I want to build a PC specifically for games from the 96 to 99 era...any suggestions?

[WCP]

Around Spring of 1996, I built my first gaming PC. I'm not 100 percent positive, but I'm pretty sure it was based around a Pentium 200mmx and a Voodoo card. I went on to upgrade and build new PC's every so often, and continued to play PC games till the release of the Sega Dreamcast in September of 1999. After that, my interest in PC gaming basically died.

I've got those nostalgic feelings for playing some PC games from 1996 to 1999. Basically, from the time 3D accelerators first appeared on the scene, until the launch of the Dreamcast.

Games I'd like to play again:

Quake
Descent
System Shock
Phantasmagoria
Carmageddon
Dark Forces 2 - Jedi Knight
Tomb Raider
Tomb Raider 2
Moto Racer
Descent 2
MDK
Blade Runner
Interstate 76
Pod
Unreal (the original)
Half-Life
Thief
SiN
GPolice
Assault Rigs
Quake 2
Carmageddon 2: Carpocalypse Now


Those are a few of the games that come to mind, but I'm sure there are a ton of others. Basically, I would like to be able to play these games at max settings, and have them run as smooth and natural as possible. I have no idea what motherboard, cpu and which video card I should go with to accomplish this. I was thinking of two voodoo cards in SLI mode, but I don't know which voodoo cards to get. I'm guessing I should try to find a PC Gamer magazine from 1999, and try to see what was considered a kick ass gaming rig back at that point in time. I'm guessing I would want to have Windows 98: SE as my operating system.

Does anybody have any suggestions?

[Soviet Conscript]

well, i can give you the specs of my win98 pc that pretty much plays everything from the era i throw at it great.

windows 98SE
450mhtz pentium II
387mb ram
dvd, cd and 3.5 floppy drive
AGP voodoo 3 3500 video card
Diamond MonsterSound MX300 sound card
40GB hdd

[WCP]

well, i can give you the specs of my win98 pc that pretty much plays everything from the era i throw at it great.

windows 98SE
450mhtz pentium II
256mb ram (it acually may be a wierd number like 3XX ram, forget)
dvd, cd and 3.5 floppy drive
AGP voodoo 3 video card
AWE64 gold sound card

is a single voodoo 3 video card better than running 2 voodoo 2 cards in SLI?

[Soviet Conscript]

is a single voodoo 3 video card better than running 2 voodoo 2 cards in SLI?

thats acually a great question that i asked myself right after i posted. i'm looking into it. its obviosuly simpler and your only useing 1 slot as opposed to 3.

hmmm, well as long as its an AGP 3500 or possibly 3000 it seems to be both simpler and faster then duel voodoo 2's

http://www.papadoc.net/Voodoo3500shootout.htm

[Jorpho]

Save yourself the trouble. You should be able to play pretty much all of those games you mentioned on any current PC with Windows XP or maybe even Windows 7. Most of them are for sale at GOG.com ; some of them are even on Steam. Certainly, there's nothing to be gained by playing any of them with a Voodoo card.

The trickiest one would probably be Thief, but there are some excellent fanmade patches to solve problems you might have with that one.

[WCP]

Save yourself the trouble. You should be able to play pretty much all of those games you mentioned on any current PC with Windows XP or maybe even Windows 7. Most of them are for sale at GOG.com ; some of them are even on Steam. Certainly, there's nothing to be gained by playing any of them with a Voodoo card.

The trickiest one would probably be Thief, but there are some excellent fanmade patches to solve problems you might have with that one.

I remember trying to play the original Unreal game on my current PC, and the problem was, the game was TOO FREAKING FAST. Way too fast. I mentioned this to a friend of mine, and he explained that I would need to run it in some type of emulator that would simulate a PC from 1999 or so, so that it would run normally. He also said that it would be even better to just have an extra PC, circa 1999, that would run the games naturally, not having to run them in a special emulator.

Doesn't GOG and Steam take those original games and run them in a special emulator that helps slow them down to a more natural speed?

