Rule of thumb, budget components made 3-4 years after a game was released are often powerful enough to play it at max settings.

As an example, a 128-bit GeForce 4 MX440 which was released in 2002 can play most games from 1999 and earlier fully maxed out. Not to mention a GeForce 4 Ti4200, which was only slightly more expensive back then.

Budget components can be more fun - take a look at PCChips an Asrock's portfolio of oddball motherboards.

Same with CPUs, video chips and sound cards.

In general I would always advise to start retrocomputing with budget stuff. For starters it's cheap and easily available. Secondly it sets a baseline against which you can judge more high -end stuff. Compared to an RTX2060, any AGP card is dead slow. But if you have a TNT2 Vanta 16 and upgrade to TNT2 Ultra or GeForce 256, you will notice the power.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-04-01, 17:03:

Rule of thumb, budget components made 3-4 years after a game was released are often powerful enough to play it at max settings.

As an example, a 128-bit GeForce 4 MX440 which was released in 2002 can play most games from 1999 and earlier fully maxed out. Not to mention a GeForce 4 Ti4200, which was only slightly more expensive back then.

a good example - i have an mx440 in a duron 800 windows 98 machine and it is absolutely up to any game of the period

dionb wrote on 2023-04-01, 18:04:

Budget components can be more fun - take a look at PCChips an Asrock's portfolio of oddball motherboards.

Same with CPUs, video chips and sound cards.

In general I would always advise to start retrocomputing with budget stuff. For starters it's cheap and easily available. Secondly it sets a baseline against which you can judge more high -end stuff. Compared to an RTX2060, any AGP card is dead slow. But if you have a TNT2 Vanta 16 and upgrade to TNT2 Ultra or GeForce 256, you will notice the power.

i'd agree if the goal is multiple working machines and experiences. Perhaps i can see an argument for saving up for better components on if a specifcally 'optimal' experience is sought, but to me there isnt much more excitement to be had from a few more fps

i played happily through half life and others with a tnt2 16mb on a celeron back in the day, and that was after half life generation with blueshift came out, so around 2002 i think

sound cards are something i have never bought, i have some old pci ones - but soon enough almost all motherbaords came with sound onboard and i just went with that and some ok speakers

Well I used budget hardware almost all along the way and while I hated some of these I have strong nostalgic feelings about others. The best example is what I just had to build later is Am5x86 with an ALI M1489 based motherboard and a bog standard PCI S3 Trio64. Was it cutting edge back then? No way. It was late 1996, Pentiums were seeping into everywhere, even my school's info classroom, but still, I was catching up, it was a cheap system - but at least a cheap NEW system, a huge step up from that 386sx with that dog slow ISA Tsengs ET3000. It could even run Quake 😁

Though my current build is quite cherry picked compared to that one, it has a GUS and an SB16 instead of the Opti929 based something I failed to get a liking of, the S3 is a cherry picked Virge again, the one that seems to work ever so slightly faster with this very board than the others, the board is one of the fastest of my 486 stock too. In a way, it's nothing like it used to be, but it still gives the same feeling I had when I could run Quake on MY OWN rig, well it was decimated by the school Pentiums, but still. On the other hand, now it CAN run scene demos from back then and for the demos written for the average sceners' 486s and Pentiums it's a very very good system, really a joy to use.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-04-01, 17:03:

Rule of thumb, budget components made 3-4 years after a game was released are often powerful enough to play it at max settings.

As an example, a 128-bit GeForce 4 MX440 which was released in 2002 can play most games from 1999 and earlier fully maxed out. Not to mention a GeForce 4 Ti4200, which was only slightly more expensive back then.

I wouldn't be so sure: I play Quake 3 Arena (1999) on my Win98SE rig: "Palermo" Sempron 3100+ (2005) with Radeon 9600 Pro (2003) and 512MB RAM at 1600 x 1200, and the frame rate drops to visible stuttering when too many rockets with smoke trails on screen at the same time. I have to use my XP rig: Core 2 Duo E7400 (2008) with Radeon HD 5670 (2010) and 4GB RAM to eliminate stuttering completely.

gerry wrote on 2023-04-01, 16:32:

anyone else a bit of a budget component afficionado ? 😀

Only on my "now" PC. I'm still rocking a 1050Ti and play games up to around 2012 (unless not demanding 3d games). Why go budget on retro PCs? Apart from a few rare items you can generally get high end stuff for cheap.

dormcat wrote on 2023-04-02, 04:16:

I wouldn't be so sure: I play Quake 3 Arena (1999) on my Win98SE rig: "Palermo" Sempron 3100+ (2005) with Radeon 9600 Pro (2003) and 512MB RAM at 1600 x 1200, and the frame rate drops to visible stuttering when too many rockets with smoke trails on screen at the same time. I have to use my XP rig: Core 2 Duo E7400 (2008) with Radeon HD 5670 (2010) and 4GB RAM to eliminate stuttering completely.

Yup, that's why I said most games and not all games. 😀 There are always going to be a couple of outliers which need even beefier hardware to run smoothly at the highest resolutions.

