• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

PC for ~1995 games

D

Drea

Experienced Member
Joined
Jan 25, 2012
Messages
79
Location
Denmark
Hi

I would like to start playing some games from about 1995 to maybe 1999, and think it would make a bit more fun to play them on a system from the same time...so was wondering, what hardware would a very good gaming pc consist of back then?

Thanks
 
This is one topic I don't agree on. I had all those systems, games and whatnot back in the day. The one thing that stands out in my mind is that the hardware of the time just never measured up to it's contemporary software. That is to say there was always something to be desired, performance wise. I actually enjoy older games much more on today's systems than I ever did on those that the software was supposedly designed for.
 
1999 is well into P3/Athlon territory so you probably want a setup slightly newer. I would probably use an Athlon 2000+ XP system with 1GB of RAM and Win98SE/Win2k along with an ATI 9700 or 9800 pro (those were made in 2001 -2002 I think).

The problem with the 1995-1999 range is that quite a bit happened in there like the switch to Windows and directx (quite a few revisions) from DOS and glide (3dfx) games. I personally have a few machines from that era for gaming because there were huge jumps in performance every year along with other innovations like 3D audio (Aureal chipset) and the jump from 16 bit to 32 bit color depth and 640x480 to 1280x1024 options. You start with the rise of 3dfx and then its death in that time period while other companies like Nvidia came out of nowhere and old companies like Matrox finally quit the gaming market after the G400 chip (nice bump mapped video). You have all those Vodoo 2 (sli)/3/4, TNT 1/2 and Geforce 1 (first with T&L), powervr chipset like the one used in the Dreamcast to experience.
 
And when doing turbo pascal software remember the bug in the mouse routines that made it stop function on a CPU that ran above 200MHz.

Hm, I have two rigs for this myself due to the wild growth of that era.
One is a Slot 1 P2 which i underclock when doing DOS games ISA sound card, AGP video card.
The other is a P3 and i use it for starcraft and diablo and that sorta games, AGP video card onboard sound.

The first one has DOS 6.22, windows 98SE and Gentoo for operating systems.
The other only has the later two OSes.
I love retro games!
 
Drea said:
Hi

I would like to start playing some games from about 1995 to maybe 1999, and think it would make a bit more fun to play them on a system from the same time...so was wondering, what hardware would a very good gaming pc consist of back then?

Thanks
Click to expand...

I personally use an old Compaq computer that someone gave me. After installing Windows 98 on it, I started using it for some of my old games too. You would be surprised at just how well these old systems can perform whenn you don't load them down with an unbearable load of software on them. Many of the old games will only display properly on a standard VGA monitor too. So when you start adding expensive graphics adapters, you can't play yhe games any more...

I just found my old copy of Ripper that I haven't been able to play since about 2001 when I built my first Windows XP machine! What a great game!
 
This is what i've setup for that era of gaming aka my old gaming rig :)
Pentium 233MMX, slightly overclocked to 240 i think with a bios turbo function.
2x 128mb sdram pc133 i think, doubt they run more than 100mhz though probably stuck at 66mhz
6.4gb seagate medalist as the main drive and win98se
7.6gb quantum fireball as second drive, this one has the swap on it cause it's faster
40gb maxtor drive, slightly damaged but nothing to be worried about and set to the 32gb limit with a jumper cause the bios won't take any bigger and won't boot either :/
3dfx voodoo 3 2000 pci 16mb <- love that card :D added a small cpu fan to the heat sink so it would run a litle colder + have the capability to overclock if i ever wanted to
soundblaster 16 value pnp isa ct2950 nice all around sound card and i think the best of my sb 16 cards atleast it has the highest ct number heh
3com fast etherlink xl 100mbit pci for network
3com etherlink III 10mbit isa, previously used to connect other oldies via coax, not via this pc though

Used to use this one for quake world (quake1) network play before and used the etherlink 3 to attach other non internet pc's to this box via coax heh
 
Hm, in 98 I had a K6-2 450Mhz machine with an ATI All In Wonder Pro (I think it was an 8MB or 16MB RAM AGP card). Played most games from that era pretty well but I eventually did end up with a 64MB card finally which got me what I needed until the turn of the century games.
 
barythrin said:
Hm, in 98 I had a K6-2 450Mhz machine with an ATI All In Wonder Pro (I think it was an 8MB or 16MB RAM AGP card). Played most games from that era pretty well but I eventually did end up with a 64MB card finally which got me what I needed until the turn of the century games.
Click to expand...

Ditto... my 2nd custom-built PC (at least for myself - I'd built several other people PCs by the time I got to this one). I ran 64mb RAM, Win98SE, K6-2 450mhz, Sound Blaster 16 ISA (later Sound Blaster Live! Gold PCI), and initially the ATI Rage Fury MAXX (later the ATI AIW Pro 16mb)

It was a good machine for virtually everything that I threw at it, but note that I wasn't heavy into Quake or other 3D-intensive games. I kind've missed the entire 3DFX era, as I didn't (and don't) like most first-person FPS shooters. That said, when I installed them to try out, they ran fine for my tastes (I never did need to max video settings and whatnot, though if this is your cup of tea, pickup a Voodoo and toss in there as well!)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top