[PC-ENGINE HELL]

Around Spring of 1996, I built my first gaming PC. I'm not 100 percent positive, but I'm pretty sure it was based around a Pentium 200mmx and a Voodoo card. I went on to upgrade and build new PC's every so often, and continued to play PC games till the release of the Sega Dreamcast in September of 1999. After that, my interest in PC gaming basically died.

I've got those nostalgic feelings for playing some PC games from 1996 to 1999. Basically, from the time 3D accelerators first appeared on the scene, until the launch of the Dreamcast.

Games I'd like to play again:

Quake
Descent
System Shock
Phantasmagoria
Carmageddon
Dark Forces 2 - Jedi Knight
Tomb Raider
Tomb Raider 2
Moto Racer
Descent 2
MDK
Blade Runner
Interstate 76
Pod
Unreal (the original)
Half-Life
Thief
SiN
GPolice
Assault Rigs
Quake 2
Carmageddon 2: Carpocalypse Now


Those are a few of the games that come to mind, but I'm sure there are a ton of others. Basically, I would like to be able to play these games at max settings, and have them run as smooth and natural as possible. I have no idea what motherboard, cpu and which video card I should go with to accomplish this. I was thinking of two voodoo cards in SLI mode, but I don't know which voodoo cards to get. I'm guessing I should try to find a PC Gamer magazine from 1999, and try to see what was considered a kick ass gaming rig back at that point in time. I'm guessing I would want to have Windows 98: SE as my operating system.

Does anybody have any suggestions?

If you want a system fast enough to handle anything from that time period, and you want something reliable, here is a list of stuff for you with some links for some stuff ebay wise:

AMD Slot A Athlon cpu from 600-700MHZ speed wise (make sure you get one with a cooler attached):
http://cgi.ebay.com/AMD-Athlon-600Mh...item335ae7f15a

Gateway Kadoka Slot A motherboard (does not rely on electrolytic capacitors, very durable):
http://cgi.ebay.com/Gateway-Kadoka-O...item3caa15dbf0

3DFX Banshee:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Ensoniq-GB1000-A...item4839b4a3aa

http://cgi.ebay.com/MaxiGamer-Phoeni...item563a4c1d99

3DFX Voodoo 3:
http://cgi.ebay.com/3DFX-VOODOO-3-16...item33594f72f1

TNT2 Ultra, Geforce 256, or Geforce 2 GTS/Ultra will also cover the graphics card area also. Prices on them vary on ebay. The 256 came in Sdram and DDR Sgram flavors, so if you planned to gun for one, try to find a DDR one as its a bit faster.

Soundblaster PCI Live or Live Value:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Creative-Sound-B...item3caad0dba3

http://cgi.ebay.com/Soundblaster-Liv...item5191199bc6

DVD or decent CD-R drive will run you around $25 after shipping.
256 megs of PC133 Sdram maybe $10 at the most. 40 gig ATA 133 hard drive will run around $20 after shipping.

Rocketfish 550 watt power supply (excellent and reliable, and wont even begin to break a sweat powering all the above, and it has cord management):
http://cgi.ebay.com/Rocketfish-550-W...item2559529348

A cheap old lan card will run 5 to 10 bucks.

Full size to medium size ATX PC case can run cheap, between $30-50 with shipping. Windows 98Se or ME will get you by either way. On any used CPU or graphics card you get, be prepared to swap out the fans if the part is used. Most gpus from back then that had fans used 40mm size fans. Cpu fans on slot A coolers tended to be 40 to 60mm.

[WCP]

Today I actually tried playing Quake (the first one), on my current PC. The game runs perfectly fine. It was pretty enjoyable experience overall playing it. I think I'll just try running a bunch of these games on my current PC, and just see if they run ok. Maybe I don't really need to build a specific 1999,2000 era PC after all.

[Arkhan]

Maybe I don't really need to build a specific 1999,2000 era PC after all.

You sure the hell dont! The only thing that has changed aside from faster CPUs and moar rams, and the obvious advances in graphics hardware, is the OS.

