Those RAM amounts are way too high compared to what people actually used back in the day. And by people, I mean actual home PC users, not server administrators. Note that RAM prices were very high until the year 2000 or so.

If you want a more realistic overview, go to the CGW museum, open the December issue for each year, and find the Falcon Northwest, Alienware and Dell ads at the back of the magazine. Specifically, their top offerings aimed at gamers.

Also, my memory of the Pentium Pro is a bit fuzzy, but I don't remember people using it for gaming all that much. I think it was mostly used as a server/workstation CPU. And IIRC, it kinda sucked when executing 16-bit code, and DOS was still relevant in 1996.

The 1999 PII would have been Slot 1, not Socket 370. Socket 370 was more of a 2000-1 thing, especially on the PIII (rather than Celeron) front with the ill-fated i820 chipset, then the i815...

Also, per Wikipedia, the 800MHz PIII came out Dec. 20, 1999, so... not sure anyone would have been able to get their hands on it by your Dec. 31 date.

I would not have put a Pentium Pro on a 'gaming' list, the gaming/consumer world would have been on the P55C Pentium MMX.

Also, I've always been a Creative Labs guy, so... not sure why you wouldn't put an SB Live! on there.

CD burners started becoming half-affordable around 1998 or so, an ultimate system in 1998 would have had a 2-4X CD burner, probably combined with a straight CD-ROM or DVD-ROM.

This one may be controversial, but my general recollection is that the Voodoo 3 (and Voodoo 5) was seen as somewhat of a flop back then. GeForce/GeForce 2/etc were where it was at in 1999-2000. It's funny because, of course, today it's the other way around. I never had a Voodoo 2 card, though I knew people who did - my guess is that either i) there was less attachment to Glide-only games, or ii) people just kept their Voodoo 2s and used them with their newer GeForces, so that's why the Voodoo 3 was not that well received.

Otherwise, I guess the question is how ultimate you want to be. Like, do you want a 'my family is in the 1% for my town so they buy a reasonably mainstream but high end' kind of system, or a 'I am John Carmack and make video games for a living so will have the absolute best in my lab' system. For example, in early 1995, 4 megs of RAM cost $250 CAD. Is it reasonable to put $1000CAD of RAM in your end-of-1994 system, at a time when most people would have been getting 4-8 megs? If you want to be that ultimate, you may want to think about SCSI - I think a lot of people building high-end systems were still into SCSI into 1998 or so. I had a friend with a big budget who had a PII 300 and a PII-450 (one Dell and one Gateway), both ordered with SCSI controllers and drives. I think the big custom OEMs like Dell/Gateway/Micron stopped offering SCSI boot drives and controllers (Adapter 2940?) around the PIII era, which happens to roughly coincide with Apple dumping SCSI with the two G3 Power Macs.

I suspect, for the record, that the first time most 'normal' people (i.e. not people spending five figures of their employer's money on a workstation) maxed out their motherboards RAM-wise was in the 440BX/SDRAM era. By 2001 or so, the price of SDRAM had plunged such that 3x256 modules for your Win2000-about-to-be-upgraded-to-XP 440BX system was actually affordable. I have vague memories of buying first 128, then a year later 256, meg PC1xx SDRAM DIMMs for under $100CAD each. (Then, of course, the i815 had dropped max RAM back down to 512)

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-10-21, 00:17:

Those RAM amounts are way too high compared to what people actually used back in the day. And by people, I mean actual home PC users, not server administrators. Note that RAM prices were very high until the year 2000 or so.

If you want a more realistic overview, go to the CGW museum, open the December issue for each year, and find the Falcon Northwest, Alienware and Dell ads at the back of the magazine. Specifically, their top offerings aimed at gamers.

I did use CGW when I spec'd these, and the RAM while a lot for the period is in line with high end specs of the era.

For example:

NEC system from Jan 1996 issue (1995 specs) had 32 MB of RAM.
CGW's ultimate rig from Jan 1997 (1996 specs) had 64 MB of RAM.
Falcon NW Mach V from Dec 1997 (1997 specs) had 128 MB of RAM
CGW's ultimate rig from Jan 1999 (1998 specs) had 256 MB of RAM.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-10-21, 00:17:

Those RAM amounts are way too high compared to what people actually used back in the day. And by people, I mean actual home PC users, not server administrators. Note that RAM prices were very high until the year 2000 or so.

