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Building a 90s Gaming PC

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Reply 40 of 48, by candle_86

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Honestly if your not playing Dos games most windows games don't tend to be affected by the CPU to much. For games released 1997 and up you would be fine with an Athlon XP or a Pentium 4 with a Geforce4 Ti/Geforce FX card. Now if Dos is a factor yes go with something slower.

As for first PC unless he was messing with them during this time frame even SS7 would be confusing at first, no one uses jumpers anymore, even cmos is now a simple switch

Reply 41 of 48, by ElementalChaos

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If you want a single system that encompasses as much of the 90s gaming era as possible, both DOS and Windows, an SS7 system would be the best although they're a little more uncommon. Higher-end Pentium MMX to lower-end Pentium II systems would probably be more plentiful and would also be very very good for this task, though when it comes to DOS games they lean a bit towards the later end of the 90s spectrum.

HighTreason wrote:

Ugh. I have no idea who the guy is that made that video, but he is everything wrong with the Retro PC scene today... Why am I not surprised that phreakindee *cough* sellout *cough* as the top comment. Poseur hipster wastes of biological systems... Anyway, yeah, where was I.

If you don't mind my asking, what exactly do you have against LGR? Is it because of his occasional sponsored review videos? Because if so that's just ridiculous. Youtube is his full time job, income from donations and ad revenue will be relatively small for channels like his that aren't massive 30-million-subs Pewdiepie-type affairs, so extra money on the side will sometimes be necessary for him to keep making the videos he wants. He clearly tries to keep the sponsored content non-intrusive as well, and most importantly, nobody is forcing anyone to watch sponsored reviews.

And personally I think he's by far knowledgeable enough about retro PCs to make videos on the subject in the first place. He isn't just some bandwagoning hipster.

Pluto, the maxed out Dell Dimension 4100: Pentium III 1400S | 256MB | GeForce4 Ti4200 + Voodoo4 4500 | SB Live! 5.1
Charon, the DOS and early Windows time machine: K6-III+ 600 | 256MB | TNT2 Ultra + Voodoo3 2000 | Audician 32 Plus

Reply 42 of 48, by sprcorreia

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ElementalChaos wrote:

If you don't mind my asking, what exactly do you have against LGR? Is it because of his occasional sponsored review videos? Because if so that's just ridiculous. Youtube is his full time job, income from donations and ad revenue will be relatively small for channels like his that aren't massive 30-million-subs Pewdiepie-type affairs, so extra money on the side will sometimes be necessary for him to keep making the videos he wants. He clearly tries to keep the sponsored content non-intrusive as well, and most importantly, nobody is forcing anyone to watch sponsored reviews.

And personally I think he's by far knowledgeable enough about retro PCs to make videos on the subject in the first place. He isn't just some bandwagoning hipster.

LGR? The link isn't to one of Lazy Game Reviews videos...

Reply 43 of 48, by Skyscraper

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ElementalChaos wrote:
If you want a single system that encompasses as much of the 90s gaming era as possible, both DOS and Windows, an SS7 system woul […]
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If you want a single system that encompasses as much of the 90s gaming era as possible, both DOS and Windows, an SS7 system would be the best although they're a little more uncommon. Higher-end Pentium MMX to lower-end Pentium II systems would probably be more plentiful and would also be very very good for this task, though when it comes to DOS games they lean a bit towards the later end of the 90s spectrum.

HighTreason wrote:

Ugh. I have no idea who the guy is that made that video, but he is everything wrong with the Retro PC scene today... Why am I not surprised that phreakindee *cough* sellout *cough* as the top comment. Poseur hipster wastes of biological systems... Anyway, yeah, where was I.

If you don't mind my asking, what exactly do you have against LGR? Is it because of his occasional sponsored review videos? Because if so that's just ridiculous. Youtube is his full time job, income from donations and ad revenue will be relatively small for channels like his that aren't massive 30-million-subs Pewdiepie-type affairs, so extra money on the side will sometimes be necessary for him to keep making the videos he wants. He clearly tries to keep the sponsored content non-intrusive as well, and most importantly, nobody is forcing anyone to watch sponsored reviews.

And personally I think he's by far knowledgeable enough about retro PCs to make videos on the subject in the first place. He isn't just some bandwagoning hipster.

