My Emulator: A 486DX 33Mhz machine running MS-DOS! And, if that is too fast I can always use a 386DX 25mhz.

is that in dosbox?

Nope. 100% real hardware. And, if you search you could probably find an older computer for next to nothing.

except this subforum is strictly for emulation. No one cares about your 486/386 unless you are willing to bugtest/crosscheck with emulators to improve them.

Oh, and you can always just try a virtual machine, such as VirtualBox or some VMware product. And Leileilol, if no mention was made about older processors and older hardware, emulation would be nothing. I am just mentioning an alternative to an emulator.

Honestly, in terms of ease of use and compatability DOSBox is pretty much as good as it gets when it comes to playing DOS games on modern systems. I've found the SB16 sound on VirtualBox to be flakey and unreliable at best. If you want accuracy, you can't beat real hardware. PCEm is interesting in that it attempts to provide low-level emulation of the actual hardware, which is the most accurate form of emulation, albeit most resource hungry approach out there. Maybe we'll see some interesting stuff being done when FreeDOS moves into fully 32-bit territory.

I went and looked at PCem but I have no clue how to use it. The documentation on how to actually use it is almost nonexistant. Can you please explain? And, DOSBox was all that I saw, at least, for dos emulators.

awgamer wrote:

though admittedly as PCs get ever faster than this problem goes ever smaller

CPUs get more cores, but cores themselves (DOSBox uses one core) on same frequency have not become much faster and frequencies are stucked. Single core speed of i5 4xxx is only ~50% faster than C2D 8xxx wich are 7 years old. And frequencies stay practically same: C2D overclocked easily to 4 GHz and almost the same you may expect from today Intel CPUs. So the progress of speed in DOSBox emulation is slooow for last 10 years, compared to what was befor (every 3 years speed doubled, at least).

On a 3570k, DOSBox runs faster than machines of the DOS era, last gasp for DOS was pretty much 1996, pentium 200 came out that year

3570 - yes... without 3D hardware emulation, while some DOS games used it. Look at fps in Pyl (the game is for DOS, only installer is for Windows) with standard software emulation of Voodoo, in 640x480 at least (optimal 800x600 needs Voodoo 2 emulation wich is not finished).
Commercial DOS games were released in 1999 and recommended ~P2 400 and up. Even to play DOS Quake in 800x600 (common for after 1995 resolution) with 30 fps you needed P3 500 MHz, not P200. I'd say DOS era lasted during Win9x era and formaly ended with beginning of XP era at 2002.

aside from some cases of emulation issues that drags the speed down the only speed issue for today is on slow devices

Some games still do not work good or at all in DOSBox. Speed stays as problem for 3D cards emulation. Today slow devices give speed near P2 300, I suppose. I need to check speed on trash like Z3735F to be sure.

and for its Windows emulation foray.

By good way, windows games need 3D cards support. It's not close task - no support for normal Direct3D cards, not enough CPUs speed. OpenGL mode for Voodoo, if will be made correctly, may solve speed problems mostly. Multicore support for 3D cards emulation could solve them too. While to wait good speed with current CPU progress is too long - it needs >3 times faster cores, when we have 50% gain during 7 years.

Tertz wrote:

Commercial DOS games were released in 1999 and recommended ~P2 400 and up. Even to play DOS Quake in 800x600 (common for after 1995 resolution) with 30 fps you needed P3 500 MHz, not P200. I'd say DOS era lasted during Win9x era and formaly ended with beginning of XP era at 2002.

what

3d games in 800x600 were definitely no 1995+ thing. Just because the games supported it doesn't mean it was "common". US Navy Fighters supported 1024x768 in 1994. Does that mean it's a common gaming resolution for 94, a world dominated by the 2-digit MHz?

To me the DOS era ended at 1998 with Bethesda and Interplay releasing very late games of questionable quality. I don't know where you pulled 1999 from, no one was crazy for the Man of War series or that GTA expansion, and the new and increasingly common PCI sound cards and their spotty DOS support ensured that the DOS era stayed dead in the last year.

