Very roughly, I'd say that if a game was published in or after 1992, it's unlikely (but not impossible) to have speed problems. 1992 seems to coincide roughly with a surge in popularity of the CD-ROM drive, and also the 486 motherboard.

My area of interest is from about 1992 onwards, from roughly the advent of the CD-ROM drive and its "multi-media" based CD-ROM games, both for DOS and then Windows. I've noticed that some games published in the late 80s, and also 1990 don't like being run on a "fast" 486, but can be slowed down on a 486 by disabling the cache inside the BIOS set up area. A natural alternative to this option is to get a 386. 😀

RG100, should have known a fellow Asus P2b/P3b obsessive would know the answer! Thanx.

1992 saw the introduction of the SB16 and the SCC-1, which coincides with the era I too am most interested in. Which means a max'd out P3 system maybe good for covering late-ish DOS and win98 games, while still having enough grunt to run ealier DOS games via dosbox. I have played Prince of Persia 2 and Alien Trilogy via dosbox on such a system with no issues, but saw massive slow down on Tyrian 2000 (1995) when the screen filled with bullets. Likewise DukeNukem 3D was probably wanting for speed and smoothness. Naturally, Duke would run better natively on such a machine, as would Tyrian 2000, given it was published in '95.

I must finish messing around with hardware, complete the system, and try more DOS games out...

These maxed out "1.4 GHz and beyond with over clocking" P3 retro systems have impressive power, and will run all 3D VESA DOS games with smoothness (except probably the ones with a 1600x1200 resolution option, eg Redneck Rampage), as well as providing all the power required to run any D3D game up to and including approx D3D7, circa approx year 2000.

AFAIK, Windows XP has no issues with any D3D7/8/9 games, and so you can concentrate your P3 machine on the win9x era up to and including about year 1999, and not much beyond that really. Also, you can throw in a Voodoo card in there too for the GLide stuff. Your idea of running DOSBox on it for the ancient speed sensitive DOS games is an excellent idea, because that saves you the bother of getting either a 386 or 486.

Excellent. The alternatives are to build a P4 system, with industrial mobos available with ISA slots, usually based on the 845 chipset (numerous), although a single ISA slot can be had with the 875 chipset (rare).

However, given your advice, it appears my perseverance with a P3 based system, and my resistance to the temptation to build a system based on more recent chipsets may well pay off.

You wouldn't need DOSBox for games that are too fast on a P3 - just turn off the internal cache.

You would only need a P4 2GHz if say you wanted to run US Navy Fighters at 1280x1024...

leileilol wrote:

You wouldn't need DOSBox for games that are too fast on a P3 - just turn off the internal cache.

The good news is that it would be quick and easy to compare and contrast these two options, to see which one worked best, for each specific game you wanted to play. In terms of successful speed adjustment, DOSBox is likely to produce the best results. The reason I suggest this is because disabling the mobo's cache on a P3 will not be as flexible, in terms of general speed setting adjustment. If you switch off the cache on a P3 mobo, you'll get a machine roughly as fast as some kind of mid era 386, but that's about it. You won't really be able to tweak its speed all that much, by making it significantly faster or significantly slower. In DOSBox, you can adjust the game's speed in a more flexible and controlled way.

Whichever way you look at this situation, a "hot rodded" P3 system is a great retro system. Combine it with DOSBox (for reasons I mention above), and you've got a machine that covers all of DOS, all Win 3.x, all Win95, and probably 99.9% ? 😉 of Win98.