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First post, by petro89

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Hi folks and happy spring! I've been looking to build a rig to handle some older games circa 1999-2006. I have two choices as far as processor/board combo. The other components would be the same.

The two choices are as follows:

1: Athlon XP 3200+ on MSI K7N2Platinum
2: 2x Athlon MP 2800+ on ASUS A7M266-D

The identical bits and pieces would be 2gb DDR, AGP x1650pro, 200gb SATA drive,, XP Pro ,etc.

In addition to gaming it would be nice to have a snappier overall experience. I think the duallie would help with that but I know the 3200+ has a higher clock speed and memory bus. Ideas welcome. Thanks!

*Ryzen 9 3900xt, 5700xt, Win10
*Ryzen 7 2700x, Gtx1080, Win10
*FX 9590, Vega64, Win10
*Phenom IIx6 1100T, R9 380, Win7
*QX9770, r9 270x, Win7
*FX60, hd5850, Win7
*XP2400+, ti4600, Win2k
*PPro 200 1mb, banshee, w98
*AMD 5x86, CL , DOS

Reply 1 of 16, by RetroGamingNovice

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If I could, for a Win9x/ME machine, the specs are as follows:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Board) Whatever supports P3s, be it Slot 1 or Socket 370.
CPU) P3 800MHz would be plenty.
RAM) 512MB.
Hard drive) 32GB.
Graphics) ATI Rage! AGP.
Sound) Yamaha XG YMF724 soundcard
OS) Win98se or ME.
DX) 9.0c

Pure DOS, which I already have the board, GPU, and CPU for but need everything else:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Board) AL440LX.
CPU) P2 266MHz Klamath core.
GPU) S3 Trio 64v, possibly Diamond Monster 3D accelerator card.
Sound) Onboard Yamaha YMF715E.
RAM) Need to get a 128MB PC100 stick.
Hard drive) Need to get a 10GB.
OS) MS-DOS 7.1 or FreeDOS.

PC hardware: Ryzen 7 1700, 32GB RAM, 500GB 970 EVO Plus system drive, 500GB 850 EVO /home drive, 1TB Travelstar 7K1000 extra storage drive, R9 270 GPU, Xonar DG soundcard, Arch Linux GNOME.

Reply 2 of 16, by ODwilly

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The dual cpu board would be my choice, especially for XP. Most games you are targeting would see a larger benefit from the 3200+'s higher clock speed but the overall system performance would be nicer with the dually. Heck try out the dual cpu system first and if you are not happy with the framerates in the games you play swap the MSI board and 3200+ in there.

Main pc: Asus ROG 17. R9 5900HX, RTX 3070m, 16gb ddr4 3200, 1tb NVME.
Retro PC: Soyo P4S Dragon, 3gb ddr 266, 120gb Maxtor, Geforce Fx 5950 Ultra, SB Live! 5.1

Reply 3 of 16, by luckybob

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i own a dual athlon board, max speed of ddr333 and the 2800+.

WONDERFUL machine.

What exactly do you plan to play on this machine? For me, it was quake 3 and UT 2003 so I designed my system around that. couldn't be happier.

It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.

Reply 5 of 16, by obobskivich

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"1996-2006" is very broad, and potentially asking for disappointment with a K7 system. The big hang-up is that K7 doesn't support SSE2/3, which can hurt some of the more popular games on the later-end of that date-range. I know from experience that Oblivion, Hitman 4, Age of Empires 3, etc all performed significantly better on my Prescott system "back in the day" as opposed to my K7 machine. Graphics performance may also be a hang-up - the X1650 isn't a slouch, but it will have trouble with a number of games on the later-end of that date range (especially if you're expecting high resolutions (like 1080p) with lots of AA/AF and max IQ settings). It's also a bridged card, and that may give you grief (try it and find out; if you already have it that is). I'm not trying to be the harbinger of doom here - just reality. 1999-2006 was a period of very rapid changes in gaming and gaming hardware.

