PCem Emulation is slow \ VOGONS

PCem Emulation is slow

Topic actions

First post, by OmriSh

Posted on 2025-02-22, 13:19

OmriSh Offline

Rank Newbie

Rank: Newbie
Posts: 9
Joined: 2024-05-13, 12:09

Hi,

I'm trying to emulate windows XP using these settings:

1Gigabyte GA-686BX
2Intel Pentium || / 400Mhz
3512 MB
43DFX Voodoo 3 3000
5Sound Blaster PCI 128

And it is leggy, even games such as jazz jackrabbit 2 or icy tower runs a bit leggy.
It shows a 100% emulation speed.

My PC Build:

1Windows 11 Pro
2MSI B650-S
3AMD Ryzen 7 9700X
432 GB
5RTX 3050

Why is it so slow? Is there a way to make it run smoother?

Reply 1 of 5, by DosFreak

Posted on 2025-02-22, 13:55

DosFreak Offline

Rank l33t++

Rank: l33t++
Posts: 13462
Joined: 2002-06-30, 16:35
Location: Milliways

Drop to a slower emulated processor.
If you want to use Windows XP instead of an older OS on the slower processor make sure you only install what is necessary including what service Pack is actually needed and do all the Windows tweaks.
If the games don't need pcem and work fine on the host or via virtualization not emulation then use that.

How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
Make your games work offline

Reply 2 of 5, by BEEN_Nath_58

Posted on 2025-02-22, 15:13

BEEN_Nath_58 Offline

Rank l33t

Rank: l33t
Posts: 2964
Joined: 2020-04-19, 19:36
Location: India

Jazz jackrabbit 2 worked fine on Win11 the last time I played

Otherwise consider using Win98 for your machine. A slower CPU should also be fine, like a Pentium MMX

previously known as Discrete_BOB_058

Reply 3 of 5, by Norton Commander

Posted on 2025-02-23, 12:20

Norton Commander Offline

Rank Member

Rank: Member
Posts: 223
Joined: 2009-03-14, 12:30
Location: Passed out drunk on couch

512 MB is enough RAM to run Windows XP and nothing else because all it does is constant disk swapping. Up the RAM to 3 GB which is XP x86's memory limit. There was a PAE hack that allowed XP to access more RAM but I never tried it. Try installing XP Service Pack 2 since that's lighter than Service Pack 3 (It's what I used when I had a Pentium II 400MHz desktop).

Reply 4 of 5, by GemCookie

Posted on 2025-02-27, 21:20

GemCookie Offline

Rank Member

Rank: Member
Posts: 161
Joined: 2022-09-25, 16:25
Location: Aboard the PCI Express

Norton Commander wrote on 2025-02-23, 12:20:

512 MB is enough RAM to run Windows XP and nothing else because all it does is constant disk swapping.

More like 64 MiB.

Up the RAM to 3 GB which is XP x86's memory limit.

In PCem, the Gigabyte GA-686BX is limited to 512 MiB of RAM. Editing the c0nfiguration file to specify 3 GiB of RAM causes a crash when the machine starts up.

Gigabyte GA-8I915P Duo Pro | P4 530J | GF 6600 | 2GiB | 120G HDD | 2k/Vista/10
MSI MS-5169 | K6-2/350 | TNT2 M64 | 384MiB | 120G HDD | DR-/MS-DOS/NT/2k/XP/OBSD
Dell Precision M6400 | C2D T9600 | FX 2700M | 16GiB | 128G SSD | 2k/Vista/11/Arch/OBSD

Reply 5 of 5, by 9646gt

Posted on 2025-03-14, 18:13

9646gt Offline

Rank Member

Rank: Member
Posts: 137
Joined: 2018-12-14, 13:55

you should try 86Box! I have been having a blast with it. Only downside is that on Mac the 3dfx implementation can be buggy. It's like a modern and more updated for of PCem

Go to top of page Go to top of page

Back to PC Emulation