Nicolas 2000 wrote on 2025-12-28, 19:14:

Thanks for all the replies! 486-33 seems a popular choice. Is it fast enough for Stunts?

Would a 486-50 loose the low-end advantages of a 33?

DX-33 is fine for Stunts.

I haven't tried a 50MHz, so can't speak to its performance. I did have a 486 DX2-66 and found it too fast for a number of games, where as the DX-33 seemed to hit a performance sweet spot for that era.

Though if you do start with a faster processor, you can always underclock if you want something slower.

Is there any game related value to specifically 33 mhz? Can you easily run a higher speed 486 (40, 50, 66) at 33 if 33 would be a gold standard?

A lot of questions, as back in the day I skipped 486 so I have zero experience with it.

Yes that was what I was referring to. 33MHz was a good speed for many games, esp. Sierra's VGA adventures. Go faster and you risk entering the "Audio Hardware Not Initialized" error with original Sound Blasters. I found the DX2 66MHz to fall sometimes into this issue, but depressing the turbo button and trying again solves it immediatelly.

Jo22 wrote on 2025-12-28, 19:55:

^Wing Commander 1 comes to mind (it's from 1990).
I vaguely remember that it's running "okay" on 12 to 16 MHz 286 PCs.

Wing Commander is very speed-sensitive, but ran a lot better on my 386-16 than my friend's 286-12. On a 486DX/SX (no FPU support)-33 you need to slow stuff down a bit but not to 286 levels.

Nicolas 2000 wrote on 2025-12-28, 22:14:

Is there any game related value to specifically 33 mhz? Can you easily run a higher speed 486 (40, 50, 66) at 33 if 33 would be a gold standard?

Warcraft and Theme Park are two that come to mind. In the case of Warcraft, the CPU speed affects palette cycling animations and scroll speeds. Theme Park it affects general gameplay.

They could probably be run at faster CPU speeds, though. I imagine there isn't a huge difference between 40 MHz and 33 MHz for those games.

There are games that have hardware issues at faster speeds. For example, I had issues with Dynamix adventure games not initially MT-32 properly on my DX2-66. Whereas they worked fine on a DX-33.

edited to add:

Ultima VII: The Black Gate is another game where 33 MHz seems to be the sweet spot.

Thanks!

The reason I ask about 486-40 and 50 is because those are available here. Could I jumper them to 33 or is that always a crystal soldering job?

Shponglefan wrote on 2025-12-28, 21:34:

Jo22 wrote on 2025-12-28, 19:55:

Edit: Or let's see it this way: 10 or 12 (or 16) MHz ATs used to be the baseline setup for VGA.
Because these 286 PCs were still sold new in the 1988-1990 (or 1987-1991) era, when VGA was new.
So it's not bad to be able to run things at 286 speeds.

I rebuilt our original 12MHz 286 and tried running VGA games on it. While they can run, it's really not ideal.

386 or 486 is much better for VGA titles, including adventure games.

Hi, performance depends on several factors, I guess. 🤷‍♂️
It can range from very bad to quite good, it some cases.
For example, if the BIOS/VGA BIOS is copied into RAM, 0 waitstates, ISA speed etc.

I had a rather slow 286 @12 MHz in the 90s, for example. Graphically, I mean.
The on-board VGA was an ATI VGA Wonder with a bus mouse port, probably connected via 8-Bit i/o.
Only that would explain the extremely slow screen drawing in Windows 3.1 using default VGA driver (you could watch Paintbrush filling colours in a painting).
RAM expansion was 4x 1 MB SIMMs (70ns I think). It had a CD-ROM drive and a 16-Bit soundcard, too.
Early QuickTime and Video for Windows ran on it, even.

Now I have an 286 Schneider Tower AT @10 MHz with an OTI-67 VGA that runs very smoothly, by comparison.
Despite its slow, meager 1 MB DIL RAM fitted on the CPU board.
The ISA bus runs at CPU speed, if I understand the Setup settings correctly.
It runs games such as this one that used to be unplayable on my 12 MHz 286 (literal slide-show back then).

Another 286 PC in Pizza box form factor runs at 16 MHz and has some Trident on-board VGA (9000?) and 60ns SIMMs.
It's very quick in most benchmarks and games, too.
I've also run a RAM BIOS and VBE 1.2 TSR for the on-board VGA.

The RAM BIOS utility also existed for other early ISA VGAs such as PVGA1A or ET4000.
It was on the driver/utility disk that shipped with these graphics cards and was meant for PCs without ROM shadowing (later 286/386 PCs had the Shadow RAM option in CMOS Setup).

dionb wrote on 2025-12-29, 00:51:

Jo22 wrote on 2025-12-28, 19:55:

^Wing Commander 1 comes to mind (it's from 1990).
I vaguely remember that it's running "okay" on 12 to 16 MHz 286 PCs.