New video cards, sound cards, etc, are all legacy compatible and you should be able to play just about anything from the win98 era on a new machine.

Youll run into some hiccups on some games and have to fiddle around to get it to run, but yeah.... that happened BITD too.


I just ran Betrayal at Krondor, Descent 1, Lords of the Realm 2, Quake 1, and Unreal on my one newer machine, all perfectly.:

AMD dual core cpu
4gb RAM
SLI'd video cards (DirectX 10!!11112233445)

Windows 7

yes, SEVEN.

even diablo 2 on the internet worked!

[Jorpho]

New video cards, sound cards, etc, are all legacy compatible

Heck no! There are apparently tremendous compatibility problems with NVidia drivers newer than 77.x, and said drivers are needed if you have one of the newer NVidia cards. NVidia might have finally fixed that recently, though.

[Kitsune Sniper]

Quake
Dark Forces 2 - Jedi Knight
Unreal (the original)
Half-Life
SiN
Quake 2

All of these have been released via Steam, and work perfectly on modern systems. Many have been patched to run in newer systems (though you can't use the Wages of SiN expansion with the Steam version.) The Quake games do -not- have CD audio, but you can use a Windows engine port to run the games that way, and even use MP3/FLAC rips of the audio tracks.

Interstate 76
Descent
Phantasmagoria
Descent 2
MDK

You can get all of these from GOG.com for cheap, or you can install them on modern systems with DOSBox.

I haven't dealt with the other games, but apparently Blade Runner runs on Windows XP and 7, but not Vista.

[aaron7]

My current rig runs all those games well:

Pentium 233 MMX
128mb RAM
20gb hard drive (ok, not period correct lol)
ATI Radeon 7000 64mb PCI
3com 10/100 PCI ethernet
SB AWE64 ISA sound card
Internal stereo speakers
14" LCD on the case

[NayusDante]

I'm torn about what OS to use for games from this era... I have 95, 98 (not SE), and ME available.

Here's my expected build:
AMD 1400 chip (I forget the name, runs either 1050 or 1400mhz)
512mb DDR 333
3dfx Voodoo 3 2000 AGP (maybe a 3000 with TV out if my eBay offer goes through)
Sound Blaster Live (gives me EAX...)
160gb IDE

Is this overkill, or should I just set up my Pentium II 266 for a dual-boot? I'm trying to shift that one to DOS and early Windows, but the framerates on 1999-era stuff aren't perfect.

[aaron7]

Windows ME is fine once tweaked. It was faster, had a better defrag, more built in drivers, etc.

The hard dive is definitely overkill!

[NayusDante]

ME it is then. Yeah, I know the drive is crazy, and I'm still thinking about how to partition it. On the plus side, I can move all my old Windows game ISOs onto it, and free up space on my main. There's ISO mounting tools for ME, right?

So on one of these 96-99 era systems, what else could they run? I'm curious about UT2003 on this spec... How about the other way around, can I run the DOS glide-driver games on ME?

[aaron7]

Might need better video, but Quake 3 Arena is the shit!

[Jorpho]

This is the first time I've ever seen someone recommend ME. Granted, I've had my suspicions that claims of its inferiority are overstated, but no one has ever refuted them before. What tweaks are you thinking of, Mr. aaron7? (Certainly, ME will quickly become unstable with 512 MB of RAM unless properly configured, but the same goes for 9x.)

There are instructions at mdgx.com for taking the best features out of ME and sticking them in a 98SE installation, but if you don't have 98SE handy that won't be helpful at all.

There's ISO mounting tools for ME, right?

Yup, there are older versions of Daemon Tools that should do the trick.

By the way, Q3 is on sale on Steam at the moment. Of course, I would doubt that you can get Steam running on 9x/ME, even with some of the kernel hacks that have been developed.

[cyrax151]

Street Fighter Alpha
Street Fighter Alpha 2
C&C Red Alert 2
Twisted Metal 2
JetMoto
Fallout Tactics
WarGames
ShadowMan
MDK2
Clive Barker's Undying
System Shock 2

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