Seriously? 🤣

Win 3.1 / DOS = anything up to a Pentium 1
Win 95 = from P-100 to P-200mmx
Win 98 = P-200MMX to a P3
Win 2000 and XP = P3 - P4

You edited it! 🤣 I thought your standards were a bit high

DOS/3.1: Anything up to 486DX4-100
W95: Pentium 100 - Pentium 166
W98: any Pentium MMX - Coppermine
XP: Tualatin up to Conroe

OS/2: 486DX2 - Core i7 😁

I'm still trying to find the best balance with Windows XP. Obviously it has to be 32 bit for compatibility, which means trying to throw in beastly 2GB video cards is going to starve it for normal ram. Right now my XP machine is on a Core 2 Duo, 3GB ram, and a 128MB video card. I think if I got it a 256MB video card it would be absolutely maxed out right? 3.25GB is the usable limit IIRC. Maybe a better idea would be 2.5GB of ram and a 512MB video card.

/shrug

DOS 6.22/Win 3.1: anything up to 486
Win 95: Pentium 75 - 166
Win 98: Pentium MMX - Pentium 3
2000/XP: P3 - Core 2

King_Corduroy wrote:

Seriously? lol […]
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Seriously? 🤣

Win 3.1 / DOS = anything up to a Pentium 1
Win 95 = from P-100 to P-200mmx
Win 98 = P-200MMX to a P3
Win 2000 and XP = P3 - P4

You edited it! 🤣 I thought your standards were a bit high

High enough for me to install Windows 95 on my Klamath 266MHz PII

DOS/3.1: 8086 to 486
W95: 486SLC2 to P60
W98: P166 to P4

I've had good success with windows 95 on 486 class machines.

armankordi wrote:

I want to know what hardware fits a 3.1/95/98/NT machine to you all What's too much? For me: […]
Show full quote

I want to know what hardware fits a 3.1/95/98/NT machine to you all
What's too much?
For me:

DOS/3.1:below socket 5/7 OR 150MHz (socket 4 Pentiums are fine)
W95 nothing below 333MHz (unless you have a Cyrix/WinChip CPU)
W98: nothing below 1GHz
WXP: Nothing below 450MHz

P.S: I WANT MORE 486 HARDWARE! 😠

And how do you fill the gap between 150 and 333MHz ?

sunaiac wrote:

armankordi wrote:

I want to know what hardware fits a 3.1/95/98/NT machine to you all What's too much? For me: […]
Show full quote

I want to know what hardware fits a 3.1/95/98/NT machine to you all
What's too much?
For me:

DOS/3.1:below socket 5/7 OR 150MHz (socket 4 Pentiums are fine)
W95 nothing below 333MHz (unless you have a Cyrix/WinChip CPU)
W98: nothing below 1GHz
WXP: Nothing below 450MHz

P.S: I WANT MORE 486 HARDWARE! 😠

And how do you fill the gap between 150 and 333MHz ?

I ment it:
DOS/3.1:below socket 5/7 OR 150MHz (socket 4 Pentiums are fine)
W95 nothing ABOVE333MHz
W98: nothing ABOVE 1GHz
WXP: Nothing below 450MHz

Ok that makes more sense. 🤣

fyy wrote:

I'm still trying to find the best balance with Windows XP. Obviously it has to be 32 bit for compatibility, which means trying to throw in beastly 2GB video cards is going to starve it for normal ram. Right now my XP machine is on a Core 2 Duo, 3GB ram, and a 128MB video card. I think if I got it a 256MB video card it would be absolutely maxed out right? 3.25GB is the usable limit IIRC. Maybe a better idea would be 2.5GB of ram and a 512MB video card.

/shrug

Technically it's 4GB as the usable limit - however anything else that takes memory address space will "eat into" that - with a 1GB card installed you will have 3GB of memory usable (even with 4GB+ installed), with a 256MB card, it would be more than that. Personally I wouldn't bother with such an over-spec'd/over-powered XP build - games that will actually require 512MB-1GB VRAM, Core 2 (or later) era CPUs, >2GB of memory, etc will also be post-Vista and run properly under Vista/7/8 (and many of the newer games with such requirements won't even run in XP because they require DX10+ and >4GB memory (thus require 64-bit OS)).

I would say "XP era" is best served by P3/P4 and AthlonXP/64 hardware - a fast P4 or Athlon64 would be top of the mark imho. 1-3GB of RAM is a good amount for such a system - 3GB is probably on the overkill side, but if you have it, why not use it? 😀 Graphics card wise, most of the contemporaneous options will be 128-256MB, but a few are 512MB-1GB.

Also, just because I will feel better with it being said: VRAM capacity does not determine performance. 😊

I've noticed something odd with the memory limitation on XP.
My video card is a GTX260, which has 896MB. Yet the accessible RAM under XP is shown as 3.25GB.
That doesn't add up. It's as if the video card's memory is not in the same address space, but I thought that was the primary component normally blamed for XP not seeing a full 4GB.
XP's system properties window proudly declares "3.25GB of RAM - Physical Address Extension" - as if it's utilizing PAE. Yet if it was supporting PAE it ought to be seeing 6GB.
I guess if I really care I ought to research how Windows actually handles this. Whatever it's doing doesn't seem intuitive.

