kolderman wrote on 2021-10-22, 10:05:

Is that using throttle.exe? What exactly does apci throttle do?

That's the one. It uses ACPI routines to slow down the CPU, unlike other software solutions which simply "eat" cycles. This works best on supported VIA chipsets since they provide a wider range of slowdown options.

More info here: http://www.oldskool.org/pc/throttle/DOS/

Interesting to see some people picking builds that can cover as much as possible in that period and others picking their two most nostalgic builds.

The two most seminal games for me are Wing Commander III (or a WWII flight sim like European Air War / Aces of [insert any of the series here]) and either Half Life 2 or Company of Heroes 1. That puts two of my favourite moments circa 1995-1998 and then again 2005-2007. I'd love to include a 486 or 5x86 in there as the spectrum is so wide and once you go Pentium, they're all in that same long line of Pentiums until the Athlons briefly held the crown.

So I'd need a high end DX, so that means a DX4-100 or I'd probably dig out a Cyrix 5x86 100GP I picked up earlier this year. That covers me for the early stuff but I have a long gap until being able to run Company of Heroes at high resolutions and smooth frame rates on Ultra - I believe it was roughly the 8800GTX before you started not having to worry about stuttering (that, and patches, COH was notoriously buggy).

Ideally it would be three builds but if it's just the two, I would probably have to drop the Cyrix build and go with the two I'm currently messing with now:

1997-98 - in my sig
2006-2008 - Athlon FX-60, DFI LanParty NF4-SLI 'Venus', Geforce 7950 GX2 quad SLI (if I can ever get it to work 🤣)

I dislike emulators and setmul and prefer building period-correct but in this case and with limited builds, I think it covers my favourite time periods quite well. But if I could throw in a Tualatin build with a GeForce 3 Ti 500 for good DOS compatibility in there somewhere...

pixelatedscraps wrote on 2021-10-24, 09:53:

I dislike emulators and setmul and prefer building period-correct

If you only use SetMul for disabling the caches, that was possible on period correct machines as well, using the BIOS settings. SetMul simply makes it easier to access that functionality on the fly.

People used to slow down Pentiums even during the '90s by disabling the caches, though not so much for gaming purposes. From my experience, it was mostly done to get old, proprietary software designed for 386 speeds to work correctly on newer machines. Similarly to how the Turbo button was used on a 486 system.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2021-10-22, 07:08:

RandomStranger wrote on 2021-10-22, 06:38:

The Athlon XP can cover the Win9x/XP switch, but I don't know how much it can be slowed down.

Pretty well using ACPI Throttle on a VIA chipset. As mentioned before 386, 486 and early Pentium speeds are all achievable on that platform. For best results, you want one of the early AthlonXP Thoroughbred CPUs which have their multiplier unlocked, as that provides even more slowdown range.

It should also be noted that there are speed sensitive Win9x games as well. Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire is one example.

The later Athlon XP Barton mobile chips also have the multiplier unlocked.

Ijust have to say mine all be intel because the CPU multimedia extensions are better.

pixelatedscraps wrote on 2021-10-24, 09:53:

Interesting to see some people picking builds that can cover as much as possible in that period and others picking their two most nostalgic builds.

Ah I was talking generally if it was me choosing for me i'd drop my LGA775 XP build for my childhood dx2/66 I've still got
Yeh the Slot 1 build can do everything it can do but I don't own that many games that need something more then a P3 and I'd much prefer to keep my very first PC and scarface playing GTA3+ onwards

But I do think 3 is the ideal number for the time period. Dos, Win9x, XP...says the guy with over 10 😜

pixelatedscraps wrote on 2021-10-24, 09:53:

Interesting to see some people picking builds that can cover as much as possible in that period and others picking their two most nostalgic builds.

I dislike emulators and setmul and prefer building period-correct but in this case and with limited builds, I think it covers my favourite time periods quite well. But if I could throw in a Tualatin build with a GeForce 3 Ti 500 for good DOS compatibility in there somewhere...

for hardware it would be best with a series of computers, but for a restricted choice it makes sense to choose era spanning

indeed, if we set aside hardware and just want to play games and run apps from that whole era then it could (almost) all be done on a modern PC with a mix of VM, Dosbox and GOG purchases of old titles