Hello forum, I registered because after some searching it appeared you guys seemed to be one of the few places that offered up information on what I'd say is probably not such a large thing anymore - building older computers. My current PC is a somewhat mid/high end current day gaming machine (To be brief, 3 GHz Core 2 Duo, two Nvidia GTX 260s in SLI, all on Windows 7 64-bit) so yes old games hate my computer, emulation is hardly an option. I have been able to get a few games working, but most of my games are from the mid to late 90's so they're made for Windows not DOS, the most common brickwall I run into is the obvious "Not a 32-bit OS" thing since I'm on 64-bit.

So after exhausting emulation options (at least to my knowledge, I dunno I don't want to get involved in anything too involving - DOSBOX got on my nerves sometimes for being too complicated in setup at least) I've decided I'd like to build a retro gaming computer. I will be playing nothing older than 1990 - but most games will be from 1994 or later and newest would be 2000. As far as an OS I'm pretty settled on Windows 98, I don't want to go as far back as Windows 95 and I want to retain the DOS mode for some of the games which do happen to be DOS based.

I do think I've got a good idea on a sound card - a SoundBlaster 32? I want the one that's the easiest to setup since some of the games were naggy about DMA, IRQ, and whatnot...and I never understood how to set that stuff up for squat and not to mention the list of "Which sound card do you have?" always had SoundBlaster 32. I saw some of you on here were talking about some other sound cards like Roland and such - I wouldn't be opposed, other than I have NO idea where to find one being a sound card from the 90's and such they're probably buried in some guy's basement in a pile of other older component cards.

The two biggest areas I'm unsure of however, are the processor and video card. I want the processor to be fast enough to play the newest games but not SO fast that it will immensely prohibit me from playing the older games that didn't need as much. I'm thinking in my head, something 500-800 MHz? I'm an Intel guy (Always have been) so I think I might have a PII or PIII laying around that would fit this, but again I'm not sure if I'm overestimating the needs. I do remember in the 90's my computer had a 500 MHz processor (And I remember I had one of the fastest computers of the time when I did 🤣) and it seemed to play most games without any problem, some old games needed Moslo though - but it did seem to work unlike using similar programs today which only slow down one of my two cores (And not the one being used by the game...).

I really need your help in the video card area. It's been way too long since I remember looking at late 90's video cards, the oldest video card I remember having by name was I think a Rage Pro or something and I remember having a 3D Accelerator card. I had GeForce MX2 but I'm not sure how that scales between being just an okay card to being a top end card to being too much. Would a Radeon 7500 be old enough to work? What kind of memory should it have? A related question as far as motherboard selection goes, will I be able to get most games from this era to work okay with AGP video cards? I'm pretty sure thats what I've always used in the past. Lastly, how much ram should I need? To give an idea at the old end I'm talking about playing X-Com UFO Defense (From 1994 - my version is Windows not DOS) and not the newest game but the most graphically demanding I can think of would be something like System Shock 2 or Deus Ex. I'd like to be able to run all these old games at maximum possible resolution and have them run well (Most max resolutions I'm thinking on these old games I plan to play would be 800 x 600 or 640 x 480 - only the later 3D ones would have 1024 x 768 or greater).

Lengthy post, but if someone can chip in to answer each part or as much as you can I'd really be thankful. I don't want to go into my old computer parts room and build a frankenstein that can't do what I'm looking to do. Plus I'd love to avoid having to re-dig in piles of old component cards. You guys seem the most knowledgable bunch about this so any area you can help me out would be appreciated!