First post, by auron
of course a question mainly for period systems. like, could a dx2/66 get away with running 1995 DOS games under win95?
i suppose one factor would be 8086 virtual mode implementation differences per CPU and also VME, although AFAIK software needs to be coded specifically to support that. did late DOS games support VME, or does win9x leverage it in some way on its part to reduce overhead? since late 486s had it, it could make for an interesting comparison running software with such a cpu and then swapping in an older model without it. another factor might be different 9x versions, like ME perhaps has more overhead than 95?
i've read that something actually working in favor of 9x over a real DOS is the 32-bit drivers running in the background for stuff like hard drive/CD access, supposedly speeding up games that use those a lot.