First post, by hilram
So I am finally biting the bullet. I am building a retro rig to recreate some fond memories from the late 1990's into early 2000's era, but also with the ability to run some earlier DOS games.
The games I will be focusing on are as follows:
Driving: Need for speed 3, 4 and 5 (Porsche Unleashed).
RTS: All Westwood-games from that era, meaning Command and Conquer, C&C II + Yuri's Revenge, Tiberian Sun ++
FPS: Half-Life, Unreal
Adventure: Broken Sword series, Indiana Jones etc.
Some old DOS games will also be played on the system, specifically Sierra Adventure games (King's Quest, Space Quest series etc.)
The software:
The software on the system will be Windows 98 / Windows XP 32-bit Dual Boot.
For really old games, like Dune II, the original Tomb Raider etc, I will be combining with DOSBox (or DosBox-X), since I will prioritize a small form factor, and can not find a way to accomodate an ISA sound card with the platform I have chosen. I find the Soundblaster and Yamaha OPL3-emulation of DOSBox to be excellent.
For 3DFx Glide, I plan on either using a Glide wrapper, or somehow get my hands on a Voodoo2.
The hardware:
Monitor
A good non-widescreen monitor, for better immersion than huge black bars, or stretched image. Likely candidate this Dell monitor:
https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-19-monit … tor-accessories
The description says 60 hz, but the user manual states it supports vertical refresh rates from 56 to 75 Hz.
Mainboard / CPU
Gigabyte GA-GC330UD - A Mini ITX motherboard with Atom 330D and 2 GB RAM
https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-GC330UD-rev-10#ov
The Atom 330D has a Single Thread performance roughly equal to a Pentium 4 1,7 GHz or an Athlon XP 1600+, whilst running at a measly 10W. Perfect for games around year 2000. Under Windows 98, only one CPU core will be active. Speed sensitive games will anyway be run under emulation.
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/604vs105 … Athlon-XP-1600+
The motherboard comes with a PCI slot, which makes it possible to upgrade the Video Card.
I have also ordered a PCI Riser:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266541007221
EDIT:
I have orderede this Graphics card:
Nvidia Geforce FX 5500 PCI - 256 MB / 128-bit memory bus
I will get one of the smaller ITX-cases with GPU support, two PCI single slot cards take up just as much space as a dual slot GPU.