retro games 100 wrote:

486s are important for the legacy gamer. Also, 386s seem to have their uses too, although I think 486s are much more important. […]
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486s are important for the legacy gamer. Also, 386s seem to have their uses too, although I think 486s are much more important.

However, do early Pentiums have any use? P60, P75, P90, perhaps even faster. Is there any need to get an early Pentium?

I have a slow Pentium II machine, 266mhz. Should I get a 486, and just be satisfied with my PII machine?

Thanks, regards, Robert.

imho if you want to run games up to circa 1993 your PII will be way too fast for many of them
If you plan to run games from the late 80's up to 1993 a 386DX 33mhz is the sweet spot
The rest can be run on your PII or a P1

The 486 is often too slow for demanding SVGA games from 1994-1995 and onwards

Whoa! Thanks Amigaz, I had no idea 386s were that important.

I may have to rethink my strategy here...

Are 386 mobos difficult to find these days?

Thank you for your assistance.

I've been wondering a little about this too. At what point during the 90's did processor speed no longer matter for games (as in being too fast)? A lot of games were speed sensitive as to play too fast on better computers, which is why we build 386 and 486 machines. But let's say during the Pentium 1 era... did games have that speed sensitivity issue? A large collection of my games play just as nice on a Pentium as a Pentium 4 - just with better frame rates. I know that is not the case with my earliest games.

I'm sitting on a P166 motherboard that I haven't built into a case yet but I'm starting to think that it's pointless. Any game requiring a 386/486 would be too fast, or I can just play under DOSBox. I think any game from the era that runs fine on a Pentium 166 would probably be okay with a PII or PIII. It would only make it smoother.

So, is the venerable Pentium "one" pretty much a useless design for retro gamers? Or does it have a specific purpose that makes it better than a 486.... or PII.... for any given game?

For what it's worth, I've had no problem running Jazz Jackrabbit Holiday Hare 95 [demo] on its highest settings on my old Compaq Deskpro. It had the Am5x86 (Evergreen upgrade version) working in Write through mode with a 1MB EISA card and 32MB of FPM SIMMS.

For a short while, I had a DOS system with 128MB RAM and a P150, and it wouldn't run. Just made the machine reboot.

Weird. Could be the sound card or a dma conflict though, I can run Jazz on a P150 with 80mb of ram fine

I've been having this dilemma too - Which is the most suitable Classic machine you can build?

I've been experimenting with various mobos and cpus from 486 to Pentium 1s with different speeds from DX33 to 166MHz.

IMHO, there are 3 factors to tackle:

1.) Gameplay Speed : e.g. Wing Commander I. This game requires the "sweet spot" to play it perfectly. I think Amigaz has posted his assessment based on various speeds of cpus for this game.

But if you're gonna build a system to play this game, then it would make playing later games useless in this machine - too slow.

There are also the last generation of DOS games which are a bit slow to run in Dosbox. This will have an impact on the smoothness of the gameplay and in turn can hamper the real experience. These kind of games require a fast DOS machine. The fastest you can build.

2) Graphics speed : e.g. Bethesda Softworks' Terminator : Skynet, Duke Nukem 3D etc.
- These games have support for 640x480 SVGA and higher resolution modes. The same holds true for some other sims like U.S. Navy Fighters and so on. To play these games, you have to get the fastest graphics card that can push up the frame rates in pure dos. Those days, you need to have a fast cpus to get good frame rates too. Building this type of machine will also render many old games unplayable - too fast.

3.) Hardware factors. Here we have some games which insist on running on pure DOS only and which require 100% SB compatibility and VESA support. These games will run best in pure DOS. Most games of this category also have a common requirement of fast CPUs/Graphics Cards.

I think the best thing to do, IMHO, is

1)Build a reasonably fast system, just enough to play the last generation of DOS games. I'm having a Pentium 1 based system with CPUs from 75MHz to 166MHz MMX. Currently I'm using a 133MHz Pentium 1. Put in a S3 based PCI card and pass it through a Voodoo or Voodoo 2 card. I'm having an S3 Virge based card which passes through the Voodoo2 card.
(Descent II supports ViRGE, and some Win95 games have support for ViRGE too.)
I have 2 hard drives in it - one for Pure DOS and the other for Win95.

Also I think that a later generation mobos (circa Pentiums) will have a better flexibility to tweak in the BIOS - like choosing which drive you want to boot first, and so on.

2) For a speed sensitive game which runs just too fast, it's much more convenient to play it under Dosbox. In Dosbox, you can fine tune to the actual speed you want for each game. Games like Wing Commander I will be immensely benefited by this. And you get to play newer dos games unhindered in the classic DOS machine.

Two computers - one latest system with Dosbox and another DOS/Win95 based machine PI to PII for the later Dos games will have a good flexibility.
I've even tried with a PIII 450MHZ system with good outcomes for newer Dos games.

Of course these are from my experience and the factors can be extremely different with many other different hardware combinations and the speed factor tolerability maybe individualized.