You beat me to making that point, but the other thing that I would add is that there were big supply disruptions in the RAM market. There was some earthquake in Japan one year, there was something else another year, and as a result, prices of RAM could triple or quadruple.

After 2000 or so, I think generally speaking RAM prices were much more stable. Sure, a new RAM type launches at 2x the price of the current standard, and the old standard plunges in price as almost no one wants to buy it anymore, but that's very different from the mad pricing shifts of the mid-1990s. You see this now with DDR3, 4, and 5, it was the same thing when DDR4 came out, etc.

Also, if you want to track the effect of RAM prices and the increasing quantity of RAM, look at Macs (since it's one manufacturer running the same OS from 1984 to 2000 and that OS didn't have the same memory quirks DOS had, it's a bit easier to see trends). Launched in 1984 with 128K, late 1984 with 512K, then 1 meg became the standard with the Plus in 1986, and up until 1994 or so, your standard amount of RAM for most of the Mac lineup was 2-4 megs. The flagship PPC machines in 1994 launched with 8 megs. By 1995, you're starting to see 8 megs on the lower end machines like the 6200. By 1998, the original iMac (a much lower-end machine) had 32 megs and by 2002 (as they moved to a different, much RAM-hungrier OS), the G4 iMac had 128 megs standard. First Intel iMac in 2006 had 512.

VivienM wrote on 2023-10-21, 00:32:

Also, I've always been a Creative Labs guy, so... not sure why you wouldn't put an SB Live! on there.

Personally, I would include both cards in a top tier system.

You still had a couple of heavy hitters like Quake 3 and UT99 using A3D 2.0 in 1999. Creative was about to win the format war, and sadly took Aureal under with their litigation crap.

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-10-21, 00:33:

I did use CGW when I spec'd these, and the RAM while a lot for the period is in line with high end specs of the era. […]
Show full quote

I did use CGW when I spec'd these, and the RAM while a lot for the period is in line with high end specs of the era.

For example:

NEC system from Jan 1996 issue (1995 specs) had 32 MB of RAM.
CGW's ultimate rig from Jan 1997 (1996 specs) had 64 MB of RAM.
Falcon NW Mach V from Dec 1997 (1997 specs) had 128 MB of RAM
CGW's ultimate rig from Jan 1999 (1998 specs) had 256 MB of RAM.

I would stick to the December issues, just in case.

I do realize that they didn't exactly represent what was available during that month, but it's debatable if some of the January issue hardware could realistically be acquired by December 31st of the previous year.

VivienM wrote on 2023-10-21, 00:32:

The 1999 PII would have been Slot 1, not Socket 370. Socket 370 was more of a 2000-1 thing, especially on the PIII (rather than Celeron) front with the ill-fated i820 chipset, then the i815...

Also, per Wikipedia, the 800MHz PIII came out Dec. 20, 1999, so... not sure anyone would have been able to get their hands on it by your Dec. 31 date.

Socket 370 did apparently release in late 1999, so along with the PIII 800MHz, thus why I'm including it.

I realize practical availability is different, but it's somewhat difficult to judge that otherwise. GeForce 256 DDR is similar. Apparently released in late 1999, but realistically most people wouldn't have had one until 2000.

These are a bit of a theoretical fantasy builds though, assuming that one was in a position to acquire the hardware at the time. 😉

I would not have put a Pentium Pro on a 'gaming' list, the gaming/consumer world would have been on the P55C Pentium MMX.

I wouldn't either until I started reading old newsgroup debates from 1996 among gamers debating the merits of the Pro 200 versus a regular Pentium 200.: https://groups.google.com/g/comp.sys.ibm.pc.g … g/c/s6eyj3iuudg

People were legitimately considering these for high end gaming rigs. And CGW even featured the Pentium Pro in one of their Ultimate rigs.

It does seem like a realistically viable option, even for 1996.

Also, I've always been a Creative Labs guy, so... not sure why you wouldn't put an SB Live! on there.

I've always preferred A3D, that's why. 😉 But an SB Live would certainly be a viable option as well.

