottlenecked on a P3? And same with the RAM - 384 megs is plenty for 98SE, which I presume is the newest OS one would want to run on a retro P3 system. (Back in the day, of course, plenty of people ran 2000/XP on PIIIs with 768 megs of RAM on 440BX boards... but that's very very early XP era stuff)

(I'm just wondering if perhaps the answer to your question is not let's try and upgrade this system by 100-150MHz here or there but rather let's build a 'new' retro system that's a lot better at doing what this one struggles to do while this one is left as is for late-DOS, early/mid-98SE era applications.)

im not so much trying to do "everything in one machine" cause allready for quite some DOS/early 9x titles this machine is too fast. (i have a 486-66 board for that. im just looking for a solid ISA soundcard for that board. what i want to do Right now is almost not a great fit either, which is cover the widest range possible for 9x along w/ what Emulation was for the day. (NES/SNES/GB/GBC/GBA (somewhat Ewww as that limits me to vba (not vba-m) n older no$gba). im trying to aim for a wide range of storage formats (theres a Zip250 drive in the system, MAYBE thinking of putting my LS120 in it thats sitting in an broken build atm.) i Would go w/ a CF or MicroSD solution to make copying data easier w/o having to rely on the network.(i have a NAS thats not internet facing that serves that function of transferring large files over.) for AGP cards i dont have much of a middle ground that isnt utter overkill for 9x or stuck w/ the set of drivers known to cause Issues( geforce 6200 AGP [the 512MB n 256Mb variant.] the only other card beyond that is a Geforce 4 MX 420.

i want to retain Gameport usability despite this should be past the range where USB HID's have negligable or no impact on system overall performance. (so sticking w/ the CT4780 in there.) as about "sideways into 3DFX, " i DO have a voodoo3 1000 (but last time i tried something 3dfx specifc like the turok demo, i went from a usable desktop to "omg so much pink!" so i dont know if the demo was corrupted or theres something wrong w/ the voodoo.

CaelThunderwing wrote on 2023-10-14, 13:51:

But anyone got an idea how far I can further upgrade the CPU?

From my experience with one of these Gateway motherboards, I was able to run a PIII-750 CPU without much fuss. Mine is a proper Slot 1 CPU if that matters.

Currently have a Pentium II 450 with a WS440BX motherboard - wondering best way to get faster cpu, e.g. 700-1000mhz?

If you use a Slotket you can get the WS440BX/Tabor board all the way up to a 1.4GHz Tualeron. Of course, that's typically with a high quality slotket like the Slot-T, or alternatively with a pin-modded CPU.
I went for the latter method as it was more affordable (but more difficult, unless you buy a pre-modded CPU). It is running well with a generic "370CPU Rev 1.0" slotket. I can't really speak for any other slotkets in this scenario, but I would look for ones that specifically support Coppermines like this one (not just Mendocino Celerons...)

Note, the BIOS will mistakenly identify the CPU as a 1200mhz Pentium Pro. This is only cosmetic and doesn't affect anything.

MrKsoft wrote on 2023-10-15, 05:19:

If you use a Slotket you can get the WS440BX/Tabor board all the way up to a 1.4GHz Tualeron. Of course, that's typically with a high quality slotket like the Slot-T, or alternatively with a pin-modded CPU.
I went for the latter method as it was more affordable (but more difficult, unless you buy a pre-modded CPU). It is running well with a generic "370CPU Rev 1.0" slotket. I can't really speak for any other slotkets in this scenario, but I would look for ones that specifically support Coppermines like this one (not just Mendocino Celerons...)

Note, the BIOS will mistakenly identify the CPU as a 1200mhz Pentium Pro. This is only cosmetic and doesn't affect anything.

any recommended ebay listings for one?