First, welcome to Vogons! 😁

I'm not too familiar with many of the games in your list, a 200MHz MMX chip might be too fast, but I'm pretty sure someone with more knowledge will help you on the subject 😜

Only other advice I could give you is to get a Socket 7 ATX board (easier to work with then AT) or a Super 7 board and disable the cashes (again, there are others who know more about this then I do).

Edit: I've heard good things about the early S3 cards (like Virge), those are pretty common, cheap and compatible. You happen to have any of those?
What hardware do you own atm and how much experience do you have building (older) computers? 😀

Most, if not all, of these games should run fine on a P100 - P133. 🤣

I highly recommend buying an OEM desktop: comes complete and is cheap. They are also very well documented and basically plug & play upon receipt.

Some of the previous threads I've made notes from re pentiums,

How fast is too fast for DOS?
How fast is too fast for DOS?

Ok, I'm building a new DOS rig from scratch.
Ok, I'm building a new DOS rig from scratch.

How good is this? (New PC)
How good is this? (New PC)
"Pentium MMX 200... Check the BIOS and see if you have options for L1 and L2 Cache. If you disable both you will have ~ 386DX, if you disable only L1 you will have ~ 486DX2."

Re: Which PCs Should I Grab For Classic Gaming (different eras)?
Which PCs Should I Grab For Classic Gaming (different eras)?

Pentium Pro systems
Pentium Pro systems

Best Pentium I CPU for old DOS games
Best Pentium I CPU for old DOS games

Hi there and welcome to Vogons!

Here's my recommendation:

Intel SE440BX-2 440BX motherboard (readily available new on eBay)
Slot 1 Pentium II 450Mhz
Geforce 2 TI
256mb Ram
PCI Sound Blaster Live 5.1 for windows games
ISA Sound Blaster Awe32 Non PNP with genuine OPL (CT2760 or CT3900) for dos games
ISA Sound Blaster 16 CT2230 for if you're unable to find the Awe32

The reason I've recommended the P2 450mhz as opposed to something slower like you mentioned is because you'll have the power there to run later 3D games if you choose to and from my experience, the 450mhz slows down quite well when used with programs like MoSlo or when you turn off the caches. This is great for those speed sensitive games. The geforce 2 is also highly compatible with dos games and I'm yet to come across a game that has issues using this card.

The SE440BX-2 is also a very stable motherboard which utilises the famous Intel 440BX chipset and is also compatible with CPUs ranging from 233mhz all the way up to 1ghz. Much better to have that flexibility than be restricted like you would be on a socket 7 motherboard.

Agree with borgie on going with a faster machine. Something to point out: the Fallout and Command & Conquer games have been re-released (they are not "remasters") by Interplay and EA respectively, and will run fine under XP, 7x64, etc. You do not need a "retro machine" for them. I'm not as familiar with the rest. For C&C I'd suggest Command & Conquer X: The First Decade, and Command & Patch if you need to run it under 7x64 (should work on 8x64 too). For Fallout, get the Interplay "Fallout Trilogy" package (it includes some community patches/mods on the disc as well).

Overall I would agree with the idea of a fast Pentium II or a Pentium III, and a decent graphics card (even if you don't need 3D acceleration, there's no reason to avoid something like GeForce - the prices are going to be equally low and it gives you many more features). If you need a machine that can be slowed down dramatically for whatever reason, I remember reading about some Dell OEM P2/3 era machines that have that capability - I forget which specific models were included though.

EDIT:

Just spyed this thread about TIE Fighter and X-Wing:
X-Wing/TIE Fighter re-release

IMHO would be worth looking into. That just leaves X-Com, WarCraft, and the LA games to investigate - a bit of web searching indicates the Battle.net Edition of WarCraft II is a good candidate for a newer machine, so that just leaves WarCraft 1, whichever version(s) of X-Com you'd like to play, and the LA games. It looks like WarCraft I is a DOSBox candidate, so that leaves X-Com and LA.

I can't speak to Warcraft, but all the games on that list will run fine on the hardware borgie83 suggested. Those are mid to late-era DOS games and will run fine with any speed hardware supported by compatible OS's. Most of those games will run on hardware supported by Windows XP with the use of VDMSound.

I'd go with borgie's recommendation for the easiest time with software compatibility and because it will give you flexibility to run some windows games too. (Jedi Knight, Thief, Unreal, the Myst series, and Half-Life come to mind)

If you want more nostalgia and a more period feel, go for a motherboard with a pentium chipset (like the last one, the 430TX), and an ISA sound card with OPL3. Any video card from the period should work fine with those games, since the highest resolution available is 640x480 iirc.

Thanks for the awesome advise everyone.

I know that some of the game listed have been updated and will work on modern machines, but playing these game on a computer from their era adds to the nostalgia factor.

Oops! Almost forgot, you could also throw a 12mb Voodoo 2 in there (recommend the Diamond monster 3D II) for use with glide games. The Voodoo 2 is also compatible with most dos glide games using the available patches.

See vetz's awesome voodoo 2 thread:

Voodoo 2 DOS Glide compatibility matrix

You could also run a second Voodoo 2 in SLI but it does have the disadvantage of taking up another PCI slot.

Mcgarnagle1981 wrote:

Thanks for the awesome advise everyone.

I know that some of the game listed have been updated and will work on modern machines, but playing these game on a computer from their era adds to the nostalgia factor.

If your goal is era accuracy a 486 or Pentium with Win95 or Win3.x/DOS would be correct for most titles. I'd probably go with an S3-based graphics card. If that isn't appealing, I'd just build a Win98 gaming box with a P2/3 and GeForce of some sort. Add a 3dfx card if you like. Such a machine will have much broader support.