What would be considered a good win 95/98 gaming PC?

[quackerww]

What would be considered a good win 95/98 gaming PC?

I can't remember specs that far back.

 

[Marty502]

Pentium II 400 Mhz
128 MB Ram
Voodoo 3 3500 32 RAM

 

[StinkyPinky]

In 1996 I'd say something like

Pentium 200
32 mb ram
2gb hard drive

in 1997 i'd say

Pentim 233-MMX
64mb ram
voodoo 3dfx card


In 1998 I'd say

Pentium 2 - 400
128 ram
13 gb hard drive
voodoo 2 3dfx gaming card

Educated guesses.

 

[StinkyPinky]

Originally posted by: Marty502
Pentium II 400 Mhz
128 MB Ram
Voodoo 3 3500 32 RAM

I think the Voodoo3 was circa 2000.

 

[legoman666]

my p2 350 + voodoo 2 + 128mb ram was beastly back in the day.

 

[Marty502]

Originally posted by: StinkyPinky

Originally posted by: Marty502
Pentium II 400 Mhz
128 MB Ram
Voodoo 3 3500 32 RAM

I think the Voodoo3 was circa 2000.

You're right. Then it's a Voodoo 2.

As an anecdote, those were probably the most painful PC gaming days of my life... I was piss poor back then, but I do mean poor as in "poor guy in a south american country". I'm from Chile, and life wasn't easy for my familiy for a while. And boy you could tell by looking at my computer.

I had a 486 DX4! In the days of Diablo 2, Quake 2, NFS 3 and, a bit later on, Unreal Tournament! I was stuck playing Duke Nukem 3D and Death Rally.

Thankfully things got much, much better. And this PC nowadays might be nothing compared to a Q6600, but man... I'm grateful.

 

[shortylickens]

There really isnt such a good thing as a GOOD win95/98 machine.
Win95 didnt support USB, AGP, or 3D Acceleration.

When I left Windows98 behind I was using an ASUS K7N8X, a Socket A Athlon XP 1700+, a Radeon 9700 Pro and an Audigy 1.

Thats about as nice a system as you can have under Win98, it wouldnt even work under Win95.

If it absolutely had to be Win95 (for older game compatibility) I would suggest a Pentium 200 and a 2MB Trident video card. I think a Soundblaster AWE 32 would be best with that.


On a totally unrelated topic, Master of Orion 2 works GREAT under Windows XP.

 

[Schadenfroh]

This brings back memories of the old Celeron that one could over clock the living crap out of.

 

[BladeVenom]

Something like a fast P3 or Athlon, and a Voodoo 5, Radeon 64mb, or a Geforce 2.

Here's an Anand setup before ME came out.

 

[Skunkwourk]

hmm I had in 2000, win 98, Abit BH6, Slot 1 P3 450, 128 ram, and a voodoo 3 3000. Short while later I moved to a P3 700, Asus CUBX, and Geforce 256 (non-ddr).

 

[livingsacrifice]

Yep I remember these days, I had a AMD 600mhz 256ram then a ATI Xpert98 card for 2d and a Voodoo 2 for 3d 12mb that was my first real gaming rig since the one before was only 200mhz

 

[Creig]

I got tired of having older game incompatibilities, so I just put together about the fastest Win98 machine I could:

Soltek K8AN2E-GR (Nvidia NF3 250Gb)
AMD S754 3200+ (2.2Ghz) - Although you can run into NDIS errors at processor speeds above 2.1Ghz, I haven't had any problems so far.
512MB memory - I could have used more, but you run into issues above 512MB
ATI X800XT PE - I had MAJOR problems finding a driver that would work properly with this card under Win98. But it appears to be working fine now
80GB hard drive
Onboard AC97 sound

I've added all the Win98 updates and will create a CD image backup before I start adding anything else. It was a fun little project (with the exception of finding a X800 driver that would work with my system). It has been QUITE awhile since I've seen the Win98 installation screen. Brings back memories.

But I would imagine that this setup will enable me to run pretty much any game I wish at whatever resolution it offers. And no more "compatibility mode" issues.

 

[LookingGlass]

Hah, and I'm playing a Thief II Fan Mission on my vista machine.

 

[CP5670]

For earlier Windows games that are not 3D accelerated, check out Virtual PC 2007, which is now free. I was surprised by how well it runs a lot of stuff from that period. The best part is that I can use the Yamaha SYXG50 midi driver in it, which makes a lot of midi music I have from older games sound really good. I had gotten this thing on an old ASUS motherboard CD, but the version included there was only for Win9x/NT and I couldn't use it on XP.

I have kept an old PC around for DOS and early Windows games (1.4ghz Athlon, 512MB, GF3+two Voodoo2s, SBLive with SB16 emulator), but I've been using it increasingly less over the years. I originally set it up for the Glide version of Descent 2, but there is a much better modern port of that available now, and Dosbox has gotten much faster with the newer versions, fast enough to run everything I've tried perfectly smoothly. There were still a handful of early Windows games that I needed that machine for, but those work great in Virtual PC and I doubt I'll have much use for that old system at all now. Maybe for Nuclear Strike in Glide mode, although that game runs fine in software and doesn't look much worse.

 

[Fox5]

Originally posted by: Marty502
Pentium II 400 Mhz
128 MB Ram
Voodoo 3 3500 32 RAM

That video card never existed.

My beastly comp back in 1999 was:
500Mhz Athlon
Voodoo 3 2000 (predated the cpu a bit, so it wasn't the fastest thing out there, but it was fast enough, and glide still important enough)
and I'm going to say 128MB of ram