AlessandroB wrote on 2022-03-19, 12:07:
to be honest, in the XP era I wasn't playing anymore and I don't care about having a computer that spans those years. I was hoping they would be covered by i5.
The i5 can cover the XP era, and aside from some tweaking you need to do for certain games, IE some only like a single-core, most games can run their best with later hardware.
XP was released near the end of 2001, and DirectX 9 came out in 2002 for 98, ME, and XP. The hardware that was designed for DX9 started losing support for older features, but the last cards to support XP mostly have no issues running DX9. On the Nvidia side, this is the GeForce 700 series from 2013.
Building a single PC to cover from 1990-2000 isn't really possible without compromises. While there was some 3D acceleration before, the 3DFX's Voodoo 1 that came out in 1996 changed the market, and games started running needing Pentiums. And in those early days of 3D accelerators, it wasn't uncommon for a new card to come out that double the performance of what you just bought 10 months ago. You can always go with something that's faster, but then you start losing the ability to slow things down for the 1990-95 range.
I don't have nostalgia for the 8086 and early days of the 286, so I personally use these machines to cover what I want to run.
- Pentium 233MMX, with SB16, Yamaha 719, Voodoo 1, and a WP32 McCake. This can be slowed down to support the 386, 486 33/66 era of games. It can handle SB Pro, SB16, and WSS for digital audio, and has OPL 2/3, as well as SB's version which some people hate but what I grew up with. The MP32 McCake gives me an MT-32 on a daughterboard as well as SoundFont support. Sure there's no Tandy or UltraSound support, but it supports sound in everything I've thrown at it.
- An Athlon 64 3000+ Cool 'n Quiet for 98SE. Its multiplier unlocked and can go down to 500Mhz, it's still a little faster than a P3-450. Geforce FX 5500 which supports older Direct3D features, SB Audigy, and Aureal Vortex 2 for audio. This computer can handle the late SVGA era of DOS, along with the Windows 9X games that don't play well in XP.
- Finally for XP is an i5-3450 on a P67 board with a Geforce 750ti and SB X-Fi.