Well, DEFINITELY XP doesn't include your VIDEO RAM in its calculation of available SYSTEM RAM - ever. 😀

DOS:8086-286
Windows 3.1 - 386
Windows 95 - 386DX-33 and 486 up to 100MHz Pentium/K5-PR100
Windows 98 SE - gold K5-PR100s - Pentium II 266MHz
Windows NT 4.0 - Pentium Pro. Period.
Windows 2000 - Katmai P3 500MHz - Tualatin 1.2GHz / Duron 950MHz - Athlon 1GHz
Windows XP (any service pack) - Tualatin 1.2 GHz - Willamette 1.7
Windows Vista/7 - Northwood 1.8A - Prescott 2.66GHz and any other Prescott based Pentium 4 CPUs
Windows 8 - Core 2 Duo to present (due to being dual core)
Linux - all CPUs
OS/2 - 486 and Socket 7 CPUs

This is what I think should fit.

shamino wrote:

I've noticed something odd with the memory limitation on XP. My video card is a GTX260, which has 896MB. Yet the accessible RAM […]
Show full quote

I've noticed something odd with the memory limitation on XP.
My video card is a GTX260, which has 896MB. Yet the accessible RAM under XP is shown as 3.25GB.
That doesn't add up. It's as if the video card's memory is not in the same address space, but I thought that was the primary component normally blamed for XP not seeing a full 4GB.
XP's system properties window proudly declares "3.25GB of RAM - Physical Address Extension" - as if it's utilizing PAE. Yet if it was supporting PAE it ought to be seeing 6GB.
I guess if I really care I ought to research how Windows actually handles this. Whatever it's doing doesn't seem intuitive.

If it has SP2 or later it has PAE enabled for NX, but Microsoft doesn't support >4GB on consumer 32-bit platforms (they report it's due to incompatibilities/problems with third-party drivers, and indeed certified platforms that run Windows 2000 ASE or similar would regularly go over 4GB with 32-bit environment). So basically it doesn't matter if PAE is enabled or if you have 3GT flag - you can install 128GB of RAM and 32-bit XP is going to show you 4GB or less until the end of time. That's by design on Microsoft's part - not a hardware limitation. The graphics card won't count towards the shown system memory in Computer Properties, but it will "eat into" the upper address space (limiting how much memory Windows can access).

With the GTX 260 in question, if I remember right that's one of those odd-ball nVidia cards that has "two" memory controllers (so to the card it's something like 512 + 384); perhaps the secondary memory controller isn't being recognized or is being mapped higher to prevent conflicts? I know on dual-GPU cards like HD4870X2, 7950GX2, etc any memory associated with the secondary GPU will not count against the 4GB, but is available to the card/drivers.

DOS = ... to W98 limit where DOS 7.1 is included.
Win 3.1 = anything up to a 486DX2-66
Win 95 = from 386DX-40 to low end P1
NT4 = low end P1 to low end P3
Win 98 = low end P1 to P3
Win 2000 and XP = high end P1 to ....

Linux does not run on old systems.

elianda wrote:

Linux does not run on old systems.

It does.

Couldn't find a distro that runs on my IBM PS/2 Model 80 system.

Try Slackware 7.x. or older.

This is probably what I would go with:

Pure DOS: 8088 - Pentium (if you're not planning on doing any Windows gaming, that is)
Win 3.x: 386 - 486, maybe Pentium if you feel like pushing the limits of Win3.x
Win95: high-end 486 - Pentium, maybe even Pentium II, though you'll want a newer edition with AGP and USB support
Win98SE: Pentium II - Socket 478 Pentium 4 (this is somewhat disputable, though I can personally attest that Win98SE absolutely SCREAMS on a Socket 478 system)
Win2000: Pentium II - LGA 775 Pentium 4 (the jump to LGA 775 was huge, especially with the introduction of things like SATA and PCI Express)
WinXP: Socket 478 Pentium 4 - Core2 generation CPUs

And if we're going by AMD CPUs:

Pure DOS: 8088 - K6-3 (again, like the Pentium, this is really only if you're not interested in running Windows games)
Win 3.x: AM386 - AM5x86 (I'm not sure how a K5 or K6 will handle 3.x, I have a feeling they would cause issues with it)
Win95: high-end AM486 or 5x86 - K6-3
Win98SE: K6-2 - Athlon XP (I've run 98 on an Athlon 64 box before, but I don't think 98 has the best support for it)
Win2000: K6-2 - Socket 939 Athlon 64
WinXP: Athlon XP (XP is in the name afterall! 🤣) - Socket AM3-based CPUs

Keep in mind, a lot of this is just based on educated guesses, and observations I've made around the forums. I haven't really played with pre-486 systems all that much, nor with AMD systems predating the Athlon XP (with the exception of my 5x86 box).