Wing Commander is very speed-sensitive, but ran a lot better on my 386-16 than my friend's 286-12. On a 486DX/SX (no FPU support)-33 you need to slow stuff down a bit but not to 286 levels.

I've played it on a 12 MHz 286, as far as I remember.
Some animations were a bit slow indeed, I guess.
(The animations on board of the Tiger's Claw seemed to be mostly okay on that 286, I think.)
But on other hand, the asteroid field scene/space fight scene wasn't too fast either.
On newer PCs I had trouble keeping up. 😅

Nicolas 2000 wrote on 2025-12-29, 09:17:

Thanks!

The reason I ask about 486-40 and 50 is because those are available here. Could I jumper them to 33 or is that always a crystal soldering job?

I tested the game F15 in my Pentium 200 triton chipset, and work fine, without slowdown. Stunts, Lemmings, all this work fine too

And this pentium im building have a S3 PCI card, AW64, 32mb and 128GB SSD using FAT32...

Dont worry too much about speed, but i check chipset of motherboard before buy. I have for example a 386SX40 with SARC chipset, and give me too much trouble than the pentium 200

I was going to suggest Pentium MMX. As per PhilsComputerLab's 136 in 1 PC video, this is a very flexible option. I have been able to play everything from Wing Commander 1 to Unreal Tournament 99 on mine (overclocked to 300Mhz and with Voodoo 1). This is right at the point where your PIII can take over.

Yes, a 486 can be slowed further than the Pentium MMX. Really depends what games you want to play.

Also to answer on underclocking a 486, it's easy. It should be just jumpers.. unlike 286 and 386 which required crystal swaps.

Nicolas 2000 wrote on 2025-12-29, 09:17:

Thanks!

The reason I ask about 486-40 and 50 is because those are available here. Could I jumper them to 33 or is that always a crystal soldering job?

Most 486 motherboards should use jumpers or switches to set CPU/FSB speed. No need to replace crystals.

wbahnassi wrote on 2025-12-29, 15:26:

Also to answer on underclocking a 486, it's easy. It should be just jumpers.. unlike 286 and 386 which required crystal swaps.

Shponglefan wrote on 2025-12-29, 15:47:

Most 486 motherboards should use jumpers or switches to set CPU/FSB speed. No need to replace crystals.

mm... take care, most if not all first 486 boards still relies on a fixed cristal. Is more on boards with DX2+ support that have the jumpers stuff

Jo22 wrote on 2025-12-29, 11:17:

I had a rather slow 286 @12 MHz in the 90s, for example. Graphically, I mean.

We also had a 12 MHz 286 from about 1988/89 to 1993. It wasn't until 1994 we got a 486.

The consequence of this was missing out on a lot of early 90s VGA games because they ran too poorly to be playable or fun.

This is why I would not recommend a 286 for anyone wanting to play games from the early 90s. A 286 is more appropriate for mid-to-late 1980s.

theelf wrote on 2025-12-29, 15:49:

mm... take care, most if not all first 486 boards still relies on a fixed cristal. Is more on boards with DX2+ support that have the jumpers stuff

True, but those early boards are going to be more rare since 486s weren't as highly adopted. Not to mention likely to be ISA only which wouldn't be ideal either.

Is PCI important, or is ISA and VLB where it's at?

Is a 1992 486DX Opti motherboard with ISA 8 bit, ISA 16 bit and VLB likely to have jumper settings for downclocking to 33?

A pci video card is important for Doom and late era dos games. Doom runs well on vlb on my 486, but runs even smoother on my pci s3 trio.

Not sure how well vlb would do with demanding late dos games like need for speed, quake, Carmageddon, as they don't run on my 486, but I assume pci will be more favorable here too.

PCI parts are easier to source. But there are people who benchmarked PCI vs. VLB and there was no remarkable difference to aim just for 486 mobos that have PCI.

dukeofurl wrote on 2025-12-29, 16:36:

A pci video card is important for Doom and late era dos games.

Thanks. The most graphically demanding I plan on playing will be Stunts. Wolf3d, Doom etc all run fine on the P3 machine.

Given that F15 II and Stunts are 1989-90 games and I'm looking at a high spec 1992 486, I assume it'll eat them for breakfast (given the rate of PC development back then). Most other games I want to play on the 486 are 2D.

Nicolas 2000 wrote on 2025-12-29, 16:37:

dukeofurl wrote on 2025-12-29, 16:36:

A pci video card is important for Doom and late era dos games.

Thanks. The most graphically demanding I plan on playing will be Stunts. Wolf3d, Doom etc all run fine on the P3 machine.

Stunts runs pretty well on a 386 with an isa video card. I have a Trident VGA card in my 386 and it runs Stunts fine. They programmed it well.