This one may be controversial, but my general recollection is that the Voodoo 3 (and Voodoo 5) was seen as somewhat of a flop back then. GeForce/GeForce 2/etc were where it was at in 1999-2000.

This isn't actually that controversial. Looking back at old CGW rigs, they tended to put Voodoos in their budget builds and nVidia based cards in their high-end ones.

Otherwise, I guess the question is how ultimate you want to be.

Basically an "if money were no object" type of ultimate, without going so far out of spec to make it functionally incompatible.

I realize that in practice many of these rigs would trail the respective years they are listed for. A 486 DX2/66 for example would have been a pretty baller system to have in 1994.

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-10-21, 00:33:

I did use CGW when I spec'd these, and the RAM while a lot for the period is in line with high end specs of the era. […]
Show full quote

I did use CGW when I spec'd these, and the RAM while a lot for the period is in line with high end specs of the era.

For example:

NEC system from Jan 1996 issue (1995 specs) had 32 MB of RAM.
CGW's ultimate rig from Jan 1997 (1996 specs) had 64 MB of RAM.
Falcon NW Mach V from Dec 1997 (1997 specs) had 128 MB of RAM
CGW's ultimate rig from Jan 1999 (1998 specs) had 256 MB of RAM.

What was their budget for ultimate? $4000USD? $10,000USD?

My other post references Macs - you could put 128 megs of RAM in a 1990 Mac model. But to do so... would probably have cost you as much as a new car.

The other thing worth noting is, PC/gamer/etc types were much younger back then. There's a reason there was no $1800 video card in 1998 - no one would have been able to convince their parents to spend $1800 on a video card so it would have been a commercial flop. People wonder why the Voodoo 1/2 were separate cards without 2D functionality - my guess is that one big reason was so people could spend a few hundred bucks and put them into their family's Presarios and Aptivas with on-motherboard soldered graphics with minimal compatibility issues. Most games up until later in the Voodoo era were played on computers that parents had bought for productivity uses. So... "high end" in my mind really means "what someone whose parents had a high-end budget" would have gotten. That's a bit different from a completely unlimited budget, especially on something like RAM.

Very different from what the high-end gamer PC builders today are selling; they're going after 35-45 year olds who have their own source of income.

All the years in the era that covered 386 through C2D were at low end of memory size due to cost. Started at 1MB and 4MB, 486 had 8MB, Pentium 100 had 16 (was $700 cdn just for memory alone!), then upgraded to 24MB. PII 350 was about 64 or 128MB. Then Athlon around 256MB. P4 at work was 256MB as well then 1GB or 2GB if I recall right, was dim memory and that was around 2006 or so. C2D was at 2GB then 8GB on Asus P5K, Was 2GB, 4GB then 16GB on Optiplex 780. XP, 7 then finally win 10 on that 780. Z220 was 16GB from the start, last year 32GB. Now my two newer HP mini computers are now 32GB, G3 for 10, other one G5 is for win 11 to learn on.

My hobby and future gaming rig is Z420, 8 core with 128GB, not yet decided on what GPU to get for it. GTX 1080 and add Tesla P100 16GB to it for holding lot of texture or GTX 2080 but not for ray tracing.

This is because I can afford due to my work and memory modules was priced well. And used parts are affordable within my means.

I still have hard time justifying spending more than 300 cdn a part. That RTX 4080 commands 1,000 still if used. I'm having hard time getting grip around that much.

I chip in one part at a time slowly building up a PC every month. 100 to 200 a month. If I wanted to buy those four 32GB ECC DDR4-2666 or -3200 registered modules, I split the spending by buying two modules at a time in two months for example.

I never spent more than 300 all in once like for getting a HP Z440 PC for example which I yet to do, have to wait next year. I already have broadwell 16 core processor that I only spent about 130 on.

Cheers,

VivienM wrote on 2023-10-21, 00:52:

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-10-21, 00:33:

I did use CGW when I spec'd these, and the RAM while a lot for the period is in line with high end specs of the era. […]
Show full quote

I did use CGW when I spec'd these, and the RAM while a lot for the period is in line with high end specs of the era.

