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High-end Windows 95 gaming PC?

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Reply 20 of 30, by leonardo

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deksar wrote on 2023-04-27, 17:10:

Quite useful and informative replies, thank you all, one by one. Noted them all down here.

And Win95 Guide was one of the best retro guides I've been reading here, great effort! Thanks for this, leonardo.

Thank you!

deksar wrote on 2023-04-27, 17:10:

You guys know what, I installed Win95 to that PC of mine and and I was then, greeted with the following message:
"Windows protection error. You need to restart your computer."
But I got no CPU faster than 2.0 Ghz, and no 480 MB (another Win95 limit I guess) RAM here.. Any clue on this?

It's the exact same error that one gets when installing with a 350 MHz+ AMD CPU. I wonder if the issue could apply in your case. The fastest intel CPU I've done the installation on personally was a 1 GHz Pentium 3, which is quite a bit faster than a K6-II or K6-III at any clock speed.

If you were to go along with the assumption that this is the CPU speed bug, the solution would then find a way to reduce the CPU performance from the BIOS (easiest things to try are to turn off L1 and L2-caches). This worked for me on the Athlon and AthlonXP's that I tried (the fastest CPU was clocked at ~1.8 GHz).

If lowering CPU speed doesn't allow you to proceed with the installation, we should then look into other possibilities. If it does, you can basically follow the guide with reduced speed until you come to the part where you install the update rollup, or alternatively just amdk6upd.exe.

[Install Win95 like you were born in 1985!] on systems like this or this.

Reply 21 of 30, by deksar

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I think it's impossible to play with my CPU freq./FSB speed. Please see the attached image. It seems those settings are locked.

I somehow entered into the Safe Mode, installed amdk6upd.exe, it said the installation was successful, rebooted and tada, the same protection error again..

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Reply 22 of 30, by leonardo

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deksar wrote on 2023-04-27, 20:15:

I think it's impossible to play with my CPU freq./FSB speed. Please see the attached image. It seems those settings are locked.

I somehow entered into the Safe Mode, installed amdk6upd.exe, it said the installation was successful, rebooted and tada, the same protection error again..

You are right on the upper end of supported hardware... there may be some BIOS settings that you want to change.

Things that come to mind:

Extended interrupts (APIC) should not be enabled, if you see this setting toggle PIC-mode instead.
There might be some hard drive controller related things too (prefer IDE-mode over AHCI/SATA/RAID), especially if you're trying to enable DMA and the chipset drivers aren't installed (or aren't new enough to support your chipset).

Did you get the 'Windows Protection Error' immediately after the last stage of setup, or after a particular set of changes that you did?

edit: If you looked at the thread for the Athlon-setup that I got, you probably noticed that I had to spend a good day or two in trial-and-error figuring out how to properly setup Windows on it... just a heads-up / warning. 😁

[Install Win95 like you were born in 1985!] on systems like this or this.

Reply 23 of 30, by deksar

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Before I start the installation, I actually disabled almost anything you mentioned above.. ACPI, APIC, Onboard LAN, LAN Boot ROM, Serial-ATA Boot ROM, Audio, Serial Port, Paralel Port and so on..

And the HDD is IDE. There's no active AHCI/RAID/SATA settings in BIOS.

I get the error just after the very first part of the installation is done and during the first reboot.

Reply 24 of 30, by Jo22

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Pentium IV is quite fast, instruction wise (cycles required). Even in comparison to its successors it's a beast.
That caused a lot of compatibility issues with certain software at the time.
If memory serves, this caused future processors to be intentionally slower at executing certain instructions.

That's what I've found for Windows 95..

"In the late 1990s, Dragon became infamous for causing Windows 95 to crash on faster systems,
although few users realized that it was Dragon specifically that was responsible.
IOS.VXD, SCSIPORT.PDR, and ESDI_506.PDR all contained CPU speed calibration code
that caused division overflows on faster processors."

https://www.os2museum.com/wp/ladders-and-dragons/

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

//My video channel//

Reply 25 of 30, by leonardo

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Jo22 wrote on 2023-04-27, 20:36:
Pentium IV is quite fast, instruction wise (cycles required). Even in comparison to its successors it's a beast. That caused a l […]
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Pentium IV is quite fast, instruction wise (cycles required). Even in comparison to its successors it's a beast.
That caused a lot of compatibility issues with certain software at the time.
If memory serves, this caused future processors to be intentionally slower at executing certain instructions.

That's what I've found for Windows 95..

"In the late 1990s, Dragon became infamous for causing Windows 95 to crash on faster systems,
although few users realized that it was Dragon specifically that was responsible.
IOS.VXD, SCSIPORT.PDR, and ESDI_506.PDR all contained CPU speed calibration code
that caused division overflows on faster processors."

https://www.os2museum.com/wp/ladders-and-dragons/

Interesting!

deksar wrote on 2023-04-27, 20:15:

I think it's impossible to play with my CPU freq./FSB speed. Please see the attached image. It seems those settings are locked.
I somehow entered into the Safe Mode, installed amdk6upd.exe, it said the installation was successful, rebooted and tada, the same protection error again..

If you still want to continue with Windows 95 instead of taking the easier way out (Windows 98 would be understandably justifiable and recommended by most Vogoners, I feel),
I think we now enter the stage where we must know more about the hardware. If it's some kind of OEM-system, you will be quite limited in what you can change in the BIOS. I did not have to lower the clock for my Athlon or AthlonXP test systems, turning off L1 and L2 cache was sufficient to complete the setup. Do you see those options in the BIOS? What motherboard do you have? edit: You mentioned it's a Asus P4V800-X. Have to look into it a little more...

