Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-06-04, 17:14:

predator_085 wrote on 2023-06-04, 16:30:

Not only elitist it sounds crazy.

Way to insult posters who have been helping you with your myriad of questions. Just because some people prefer to play with non-period correct hardware doesn't make them "elitist" or "crazy".

For reference, there were always a couple of demanding games which needed more power than what was available at the time. As for the recommended specs, let's just say that some developers were overly optimistic with their estimates. Either that, or they didn't consider the desire for 60+ FPS in their calculations. But like I said before, such demanding games (like Deus Ex) are the exception, not the norm.

Idk man it does kinda sound objectively crazy when you consider that when windows 98 came out the fastest thing you could get would have been like a P2-450

predator_085 wrote on 2023-06-04, 16:30:

Not only elitist it sounds crazy. As most of you guys should now by the many threads I have already made that i am also about the get my first win 98 gaming machine. During my research process I also checked the specs of he late 90s and early 2000 games I am in and for most of the games a 800mhz cpu would be seen as optimum. cpu for many games well into the year 2000. The statement that 800mhz is to slow for win 98 does not make any sense at all. At least not for most standard applications.

I think there's A LOT of subjectivity around this. People are all individuals who like to experience their games by their own preferences, unfortunately they sometimes forget that their own way don't apply to others.

My P3 650MHz Voodoo3 3ooo is a powerful machine by late 90s standards and is considered by Unreal Tournaments readme as faster than an "awesome system", and yet I don't play UT with it. The ~30fps isn't good enough for me anymore for FPS games. Back in the day I played it with cheap budget prebuilt with a 450MHz P3 and who knows what craptastic GPU and I absolutely loved it, I had no issue whatsoever with the framerate. But things have changed since.

I think the machine is great for RPGs, adventure games and older games that run well, but otherwise I mostly use it for DOS games as I simply enjoy playing games at max settings with smoother framerates than what was considered normal back then. I tried NFS4 (released 1999) with it and had to turn the settings way down to get it smooth, and as I was looking at it I asked myself "why I would play this like this if I don't have to?"

Does that mean you aren't allowed to enjoy the games like they originally played? Hell no. Want to play with with period correct hardware with the same limits as back then? Go for it. Want to play with later far faster hardware with settings maxed? Go for it. There is no universal RIGHT way to enjoy anything, there's just your own way.

Who needs a Pentium 2? Windows 98 runs great on anything with MMX too. I suspect that anything "Pentium" will probably have good operating system performance. The scale begins at what kind of kind of games you want to play.

it was not my intention to insult anyone @Joseph_Joestar.
My apologies if my post was seen as offensive

maxtherabbit wrote on 2023-06-04, 17:16:

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-06-04, 17:14:

predator_085 wrote on 2023-06-04, 16:30:

Not only elitist it sounds crazy.

Way to insult posters who have been helping you with your myriad of questions. Just because some people prefer to play with non-period correct hardware doesn't make them "elitist" or "crazy".

For reference, there were always a couple of demanding games which needed more power than what was available at the time. As for the recommended specs, let's just say that some developers were overly optimistic with their estimates. Either that, or they didn't consider the desire for 60+ FPS in their calculations. But like I said before, such demanding games (like Deus Ex) are the exception, not the norm.

Idk man it does kinda sound objectively crazy when you consider that when windows 98 came out the fastest thing you could get would have been like a P2-450

That was were I was coming from. By the time Windows 98 was conceived, there was no P3 800. It was build arround much weaker machines So saying a P 3 800 is too slow for windows 98 sound a big strange. Strange is the word I also should have picked in the first place. My original words were over the top I have to admit

I have no issues with saying P3 800 mhz is too slow to play some games in the best possible way . That's totally correct.

I should have picked my worlds more carefully. Was not my intention to be be offfensive.

I am sorry.

predator_085 wrote on 2023-06-04, 17:35:

It was not my intention to be offensive.

