I mean, if you wanna go all out, you might as well get a 1.4 GHz P3. As anything that the 850 runs, the 1400 will run better.

P3's make great late DOS/Win9x machines!
Games from around mid 90's onwards will be fine mostly and aren't affected by system speed. There are acceptations of course.
P3 even has enough horsepower to run dos games in Win9x if you want to be lazy.
As a bonus the same PC can be used for vast majority of Win9x games.
Most Geforce card offers good VESA compatibly for DOS.
AWE64 is a good choice, personally I think the Gold is over rated and happy with a value but I don't bother with soundfonts.
If adlib is important for you games, something with a true Yamaha OPL chip will suit you more. SB16/AWE32 was the change over period so check which model number it is and confirm its not using Creative's CQM for adlib
Yamaha YMF-xxx cards are also popular ISA cards around here.

Here's my experience. I started off my DOS retro adventures with a Pentium 120. Some old games played too fast on it. SETMUL helped make it easy to diable L1 cache and bring it down to 386 speeds. But many new DOS games were sluggish, especially if run in SVGA. These included System Shock in 640x480, US Navy Fighters in 640x480 or higher, Duke Nukem 3D in 640x480 or higher, Wing Commander 3 in SVGA, and CyberMage. I eventually came across a 440LX board with a Celeron 333. This ran every game I listed above smoothly, but of course, it had issues with older games. So it seems, based on my limited experience, that somewhere around 300Mhz is the sweet spot for high-end SVGA DOS gaming.

A Tualatin is overkill for most dos games. It's usefull for playing dos games that support high resolutions like Duke3D, and quake, but most dos stuff will run fine on a pentium 1.

If I had to choose one machine for DOS games, it'd be my PIII. The hardware is cheap and mature, and it can do Windows 3D, ISA + PCI sound, sound fonts, etc. It's not my most glamorous retro machine, but it's my most useful.

its a bit of an overkill but it will help with some later DOS games like Duke3d or Shadow Warrior.

You can always underclock.

Hey guys! Thanks for all your inputs!

Now, I plan on settling on the following motherboard.

http://baber.com/biostar-m6vlr-motherboard-with-1-isa-slot/

Since this uses a VIA chipset, will that be a problem? I also can't tell if the ISA slot is native or bridged either. That being said, I'm not sure what difference that will make for a Sound Blaster. Some say VIA chipsets are garbage for ISA Sound Blaster cards. Others say it's fine. Thoughts?

Perhaps Phil from Phil's Computer Lab or High Treason can weigh in on this.

Matt

Most of the criticism surrounding VIA chipsets is centered on Creative PCI cards, not ISA devices.

Really? Has this been discussed on VOGONS? I'm looking through search and I don't see anything turn up.

So I should be safe going with a PnP AWE32 or AWE64 then?

Well, it's vintage computing. If you want a guaranteed result, you may be in the wrong place. I doubt you'll kill anything or anyone but...

Anyway, you'll find lots of chatter about DMA issues with higher order operating systems like Windows or Linux. The situation is unclear with DOS. The only sure way to know is to test.
http://www.flaterco.com/kb/ISA_chipsets.html#686B

mattrock1988 wrote:

without running too fast

You may get problems with some DOS games on P3. You may switch off cach level1, but this may not help in all cases.

as well as an excellent Win9x platform to boot

It will be Win9x platform with limited DOS games support.

maybe AWE64 Gold?

It has no good FM. So it's better to use SB16 model with OPL3 (not OPL3-L, not CQM), but they are more noisy than AWE64.

when a say 800 MHz PIII CPU will do just fine in 95% of all circumstances

I'd get MB on 440BX, not VIA (it had more issues) and P3 600-1000 MHz. P3 1400 is cool, but probably has not much sense as Win9x games (without XP support) were made for P3 1000 as max, with a little exception. P3 1000EB allows range 500-1000 MHz, where this 500 is close to max PII what hypotheticly can be good for more compatibility.

chinny22 wrote:

Yamaha YMF-xxx cards are also popular ISA cards around here.

They have less compatibility in games than SB16/AWE.

YMF-71x do SB Pro just fine, and few titles require or support more than that.

Tertz wrote:

maybe AWE64 Gold?

It has no good FM. So it's better to use SB16 model with OPL3 (not OPL3-L, not CQM), but they are more noisy than AWE64.

Oh for fuck's sake. The CQM is *different* than the OPL3. It's not better or worse. Whether you like it better is purely personal preference. Personally I like CQM just fine - with the AWE64's chorus and reverb enabled (and tuned properly, not just MAX/MAX) it has a really clean, punchy sound that can fill a room in a way the OPL can't. Personally I wouldn't bother with an SB16 any more - shitty, noisy DACs, bad output frequency response that sounds totally muddy on any decent sound system, hanging MIDI note bug, and the fact that the cards were built to a much cheaper price point and are worse in build quality which makes a BIG DIFFERENCE 20 years down the road (crackly outputs, etc.)

Plus with the AWE64 you get a real wavetable synth supported in just about everything so if you don't like the CQM there's always the other option. The AWE64 Gold is the best Sound Blaster there is - I'm tired of people saying it's "no good" because the stupid FM engine isn't the one they're used to.

