Recently I test DosBox with some old games. Different games from several years. Named it, it was Heretic, Stonekeep, Duke Nukem 3D and Birthright: Gorgon's Alliance.

Results quite surprise me.

I thinks, Dosbox will give me results, similar that would give real PC. In that terms Heretic must plays best of all (it oldest and successfully played even on 40MHz), than goes Stonekeep (Still VGA, but with movies), Birthright (Bad SVGA) and worse at all - Duke Nukem (Heavy use of VESA up to 800x600).

In reality all was different. %)

Best of all was Birthright. My Athlon 2000+ gives it 40 000 or even 60 000 cycles without slight processor overworks.
Second place is Duke Nukem. 30 000 with slight overwork in crowded places with 640x480. 28 000 must work fine.
Third is Stonekeep, with it's 320x200 window. %) 25 000. Most of time Dosbox share is 60-70%, though, but not in dialogs. Voices lever it up to 99%.
And worse at all was most older game - Heretic. %) I don't succeded in smooth run of it - even on 12 000 cycles processor exceeded 100% each time as appears more than 2-3 enemies. Very strange.

Analysing results, I think, tight place of all games is sound system, and FX/Voice in particular. In Birthright, where sounds are scarce, and voices are absent DosBox gives incredible numbers, Heretic heavy-based on FX, and in Stonekeep it appears clear to me, that voice is only processor-eating component. DN3D is exception from this rule, but whole game seems different from others, so maybe it uses sound system somehow different too?

So I ask everyone: maybe I do something wrong? Is this exist a way to lower sound demand of games apart of disabling it? Or sound really now must difficult component for DosBox to reproduce?