I am sorry.

No worries, I didn't see your post as an insult. In the end, it depends how people want to play the games. 😀

Win98SE was released less than two weeks earlier than P3-550; therefore we could assume that any CPU released later AND faster than a P3-550 should be able to handle the operating system with ease. However, there were many games released YEARS later that still compatible with Win98SE.

Example: Call of Duty: United Offensive was released on Sep. 15, 2004 -- more than 5 years after Win98SE -- and required at least a P3-800 to play, but could run under Win98SE. Most people would rather run this DX9 game under WinXP, though.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-06-04, 17:14:

Way to insult posters who have been helping you with your myriad of questions. Just because some people prefer to play with non-period correct hardware doesn't make them "elitist" or "crazy".

For reference, there were always a couple of demanding games which needed more power than what was available at the time. As for the recommended specs, let's just say that some developers were overly optimistic with their estimates. Either that, or they didn't consider the desire for 60+ FPS in their calculations. But like I said before, such demanding games (like Deus Ex) are the exception, not the norm.

Completely agree. There are quite a few Win98 compatible games that would be unplayable by modern standards on anything slower than a Tualatin/Thunderbird @ ~ 1.4 GHz.

For example, games like NOLF, Serious Sam the Second Encounter won't hit 60 FPS averages even with a Pentium 3 / Athlon 1 GHz. And if you now value 1% lows and frametime consistency... then you are in for a big surprise even with faster CPUs than that.
When using the Direct3D API, Unreal is unable to hit 60 FPS averages and has very poor 1% lows by modern standards (~ 30 FPS), and that's with a Tualatin 1.4 GHz! And let's not even mention Unreal Tournament...

Heck, even Diablo 2 can bring an Athlon XP to its knees during intense scenes...

And did I mention that EAX and especially A3D 2.0 can tank your performance even more?

So it depends a lot on each player's expectations, the games they play and how they play them.
In my case, for example, there are days where I just pick some of the fastest Win98 PCs, in order to have a perfect, high FPS, high resolution, high image quality, no compromise experience. And there are other (weird) days where I find myself playing Quake 2 for a few hours on a P MMX in software mode (true & recent story)...

Gmlb256 wrote on 2023-06-04, 17:46:

predator_085 wrote on 2023-06-04, 17:35:

It was not my intention to be offensive.

I am sorry.

No worries, I didn't see your post as an insult. In the end, it depends how people want to play the games. 😀

That's right. And it is like that do not agree with the people that want more power to get out most of the game. I am fan of school of thinking to use more powerful hardware to run old applications. It sounds like a neat idea for me.

I just was a bit confused by the statement not powerful enough in general. Stating not powerful enough to run some games in the best possible would have been a way more clearer statement. I totally agree with it.

I still think I should have picked my words in a better way. That drama was not necessary. My bad.

maxtherabbit wrote on 2023-06-04, 17:16:

Idk man it does kinda sound objectively crazy when you consider that when windows 98 came out the fastest thing you could get would have been like a P2-450

It depends on how one wants to play. As an example, back in the day, I didn't mind having 25-30 FPS in Unreal Tournament. Such frame rates were common at the time, and games running like that were considered quite playable. But today, I prefer having a constant 60 FPS in first-person shooters, for a smooth and responsive experience.

That's just me though, and everyone is free to play the way they like.

I played Crysis to completion at 10 fps, but the motion blur helped a lot to compensate. This game was definitely the exception for me, as there wasn't anything contemporary at the time that could run it well anyways.

Kahenraz wrote on 2023-06-04, 23:40:

I played Crysis to completion at 10 fps, but the motion blur helped a lot to compensate. This game was definitely the exception for me, as there wasn't anything contemporary at the time that could run it well anyways.

Crysis for me was the last of its kind that pushed the limits of the PC hardware at the time (Can it run Crysis? 😁). It was also one of the earliest one that came with a 64-bit Windows executable before it became commonplace years later.

