retro games 100 wrote:

Out of curiosity, I tried running Ultima 6 (Origin, 1990) on a P100 machine. To my surprise, it didn't run stupidly fast. It was too fast, but less quick than I anticipated.

I want to try out other early 486-era games on a P100. Games which were released around '90 - '92. Any suggestions please? I'm looking to test games that are known to work OK on a 486, but not so well on anything faster. Please note, I'm not looking for really ancient games, such as '80s games for 386s and beyond.

Thanks a lot.

Test these:

Wing Commander 1 (will run at hyper speed)
Wing Commander 2 (music/sfx can sound weird)
Double Dragon III
Prophecy - Viking Child
Silpheed

Pentiums 90/100 are the worst possible gamer CPUs. They were too fast for old games, up to the point of being totally useless and far too slow for newer games. I really, honestly hated my P90 back at that time. I would have been much happier if I had 486 DX4 66 Mhz or a real P1 133Mhz/166 mmx.

A game that ran flawlessly on the P90 was for example Diablo 1. But there are a bunch of DOS games that didnt run on it. My favorite of that time - bubble bobble didn't run anymore. Ducktales too.

Anyway, forget about P100 - get a nice little DX4@66Mhz or a decent P1 or even Pentium PRO 200Mhz - those are "gamer" CPUs.

elfuego wrote:

Pentiums 90/100 are the worst possible gamer CPUs.

In contrast to the 'superior' K5s and Cyrix6x86MXs, p100s look great compared to those in terms of actual performance. A lack of MMX keeps it from being a real keeper though.

@everyone,

Thanks a lot for your comments.

I just want to add something here. I understand that a P100 is not the best choice. A better choice would be either a fast 486, or a P-MMX, or a PPro. However, I was thinking of throwing together 3 rigs (just for a bit fun) -

1) 486 dx2 66 (or sx 25) -- use for older '90s DOS games.
2) pentium 100 (or 90) -- use for windows 3.1
3) pentium mmx 166 (or 200) -- use for some SVGA games.

Given the above, would a P100 still be a bad idea?

it'll feel a bit redundant with the 166 around, since the 100 is rather close to its speed

leileilol wrote:

it'll feel a bit redundant with the 166 around, since the 100 is rather close to its speed

Yes, that's a good point. How about I make it a P90, and the other one a P200 mmx then?! 😉

There's really no advantage to any point between a 486-66 and a P-MMX. I can't think of a single game that can be played optimally on the 60-150 Mhz Pentiums that cannot be played optimally on a 486-66 or P-MMX.

prozoam wrote:

There's really no advantage to any point between a 486-66 and a P-MMX. I can't think of a single game that can be played optimally on the 60-150 Mhz Pentiums that cannot be played optimally on a 486-66 or P-MMX.

Agree

Amigaz wrote:

prozoam wrote:

There's really no advantage to any point between a 486-66 and a P-MMX. I can't think of a single game that can be played optimally on the 60-150 Mhz Pentiums that cannot be played optimally on a 486-66 or P-MMX.

Agree

Me too. But, if its just for fun - why not! Its gonna cost you a few bucks, but if you are at least as half as crazy about old HW as I am, it will give you a lot of fun 😀

Ok, so slightly off target as to OP's time frame, this beeing a game from 1994, which speed is the best for Magic Carpet(1, or 2 for that sake) ?

I've tried it on a Celeron533@803, but it is unplayable... waay too fast.
So, when does it start to get faster than it should be, I wonder ?
P166, P200, other ?
(too lazy to test all that myself... heh)

It's more do to how they coded it. Populous, from 1989, will play on my Athlon X2.

Bullfrog aren't a fan of speed throttling. Most of their games are pretty much designed for 486 DX4 100s it seems, but Pentium 133s if you hit R to pump it up to SVGA.

@everyone, thanks for all comments. 😀

Re: Magic Carpet 1 & 2, I tried both on a P90. In VGA mode, both were too fast, but not unplayable. I messed about in the BIOS, disabling any setting which I thought might slow things down a bit, then reran MC1. It seemed almost OK, but still a bit too fast. Both games in SVGA mode were too slow. So, using a P90 wasn't too successful, but not a disaster.

Edit: I tried the above scenario with a P133 (non-MMX), in SVGA mode. It seemed about right. Although it was undeniably a little bit slow & choppy, the animation speed of the characters scurrying about on the ground looked correct.