Matching how? What runs best, or what is "period appropriate."

Socket 4 *and* 5 Pentiums are older than Windows 95. We ran the standard MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.1 combo on my P100 for a few months before Windows 95 hit the market. Some very late 486 systems came with it preinstalled too. Socket 7s came out inbetween 95 and 98, so it's a tossup, but remember that early Socket 7s would probably be running OSR 2 or 2.5. Pentium Pros were reserved for NT-based servers and workstations at the time.

Various flavors of Linux and OS/2 Warp were available, but I don't think any major manufacturer other than IBM preinstalled OS/2.

That was my question too: Does the OP mean Best or Period Appropriate? I have one W95 retro rig running a P3-999 [Rendition + V2 SLI]. It's the bomb!

Period appropriate to me, most of the time is whatever you can install on the machine, and what you want to run will still work 🤣 .
Most PC's were meant to be upgradeable after all.

Kensuke_Aida wrote:

Matching how? What runs best, or what is "period appropriate."

Socket 4 *and* 5 Pentiums are older than Windows 95. We ran the standard MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.1 combo on my P100 for a few months before Windows 95 hit the market. Some very late 486 systems came with it preinstalled too. Socket 7s came out inbetween 95 and 98, so it's a tossup, but remember that early Socket 7s would probably be running OSR 2 or 2.5. Pentium Pros were reserved for NT-based servers and workstations at the time.

Various flavors of Linux and OS/2 Warp were available, but I don't think any major manufacturer other than IBM preinstalled OS/2.

Yes such things are often neglected. There was not much Windows 95 gaming going on after it was released. It mainly started with DirectX3 to be useful which was released in Sept. 1996. Early games like Diablo were released beginning of 1997 (yeah Diablo itself on 31.12.1996). Before that the gaming platform was MS-DOS. In 1997 the hardware already entered the Pentium MMX age if you bought a new system.

Kensuke_Aida wrote:

Various flavors of Linux and OS/2 Warp were available, but I don't think any major manufacturer other than IBM preinstalled OS/2.

Highscreen computer from Vobis (Germany) had OS/2 preinstalled. Pretty silly since they even did this with 4MB machines. It had WinOS/2 but they boot time was pathetic. We had to ask for a Windows installation CD (WfW 3.11) which they gave us for free.

For me it goes somewhat along these lines (only Windows, haven't build a DOS rig in a long time 🤣) :

Windows 95 :
Anything 486 100MHz or faster with 16MB RAM or more
Windows 98SE :
Anything with 64MB RAM and a Pentium class CPU above 100MHz or so
Windows ME :
Anything with 128 MB RAM or better (usually Pentium 2ish to Tualatin)
Windows 2k/XP :
s478 or Athlon XP (usually Tualatin/Thunderbird or better) with 512MB RAM or better
Windows 7 :
Anything that requires DDR2 and/or has more then one core and more then 2GB RAM