Now, that does not mean you need 10 different machines to accomplish what you want. But I wouldn't go with K7 if your goal is to have a single machine. You need something that will sit closer to the "end date" to cover the later titles - that means NetBurst/K8, or Core/K10 depending on exactly what you want to play and what kind of performance you expect. Also note that a lot of the games toward the "later" end of your date-range will generally run on Windows Vista/7 (and probably 8 too), so if you've got a more modern gaming system, it may be a better candidate for those games.

Of the two K7 systems you've proposed, purely for gaming, I'd go with the XP 3200. It'll have better single-threaded performance primarily owing to the higher FSB and faster memory, which will be the biggest improvement for games. SMP really didn't matter for gaming back then, and for the most part the second CPU will be twiddling its thumbs while you're gaming. In terms of "snappiness" there shouldn't be any significant differences if my Xeon and P4EE boxes are any indication.

Reply 6 of 16, by petro89

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Thank you all for the comments and advice!

The games I would most likely be playing are Q3, UT2003, Morrowind, possibly Oblivion if it runs decently, some of the older NFS games like Porsche Unleashed, Age of Empires 2/Age of Mythology, Deus Ex, Splinter Cell and a few others.

I have no illusions of this system running later games, or running older games at crazy resolutions. And now that I think about it, maybe my 1999-2006 range was a little off looking at the titles I listed...its probably more like 1999-2003/2004 other than Oblivion.

To make the decision even more challenging, I know I have an XP-mobile chip somewhere that used to run at 2.4 or 2.5ghz without breaking a sweat so the classic argument of faster single core vs slower dual core is really what I was wondering for this array of games.

I was leaning towards the duallie for the coolness factor (as mentioned 😀 ). Maybe I'll try it out and see how it runs and then go from there. Also, I'll peruse online and see if I can find a good list of games that support dual CPU from back then.

THanks again, and I'll let you know how it goes. Just waiting on a SATA PCI card to arrive since the dual CPU board doesn't have onboard SATA. 😀

*Ryzen 9 3900xt, 5700xt, Win10
*Ryzen 7 2700x, Gtx1080, Win10
*FX 9590, Vega64, Win10
*Phenom IIx6 1100T, R9 380, Win7
*QX9770, r9 270x, Win7
*FX60, hd5850, Win7
*XP2400+, ti4600, Win2k
*PPro 200 1mb, banshee, w98
*AMD 5x86, CL , DOS

Reply 7 of 16, by obobskivich

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petro89 wrote:

Thank you all for the comments and advice!

The games I would most likely be playing are Q3, UT2003, Morrowind, possibly Oblivion if it runs decently, some of the older NFS games like Porsche Unleashed, Age of Empires 2/Age of Mythology, Deus Ex, Splinter Cell and a few others.

Ignoring the racing games (only because I don't know much about them), all of that should be doable on a single machine if it's built around Oblivion's requirements. 😀

I have no illusions of this system running later games, or running older games at crazy resolutions.

Why not? 😊

To make the decision even more challenging, I know I have an XP-mobile chip somewhere that used to run at 2.4 or 2.5ghz without breaking a sweat so the classic argument of faster single core vs slower dual core is really what I was wondering for this array of games.

Generally fast single-core is good for older games. But the K7 will hit the SSE2/3 wall, which from memory did impact Oblivion.

I was leaning towards the duallie for the coolness factor (as mentioned 😀 ). Maybe I'll try it out and see how it runs and then go from there. Also, I'll peruse online and see if I can find a good list of games that support dual CPU from back then.

Not many old games will do much with SMP, but apart from the original AMD K8 dual-cores, not many should have problems being run on an SMP system (this also includes Pentium D and Core processors).

Reply 8 of 16, by petro89

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Great...thank you again for your input! I'll let you know how things progress and put up some pics!

