Not really at all, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Gvz6PMtEuU this is how it runs of a 10 Mhz 286 with a good Tseng VGA card. This is how it runs on a 16 Mhz 286 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lBHxfsCqWw .

Wolfenstein 3D was a 286 optimized game that in fact played slower on 386SX than on 286s.

And Harris 286 25 Mhz is an awesome retro gaming machine. It pretty much runs smoothly any DOS game that does not use memory over 640 KB.

Well this boils down to the subjective matter of "playing smooth". Wolfenstein 3D on that 16MHz 286 is skipping a lot of frames. Smooth for me is at 72+ fps 😀

Valid point... I recall playing Wing Commander 1 on a HT 16 Mhz 286 with an EGA monitor and considered the "slideshow" quite playable -back in 1990. Even the texture conversion (provided by the game installer) from VGA to EGA took a whole night and then some 🤣

🤣 I remember that texture conversion. I also remember playing Wing Commander on a 286 with EGA and PC speaker. And it was STILL an awesome game...

It's similar to playing Elite on the C64. Back then it was awesome, these days is very slow...

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Well this boils down to the subjective matter of "playing smooth". Wolfenstein 3D on that 16MHz 286 is skipping a lot of frames. Smooth for me is at 72+ fps 😀

I am so sick and tired of this FPS obsession. 24-30 fps is more than enough for me personally. 60 Hz monitors cannot show more than 60 fps anyways. Before you link me to some "you can see the difference" website, that is not actually a valid method for evaluating anything. Try a double blind test. The same applies to people who trash 128 kbps mp3s and swear how they can hear the difference, even through modern encoders produce basically transparents files to the original. Most of these people fail the double blind test very badly, often even preferring the 128 kbps version to the original.

I remember when I was FPS obsessed and always turned down settings in Bioshock because in my delusion it was "laggy as fuck". It turned out that my framerate was actually around 200 fps. Never compare things "side my side" because you KNOW the right side is 30 fps and your mind actually percieves it as "unplayable" even through you might actually confuse it for the 120 fps side in a true blind test. If you want to see what you really percieve, have someone show you things but without telling you which is which.

I am also infuriated by people who claim "man, after 1080p and 120 fps everything else feels/looks shitty man, you can't go back". Yes I can, I came back, I wasn't impressed by HD or stupidly high framerates. Most people who whine about framerates are sociopathic shooter players who blame their bad skill on "lag". Many people became Quake pros on shitty 100 mhz Pentiums and many people with quad core machines suck at gaming.

Honestly, ultra high FPS and graphics with way too many effects fall into the uncanny valley for me. Water shimmering like mercury and stuff moving so fast and smooth that it defies physics are NOT realistic. I am used to seeing 25 fps TV and graphics that don't pretend realism and that is the thing I am comfortable for me. Sure, gamers always say how real video contains blur and rendered scenes do not, but that is not true in case of retrogaming. Most old CRT monitors have quite a bit of blur and the output of my PSone on my CRT TV is very blurry. I play games for fun, not to admire "kickass graphics" that will be considered "zomg shitty" by "gamer kids" in half a decade. What's next? Will gamers in 2030 claim "any les than 550 fps is liek total unplayable lololol"?

There is a pretty obvious difference between 30 and 60 FPS and arguably an even bigger one between 15 and 30. It all comes down to the individual game though. I currently play Deus Ex on a Voodoo5 with 4xFSAA@800x600 and it's not what I call fluent, but due to the game being of the slower variety I have no issues with it. In fast paced games I definitively want high FPS especially because lower framerates tend to come with annoying mouse lag. The whole thing is certainly nothing to get all upset about though 😀

m1so wrote:

I am so sick and tired of this FPS obsession. 24-30 fps is more than enough for me personally. 60 Hz monitors cannot show more t […]
Show full quote

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Well this boils down to the subjective matter of "playing smooth". Wolfenstein 3D on that 16MHz 286 is skipping a lot of frames. Smooth for me is at 72+ fps 😀

I am so sick and tired of this FPS obsession. 24-30 fps is more than enough for me personally. 60 Hz monitors cannot show more than 60 fps anyways. Before you link me to some "you can see the difference" website, that is not actually a valid method for evaluating anything. Try a double blind test. The same applies to people who trash 128 kbps mp3s and swear how they can hear the difference, even through modern encoders produce basically transparents files to the original. Most of these people fail the double blind test very badly, often even preferring the 128 kbps version to the original.

I remember when I was FPS obsessed and always turned down settings in Bioshock because in my delusion it was "laggy as fuck". It turned out that my framerate was actually around 200 fps. Never compare things "side my side" because you KNOW the right side is 30 fps and your mind actually percieves it as "unplayable" even through you might actually confuse it for the 120 fps side in a true blind test. If you want to see what you really percieve, have someone show you things but without telling you which is which.

I am also infuriated by people who claim "man, after 1080p and 120 fps everything else feels/looks shitty man, you can't go back". Yes I can, I came back, I wasn't impressed by HD or stupidly high framerates. Most people who whine about framerates are sociopathic shooter players who blame their bad skill on "lag". Many people became Quake pros on shitty 100 mhz Pentiums and many people with quad core machines suck at gaming.