Speaking of Quake 3, I have a system with an Athlon64 3400+ and a GeForce FX 5900XT. Not exactly low-end budget hardware, but it will make for an interesting comparison. Using 1600x1200 with all in-game settings at maximum, the frame rate generally remains in the 90s, but it can drop to the 40s in a few, specific areas. Usually around portals and mirrored surfaces, like those at the very beginning of Q3DM0. Lowering the resolution to 1280x1024 prevents the frame rate from dropping below 60, even under the aforementioned circumstances.

That said, people's definition of "maxed out" tends to vary a bit. Does it mean playing at the highest possible in-game settings (texture quality, effects, draw distance etc.) while keeping to resolutions that were commonly used at the time, like 1024x768? Or does it also mean using the highest possible resolution that the game allows, with AA and AF enabled, while still expecting a locked 60 FPS? The latter is obviously going to be more demanding, but some folks would be happy with the first option too.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-04-02, 07:17:

Speaking of Quake 3, I have a system with an Athlon64 3400+ and a GeForce FX 5900XT. Not exactly low-end budget hardware, but it will make for an interesting comparison. Using 1600x1200 with all in-game settings at maximum, the frame rate generally remains in the 90s, but it can drop to the 40s in a few, specific areas. Usually around portals and mirrored surfaces, like those at the very beginning of Q3DM0. Lowering the resolution to 1280x1024 prevents the frame rate from dropping below 60, even under the aforementioned circumstances.

That said, people's definition of "maxed out" tends to vary a bit. Does it mean playing at the highest possible in-game settings (texture quality, effects, draw distance etc.) while keeping to resolutions that were commonly used at the time, like 1024x768? Or does it also mean using the highest possible resolution that the game allows, with AA and AF enabled, while still expecting a locked 60 FPS? The latter is obviously going to be more demanding, but some folks would be happy with the first option too.

an important point. sometimes i hear / read people complaining about a game's graphics and when i looks its fine - constantly above 30fps and 720p or higher. its fine, if you're noticing that the exact shading near a bush isn't quite right then you're not playing the game (unless its gardener simulation!). i actually have some scepticism about it all 😀

only when the game becomes genuinely less responsive to inputs and stutters the visuals does it impinge on the experience significantly imo

i played q3 an UT99 on various systems, once into P4 / athlon XP territory almost any 3d card later than tnt2 and its all fine at 1024 or even 1280

i understand the desire to fully max out though, but to me thats a reason to get gog versions and just play them on newer hardware

dionb wrote on 2023-04-01, 18:04:

Budget components can be more fun - take a look at PCChips an Asrock's portfolio of oddball motherboards.

Same with CPUs, video chips and sound cards.

In general I would always advise to start retrocomputing with budget stuff. For starters it's cheap and easily available. Secondly it sets a baseline against which you can judge more high -end stuff. Compared to an RTX2060, any AGP card is dead slow. But if you have a TNT2 Vanta 16 and upgrade to TNT2 Ultra or GeForce 256, you will notice the power.

I love the budget stuff. Even PC chips!

Its too easy to just build cookie cutter OP builds. The lesser parts are more interesting to me at least.

kolderman wrote on 2023-04-02, 05:10:

Why go budget on retro PCs? Apart from a few rare items you can generally get high end stuff for cheap.

Fan noise. Higher end stuff generates lots of heat, so I prefer to go for slightly later gen but lower powered hardware to keep things cool, quiet and compact.

The first computer I built with new parts had a budget Mach Speed (Tiger Direct) VIA motherboard that was rock solid but when I upgraded to an Asus motherboard partially to get off of IDE I had read that the SATA was buggy and crossed my fingers it wouldn't be on mine... Worked fine for a while but started having problems with crashes. Put the IDE drive back in and problems went away. Kind of wish I still had my little space heater. By the time I put in a Prescott 3.4ghz I was never cold in the winter.

Also just realized Tiger Direct doesn't exist anymore.

gerry wrote on 2023-04-01, 16:32:

i don't really feel like i'm losing out though, most of the games i play are 10 or more years old and i have a 10 year old amd quad core with a radeon hd 6670 that is up to most games of around then as long as i stick with 1600x900
same was true back in the early 2000's where an fx 5200 did all i wanted at 1024x768 and even 1280x1024 with games like soldier of fortune 2

For nearly every expensive/rare item there is a comparable one that cost way less and does the job just as good or even better.
Apart from some exceptions (like the GUS or Voodoo) there's no need to buy expensive stuff to build a perfectly usable system.

gerry wrote on 2023-04-01, 18:42:

[...]

i'd agree if the goal is multiple working machines and experiences. Perhaps i can see an argument for saving up for better components on if a specifcally 'optimal' experience is sought, but to me there isnt much more excitement to be had from a few more fps

Exactly. But it still beats going all-in for some stupidly expensive card and having no reference for it whatsoever. That's just a complete waste of money. I wasn't thinking multiple machines, just upgrading the machine the expensive part would be stuck into.

i played happily through half life and others with a tnt2 16mb on a celeron back in the day, and that was after half life generation with blueshift came out, so around 2002 i think

