That is the minimum required CPU for that game, while you have several times the required ram.. In general, adding a sound blaster does require more cpu work to process the sound data for output.

CPU bottleneck, but 8mb ram won't hurt or CPU cache.

Adding more RAM won't help unless the game(s) are slower because of swapping or extra loading because of the lack of memory. DOS games like Epic Pinball usually either fit in the memory or won't run at all, the operating system itself doesn't do any virtual memory handling. Newer games (like first person shooters) that dynamically load and unload a lot of (mostly graphical) data can benefit from more RAM. Doom, for example, runs with 4MB but for more complex levels more memory can mostly avoid "swapping" after initially loading a level. You can also use the extra RAM for disk caching that speeds up loading and especially copying small files - but CPU limited games or demos won't run faster at all.
Adding some cache can help a bit too though I have no idea if the mentioned board has cache and how much.

More RAM does not in fact speed a system up by itself. More RAM is only useful if either the software you want to run actually NEEDS more RAM, or if the operating system you use use virtual memory as in, swapping memory to disk. DOS does not use virtual memory and the only DOS game I can recall that actually can do so is Jagged Alliance if run with 4MB instead of 8MB ram.

so, more ram will not help in this case.

Thanks everyone! That’s sort of what I figured, but I wanted to confirm here first. I didn’t ask about cache, because this board doesn’t support any.

Since that game uses mod music, if you get a compatible sound card that provides hardware mixing (like the gravis ultrasound), you may be able to get smooth gameplay with music. But getting a faster machine is probably the cheapest alternative 🤣

Deksor wrote:

Since that game uses mod music, if you get a compatible sound card that provides hardware mixing (like the gravis ultrasound), you may be able to get smooth gameplay with music. But getting a faster machine is probably the cheapest alternative 🤣

Haha, true! I’ve got a 486 as well that has no problem with it - just trying to figure out how far I can go with the 386.

There might be some value to have 8MB in your 386. Anything beyond that is not really useful unless you are trying to run something like Windows NT. A lot of older 386s can't really handle more than 8-12MB reliably anyway.