I would recommend at 486DX-33 or 486SX-33 (dependent on what you have available or can find). In most benchmarks I've run, it slows down to roughly 386DX-33 speeds in "de-turbo" or normal mode.
The 486DX2-66 was a very popular CPU as well during the mid nineties but, I believe that your Pentium 133 MHz will cover games from the post 1992 era just fine.

Also, before 1992 you probably would have only had ISA only 486. No VLB, and no PCI for sure. Workstations and servers might have had EISA. But for example we had a 486SX-33 with ISA only back then. Plus 4 MiB of RAM. If you go back to 1989 that would have been very costly... 😉

+1 for the 33MHz option - 66MHz too fast for U7 and not needed for the other games you mentioned. I'd go for VLB over ISA, because that's what made the 486 fun and unique.

33MHz master race!

How about the UMC U5S-SUPER33?

Before 1992 they didn't have VLB, but you could sometimes get proprietary local buses.

appiah4 wrote:

How about the UMC U5S-SUPER33?

Apparently it's awfully slow.

I'm currently building a system around one (all UMC, so also UMC motherboard chipset, I/O chip, VGA and NIC). It makes a 386 feel fast - but most of that is due to the UMC VGA that is quite literally the slowest thing I've ever seen doing VGA. It takes almost a minute to render the ASCII of the basic settings page of the BIOS...

I want to see this UMC drawing a screen in action.

dionb wrote:

appiah4 wrote:

How about the UMC U5S-SUPER33?

Apparently it's awfully slow.

I'm currently building a system around one (all UMC, so also UMC motherboard chipset, I/O chip, VGA and NIC). It makes a 386 feel fast - but most of that is due to the UMC VGA that is quite literally the slowest thing I've ever seen doing VGA. It takes almost a minute to render the ASCII of the basic settings page of the BIOS...

Something is wrong with your system, I've run Doom on a UMC U5SX-33 before and it ran basically fine.. I was asking whether it would be too fast, to be honest.. Now I'm very curious about what could be wrong with your system 😀

oeuvre wrote:

I want to see this UMC drawing a screen in action.

Maybe I'll make a video of it 😉

appiah4 wrote:

dionb wrote:

appiah4 wrote:

How about the UMC U5S-SUPER33?

Apparently it's awfully slow.

I'm currently building a system around one (all UMC, so also UMC motherboard chipset, I/O chip, VGA and NIC). It makes a 386 feel fast - but most of that is due to the UMC VGA that is quite literally the slowest thing I've ever seen doing VGA. It takes almost a minute to render the ASCII of the basic settings page of the BIOS...

Something is wrong with your system, I've run Doom on a UMC U5SX-33 before and it ran basically fine.. I was asking whether it would be too fast, to be honest.. Now I'm very curious about what could be wrong with your system 😀

Like I said, it's the UMC VGA that makes it so idiotically slow. If I stick in a Trident TVGA8900C (not exactly known for its speed either) it's much faster and it positively flies with a CL-GD5428 VLB card. By comparison that is. It's still slower than an i486DX-33. I still have that CPU somewhere, so could benchmark them if I have time.

The Am386DX40 was the mainstream option for 1992. Origin was all about pushing the high end, already optimizing for 486DX's that year.

The UMC U5S is supposed to be faster than an intel 486 by a considerable margin, at least that's what I've heard from several others.

Anonymous Coward wrote:

The UMC U5S is supposed to be faster than an intel 486 by a considerable margin, at least that's what I've heard from several others.

I have the same experience. The only socketed UMC U5S I have was faster in a proper mobo. The PQFP one I tried, which was soldered to a tiny motherboard (late 386 size) was as slow as dionb wrote. I don't know what its problem was. But the CPU itself should be a decent performer.

alvaro84 wrote:

Anonymous Coward wrote:

The UMC U5S is supposed to be faster than an intel 486 by a considerable margin, at least that's what I've heard from several others.

I have the same experience. The only socketed UMC U5S I have was faster in a proper mobo. The PQFP one I tried, which was soldered to a tiny motherboard (late 386 size) was as slow as dionb wrote. I don't know what its problem was. But the CPU itself should be a decent performer.

I can contest to that - I recently borrowed a UMC U5S-33 and benchmarked it on my 486 motherboard. I'll dig out the benchmark results a bit later but, overall, it performed more or less on par with a 486DX2-50.
It didn't quite managed to reach 486DX2-66 speeds but, I believe that the equivalent UMC U5S-40 CPU should manage to run more or less on par with a 486DX2-66.

firage wrote:

The Am386DX40 was the mainstream option for 1992. Origin was all about pushing the high end, already optimizing for 486DX's that year.

Yes, it was quite a popular CPU but, fortunately a 486DX-33 can be slowed down to run at 386 speeds as well, if it is a bit too fast for certain games.

alvaro84 wrote:

Anonymous Coward wrote:

The UMC U5S is supposed to be faster than an intel 486 by a considerable margin, at least that's what I've heard from several others.

I have the same experience. The only socketed UMC U5S I have was faster in a proper mobo. The PQFP one I tried, which was soldered to a tiny motherboard (late 386 size) was as slow as dionb wrote. I don't know what its problem was. But the CPU itself should be a decent performer.

Is this the one?

appiah4 wrote:

Is this the one? […]
Show full quote

Is this the one?

I don't have it anymore but it's quite possible.

Back in 1989 when I bought my first pc, it was a 286 which I upgraded to 33Mhz 386 in 1992. I never really looked into it, so I didn't know that 486 pcs were that common even back in 1989. Perhaps they were just too expensive for people to buy back then? It would be strange to buy a pc nowadays that would be 2 generations behind the newest tech. I even paid quite much for that 286 in 1989.

Yeah, as the 386 before, they had the 486 as a special high end market segment CPU for quite a long time, since consumer applications were so few. 486DX2's became mainstream as they brought out the early Pentiums in '93, and then as Pentiums became mainstream they brought out the Pentium Pro. Barely a gap anymore at that point.