I thought a 486 120mhz was a good sweet spot in the middle, though don't plan on playing any 1996+ game in 640x400+. Turbo button and switching a clock jumper or two could solve that 'too fast for wing commander' problem probably, though I never played that game on anything better than 16mhz.
Pentiums can have timing problems with some games like Blackthorne (causing the game to run 50% of its speed)
oh and also to mention, early pentiums have that infamous division error.

I think we need to create a list of games which have specific CPU/speed requirements.

Eg:

Wing Commander I, Ultima VI, etc!

I tested Ultima VI on a PII, and it ran *much* too fast. (I have nothing slower ATM to retest this game.)

I am guessing (hoping!) that there are not too many games between say approx '89 and '93 that need a 386. (I wonder how many though?)

I am also guessing/hoping that for most games between say approx '89 and '93, a 486 would be fine.

Those DOS SVGA games can sometimes need around a P3-600 to run really smooth. I saw that with Cybermage. It's not just about SVGA framebuffer speed.

Good post Malik, but I gotta ask again for others who are reading--

Is there any retro-gaming advantage to a Pentium 66-233Mhz, for specific games, over a 386/486 or a faster PII/III ?

It seems to me that for later DOS games, a PII or PIII would be faster (in a good sense) for games that needed it vs an older Pentium. For old DOS games that are speed sensitive, a Pentium "One" would be too fast (in a bad sense) for games that needed a 386/486.

True?

Yup and that's why DOSBOX is so much easier. You really need a rig designed for each game for the best experience.

valnar wrote:

Is there any retro-gaming advantage to a Pentium 66-233Mhz, for specific games, over a 386/486 or a faster PII/III ?

It seems to me that for later DOS games, a PII or PIII would be faster (in a good sense) for games that needed it vs an older Pentium. For old DOS games that are speed sensitive, a Pentium "One" would be too fast (in a bad sense) for games that needed a 386/486.

True?

Assuming you don't want to use emulators and want to keep the number of retro machines down, but still want to play as many games as possible at the correct speed, then it's true.

It's not easy to "optimise" your old computers to cover a great range of games, because you'll have to know about the limitations of the different platforms, and the (in)compatibilities between them.

I think the main reason why so many retro gamers play with an early P5 system is because that's what they found in their attic/garage/cellar. 😉

leileilol wrote:

Pentiums can have timing problems with some games like Blackthorne (causing the game to run 50% of its speed)

That's scary news for prospective retro Pentium builders. 😵

Really no way to launch Blackthorne on Pentium without this 50% / "crawling" bug?

I wonder if a later P-II (with all proper ISA sound of course) could overcome this syndrome
by sheer CPU power...

Could someone try it?

Mithloraite wrote:

I wonder if a later P-II (with all proper ISA sound of course) could overcome this syndrome
by sheer CPU power...

Could someone try it?

CPU power can't compensate. Oddly this also affects the AMD k6 as well, so K6-2 500 gets the slowdown

The Blackthorne slowdown should be something that needs to be BullShitTested across various systems.

Pentium 60,66,75, and in some cases 90 are too slow for many Pentium era games. 90 is ok with some games but 100 and up seem to be where the Pentium started to become really good for games released during that time frame.

Also cache matters a lot for a Pentium

using it without a cache module is like using an AM5x86 without a cache module

leileilol wrote:

CPU power can't compensate. Oddly this also affects the AMD k6 as well, so K6-2 500 gets the slowdown

The Blackthorne slowdown should be something that needs to be BullShitTested across various systems.

Yes it needs. 😠 Because these are just a few games it seems that behave like this.

Lost Vikings as I have heard share this bug.

Surprisingly the Interplay review sais ~nothing~ about the inability of Balackthorne to run on Pentiums.

They say it works with Win95/98 which should mean Pentiums, the more likely CPU for Win98.

http://lionheart.blackisle.com/games/support.php?id=391

I am not surprised there is no compatibility with the later AMD Pentiums. But isn't it a fact that P-90 & P100 existed in 1994 when Blackthorne was released?

Horror Pentium-60 and 66 existed even in 1993. Could the authors just ignore it?

also it was 19.12.1994 (December!), this Blacthorne release. So the Pentiums already existed, they were released 7 months earlier, even the good P-90 & P-100.

leileilol wrote:

Also cache matters a lot for a Pentium

using it without a cache module is like using an AM5x86 without a cache module

indeed.
Unfortunately, I can not measure what ~exactly~ this game could do to the typical P-1 cache.

Matter is, considering the Pentium history, Blackthorne should have actually cared to work with it, not "do ze bad thing" to it.

Otherwise it's just pretty absurd. to reject the most promising processors on the market?

It might be a system feature problem, not the CPU.

I wonder if there is somebody here with an operating Intel Pentium on Intel chipset... and a good ISA sound.

sliderider wrote:

Pentium 60,66,75, and in some cases 90 are too slow for many Pentium era games. 90 is ok with some games but 100 and up seem to be where the Pentium started to become really good for games released during that time frame.

Yes I have to confess I like Pentiums more than 486. The latter are venerable and all, but soo easily wasted by any of the programmers' faults/speed bugs or some added fancy features...

Wiki sais P-100 was released in March 1994.

That's a mystery how this Blackthorne game released in December can be "incompatible" with it.

Or P-90.