As far as I remember from the Dark Forces setup program it only uses a maximum of 8MB RAM anyway, and I've never seen any benefit to giving Doom more than that either so you should be good as far as memory goes for those two games. The only DOS game I play that benefits from more than 8MB is Descent. A DX 33 is a little low-end as far as 486s go but many games will still be quite playable AFAIK.

I'd suggest it's easier to not bother with any of the DX4 chips, a DX2-66 should be more than enough considering your board only has ISA slots.
I don't know about the RAM though, but if you stick with DOS then the 8MB wouldn't be much of a bottleneck I think.

So my advice is to keep things easy, just get a DX2-66 at the most (3.3v chips might give you trouble, just stick with 5v chips).

AnacreonZA wrote:

As far as I remember from the Dark Forces setup program it only uses a maximum of 8MB RAM anyway, and I've never seen any benefit to giving Doom more than that either so you should be good as far as memory goes for those two games. The only DOS game I play that benefits from more than 8MB is Descent. A DX 33 is a little low-end as far as 486s go but many games will still be quite playable AFAIK.

My copy of dark forces says it needs 8mb of ram and 16mb of ram is recommend. I'm not looking for quite playable but 60fps playable. Or as close as I can get to 60fps.
Also don't forget MW2, duke nukem 3d and shattered steel they all call for more then 8mb of ram if I recall,

Tetrium wrote:

I'd suggest it's easier to not bother with any of the DX4 chips, a DX2-66 should be more than enough considering your board only has ISA slots.
I don't know about the RAM though, but if you stick with DOS then the 8MB wouldn't be much of a bottleneck I think.

So my advice is to keep things easy, just get a DX2-66 at the most (3.3v chips might give you trouble, just stick with 5v chips).

Thanks, it's a 5v only board from what I know. What about the i486 overdrive CPU's ? Would it be better then a 486dx2-66? I may install windows 3.1 on the system. But I don't know yet. I'm thinking of getting 16mb of ram so I never have to bother with having to little ram.

saturn wrote:

My copy of dark forces says it needs 8mb of ram and 16mb of ram is recommend. I'm not looking for quite playable but 60fps play […]
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AnacreonZA wrote:

As far as I remember from the Dark Forces setup program it only uses a maximum of 8MB RAM anyway, and I've never seen any benefit to giving Doom more than that either so you should be good as far as memory goes for those two games. The only DOS game I play that benefits from more than 8MB is Descent. A DX 33 is a little low-end as far as 486s go but many games will still be quite playable AFAIK.

My copy of dark forces says it needs 8mb of ram and 16mb of ram is recommend. I'm not looking for quite playable but 60fps playable. Or as close as I can get to 60fps.
Also don't forget MW2, duke nukem 3d and shattered steel they all call for more then 8mb of ram if I recall,

Tetrium wrote:

I'd suggest it's easier to not bother with any of the DX4 chips, a DX2-66 should be more than enough considering your board only has ISA slots.
I don't know about the RAM though, but if you stick with DOS then the 8MB wouldn't be much of a bottleneck I think.

So my advice is to keep things easy, just get a DX2-66 at the most (3.3v chips might give you trouble, just stick with 5v chips).

Thanks, it's a 5v only board from what I know. What about the i486 overdrive CPU's ? Would it be better then a 486dx2-66? I may install windows 3.1 on the system. But I don't know yet. I'm thinking of getting 16mb of ram so I never have to bother with having to little ram.

I'm really not that knowledgable when it comes to ISA graphics performance, I only know what I read on the net (like what others wrote on Vogons).
It never hurts to have extra memory modules (large sized modules! 😁 ) at hand 😀

The Intel Overdrives were specifically made to be "plug and play", in particular for boards that won't support CPU voltages under 5v (the overdrives are basically 3.3v (or similar) chips on a PCB with a voltage regulator so it will work on 5v boards), but unless you actually already have one in a drawer somewhere, I wouldn't bother buying one if they are still relatively expensive (especially compared to the performance the DX2-66 delivers and how many of the DX2-66's were made. They should be relatively cheap and most are 5v iirc).