For example:

NEC system from Jan 1996 issue (1995 specs) had 32 MB of RAM.
CGW's ultimate rig from Jan 1997 (1996 specs) had 64 MB of RAM.
Falcon NW Mach V from Dec 1997 (1997 specs) had 128 MB of RAM
CGW's ultimate rig from Jan 1999 (1998 specs) had 256 MB of RAM.

What was their budget for ultimate? $4000USD? $10,000USD?

The CGW ultimate builds were typically in the $8k to $10k range.

A lot of the high end gaming rigs they reviewed of the same era were usually $3k to $4k.

These were not intended to be necessarily affordable, but moreso dream machines to lust after if one happened to win the lottery.

There's a reason there was no $1800 video card in 1998

The Quantum cards were up there for the time. They made these crazy single slot Voodoo and Voodoo 2 SLI cards that IIRC were close to a grand at the time.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-10-21, 00:46:

I would stick to the December issues, just in case.

I do realize that they didn't exactly represent what was available during that month, but it's debatable if some of the January issue hardware could realistically be acquired by December 31st of the previous year.

All the hardware I have listed is based on release dates for the year up to Dec 31. I realize that practically speaking, some things like Coppermine 800's people wouldn't have realistically gotten their hands on until the following year. It becomes a bit futzy trying to set a different cut-off date, so I honestly don't want to get too much into trying to offset release dates for everything.

Pricing is also a big factor, but again this is an 'ultimate' list not necessarily a realistic for the time list.

In my own experience, we were at least a couple years behind the curve. My 'ultimate' 1995 rig we probably wouldn't have owned until 1996 or 1997. But I could still dream... 😆

Looking at your 1996 build, I would go with a Matrox Mystique (MGA-1064SG) over the Virge DX. The Matrox card would be slightly faster under Win9x, have more VRAM available and provide a much sharper image in higher resolutions, especially when Voodoo 1 passthrough is taken into account.

For the 1999 system, I would include the SBLive + LiveDrive (Platinum?) either as an alternative to the Vortex2 or as a secondary card. I can't remember when the first LiveDrive became available exactly, but it should be around that time.

EDIT - looks like the SBLive Platinum (which included the LiveDrive IR) was available in 1999. Archived link here.

I don't understand this mentally of picking a date range... Why pick a date and build a system to a certain date? - especially if this date isn't significant to you.

I also don't understand why you are limiting yourself to what "people had" back in the day.

"Ultimate" means ultimate: i.e the best, the ultimate, now whether you shoot for ultimate performance, ultimate compatibility or ultimate value at the time of purchasing (today, not in the past, as you are purchasing/acquiring now not in the past) that is your business.

I understand building an exact spec system 1:1 to what you had back in the day. Nostalgia is powerful.

Setting yourself a virtual or mental limit based on limits of the past isn't really something you need to burden yourself is it? - obviously if it makes you happy then I have no business telling you what to do - but why oh why would you limit yourself? Think to yourself what do I want to build a computer for? What software do I want it to run? And what is the best or "ultimate" I can get, given price today, availability today, performance today and compatibility today...?

Just makes more sense to me than starting out with the attitude of "I want a 2001 system" then deciding on a use case for it later on or even never.

Imo the plan for any build should be something like, getting most compatibility for your favourite DOS games.

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-10-21, 00:46:

VivienM wrote on 2023-10-21, 00:32:

The 1999 PII would have been Slot 1, not Socket 370. Socket 370 was more of a 2000-1 thing, especially on the PIII (rather than Celeron) front with the ill-fated i820 chipset, then the i815...

Also, per Wikipedia, the 800MHz PIII came out Dec. 20, 1999, so... not sure anyone would have been able to get their hands on it by your Dec. 31 date.

Socket 370 did apparently release in late 1999, so along with the PIII 800MHz, thus why I'm including it.

Sorry, maybe I wasn't that clear. Socket 370 was launched with the i810 (integrated graphics, no AGP, SDRAM) chipset and the i820 (RDRAM, only used in a few really high-end systems from Dell and the like). There was also a weird i820 with an SDRAM compatibility chip that got recalled and never came back.

440BX was Slot 1.

