VOGONS


First post, by Half-Saint

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I know this has been discussed many time but I keep getting back to this problem. I'm speaking of having too many computers of course 😀

If, for a moment, we disregard pre-286 era games, would it be possible to run everything else on a maxed out Pentium I machine? Back then, I went from a NEC V20 straight to a 486DX-40 in 1992 or 1993. Later on, while still in secondary school, my parents had the PC upgraded to Pentium 133 which I later pretty much maxed out with Pentium 200 w/o MMX, 96MB of RAM and Voodoo 2. My memory is a bit hazy but the last PC I owned before ditching desktop for a couple of years was an Athlon XP-M 2500+ Barton with 2GB of RAM running Windows XP.

My reasoning goes like this:
Pentium 166-233 for DOS/Windows 2D and some early 3D games
Athlon XP 3200+ for 3D games running Windows 98SE and/or Windows XP

My main PC i5-3570 can run pretty much everything else after that.

What do you guys think?

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Reply 1 of 7, by nforce4max

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This usually ends in a dead end where you will have gaps in performance and compatibility that will force you back to where you started needing to fill the gaps again with one or more systems, honestly you are better off figuring how to use the space more efficiently or doing some custom case that allows for a two or more in one.

On a far away planet reading your posts in the year 10,191.

Reply 2 of 7, by gdjacobs

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The most complete performance envelope with two systems probably requires an Ezra-T in one and a K8 (AGP chipset) in another. PMMX CPUs have excellent performance granularity, but they can't reach the level of a P2 or P3 system. This might not be as much of an issue if the high tier system is built to be DOS compatible. Several DOS games in the 96-97 time frame are known performance pigs, so you will need something faster than the Pentium.

All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder

Reply 3 of 7, by Baoran

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I can do pretty much everything I want with these 2:
486 33Mhz with dos 6.22. It can go down to similar speeds as 4Mhz 286 would be with turbo and caches disabled and I can get correct speed with difficult to run games like wing commander and ultima 7.
K6-III+ with voodoo 3 and voodoo 2 cards that I can run anything that needs something faster with win98se

Reply 4 of 7, by Half-Saint

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Baoran wrote:

I can do pretty much everything I want with these 2:
486 33Mhz with dos 6.22. It can go down to similar speeds as 4Mhz 286 would be with turbo and caches disabled and I can get correct speed with difficult to run games like wing commander and ultima 7.
K6-III+ with voodoo 3 and voodoo 2 cards that I can run anything that needs something faster with win98se

What are the latest games that you can play on that K6-III+ system?

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Reply 5 of 7, by Nipedley

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You can run XP on your i5-3570, dual boot it. No need for the Athlon XP then. Almost any late-stage 98se game will run on XP (I haven't found one yet that doesn't). This does limit your videos cards to ones with XP drivers - to either a Nvidia 9 series (960/970/980) or AMD R9 280x. I'm using an AMD R9 280x for XP & 10 dual booting on my i5 2500k

I use a Socket 7 pentium MMX system for all the earlier, Win9x only stuff and DOS and it does a great job. With cache disabled it's a 386 equivalent

Reply 6 of 7, by Ampera

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I have a 3.5 machine configuration for my gaming. My first machine is a 486 DX4-100 (Effectively a DX4-120 with an overclock). That covers anything besides very early CPU dependent games. I then have a Pentium Pro 200 or Pentium MMX 233 with the exact same specs for both. That covers meatier DOS titles that the 486 can't run, and is a place I also do earlier Windows games.

I then have a Pentium 3 450mhz for gaming ~1998-2001. If I wanted to, I could supplement this with a mid-range Athlon XP+ machine. For DX9 games and newer titles that require XP to run properly (For example, SecuROM titles) I have an Athlon 64 FX-57 machine with dual 7800 GTX 512s.

Reply 7 of 7, by Baoran

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Half-Saint wrote:
Baoran wrote:

I can do pretty much everything I want with these 2:
486 33Mhz with dos 6.22. It can go down to similar speeds as 4Mhz 286 would be with turbo and caches disabled and I can get correct speed with difficult to run games like wing commander and ultima 7.
K6-III+ with voodoo 3 and voodoo 2 cards that I can run anything that needs something faster with win98se

What are the latest games that you can play on that K6-III+ system?

I don't know if I have played the most demanding win98se games but I think latest game I have played is warcraft 3 from 2002 and it was fine. Most later games that are meant for windows xp or newer work fine with my main computer that has windows 7.