Re: i5-3570K / MSI Z77A-G43 / GTX 980Ti / X-Fi Titanium

Posted on Yesterday, 12:36

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by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Repasted the GTX 980 Ti with some Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut. I made the card run for 5 minutes under full load (with V-Sync disabled) and the (boost) core clock increased by 30 MHz compared to the previous result. With V-Sync enabled, temperatures dropped by about 7°C from before changing the paste. …

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Re: Choice of sound card in a 486DX2

Posted on Yesterday, 05:02

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by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

That seems to list 16-bit output but not what the original samples were recorded at though. I would suspect most games from the early 90s probably used 8-bit / 11kHz samples. Cloudschatze did those tests so he might know more. That's why I like the Yamaha with the low-pass filter mod. Those 11 kHz …

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Re: Choice of sound card in a 486DX2

Posted on 2025-06-12, 18:36

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by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Grzyb wrote on 2025-06-12, 18:32: Are there any games with 16-bit samples that work well on a 486 ? Probably most titles released in 93/94 as listed in this thread: A List of DOS Games with 16-Bit Sound Disclaimer: I've never owned a 486, so this is based purely on looking at the system …

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Re: Choice of sound card in a 486DX2

Posted on 2025-06-12, 17:42

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by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

There are indeed games which can make good use of AWE cards. I suggest checking out this thread by Cloudschatze: AWEstruck... That said, for the OPs use case, I would recommend the Yamaha YMF719 + low-pass filter mod.

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Re: My first retro gaming PC build - hold my hand

Posted on 2025-06-12, 07:27

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by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

In real life, it's the Beige Baller Build . And for that reason alone, I'll try to print some of those square case front stickers for P3, Voodoo2 etc. Like we did back in the day. :) You can get some pretty faithful replicas of those stickers on eBay. Just search for "pentium sticker" and pick the …

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Re: EAX appreciation thread

Posted on 2025-06-11, 14:04

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by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I went through my old boxed games recently, looks like I have only one game with "Sounds best on Sound Blaster" logo on the box, it's Call of Duty: Deluxe Edition, so technically Call of Duty and its expansion United Offensive. There's a CoD developer interview on Creative's old EAX website. …

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Re: Best WinXP Video Card

Posted on 2025-06-10, 20:16

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by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I did extensive testing on Athlon 64 socket 754 and cards newer than GeForce GTX 2xx don't work properly in Need for Speed Hot Pursuit 2. There is a major performance drop in FPS. This may not be noticable on newer CPU, perhaps due to instruction set optimization in NVidia driver, not available on …

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Re: What game are you playing now?

Posted on 2025-06-10, 13:37

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by Joseph_Joestar

in Milliways

in Milliways

you got through that pretty quick considering its a massive 4 disc epic My playthrough clocked at 56 hours, per the in-game time tracker. That said, I likely missed most of the optional content, since I didn't find the gameplay particularly engaging. Meaning, I rarely bothered with exploring non- …

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Re: What game are you playing now?

Posted on 2025-06-10, 11:23

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by Joseph_Joestar

in Milliways

in Milliways

Finished Lost Odyssey . The gameplay did get slightly better after picking up more party members and learning their abilities, but it never really felt great to me. Just barely adequate. I did find a few of those secret dungeons, which helped a bit with leveling. One of those also had additional …

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Re: EAX appreciation thread

Posted on 2025-06-10, 04:20

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by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Another thing about Audigy, I feel kinda bad about using it, because, well, native EAX cards aren't plentiful. And if something happens to it for whatever reason...computer is still holding after 16 years, but regardless I get these thoughts about sudden hardware failures. Am I overthinking it? …

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Re: EAX appreciation thread

Posted on 2025-06-09, 20:10

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by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

IIRC, the only time I saw those special presets for non-EAX games was when using a SBLive with the stock drivers from its installation disc. I don't use SBLive cards in my retro rigs anymore, so I can't say for sure.

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Re: Windows XP and 3DNow! Support

Posted on 2025-06-09, 08:35

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by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I want to see how much 3DNow really makes a difference in FPS. Back in the day, the difference was noticeable on Voodoo 2 cards, at least with that AMD optimized build of Quake 2. Relevant Anandtech article . As I recall, that optimization worked best when pairing a K6 CPU with a Voodoo 2. Older …

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Re: EAX appreciation thread

Posted on 2025-06-09, 05:44

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by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

sharangad wrote on 2025-06-09, 05:37: The GOG version has EAX patched out somehow, I remember someone complaining about it somewhere. Yeah, I've seen this in a few of their releases, including Splinter Cell. At least for that one, there's an Xdelta patch which restores it.

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Re: Revamped my XP/Vista machine

Posted on 2025-06-09, 05:39

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by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It's a nice build, though I would consider a modern mesh case for better airflow. That is if you plan on using the GTX 980 Ti. Might just be personal preference, but retro cases don't have much appeal for me after the Win9x era.

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Re: EAX appreciation thread

Posted on 2025-06-09, 05:07

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by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Has anyone got Alchemy working on Win11? I can't get a single game working with it. I don't have Win11, but ALchemy works fine on Win10 LTSC. One thing to note, ALchemy targets retail games, and uses their registry entries for detection. For that reason, GOG/Steam versions of games might not be …

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Re: The flip side of the cost of vintage computing

Posted on 2025-06-09, 04:39

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by Joseph_Joestar

in Milliways

in Milliways

Interesting take. I'll add that brand new games now cost 80 USD apiece (thanks Nintendo and Microsoft!) and need about six months of patching to get into semi-usable shape. In contrast, retro PC games usually aren't that expansive, unless you're buying something very rare or NOS. They also come …

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Re: EAX appreciation thread

Posted on 2025-06-08, 11:52

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by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

However, there are other games from that era (late 90s, very early 2000s) where EAX only sounds correct if you play them under Windows 9x using VxD drivers for the sound card. Weren't those just the problems of the era? Plenty of shit was bugged back then. A few games made before 2001 seemingly …

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Re: EAX appreciation thread

Posted on 2025-06-08, 09:04

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by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I was playing a bit of Drakan, EAX effects are so subtle that they might as well not be there. On Audigy RX at least. I can't speak for Drakan, as I haven't tested its EAX implementation extensively. However, there are other games from that era (late 90s, very early 2000s) where EAX only sounds …

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Re: Windows 98SE - Basic Build - Opinions Welcome

Posted on 2025-06-08, 03:55

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by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

StriderTR wrote on 2025-06-07, 23:30: Blood II shows a black screen for movies and menus. No idea how to fix it. I vaguely remember Blood II and Shogo having issues with certain Nvidia driver versions. Try 56.64 and see if it helps with those games.

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Re: Review: Sound Blaster PCI 128 (CT4810)

Posted on 2025-06-06, 14:42

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by Joseph_Joestar

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

thanks, i've always tended to run dos apps and feed the sc55 in windows 98 environment, so hadnt picked up on the fact that pci cards cannot feed to external midi in pure dos modes unless they have SB-link It's not related to SB-Link, that's just how Audio PCI/SBLive/Audigy cards work. The ESS Solo …

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