[Install Win95 like you were born in 1985!] on systems like this or this.

Reply 28 of 30, by gerry

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Socket3 wrote on 2023-04-27, 18:44:

Here's an example - Dungeon Keeper 2 came out in 1999 - system requirements say 166mhz pentium 1 and 2mb video card with 300mhz pentium 2 and 8mb video card recommended. If you run the game on the recommended system, it will not be a pleasant experience, except for maybe the first 2-3 missions.

that's a good example, any game where the number of units needing path finding and other calculation can increase to large numbers, can run on low specs but needs higher specs to not get bogged down

with this game and age of empires 2 and other sim/rts types i found that more was better, but once into p4 / athlon xp they tended to run well

some enthusiasts really push these games though and benefit from still greater cpu power

Reply 29 of 30, by Socket3

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gerry wrote on 2023-04-29, 07:59:
that's a good example, any game where the number of units needing path finding and other calculation can increase to large numbe […]
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Socket3 wrote on 2023-04-27, 18:44:

Here's an example - Dungeon Keeper 2 came out in 1999 - system requirements say 166mhz pentium 1 and 2mb video card with 300mhz pentium 2 and 8mb video card recommended. If you run the game on the recommended system, it will not be a pleasant experience, except for maybe the first 2-3 missions.

that's a good example, any game where the number of units needing path finding and other calculation can increase to large numbers, can run on low specs but needs higher specs to not get bogged down

with this game and age of empires 2 and other sim/rts types i found that more was better, but once into p4 / athlon xp they tended to run well

some enthusiasts really push these games though and benefit from still greater cpu power

I think DKII chugs in part because of the graphics. The game looks very very good for 1999, and if you crank the resolution and details up it looks even better. I noticed particles and particle effects have a serious impact on performance, and so do reflections, alpha blending and transparency. The game lags on the recommended system in maps with lots of water and it also lags in heavily scripted missions with lots of units moving about. Pathfinding also plays a role like you said, especially since DKII uses a rather complicated AI system for creatures - but I also have a feeling DKII relies on the CPU to calculate some graphical or graphics related effects, making things worse. Overall it's not a very well optimized game.

Another good example is Homeworld. It recommends a 350MHz pentium 2, 64MB of ram and a Voodoo 2 (not specifically, but what other card uses a 12MB framebuffer?) - thing is, as soon as you get to the Gardens of Kadeshi mission, the game chugs horribly even on said 350mhz pentium.... It also benefits greatly from 256mb of ram, especially in multiplayer, and from video cards with a large framebuffer (32MB) despite the game having a rather simple texture pool. The slowdowns experienced are due to the game engine actually calculating projectile and unit paths in real time as no weapon in the game uses hit-scan. Projectiles are individual entities with their own paths and collisions. As such, the game can sometimes chug even on a 1GHz pentium III. I found the best setup for singleplayer Homeworld 1 is a Riva TNT2 Pro, 128Mb of ram and a 1.4GHz P3 tualatin or Athlon XP 1500+ and for multiplayer any 2GHz (or 2000+) CPU will do well, and another 128MB of ram for 256 total. For high-res graphics and big battles I found the game plays best on a Geforce 2 PRO/GTS.

You're right about AOE2 - the pathfinding does slow down the game by a lot. Same story with Red alert 2 - witch is in contrast to Tiberian Sun that will run well on a 600mhz pentium 3 (and as such runs great on my 1.2GHz VIA C3 rig). Red Alert 2 seems to run best on a 2GHz pentium 4, and if you're playing large maps and especially multiplayer, those requirements grow exponentially. I recently found a modded map pack for red alert 2, that changes the campaign by doubling the size of the campaign maps and modifying scripting to adapt the AI to those changes. A great mod, but it chugs even on my IBM thinkcentre (2.5GHz p4 northwood). Out of frustration since mission 6 was running pretty slow, I installed it on my i7 950 XP rig and on that machine it plays perfectly.

So yeah, overkill retro rigs have legitimate uses, with win98se and windows XP overkill rigs being (in my opinion) the most justified and useful - but I don't see how win95 would benefit from this, especially considering it's limitations when it comes to compatible hardware are even more severe compared to windows 98 (memory, CPU speed, no WDM driver support).

Reply 30 of 30, by shevalier

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Socket3 wrote on 2023-04-27, 18:44:

Even a 1.4GHz pentium 3 has trouble keeping up when there are a lot of spells and creatures on screen, even at 640x480. As it's one of my favorite games

This is the game for which rig#1 was assembled. I wouldn't say it's all that bad.
Yep, 12FPS at 1024*768. But this does not happen during the passage of the plot.
If you put the spell "Call to Arms" in the final mission near the central portal, then you can develop the dungeon further after the win.
With a normal passage - 25-45 fps, with " -32BITEVERYTHING -ENABLEBUMPMAPPING -ENABLEBUMPLUMINANCE" and Hardware3D

But in general, I agree that some games require more CPU&GPU performance than I would like.

Aopen MX3S, PIII-S Tualatin 1133, Radeon 9800Pro@XT BIOS, Diamond monster sound MX300
JetWay K8T8AS, Athlon DH-E6 3000+, Radeon HD2600Pro AGP, Audigy 2 Value