First post, by ux-3
- Rank
- Oldbie
I am currently in the process of building a PC to run those rather problematic games from the transition age during the 2D/3D revolution.
I do have a dedicated Win98 PC that is based on an Athlon XP-M (free multi) and a GF6800. This system has enough power to run basically any win98 game that provides decent directX support or that will cooperate with a glide wrapper.
Very old DOS titles usually run fine in Dosbox.
So what is left is the stuff that is
-to fast to emulate,
-to restricted in hardware to be run on modern equipment or
-to investigative during setup (runs elsewhere later)
Obviously, this machine needs some Voodoo Graphics support. I do have the choice between all old Voodoos, either a V1, a V2 SLI or a V3. After experimenting for a while, I arrived at the conclusion that a V1 would be the best choice. My reason is this: Most games that take advantage of the V2 or V3 will either work fine with a glide wrapper too or support direct3D. If they don't, they will work on a V1. On the other hand, a fair number of games do not work with the V2 or V3 out of the box.
Having choosen the Voodoo1 as the transition card, I have to choose a regular graphics card. This card should be Vesa3 compliant. I do only have one such card aside from the Voodoo3: A Diamond Viper 330. This card seems to be ok for the job. I could throw in a more powerful geforce, but in Dos, I see only disadvantages.
As a base, I have two diffenrent mobos/CPU types to choose from. I do have an intact packard bell PC (Legend 2525 go), which is a micro ATX super socket 7 machine. I can use it with a Pentium MMX ranging from 133 MHz up to about 290 MHz, or AMD K6-2 with up to 500 MHz. The SIS chipset can only cache the 64MB ram - which should be enough for transitional games.
The other alternative is a Aopen MX6b EZ (slot 1, BX-chipset), which is equipped with a P2 that can run between 133MHz to 333MHz (plus OC) or a P3 800MHz.
I find this choice very difficult. The P1 is more "retro" in a sense. Bus and Muliplier are dip switches, two of which I have externalised for speed selection. It also comes in a nice and small case.
The P2-333 has more bios options and presumably more power. Its Bios offers the disablement of external cache - CPU-Z then interprets the CPU as a Celeron. With all the bios options, I can slow down the CPU to act like a 133MHz Celeron - that should be slow enough for the games of this period?
Both mobos come with an ESS Solo1 sound chip, which works very well as SB Pro in Dos. They both have an ISA Slot where I could put my old jumpered Soundblaster 16 - it should be supported by most games from the transition period.
Please help me make a selection regarding the components. Since too much speed is a likely source of problems, I am concerned about being able to throttle down the machine as much as possible.
I have run 3Dmark 2000 with a V3 2000 PCI and CPUs at 133 MHz on both boards to figure out which could be slowed the most:
P2: 438 3Dmarks
P1: 322 3Dmarks
Any other thoughts?
Thanks for help!
