There are actually only two DOS games that I actually use for my Voodoo 1 for: Tomb Raider and Bleifuss 2. Otherwise, you may as well completely skip that.

Do you need anything faster than a Pentium for DOS games, even late ones?

Errius wrote:

Do you need anything faster than a Pentium for DOS games, even late ones?

Depends. If you want to play Duke Nukem 3D at 800x600, even an MMX won't cut it. Quake basically destroys even lesser Pentiums.

Magic Carpet, Carmageddon and NAM also require something like a Pentium III 700 to run smooth in 640x400/480 mode.

Errius wrote:

Do you need anything faster than a Pentium for DOS games, even late ones?

Guess not, I'm just trying to use the parts on hand to come up with something that will work without all the "tweaking" I have to do with my
P3 setup for the dos games to work.

I can take one of the voodoo 2's in the P3 setup and use for glide/dos games but it won't be as straight-forward as using a voodoo 1 from what I gather.

Yeah I was using a P3 600 Coppermine for Cybermage. That seemed to finally smooth it out in SVGA.

Carmageddon is like that too even with a Voodoo. And for that you really also want a Voodoo3. It's a demanding game.

buckeye wrote:

Guess not, I'm just trying to use the parts on hand to come up with something that will work without all the "tweaking" I have t […]
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Errius wrote:

Do you need anything faster than a Pentium for DOS games, even late ones?

Guess not, I'm just trying to use the parts on hand to come up with something that will work without all the "tweaking" I have to do with my
P3 setup for the dos games to work.

I can take one of the voodoo 2's in the P3 setup and use for glide/dos games but it won't be as straight-forward as using a voodoo 1 from what I gather.

There are a handful of DOS Glide games and the voodoo1 glide2x.ovl won't work with most of them. Some of them have patches and what not but the Voodoo 2 is thoroughly a Windows accelerator.

Like I said, if you don't stumble on a Voodoo 1 (I did not for years, until I came across three of them last year..) don't worry, for a DOS PC it is largely irrelevant.

appiah4 wrote:

Depends. If you want to play Duke Nukem 3D at 800x600, even an MMX won't cut it. Quake basically destroys even lesser Pentiums.

I dunno, Duke3D seems to work fine on an MMX for me. I can tell that the framerate is a little lower but it's far from unplayable.

My MMX 233 runs duke3D in 800x600 res at 25-30fps.

Certainly at the time a PMMX was luxury. But it's fun to go for 60fps now I think. And to clear up all the corner cases of frame rate drops you need to get a lot more CPU power.

You may want to go with DOSBox for the really demanding stuff.
DOSBox can run Duke Nukem 3D at stupid high resolutions like 1600x1200 locked at 60 fps. Not even my Celeron-1400 can manage that!

Standard Def Steve wrote:

You may want to go with DOSBox for the really demanding stuff.
DOSBox can run Duke Nukem 3D at stupid high resolutions like 1600x1200 locked at 60 fps. Not even my Celeron-1400 can manage that!

Ha yeah. For Carmageddon I ended up at PIII 1400 with Voodoo3. But that's locked to 640x480!

buckeye wrote:

Win98se - dual boot with dos

Don't do this - it's a waste of time and effort; Win98 SE has a perfect pure DOS mode.

buckeye wrote:

Processors on hand: 233mhz mmx P2, 450mhz P2, 450mhz P3.

What processor would you recommend from the list or otherwise? I can get an 300mhz Celeron but would it be that much of an advantage over the 233?

If you actually want to enjoy some later Win9x games, go for the fastest one (P3-450); but if you plan to also keep your P3-850 system (it wasn't clear), then you can go for the P2-233.

Personally I would just use the P3-850 if it's stable for you, and for the few games that really run too fast on it try to achieve slowdown via software means.

Standard Def Steve wrote:

You may want to go with DOSBox for the really demanding stuff.
DOSBox can run Duke Nukem 3D at stupid high resolutions like 1600x1200 locked at 60 fps. Not even my Celeron-1400 can manage that!

Yeah I do use dosbox on my duo-core rig for Duke, Blood, Shadow Warrior and the like, no problems. This is really more of a "putting my spare parts to use"
kind of thing and having an excuse to tinker some more.

Here's a list of some intensive dos games that a pentium1/mmx may not be enough to run well or at max settings:

1942 paw
dawn patrol
overlord
pacific strike
usnf
wing commander 3, 4
fifa soccer 96, 97
nhl 96, 97
nfs, nfsse
actua soccer
wipeout
transport tycoon, deluxe
serf city, settlers 2
air power
ef2000
flight unlimited
screamer, screamer 2, screamer rally
flight sim 5.0/5.1
f22 lightning 2
flying corps
hind
atf
longbow
quake
tome raider
track attack
big red racing
assault rigs
indycar racing 2
nascar 2
network q rac rally championship
scorcher
striker '96
su-27 flanker
ignition
kick off 97, 98
test drive: off-road
world wide rally
archimedean dynasty
carmageddon
d.o.g. fight for your life
darklight conflict
dreams to reality
extreme assault
if-16
jetfighter iii
mdk
power f1
professional underground league of pain
speed haste
thunder truck rally
x-car
tomb raider
burnout: championship drag racing
motor mash
queen; the eye
redneck rampage
wreckin crew

swaaye wrote:

Standard Def Steve wrote:

You may want to go with DOSBox for the really demanding stuff.
DOSBox can run Duke Nukem 3D at stupid high resolutions like 1600x1200 locked at 60 fps. Not even my Celeron-1400 can manage that!

Ha yeah. For Carmageddon I ended up at PIII 1400 with Voodoo3. But that's locked to 640x480!

To compensate the "lost" performance, you can increase the render distance by editing the config file ^^

My Pentium 133 struggles to get 60 fps at 320x240 in Descent 2. Using the -superhires parameter, you can play up to 1280x1024.

Can you play at 60 fps at 1280x1024 with your Pentium III?

buckeye wrote:

Need: some variation of the voodoo1 (prices are crazy)

You can buy voodoo1 for around 30-40eur. I don't see these prices as crazy.

Deksor wrote:

swaaye wrote:

Standard Def Steve wrote:

You may want to go with DOSBox for the really demanding stuff.
DOSBox can run Duke Nukem 3D at stupid high resolutions like 1600x1200 locked at 60 fps. Not even my Celeron-1400 can manage that!

Ha yeah. For Carmageddon I ended up at PIII 1400 with Voodoo3. But that's locked to 640x480!

To compensate the "lost" performance, you can increase the render distance by editing the config file ^^

I don't think there is much lost performance. A Voodoo 2 can't get 60fps at 640x480 with Carmageddon, so the Voodoo3 probably doesn't have that much in reserve.