Just found the thread randomly because a GF4 or GF FX are beyond the focus I want to for my first system but as the future owner hp system with p3 800mhz cpu the statement that p3 800mhz is too slow for windows 98 is a bit discouraging. I though that for game from 1997 to 1999 800mhz would more than enough to play the games in good quality at least in medium settings..

Would a cpu swap from p3 800mhz to 1.2 ghz make a difference? Or is this a dead end and need to move up my specs to high 2000 or 2001 specs in case I really want good quality gaming?

With quality gaming I mean all the eye candy enabled and still running fluid on decent resolutions. With decent resolution I mean either 800x600 or if possible 1024x768.

retep_110 wrote on 2023-06-05, 06:53:

[...] but as the future owner hp system with p3 800mhz cpu the statement that p3 800mhz is too slow for windows 98 is a bit discouraging. I though that for game from 1997 to 1999 800mhz would more than enough to play the games in good quality at least in medium settings..

I think you misinterpreted what was said.
Let me try and explain it differently. When you are purchasing a new car, you have the option of buying additional features like, for example, a heated steering wheel. Now, how often you will actually use this feature will depend on a lot of factors (most importantly, your actual country of residence). You might only need it a few times per year, which is not really a lot in the grand scheme of things. But, trust me, when you do need it... you will fully appreciate it. 😀

It's the same with PC hardware (and not just retro hardware). Sometimes, having that extra "feature" (i.e. extra power, in this case) will make your overall experience better.
Look at Hogwarts Legacy, a recent and very resource intensive game. At the time of this writing, there isn't any hardware available on the market that can run this game at a consistent 60+ FPS with Ultra details/Ray Tracing (without frame generation), because the game is heavily CPU bottlenecked when using these settings. Does this mean that the Intel 13900K / AMD 7800X3D are bad CPUs? No, absolutely not. However, 10 years from now, if you want to play Hogwarts Legacy, you will most likely go with a more powerful configuration to fully enjoy it without any restrictions.

So.. is an 800 MHz Pentium 3 a very good CPU for a retro build? Absolutely! It's an awesome CPU, actually. Many games of the era will run perfectly fine with it, some at hundreds of FPS. However, there will be some specific "Hogwarts Legacy" type outliers (which you might or might not be interested in) that are best played on (much) more powerful hardware.

bloodem wrote on 2023-06-05, 07:33:

I think you misinterpreted what was said. Let me try and explain it differently. When you are purchasing a new car, you have the […]
Show full quote

retep_110 wrote on 2023-06-05, 06:53:

[...] but as the future owner hp system with p3 800mhz cpu the statement that p3 800mhz is too slow for windows 98 is a bit discouraging. I though that for game from 1997 to 1999 800mhz would more than enough to play the games in good quality at least in medium settings..

I think you misinterpreted what was said.
Let me try and explain it differently. When you are purchasing a new car, you have the option of buying additional features like, for example, a heated steering wheel. Now, how often you will actually use this feature will depend on a lot of factors (most importantly, your actual country of residence). You might only need it a few times per year, which is not really a lot in the grand scheme of things. But, trust me, when you do need it... you will fully appreciate it. 😀

It's the same with PC hardware (and not just retro hardware). Look at Hogwarts Legacy, a recent and very resource intensive game. At the time of this writing, there isn't any hardware available on the market that can run this game at a consistent 60+ FPS with Ultra details/Ray Tracing (without frame generation), because the game is heavily CPU bottlenecked when using these settings. Does this mean that the Intel 13900K / AMD 7800X3D are bad CPUs? No, absolutely not. However, 10 years from now, if you want to play Hogwarts Legacy, you will most likely go with a more powerful configuration to fully enjoy it without any restrictions.

So.. is an 800 MHz Pentium 3 a very good CPU for a retro build? Absolutely! It's an awesome CPU, actually. Many games of the era will run perfectly fine with it, some at hundreds of FPS. However, there will be some specific "Hogwarts Legacy" type outliers (which you might or might not be interested in) that are best played on (much) more powerful hardware.