If he* wanted to build a period correct 1998 system that can play both 1995 - 1998 Windows 9x games and late DOS games his build is fine.
If he* wanted to build a system for Windows games all the way up to the end of the Windows 9x era then it isnt that great.

Im one of those who dosnt like the idea of a combined DOS and Windows 9x build because of all the compromises needed to be made.

Windows 9x: At least a 1GHz P3/K7 with a Geforce 3. Ideally a 1400MHz Tualatin/Tualeron/K7 with a Geforce 4 or even a FX5900, add a Voodoo2 or two for good measure.

DOS: Either some sort of versatile K6-3+ build or at least two builds. As an example one build could be a 386DX40 or 486SX25 system for early 90s games with the other build beeing something like the random guys* 9x build (minus the SB live and with a single Voodoo or Voodoo2) for 1993 to 1997 DOS games. This would cover all DOS games most people want to play (Im not mentioning sound cards and sound modules because thats a minefield).

*The random guy in the video who clearly isn't LGR.

New PC: i9 12900K @5GHz all cores @1.2v. MSI PRO Z690-A. 32GB DDR4 3600 CL14. 3070Ti.
Old PC: Dual Xeon X5690@4.6GHz, EVGA SR-2, 48GB DDR3R@2000MHz, Intel X25-M. GTX 980ti.
Older PC: K6-3+ 400@600MHz, PC-Chips M577, 256MB SDRAM, AWE64, Voodoo Banshee.

Reply 44 of 48, by ElementalChaos

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sprcorreia wrote:

LGR? The link isn't to one of Lazy Game Reviews videos...

Skyscraper wrote:

*The random guy in the video who clearly isn't LGR.

I wasn't referring to the video uploader.

HighTreason wrote:

Why am I not surprised that phreakindee *cough* sellout *cough* as the top comment.

LGR goes by phreakindee in some places. I should've made it more clear, obviously. Retrospective apologies for the minor ramble, let's get back on topic now..

Last edited by ElementalChaos on 2016-03-17, 02:00. Edited 3 times in total.

Pluto, the maxed out Dell Dimension 4100: Pentium III 1400S | 256MB | GeForce4 Ti4200 + Voodoo4 4500 | SB Live! 5.1
Charon, the DOS and early Windows time machine: K6-III+ 600 | 256MB | TNT2 Ultra + Voodoo3 2000 | Audician 32 Plus

Reply 45 of 48, by Skyscraper

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ElementalChaos wrote:
LGR goes by phreakindee in some places. Retrospective apologies for the minor ramble, let's get back on topic now.. […]
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sprcorreia wrote:

LGR? The link isn't to one of Lazy Game Reviews videos...

Skyscraper wrote:

*The random guy in the video who clearly isn't LGR.

HighTreason wrote:

Why am I not surprised that phreakindee *cough* sellout *cough* as the top comment.

LGR goes by phreakindee in some places. Retrospective apologies for the minor ramble, let's get back on topic now..

I was talking about the guy uploading the video in the first post, only known to me as clearly not LGR.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfSukXqGZ1c

New PC: i9 12900K @5GHz all cores @1.2v. MSI PRO Z690-A. 32GB DDR4 3600 CL14. 3070Ti.
Old PC: Dual Xeon X5690@4.6GHz, EVGA SR-2, 48GB DDR3R@2000MHz, Intel X25-M. GTX 980ti.
Older PC: K6-3+ 400@600MHz, PC-Chips M577, 256MB SDRAM, AWE64, Voodoo Banshee.

Reply 46 of 48, by NooNaN

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PhilsComputerLab wrote:
Darkman wrote:

another option would be an SS7 board with a K6 based CPU at 400Mhz+ , pair that up with a Voodoo3 and he gets a machine that will play most games between Monkey Island and Sin

^^ This 😀

2nd this! I went this route and have been able to run everything from the most simple, early DOS games up to the Quake's of the world. The best part about this is the ease at which you can toggle the caches and clock speed.

Thanks for all the help Phil!

Reply 47 of 48, by kanecvr

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I highly doubt that you can get two boxed V2 cards for 20 pounds. Most SLi kits sell for 60-100$ - and that's just the cards and the SLi cable.