I think any software rendering game where you can raise the resolution falls into this category, like Quake or the Build engine games: Duke Nukem 3D, Blood, Shadow Warrior, etc.

The title prepared me to reply in a completely different way, but the text made it clear: You're talking about DOS games.
Short answer: No.
Long answer: No. SVGA or early 3d accelerators era games run perfectly well/better than just acceptable on a P1 MMX. Yes, some do benefit from a PII, like when using the CPU hungry m3D or large resolutions for software rendered games. But in my opinion/experience, there's nothing DOS based really requiring anything more than an early PII to shine, even with extreme settings. Which I believe is logical, by the MMX time Windows was already the target platform.

wasn't some of the hi res dos stuff still speeding up in the mid p3 region?

mrau wrote:

wasn't some of the hi res dos stuff still speeding up in the mid p3 region?

Yes, but that is a different question. No dos game needs those to run.

Basically, if you ask if dos games NEED later CPUs you are effectively asking if those dos games need the instruction set extensions like MMX, 3Dnow or SSE. And the answer to that is no. As far as dos is concerned a pentium (MMX, II, III and so on) is nothing more than a particularly fast 386 with FPU.

Flying Corps/Gold is the most intensive I've found so far, at least for DOSBox, manages 20-25fps in 1280x960 with software rendering. Note there is a 3dfx option but I haven't tried it yet, but then I'm actually hunting for things to push DOSBox in software. Montezuma's Return doesn't fare well, I think it's from poor programming, buggy to get running in DOSBox, had an allocation bug that wouldn't let it start and then it worked by switching to lower resolution, sound off, fine except I set back to high res and sound on and it started working there too. DOSBox? maybe, but then maybe not, crashed even running its windows executable in native Windows. Also a poor game, so for me just good for testing purposes. edit: montezuma is also a DOS game with 32k/65k hi-color video modes.

These examples probably violate the spirit of the question - but:

Quake 2 (the version backported to DOS) The minimum recommended requirement is a Pentium 200. I'm sure for enjoyable gameplay more is better.

Certain emulators like no$gba although most of the emulators that punish a highend dos machine are also buggy as hell.

there's nothing DOS based really requiring anything more than an early PII to shine

System Shock
Archimedyan Dynasty
Grand Prix II
Terminator: Future Shock/Skynet

Screamer 2 in SVGA requires some serious CPU powah. Not even a PIII-550 can fully maintain 60 fps, but a Celeron-1400 can. I haven't tried the game on anything else, but I'd guess that a PIII at around 850MHz would be required to lock it at 60.

Or, DOSBox on any modernish PC will also sustain 60 fps. 😀

Check out some stuff from the demoscene. The DOS era lasted well into the early 2000s (actually it's kinda still going) & you can find software-rendered DOS prods intended for 1GHz+ CPUs.

NASCAR Racing. It's a lot nicer in hires mode (640x400) than 320x200, but it's hard to get a fast framerate in hires.
It isn't mandatory, but I wouldn't classify it as overkill because 640x400 is really the mode that anybody would want to play in. Even at low-res, you at least want a fast Pentium.

If you accept low res then it's playable on a 486, and that's how I played it back then (486DX2-66). But by playable I mean I was getting ~12-15fps at 320x200 with medium details. I had a better experience after upgrading.

As was mentioned, high powered CPUs are useful for most games that have an SVGA option. So it becomes a question of which games benefit greatly from using SVGA modes vs low res.
When it comes to mainstream commercially released games, I think SVGA is the typical use case for a P2+. It's optional, but desirable sometimes.

But the world of independent non-commercial stuff like the demo scene is another good point. Much faster CPUs can be utilized there.

Tomb Raider on a P1 133 Mhz is pretty stuttery in SVGA.. and I used to play this on a Cyrix 120 Mhz back in the day. Apparently you got used to it.

Cool about Nascar Racing. I played that a lot on a friends' 486 and I never guessed it even had a highres mode!

henryVK wrote:

Tomb Raider on a P1 133 Mhz is pretty stuttery in SVGA.. and I used to play this on a Cyrix 120 Mhz back in the day. Apparently you got used to it.

Yeah, back when the hardware was expensive, we didn't mind lower framerates. Being able to play an awesome game was enough. Sometimes I'd jack up the detail settings on a game just to admire it, even though I couldn't play it without turning the settings back down again.

Cool about Nascar Racing. I played that a lot on a friends' 486 and I never guessed it even had a highres mode!

Highres is invoked with the '/h' parameter when running the game. They didn't show it in any of the game's menus so it's easy to miss. I think it was only mentioned in a readme or maybe in the manual.

OK then. Blood in 1600x1200 kinda needs a high clocked Northwood (and fastvid and nolfb with a VGA that offers decent performance under the circumstances). I tried it on a Tualatin P3S at 1.5GHz and a similarly clocked Palomino Athlon XP, neither could really cut it. A P4-3.06 with DDR333 in an i845/ISA board plays it fine though under 60fps, typically more like 30-40.

alvaro84 wrote:

OK then. Blood in 1600x1200 kinda needs a high clocked Northwood (and fastvid and nolfb with a VGA that offers decent performance under the circumstances). I tried it on a Tualatin P3S at 1.5GHz and a similarly clocked Palomino Athlon XP, neither could really cut it. A P4-3.06 with DDR333 in an i845/ISA board plays it fine though under 60fps, typically more like 30-40.

i always found that kinda funny, how the old solutions get much heavier with quality increase than new solutions (like hardware assisted 3d)
also - how good at gaming would the pc have been, had anyone made hardware assisted 2d like in consoles?

Tomb Raider - PowerVR, 3DFX et al.

DOS game that benefits from a beefy Pentium or III.