*Ryzen 9 3900xt, 5700xt, Win10
*Ryzen 7 2700x, Gtx1080, Win10
*FX 9590, Vega64, Win10
*Phenom IIx6 1100T, R9 380, Win7
*QX9770, r9 270x, Win7
*FX60, hd5850, Win7
*XP2400+, ti4600, Win2k
*PPro 200 1mb, banshee, w98
*AMD 5x86, CL , DOS

Reply 9 of 16, by raymangold

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Unfortunately you won't get much benefit from the ASUS A7M266-D unless you run an OS that supports SMP. I'd definitely agree with everyone else that it's the better board in lieu of that.

If you're doing 2D, I'd stay away from the ATI Rage (after doing some tests on slower systems that can really feel performance penalties, the ATI rage cards actually cause games like AOE2 to run slower than if you were to use S3 or Matrox). Even causing serious artifacts in DOS and 3D games due to ATI's weird drivers-- which is why I'm recycling all of mine. It's kind of sad since those cards had so much potential, I have one with an 8 MB memory upgrade and NTSC support.

Ah well...

Reply 10 of 16, by petro89

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Well I finally received the PCI SATA card and am in the process of putting things together. Decided to take a few pics of the bits and pieces 😊

Here are the evil twins!

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Their future home...

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Putting it together...

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*Ryzen 9 3900xt, 5700xt, Win10
*Ryzen 7 2700x, Gtx1080, Win10
*FX 9590, Vega64, Win10
*Phenom IIx6 1100T, R9 380, Win7
*QX9770, r9 270x, Win7
*FX60, hd5850, Win7
*XP2400+, ti4600, Win2k
*PPro 200 1mb, banshee, w98
*AMD 5x86, CL , DOS

Reply 11 of 16, by petro89

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Well Everything is up and running! I actually went ahead and built both setups - the duallie I put in a case since I was leaning towards running that setup, the XP3200+ I simply put it together to try it out.

As expected, the 3200+ is definitely a smidge better in the few games I've tried - probably around 5 or 10% better. But doing simple things within Windows seems to favor the dual setup - it just seems to be snappier and more responsive. I'm going to continue to try different things but for now I think the dual setup is the one I'll stick with, while the 3200+ will get a nice rest in the closet 😀

Thanks again for everyone's input and comments!

*Ryzen 9 3900xt, 5700xt, Win10
*Ryzen 7 2700x, Gtx1080, Win10
*FX 9590, Vega64, Win10
*Phenom IIx6 1100T, R9 380, Win7
*QX9770, r9 270x, Win7
*FX60, hd5850, Win7
*XP2400+, ti4600, Win2k
*PPro 200 1mb, banshee, w98
*AMD 5x86, CL , DOS

Reply 12 of 16, by matze79

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You can optimize Oblivion to benefit slightly from Dual CPUs, i tested this with Dual 1Ghz Coppermines and got a nice Improvement from slightly chopping without tweaks, to fluid with tweak. (6800GT GeForce)

https://www.retrokits.de - blog, retro projects, hdd clicker, diy soundcards etc
https://www.retroianer.de - german retro computer board

Reply 14 of 16, by obobskivich

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matze79 wrote:

You can optimize Oblivion to benefit slightly from Dual CPUs, i tested this with Dual 1Ghz Coppermines and got a nice Improvement from slightly chopping without tweaks, to fluid with tweak. (6800GT GeForce)

Is this similar to changing the value of the "INumHWThreads" cvars in the Fallout games?

Reply 15 of 16, by petro89

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luckybob wrote:

Hilarious!

*Ryzen 9 3900xt, 5700xt, Win10
*Ryzen 7 2700x, Gtx1080, Win10
*FX 9590, Vega64, Win10
*Phenom IIx6 1100T, R9 380, Win7
*QX9770, r9 270x, Win7
*FX60, hd5850, Win7
*XP2400+, ti4600, Win2k
*PPro 200 1mb, banshee, w98
*AMD 5x86, CL , DOS

Reply 16 of 16, by Robin4

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oerk wrote:

Dual CPU, just for the coolness factor.

And the coolness power consumption.. 2 cpus requires more power draw then 1..

~ At least it can do black and white~