I will say that I would rather have CQM than the hanging note bug. IMO the difference between CQM and OPL3 is one of personal preference (as xjas says). Zerker posted some FM gaming samples from the AWE64 here:
http://www.zerker.ca/misc/synth/

If you're at all familiar with how Doom, Doom2 and Duke3d sound on OPL3, you'll be able to notice the difference, but IMO and like xjas says, it's different, not better or worse.

gdjacobs wrote:

YMF-71x do SB Pro just fine, and few titles require or support more than that.

I doubt there is a complete games list to decide how few it is. Issues are hard to notice without direct comparision with Creative cards.

@mattrock1988; You said my name, this summoned me from the darkness in a cloud of acrid smoke.

I had a similar board to that made by Asus and it seemed to work fine. I have more experience with Intel chipsets for the Pentium III but I'm not inclined to think the VIA has any outstanding issues unless there's something I don't know about - There's a VIA chip where some iDE drivers slow the drives down or something, but I think it was either the MVP3 or an Apollo used for Athlon machines and I've never seen it personally - but it should be overkill for running DOS stuff.

At the end of the day with such questions there's no right or wrong answer, it comes down to what you prefer and what you want the machine to do and nothing comes with guarantees when you're operating outside of the manufacturer's intended parameters. In short if you don't mind the sound of CQM (Which I don't, it sounds fine to me) you'll be fine with nearly any Creative ISA card. If you don't like CQM you'll have to find one with a real FM chip (Probably the YMF262) or find another substitute like the cheap and easily available ESS cards. The down-side to non-creative boards is that you only have SBPro support, not SB16. Skip the SBPCI cards as they have no FM/CQM and they sound crappy. AWE64's seem to be the go-to card for this kind of machine and with good reason, I used one in both my Athlon and Pentium III where they had no real issues, they also have the waveguide synth which isn't great versus pro equipment but works well if you're into that stuff.

Such a machine with a 1.4GHz chip would breeze through games like Doom, Duke 3D and Quake as well as offering some capability for older games like Keen that weren't speed sensitive though you might have some issues with audio and timing in them.

The only real negatives for that board are;
No SB-Link, this removes a few PCI cards you could have used. You would probably have compatibility issues with cards like the YMF724 in DOS and cards which don't need the connector, like the CMI8738, are hit and miss at the best of times.

No AGP. Not an issue in DOS, but if you want to run Windows 9X games you might start noticing a performance drop at the upper end of the scale.

xjas wrote:

The CQM is *different* than the OPL3. It's not better or worse.

It's definetely worse as you get wrong sound, not as composer wanted. Degree of issues may differ from a little wrong to disgustingly wrong elements. The better you have music taste, the more aversion you'll get from random variations CQM inputs into original music in case you'll compare with OPL3 sound. Also without such direct comparision it's hard to understand are lame elements in a track caused by lame composer or by lame CQM emulation. CQM is just wrong.

Personally I wouldn't bother with an SB16 any more - shitty, noisy DACs, bad output frequency response that sounds totally muddy on any decent sound system, hanging MIDI note bug, and the fact that the cards were built to a much cheaper price point and are worse in build quality which makes a BIG DIFFERENCE 20 years down the road (crackly outputs, etc.)

SB16 starting from CT2xxx were better, maybe you had earlier one. There are AWE32 with OPL3 with probably better sound.
Another alternative is to use 2 cards, one of wich with OPL3 like YMF724/744 PCI. But I don't know how much games may get problems in using 2 cards simultaneously: one for FM, another for DAC.

Plus with the AWE64 you get a real wavetable synth supported in just about everything

AWE has bad GM/MT and lame GM/MT emulation in DOS, while not much games supported AWE directly. So the ones who care about wavetable, should choose other thing. To run DOS games in Win9x is not always acceptable and I don't like this idea. To get something reasonable as GM from AWE you need additional ram like Gold has, good banks and to run DOS games under Win9x.

so if you don't like the CQM there's always the other option

SB FM and GM - are very different to say it as option, - FM may be prefered in many cases. Also not all games have support for GM/MT or AWE.

AWE64 Gold is the best Sound Blaster there is

In case it had OPL3 instead of lame CQM wich sounds badly.

clueless1 wrote:

the difference between CQM and OPL3 is one of personal preference

Taking into account how wrongly CQM may sound in some cases I'm sure that most people will find it bad during direct comparision there. Wikipedia has a clear example. And I'm sure that most will find it noticably worse if they'll make direct comparision in many games. Distortions like reverb on AWE distract and mask the issues in the resulting mess, while they are more noticable if to listen FM in normal conditions.

Zerker posted some FM gaming samples from the AWE64 here

Unfortunally there are no OPL3 examples to understand the losses from CQM.

it's different, not better or worse

It's worse as anything what randomly changes original music. Make with attention a direct comparision (youtube has some, for example) and you'll find music on CQM sounds wrongly in some elements and hence is less pleasing. And another data for comparision OPL with CQM.

HighTreason wrote:

Such a machine with a 1.4GHz chip would breeze through games like Doom, Duke 3D and Quake as well as offering some capability for older games like Keen that weren't speed sensitive though you might have some issues with audio and timing in them.

May you say those problematic in sound games? From wich MHz P3 gets those issues. Are there ways to solve (bios settings, software,etc)?