Thanks for the answer. Now I get it.

That's tough call then. Being content with good cpu for most of the games but might run into some troubles for some specific games or move a bit further ahead to the future in order to make certain everything runs great on my machine.

Too early to decide. Need to do some further research about the games that might have some issues with a slower cpu. If I do not care about these games then the p3 800mhz is a great choice but if I run into some games that i want to enjoy in the best possible quality then I might to reconsider my choice.

As you guys surely now I am new to to retro gaming pc scene but I am avid retro console gamer for many years now.

And I take my retro gaming seriously. I do not like emulated console games I prefer to play games on original hardware with some upscalers to make them look ok on a modern display. Had a framemeister and now I have the retro tink 5x.

So you can say that I am serious about my retro games.

For my upcoming retro pc i want to apply the same standards. I am looking for the original look of the games just in prettier with all the effects enabled.

I will go through my games of interest list asap and check out if there are some among them that would need more power to really shine.

retep_110 wrote on 2023-06-05, 07:50:

So you can say that I am serious about my retro games.

It's veeery common in this hobby to have your first "do-it-all" retro PC to go bunny and multiply by five in no time. There IS NO do-it-all PC, there's always something that it can't do perfectly. Just look at bloodem, guy has a retro PC for every week of the year.

So I think you should seriously ponder on what games you want to play, how you would like to experience them (window to the past as they were or a later non-purist approved but possibly subjectively more pleasing) and do you have the space and the will to build another PC if it turns out the one you built sounded better in your head than was in reality or would like another to complement the earlier.

Sombrero wrote on 2023-06-05, 09:18:

Just look at bloodem, guy has a retro PC for every week of the year.

I'm dying... 🤣

To get the discussion back on track, I noticed that the FX cards seem to be slightly more efficient than their GeForce 4 counterparts when it comes to Anti Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering.

Even when comparing cards with similar specs from these two generations, cranking up AA and AF incurs a smaller performance hit on FX cards compared to GF4. This might be of interest to people who like to play with those settings.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-06-05, 10:12:

To get the discussion back on track, I noticed that the FX cards seem to be slightly more efficient than their GeForce 4 counterparts when it comes to Anti Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering.

Even when comparing cards with similar specs from these two generations, cranking up AA and AF incurs a smaller performance hit on FX cards compared to GF4. This might be of interest to people who like to play with those settings.

It's what they are famous for. At least after NV35 came out. It's why I love my FX5950U despite all the hate.

retep_110 wrote on 2023-06-05, 06:53:

Just found the thread randomly because a GF4 or GF FX are beyond the focus I want to for my first system but as the future owner hp system with p3 800mhz cpu the statement that p3 800mhz is too slow for windows 98 is a bit discouraging. I though that for game from 1997 to 1999 800mhz would more than enough to play the games in good quality at least in medium settings..

Would a cpu swap from p3 800mhz to 1.2 ghz make a difference? Or is this a dead end and need to move up my specs to high 2000 or 2001 specs in case I really want good quality gaming?

With quality gaming I mean all the eye candy enabled and still running fluid on decent resolutions. With decent resolution I mean either 800x600 or if possible 1024x768.

A p3800 mhz is not at all too slow for windows 98.

When people say that they are talking about maybe 3 games (deus ex, rune or other late era unreal engine games, and serious sam), that are well within the transition period from win9x to windows XP and arguably better suited for a later era XP machine. And when they say too slow, they mean you will average more like 30-40fps instead of 60+. All of these late era win9x games can be played on any machine you like with a little bit of effort and maybe the help of some wrappers. If you are after the most frames, the best filtering, the highest resolution, then you should play late era unreal engine games on a modern computer with dgvoodoo2 (and sometimes some community patches). Head over to the emulation board and we can get you setup no problem.