Same here. Upgraded from my old P60 to Celeron 433 and TNT2 M64 in 1999. Somewhere in late 2003 I did go fairly high-end for an AthlonXP 2500+ and GeForce 4Ti, but cheated as I bought the board as 'dead' and correctly guessed the BIOS had just been mis-flashed.

sound cards are something i have never bought, i have some old pci ones - but soon enough almost all motherbaords came with sound onboard and i just went with that and some ok speakers

That was (and indeed is) the Windows experience, but under DOS, each card sounds unique, and some low end stuff sounds er... spectacularly 'unique' 😜

Also quite a few less low-end things for that matter - in particular the mess sample-based cards made of attempts at FM-synthesis were hilarious; still not sure if Ensoniq Sounscape, Sierra Aria or Creative/Ensoniq SB128/CT4810 is the worst, although the buggy Crystal CS4235 can give them a run for their money despite actually synthesizing something. Speaking of synth, low-end wavetable cards/modules also had a charm all of their own. There are actually reproductions of them now for people nostalgic for the less than perfect sound, things like the Serdaco Q-Wave, E-Wave and McFly.

People say the 4200 is a cheap card. But as a student in the early 2ks it felt very expensive for a gpu. 4600 or FX5900 would have been unobtainium.

kolderman wrote on 2023-04-04, 05:50:

People say the 4200 is a cheap card. But as a student in the early 2ks it felt very expensive for a gpu.

The 64 MB model of the GeForce 4 Ti4200 was $179 at launch (source: Anandtech). This is a bit more expensive than the MX440 which was $149 when it first hit the market. The MX card lacked pixel shaders though, which was the "cool new thing" that games started adopting around that time (e.g. Morrowind).

4600 or FX5900 would have been unobtainium

Sure, those were top of the line models. But the GeForce FX 5900XT was a relatively affordable mid-range card, retailing for around $175 (source: HotHardware).

I also like certain budget parts. Mendocino series Celerons, Durons, Trio64V(+), TNT2-M64, Geforce MX and Geforce2 MX, 7300GT, Radeon 9100, these were all good budget parts for the time. I what price ESS AudioDrive and Solo-1 sound cards went for back in the day, but those are good ones too and today they are very budget friendly.

IMHO Core i3 (Ivy Bridge and earlier)-based desktop systems are very good budget choices for late XP and early Win7+ gaming; just add a decent (not necessary premium) graphics card. Ironically, while Core i3 systems occupy most government and private offices as basic office computers, they rarely appear in B2C (i.e. open to general public) e-waste recyclers. I'd assume most of them were bought by B2B-only recyclers at retirement and then sold abroad after (minimal) refurbishing, as they spent their "legal lifetimes" (usually 5 years) in an air-conditioned indoor environment running undemanding office software.

dionb wrote on 2023-04-04, 00:09:

i played happily through half life and others with a tnt2 16mb on a celeron back in the day, and that was after half life generation with blueshift came out, so around 2002 i think

Same here. Upgraded from my old P60 to Celeron 433 and TNT2 M64 in 1999. Somewhere in late 2003 I did go fairly high-end for an AthlonXP 2500+ and GeForce 4Ti,

similar to me - from P166 with matrox card (still have that!) to Celeron 500 with tnt2 and eventually (interim new mb with duron 800) to Athlon XP2400 with fx5200

i used to keep up with and spend more frequently back then

RandomStranger wrote on 2023-04-04, 07:29:

I also like certain budget parts. Mendocino series Celerons, Durons, Trio64V(+), TNT2-M64, Geforce MX and Geforce2 MX, 7300GT, Radeon 9100, these were all good budget parts for the time. I what price ESS AudioDrive and Solo-1 sound cards went for back in the day, but those are good ones too and today they are very budget friendly.

all great parts, i have particularly good experience of Duron and TNT2 from that time. If someone wanted to build a win 98 system and had very little money i'd suggest a cheap spitfire Duron, a TNT2 card, 128mb ram all on a motherboard that already has onboard sound - all fine for Quake 2 and 3, Unreal and UT99 and a whole host of mid-late 90's games

I enjoy messing around with early 3d accelerators like the S3 Virge, Matrox Mystique, etc and much like the Geforce MX range despite being lower end of the market are actually pretty good cards if you pair with hardware from the previous generation.
One of my 486's uses an onboard ATI Mach64, not the best choice for gaming compatibility wise agreed. but performance wise, yes a ET4000 is much faster in dos but it's not going to improve frame rates so much that a game that's unplayable on the ATI card now runs seamless.

If a motherboard has something onboard then by my rules I have to use it. I've a Celeron 400 with a Rage Pro and was surprised how well it held up in Need for Speed 4. It's not perfect but ok for a 2nd machine in LAN games which is wat we were using it for.

That same PC and a second P2 400 has onboard Ensoniq AudioPCI and again, really, while far from perfect they do at least produce sound in both windows and dos and if you have multiple computers and one of them has something decent the 2nd (or 3rd or 10th) doesn't matter so much