Tertz wrote:

By good way, windows games need 3D cards support. It's not close task - no support for normal Direct3D cards, not enough CPUs speed. OpenGL mode for Voodoo, if will be made correctly, may solve speed problems mostly. Multicore support for 3D cards emulation could solve them too. While to wait good speed with current CPU progress is too long - it needs >3 times faster cores, when we have 50% gain during 7 years.

You think it's all easier said than done do you

You can't simply multithread everything of an emulated single-core computer, even if you dedicate threads to different devices.

leileilol wrote:

3d games in 800x600 were definitely no 1995+ thing

800x600 was generaly common in that times of 15-17" monitors. 800x600 in 3D games has become common from 1998 with Voodoo 2 and good Direct3D cards.

no one was crazy for the Man of War serie

Mobygames will show several commercial games and addons released in 1999, besides Pyl. There may be more, as moby may to tag DOS games as Windows based on their installer. GTA: London 1969 addon released in 1999 should was been popular.

and the new and increasingly common PCI sound cards and their spotty DOS support ensured that the DOS era stayed dead in the last year

Until ISA slots presented on new mass MB with Intel chipsets there were no great techincal problems for DOS games. And +3 years for hardware to become outdated. So we get ~2003 as practical end of DOS games era from technical side.

You can't simply multithread everything of an emulated single-core computer, even if you dedicate threads to different devices.

I talked not about everything. What was said is in reasonable possibilities of developers. No one cares today about single core devices to explain the situation by portability, also current versions will stay for those anyway. While multicore support for 3D hardware emulation is the only way to keep good portability (as OpenGL mode is doubtful for such, if ever will be finished) and make 3D games normaly playable in near 10 years as CPUs progress appeared too slow. Unfortunaly, after AMD have surrendered near 2010, Intel guys as monopolists prefer to sell same CPUs every year for x5 times higher prices than they should.

Tertz wrote:

CPUs get more cores, but cores themselves (DOSBox uses one core) on same frequency have not become much faster and frequencies a […]
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awgamer wrote:

though admittedly as PCs get ever faster than this problem goes ever smaller

CPUs get more cores, but cores themselves (DOSBox uses one core) on same frequency have not become much faster and frequencies are stucked. Single core speed of i5 4xxx is only ~50% faster than C2D 8xxx wich are 7 years old. And frequencies stay practically same: C2D overclocked easily to 4 GHz and almost the same you may expect from today Intel CPUs. So the progress of speed in DOSBox emulation is slooow for last 10 years, compared to what was befor (every 3 years speed doubled, at least).

On a 3570k, DOSBox runs faster than machines of the DOS era, last gasp for DOS was pretty much 1996, pentium 200 came out that year

3570 - yes... without 3D hardware emulation, while some DOS games used it. Look at fps in Pyl (the game is for DOS, only installer is for Windows) with standard software emulation of Voodoo, in 640x480 at least (optimal 800x600 needs Voodoo 2 emulation wich is not finished).
Commercial DOS games were released in 1999 and recommended ~P2 400 and up. Even to play DOS Quake in 800x600 (common for after 1995 resolution) with 30 fps you needed P3 500 MHz, not P200. I'd say DOS era lasted during Win9x era and formaly ended with beginning of XP era at 2002.

Past 1996 for most there are windows versions and voodoo came out in late 1996. A case could be made for 1997, as there's a small set of games that weren't shovelware, rereleases, or other pure dreck.

1997 was the last year DOS was really relevant as a gaming platform, IMO. 1998 saw some expansion packs and questionably late low-key releases, but it didn't have anything nearly as big as Dungeon Keeper or Carmageddon, released the year prior.

1997 saw the release of the pentium ii 233-300, which a 3570k will perform at and more running dosbox. Where's a list of low performing games under dosbox?

I was running DOSBox on a Pentium 4 HT machine. It runs pretty well, and I was able to run SimFarm and SimCity 2000 and SimCity original. It was also set to a Pentium. PCem is great, although you can find little documentation. You might also want to try Bochs as well. As I do not have a Core i5, I could not say how well PCem would run, but it does run well on my Core i3 330M laptop. Also, try setting affinity of Dosbox to one core, and using software such as CPU grabber you can slow down the operating frequency.