If you have no intention of playing speed sensitive games (or you don't mind emulating them) then you can easily "upgrade" to a socket 478 or a socket 754 machine and your CPU will double and triple in power. Both platforms have excellent chipsets for windows 9x and it isn't a bad way to go at all.

But if you do that you might as well play on windows XP, and oh my goodness a FX card can't play crysis! Upgrade again! /s

IMO I think a slot1/socket 370 platform is great for windows 98 especially as a DOS hybrid. These sockets still have ISA or at SB link. A p3 800mhz is just fast enough to play quake at 640x480 with CPU rendering, as well as build engine games like Duke Nukuem 3d and others at "high" resolution. Any p3 can also be easily slowed down to a fast 386 just by disabling L1 cache which is perfect for like 90% of speed sensitive DOS games (in the VGA/EGA era at least).

But If you don't care about any of that (namely you have no interest in DOS) then you might as well move to a later platform. Personally I like socket 478 with intel chipsets.

mothergoose729 wrote on 2023-06-05, 16:42:

A p3800 mhz is not at all too slow for windows 98. […]
Show full quote

retep_110 wrote on 2023-06-05, 06:53:

Just found the thread randomly because a GF4 or GF FX are beyond the focus I want to for my first system but as the future owner hp system with p3 800mhz cpu the statement that p3 800mhz is too slow for windows 98 is a bit discouraging. I though that for game from 1997 to 1999 800mhz would more than enough to play the games in good quality at least in medium settings..

Would a cpu swap from p3 800mhz to 1.2 ghz make a difference? Or is this a dead end and need to move up my specs to high 2000 or 2001 specs in case I really want good quality gaming?

With quality gaming I mean all the eye candy enabled and still running fluid on decent resolutions. With decent resolution I mean either 800x600 or if possible 1024x768.

A p3800 mhz is not at all too slow for windows 98.

When people say that they are talking about maybe 3 games (deus ex, rune or other late era unreal engine games, and serious sam), that are well within the transition period from win9x to windows XP and arguably better suited for a later era XP machine. And when they say too slow, they mean you will average more like 30-40fps instead of 60+. All of these late era win9x games can be played on any machine you like with a little bit of effort and maybe the help of some wrappers. If you are after the most frames, the best filtering, the highest resolution, then you should play late era unreal engine games on a modern computer with dgvoodoo2 (and sometimes some community patches). Head over to the emulation board and we can get you setup no problem.

If you have no intention of playing speed sensitive games (or you don't mind emulating them) then you can easily "upgrade" to a socket 478 or a socket 754 machine and your CPU will double and triple in power. Both platforms have excellent chipsets for windows 9x and it isn't a bad way to go at all.

But if you do that you might as well play on windows XP, and oh my goodness a FX card can't play crysis! Upgrade again! /s

IMO I think a slot1/socket 370 platform is great for windows 98 especially as a DOS hybrid. These sockets still have ISA or at SB link. A p3 800mhz is just fast enough to play quake at 640x480 with CPU rendering, as well as build engine games like Duke Nukuem 3d and others at "high" resolution. Any p3 can also be easily slowed down to a fast 386 just by disabling L1 cache which is perfect for like 90% of speed sensitive DOS games (in the VGA/EGA era at least).

But If you don't care about any of that (namely you have no interest in DOS) then you might as well move to a later platform. Personally I like socket 478 with intel chipsets.

thanks a lot for your explation. I get the gist now.

I will stop getting carried away and getting overwhelmed. There too many interesting eras in the pc gaming space to cover it with just one rig.

I will stick to the orginal plan with a slightly modifcation. I will get the hp p3 800 mh system and swap the 800 mhz cpu with a p3 1.0 GHZ to be bit on the faster side. This should be covering the 97 to 99 games perfectly.

For some mid to late 2000 games I am also interested in and beyond I will get another rig for pure windows xp gaming.

Thanks for your help.