I think games running to fast have everything to do with a to fast CPU and nothing to do with a video card. I've heard of games not running fast enough because of a slow video card but never to fast.

The CPU will defiantly be too fast for early Sierra games and you will run into timing bugs. You can disable the cache in the BIOS which will slow down your machine, but it will be super slow. Like a 386SX.

Better suited is a Pentium machine. Here you get a 386DX when you disable the cache.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

The CPU will defiantly be too fast for early Sierra games and you will run into timing bugs. You can disable the cache in the BIOS which will slow down your machine, but it will be super slow. Like a 386SX.

Better suited is a Pentium machine. Here you get a 386DX when you disable the cache.

would running those early Sierra games ( or any other game affected by the CPU speed) be easier with a faster CPU , like a 1Ghz PIII for instance?.

I mean , at least from my experience , if you disable the cache on a coppermine PIII , its not any worse than running the games on a 400Mhz PII with the cache disabled , albeit things did load a bit faster and there was less slowdown. When I ran 3dbench on that setup , the PIII 800Mhz score put it at the same level as a 25Mhz 386DX (if I remember correctly , the score was a 9.4).

Darkman wrote:

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

The CPU will defiantly be too fast for early Sierra games and you will run into timing bugs. You can disable the cache in the BIOS which will slow down your machine, but it will be super slow. Like a 386SX.

Better suited is a Pentium machine. Here you get a 386DX when you disable the cache.

would running those early Sierra games ( or any other game affected by the CPU speed) be easier with a faster CPU , like a 1Ghz PIII for instance?.

I mean , at least from my experience , if you disable the cache on a coppermine PIII , its not any worse than running the games on a 400Mhz PII with the cache disabled , albeit things did load a bit faster and there was less slowdown. When I ran 3dbench on that setup , the PIII 800Mhz score put it at the same level as a 25Mhz 386DX (if I remember correctly , the score was a 9.4).

Amazing what cache can do!
But with a 1 GHz P3 you could probably run those games on dosbox in Windows better

Early 90s games would be better of with a (seperate) fast 486 or slow Pentium

Option 2 would be the better..

But i suggest better for looking an slower machine.

Yes Darkman, the faster the PIII the better 386 you get when you disable caches.

Now I admit I haven't got any long-term experience of actually using such a machine, Meaning having finished games and confirmed that everything works. Whereas on a Pentium I have finished many games and know it's a solution I wholeheartedly recommend!

by older games, what are we talking about...?? I know games like Kings Quest 1 etc... have issues on anything faster than 286 or so, but those games I"m not interested in playing. When I say early 90's Sierra, I mean only the VGA & VGA remakes, from Kings Quest, QFG, Police Quest... Gabriel Knight, all the Sierra FMV games, Shivers, Gab 2, Phatasmagoria, Black Dahlia, Tex Murphy.... etc...

To clarify a bit, I know a early Pentium/K5 or MMX will run all of the above, but I would really like to have the ability to run Half Life 1, and Swat 3. Swat 3 takes considerable more horse power, a strong K6 chip or P2, and at least a Voodoo 3 for fluid performance. By adding a TNT or a faster K6-2 chip or even a P2, I don't want that affecting the majority of the games I want to play. If I can, I'd like to avoid having 2 systems, and I'd rather not have to turn cache on/off in the BIOS. I'm trying to remember 20+ years ago, but I think my friend had a AMD 5x86/133 PR75 chip that he played all of the above with, and I had a Pentium 166 MMX, but K6-2 or higher I can't remember trying that.

On a serparate note, I picked up the CT2940 off ebay, but I noticed afterwards it does not have the nice OPL3 chip 😢

Why not use something like Throttle? (http://www.oldskool.org/pc/throttle/DOS/) They have both DOS and Windows (up to XP) versions. i have a P3 500 and 440bx chipset that i use and it works perfect on it. It uses the chipset to divide the speed by 12.5% chunks. At the lowest setting mine drops down to roughly 63 mhz.

IF I could choose one DOS System only it would be something like a fast super socket 7 or P3 Tualatin 1.4, if you want to run some of those shooters in higher res like 640x480/800x600 you need the cpu horsepower(in dos mode), the majority of dos games are not affected by speed issues and those that are.

Ultima 7 is affected by the cpu but that game has a windows build called exult that I would rather use than the traditional dos version.

If a game is speed sensitive I'd say bugger it and run it under dosbox or use slow down utilities.

dave343 wrote:

by older games, what are we talking about...?? I know games like Kings Quest 1 etc... have issues on anything faster than 286 or so, but those games I"m not interested in playing. When I say early 90's Sierra, I mean only the VGA & VGA remakes, from Kings Quest, QFG, Police Quest... Gabriel Knight, all the Sierra FMV games, Shivers, Gab 2, Phatasmagoria, Black Dahlia, Tex Murphy.... etc...

To clarify a bit, I know a early Pentium/K5 or MMX will run all of the above, but I would really like to have the ability to run Half Life 1, and Swat 3. Swat 3 takes considerable more horse power, a strong K6 chip or P2, and at least a Voodoo 3 for fluid performance. By adding a TNT or a faster K6-2 chip or even a P2, I don't want that affecting the majority of the games I want to play. If I can, I'd like to avoid having 2 systems, and I'd rather not have to turn cache on/off in the BIOS. I'm trying to remember 20+ years ago, but I think my friend had a AMD 5x86/133 PR75 chip that he played all of the above with, and I had a Pentium 166 MMX, but K6-2 or higher I can't remember trying that.

On a serparate note, I picked up the CT2940 off ebay, but I noticed afterwards it does not have the nice OPL3 chip 😢

Those games you are mentioning there would be mostly mid-90's and not very speed sensitive. Things like Phantasmagoria, the Tex Murphy games, Gabriel Knight and so on would probably be 486DX2/66 minimum for decent playability and will run even better on faster hardware. Doesn't matter how "fast" of a graphics card you have, as that will make next to no difference. It's really the properly older games, late 80's to early 90's (perhaps up until around 92) that have any real problems with faster hardware. I think for the use you seem to be outlining, it won't be a problem using a system fast enough for Half Life and such.