Now, don't get me wrong, with the disaster around the i820 platform and the complete unsuitability of the i810 for anything beyond basic productivity, I'm sure by mid-2000, the usual creative Taiwanese folks (Abit, Asus, Gigabyte, etc) were putting together socket 370 and 440BX, but that is not the socket the 440BX is associated with. Most 440BX systems, including all the ones from the big guys like Dell (and I bought one of Dell's last 440BX systems in June 2000, maybe two weeks before they launched the i815-powered Dimension 4100), were Slot 1.

Worth noting - I don't know when the i820 came out. If it came out in Nov./Dec. 1999 and not spring, then your completely insane system probably should have an i820 with a big huge amount of RDRAM. No one would have bought that at the time, but hey...

This is like, say, saying that the i865 is associated with LGA775. It's not - a few creative Taiwanese folks made i865 LGA775 boards (and some even made boards that could take 45nm C2Qs launched 5 years after the i865), but the overwhelming majority of i865 boards had socket 478 and the overwhelming majority of LGA775s.

Similarly, I just received today and haven't unboxed yet an AMD AM2 motherboard with a Via AGP chipset that's a complete mismatch. That chipset should was associated with the 754 platform, but hey, the 754 bus and the AM2 bus are electrically compatible, so one or two creative motherboard manufacturers paired AM2 with those much older chipsets.

I can bring my experience of the state in which I live, namely Italy. In my opinion, RAM should be divided differently, that is, before the Pentium and after the Pentium. Let me explain better: when the PC started to become a gaming machine or 386/486 era, the RAM was very expensive and all the systems had the minimum amount of RAM to run the games, typically the limit of 4Mb, for example me I had a very fast DX2 that had just been released with 4Mb which I kept for years because the 1Mb 30pin SIMs cost a lot. When the first Pentium came out (let's say 90MHz) the computers were equipped with enough RAM that it was no longer a desirable factor. I remember that already at the time of the Pentium 200 I had 64MB which was of no use to me but since I could buy it I did so. (and I'm not a rich person). In my opinion the ram speech is not the focal point. The hard disks could be interesting, from the first 7200rpm to the raptors passing through the scsi. Another classic interesting discussion is the CPU and in the second part of the 2000s the graphics cards, but not the RAM, after Pentium everyone had enough of it.

tunertom wrote on 2023-10-21, 01:44:

I don't understand this mentally of picking a date range... Why pick a date and build a system to a certain date? - especially if this date isn't significant to you.

I also don't understand why you are limiting yourself to what "people had" back in the day.

These are significant to me from having grown up through that era. Part of it is from reading gaming mags that listed various high end systems. I used to be an avid reader of CGW, for example, and always lusted after their ultimate rigs when they published them every year.

The appeal is being able to experience what it would have been like to have one of those rigs back in the day.

"Ultimate" means ultimate: i.e the best, the ultimate, now whether you shoot for ultimate performance, ultimate compatibility or ultimate value at the time of purchasing (today, not in the past, as you are purchasing/acquiring now not in the past) that is your business.

It can be temporal as well.

If you flip through a 1996 CGW issue where they list their "ultimate gaming rig" build, it's not going to be based on modern parts. 😉

VivienM wrote on 2023-10-21, 01:48:

Sorry, maybe I wasn't that clear. Socket 370 was launched with the i810 (integrated graphics, no AGP, SDRAM) chipset and the i82 […]
Show full quote

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-10-21, 00:46:

VivienM wrote on 2023-10-21, 00:32:

The 1999 PII would have been Slot 1, not Socket 370. Socket 370 was more of a 2000-1 thing, especially on the PIII (rather than Celeron) front with the ill-fated i820 chipset, then the i815...

Also, per Wikipedia, the 800MHz PIII came out Dec. 20, 1999, so... not sure anyone would have been able to get their hands on it by your Dec. 31 date.

Socket 370 did apparently release in late 1999, so along with the PIII 800MHz, thus why I'm including it.

Sorry, maybe I wasn't that clear. Socket 370 was launched with the i810 (integrated graphics, no AGP, SDRAM) chipset and the i820 (RDRAM, only used in a few really high-end systems from Dell and the like). There was also a weird i820 with an SDRAM compatibility chip that got recalled and never came back.

440BX was Slot 1.