Honestly, ultra high FPS and graphics with way too many effects fall into the uncanny valley for me. Water shimmering like mercury and stuff moving so fast and smooth that it defies physics are NOT realistic. I am used to seeing 25 fps TV and graphics that don't pretend realism and that is the thing I am comfortable for me. Sure, gamers always say how real video contains blur and rendered scenes do not, but that is not true in case of retrogaming. Most old CRT monitors have quite a bit of blur and the output of my PSone on my CRT TV is very blurry. I play games for fun, not to admire "kickass graphics" that will be considered "zomg shitty" by "gamer kids" in half a decade. What's next? Will gamers in 2030 claim "any les than 550 fps is liek total unplayable lololol"?

Don't get so worked up over such things. Like d1stortion said, there is a great difference between 30 to 60 fps but it really boils down to the game. Wolf 3D seems fairly playable on the 286 16, but I can definitely tell that it is not as smooth as it can be. I would play it like that though.
Wolf 3D is probably running at the proper speed on a 286-25.

M1so you need to relax and accept that others have different opinions. I understand that back in the days we simply played on whatever we had. But these days I find it silly to play Doom on a 386 when you can play it on a fast Pentium.

Here is Doom on a 386DX: http://youtu.be/gzxnB2CD6aw?t=11m7s

I know many who played it on a 386DX and remember it as "playing fine". But for me, it's not fine and I prefer it on a Pentium.

m1so wrote:

Not really at all, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Gvz6PMtEuU this is how it runs of a 10 Mhz 286 with a good Tseng VGA card. This is how it runs on a 16 Mhz 286 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lBHxfsCqWw .

Wolfenstein 3D was a 286 optimized game that in fact played slower on 386SX than on 286s.

And Harris 286 25 Mhz is an awesome retro gaming machine. It pretty much runs smoothly any DOS game that does not use memory over 640 KB.

From the looks of it, I'd actually say that Wolf3D runs quite smoothly on the 16MHz machine. It's not 60fps, but I don't think it was supposed to even be played at 60fps. 😜 As for the 10MHz machine, I'd say that one actually runs it somewhat choppy.

I guess I was wrong about saying that it truly needed a 386 to run well. Shows you how knowledgeable I am about pre-486 systems. 🤣 (which of course, is not very. 😜)

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

M1so you need to relax and accept that others have different opinions. I understand that back in the days we simply played on whatever we had. But these days I find it silly to play Doom on a 386 when you can play it on a fast Pentium.

Here is Doom on a 386DX: http://youtu.be/gzxnB2CD6aw?t=11m7s

I know many who played it on a 386DX and remember it as "playing fine". But for me, it's not fine and I prefer it on a Pentium.

Now THAT is a slideshow. 🤣 I think even the SNES version runs better (though it's a slightly cut-down version utilizing the SuperFX2 chip).

What kind of 386dx was it?

Anonymous Coward wrote:

What kind of 386dx was it?

40 MHz equivalent.

Found another video. Doom on a 386SX-33 😀

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vETjEH0Vo9I

Funny how that SX-33 seems to have a much better time at it than the DX-40 (or equivalent)...

VileRancour wrote:

Funny how that SX-33 seems to have a much better time at it than the DX-40 (or equivalent)...

Fullscreen + Sound Blaster and MIDI

With my recent 386 DX-40 build i feel i can cover most games i wanna play quite nicely. Wing Commander runs a bit too fast, but disabling the cache makes the system run between a DX-25 and a DX-33 which is perfect speed for WC.

With the turbo button depressed the system becomes roughly in the same speed as a 386 SX 16, i guess my board does a lot of stuff, probably increses wait states, lowers FSB to its minimum and disables the cache. So i have 3 different states of speed with my 386.

If i ever build something slower than what i can do with my 386 i'll probably buil a XT class PC.

I had a strange 25 MHz 286 motherboard. The strange thing is - there is a jumper to select the 287 FPU clock speed - 25 MHz or 30 MHz(?).
Well, if I find this motherboard in my old stuff - I will add photos...

That might have been for a prototype coprocessor never realized. Or an adaptable 387 coprocessor. On one of my motherboards (a 16 mhz Headland without the copro oscillator) I was accidently running the 87XL at 25 mhz for a few minutes - well, if one can trust Landmark 6.0 scores. So I think even when the oscillator is missing there must be a way to run the coprocessor overclocked. Something that you definitely would not want (in this speed range).

While I believe that a 286 shouldn't be faster than 16MHz, in general I like the faster models made by Harris for a specific reason. They run a lot cooler than the slower (16MHz) 286s made by amd or siemens. So for my 286 PC, I wouldn't mind getting a 20MHz CPU and underclock it to 16MHz.

VileRancour wrote:

Funny how that SX-33 seems to have a much better time at it than the DX-40 (or equivalent)...

Im going to bet its running in low detail, I use to play Doom on my 386SX33 in Low Detail and looks about the same and quite playable.

Actually 80287XL, Fasmath and the IITs are already "adapted". Their cores are pretty much the same as those found in the i387SX.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

VileRancour wrote:

Funny how that SX-33 seems to have a much better time at it than the DX-40 (or equivalent)...

Fullscreen + Sound Blaster and MIDI

I was just going to say, the SX33 only seemed to be using the PC speaker for sound.