Now, don't get me wrong, with the disaster around the i820 platform and the complete unsuitability of the i810 for anything beyond basic productivity, I'm sure by mid-2000, the usual creative Taiwanese folks (Abit, Asus, Gigabyte, etc) were putting together socket 370 and 440BX, but that is not the socket the 440BX is associated with. Most 440BX systems, including all the ones from the big guys like Dell (and I bought one of Dell's last 440BX systems in June 2000, maybe two weeks before they launched the i815-powered Dimension 4100), were Slot 1.

Ah, that's a good point. I did some copy-pasting when setting up the list, so I missed that. I guess technically it should be an 810 or 820 chipset for late 1999 / Socket 370.

tunertom wrote on 2023-10-21, 01:44:

I don't understand this mentally of picking a date range... Why pick a date and build a system to a certain date? - especially i […]
Show full quote

I don't understand this mentally of picking a date range... Why pick a date and build a system to a certain date? - especially if this date isn't significant to you.

I also don't understand why you are limiting yourself to what "people had" back in the day.

"Ultimate" means ultimate: i.e the best, the ultimate, now whether you shoot for ultimate performance, ultimate compatibility or ultimate value at the time of purchasing (today, not in the past, as you are purchasing/acquiring now not in the past) that is your business.

I understand building an exact spec system 1:1 to what you had back in the day. Nostalgia is powerful.

Setting yourself a virtual or mental limit based on limits of the past isn't really something you need to burden yourself is it? - obviously if it makes you happy then I have no business telling you what to do - but why oh why would you limit yourself? Think to yourself what do I want to build a computer for? What software do I want it to run? And what is the best or "ultimate" I can get, given price today, availability today, performance today and compatibility today...?

Just makes more sense to me than starting out with the attitude of "I want a 2001 system" then deciding on a use case for it later on or even never.

Imo the plan for any build should be something like, getting most compatibility for your favourite DOS games.

I still see it differently, I don't divide the computers by years but by CPU, I built a PC for each CPU class: 286/386/486/Pentium/PentiumII... I inserted the maximum amount of RAM so as not to have limits in this regard and the rest of the components pretty standard for that class of cpu. Then I try a game for example on the Pentium and out of curiosity I also install it in the 486 and 386 out of curiosity and to see how it would work. If a game I want to play runs on the Pentium, I install it on the PentiumII, if it isn't perfect there either, I install it on the PentiumIV. For me the components/mainboard discussion was simpler because by collecting IBMs they were already nice and ready, I just had fun pairing the various sound cards.

tunertom wrote on 2023-10-21, 01:44:

I understand building an exact spec system 1:1 to what you had back in the day. Nostalgia is powerful.

Interestingly, I have trouble understanding that. I don't have great memories of any of the computers I had before 2000. Maybe because they were too low budget or kept too long. Trauma can be as powerful as nostalgia...

So, for example, let's say I wanted a DOS gaming rig. Why would I buy my old machine from 1995 back (and I actually saw the exact same model with the same crappy monitor for sale on Facebook Marketplace a few months ago...) now that I know all of its flaws, all of the ways in which it was lousy for the time (e.g. having only one IDE channel instead of two, no free expansion except one ISA, etc), etc, when I could just try to get my hands on a nice DOS machine that I wish I had in 1995 and run the software I might be nostalgic about much better?

And actually, it's not even the machine 'I wish I had in 1995 or 1996'. I suspect I was probably jealous of my friend's Mwave Aptiva in 1996 or whenever it was he had that thing. But with the benefit of hindsight about Mwave's failures... who wants an Mwave Aptiva in a retro system when you could have an SB AWE64 and a nice S3/Matrox/etc 2D video card and maybe a Voodoo card if you can get your hands on one? I would say that what you want is 'the machine that turns out to have been the best for the software you were using in 1995'.

That's a luxury we have looking at this 20+ years later. We are far away enough from all of this now to know what ended up mattering, what fizzled out, what got massively improved the next year, what had dreadful drivers that never got fixed, what software never got patched to run nicely on the newer OS, etc... and this is why, for example, a GeForce2 GTS on eBay is maybe 1/5th the price of a Voodoo 5 when everybody in 2000-2001 wanted the GeForce 2.