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

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    Peach (Level 3) PC-ENGINE HELL's Avatar
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    Back then it amounted to people doing their own modding on the cases, ect. Cutting out holes in the sides and front to mount more fans was done alot. In the X-24s case people tended to mount it at the lower pci slots, a few inchs from the bottom of the case if possible, and rig extra 80mm fans around the card to keep it cool

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    Kirby (Level 13) Push Upstairs's Avatar
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    That is why I'm perfectly fine with throwing a late 90's gaming rig into a modern case, options galore when it comes to fan placement. Even the cheapest $25 case has better cooling fan options than cases 10 years ago.

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    Insert Coin (Level 0) Hari Seldon's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Push Upstairs View Post
    So that card is about as long as current video cards?
    Yeah, kinda. I had to modify my case to make space for an 5870.

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    I remember it was quite a while after Windows XP was released that a number of hardware review sites were still doing their testing with Windows 98SE, so I'd figure 98/SE is the best OS to go with. The DOS support would be the big one, for running games like Warcraft and Descent.

    The TNT2 Ultra and GeForce 256/2 GTS were the flagship cards around then. Backtracking on the Voodoo 3 has shown it wasn't necessarily as bad as the 16 bit issue suggested, but I'm still not sure it's necessarily the best choice. Savage4 is probably not worth considering despite S3TC, but both the S4 and Savage2000 had better graphics quality and perforamnce with games that supported it than the GeForce cards. Glide might be a reason to chose a Voodoo 3.

    For CPUs, the Celeron 300A was killer while overclocked, and for similar performance benefits the PIII Coppermine is worth looking at. I'm not sure whether you'd want to look into a system with an Intel chipset and RDRAM though.

    SoundBlaster Live was the big one for sound cards, but Aureal Vortex 2 was also a strong contender at the time.

    Which combination you'd go for would really depend on what games you wanted the best performance out of. I enjoyed Unreal Tournament a lot, so if I were doing that I'd try to get my hands on a Diamond Viper II Z200 for graphics purposes, although I'd need to read up on whether the P3 really is the best option or if an Athlon would serve me better.

    Edit: Digging back into my memory a bit more, you'd want to go for a SCSI hard drive, or 2-4 in a RAID configuration, since you're otherwise looking at ATA-33 for the most part, or ATA-66. Dual channel RDRAM should also give a very slight edge over DDR but single channel could lose out to SDR. I remember I really wanted a Turtle Beach Montego II but couldn't afford it, so I'd lean towards an Aureal Vortex 2 based sound card like the aforementioned Montego II or the Diamond Monster Sound MX300 over a SoundBlaster Live. For video cards I did a bit more digging and it seems nVidia cards later got S3TC support, along with it's inclusion in DirectX 6.0c, but they didn't handle it perfectly. Even the TNT2 Ultra beat out the Voodoo 3 from what I can remember, and ATI and Matrox weren't that significant from what I remember. The choice would really be between an nVidia or S3 card.
    Last edited by migo; 06-19-2010 at 05:01 AM.

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    That's from 2000, so past the end of your period of nostalgia, and some components are a bit higher than what was available, but it gives a good picture.

    Anything running at 500MHz should be solid, with an overclocked Celeron 300A or 333 on an ABit BH6 motherboard being the winner around '98. K6-2 500 or K6-3 500 might also do the trick, but the on die cache of the Celeron is what really made it shine. RAM was pretty expensive around then, but there's no reason not to go all out and stock up with 256MB, which is rather overkill in that era (my 64MB system ran just fine). If I remember correctly around a year later the Athlon came along and slaughtered everything, and was champion in the CPU arena, rather concurrently with how the GeForce came along and killed everything else in the market. I'm really not sure why Falcon-NW went with the V3 unless I'm misremembering when the GeForce came out and at the time it was sitll a choice between frames per second on the V3 or picture quality with a TNT2.

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    A 500mhz Athlon would suit your needs well. And if any game requires more horsepower than what a overclocked Celeron 300a could give, the Athlon would cover that. As far as cards go, I had a Voodoo 3 2000 back then, and for the money it was one of the best cards I have ever bought. The only downside to it is it doesnt render true 32 bit color, but it is faster in 16 bit color mode than other cards are, and its 16 bit color looks better [they dither down from 32 bit color I believe, which gives results close to 24bit color].

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    im actually thinking about doing this same exact thing to, although im trying to focus more on playing games from like 95 up to around 2002-2003 ish



    not sure what route i should go with yet, these are some of the things i have at hand, i have


    1 nvidia gts 2 pro graphics card
    1 ghz intel pentium 3 chip & motherboard set
    256mb of ram (possibly rdram, i honestly dont remember)
    1 16x dvd drive
    1 52x cd drive
    1 copy of windows 98 se
    1 copy of windows xp with service pack 3
    1 copy of windows 95
    and if i can find it, 1 copy of windows ME


    im looking into buying a new case and DEFINITELY need a new power supply and a couple of heavy duty fans and heatsinks, i'll probably salvage whatever soundblaster card i have in my old compaq card, unless you guys can recommend something better


    my question is, is pentium 3 the way to go? also will my graphics card be able to max out all post 2001 games that im looking for? or should i look into buying a voodoo card? should i look for a card that supports open gl & glide? im looking to play at absolute max settings, with everything turned up and as smooth as possible



    games im most looking forward to playing

    grim fandango
    quest for glory series 1-5
    fallout series
    command and conquer series
    giants
    kknd
    commandoes
    xcom series
    deus ex
    civ series (maybe)
    jedi knight
    Planescape Torment
    secret of monkey island
    zork series
    journeyman



    pretty much all the best and critically acclaimed games of the era that i missed out on for one reason or another, how should i go about this? any and all help would be greatly appreciated, thanks
    Last edited by LaughingMAN.S9; 06-25-2010 at 11:39 PM.
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    Giants: Citizen Kabuto came with my GeForce 4, and seemed about right for that. I'd get a Voodoo 3 for your retro rig, and play some of those newer 3D games on your current rig.

    I personally like using 95 over 98, for compatibility. If you're playing the Journeyman series, Legacy of Time requires DirectX hardware acceleration to be disabled on 98, otherwise there's bad popping in the audio. Not an issue with 95. If you're not going online with this rig, 98 or ME won't give you much benefit over 95.

    Be sure to use a CD-audio cable, because many games from that era play music from the CD drive, rather than reading the tracks over the IDE cable.

    The most system-intensive game on your list, aside from Giants, is probably Deus Ex. You may want to play that one with a DirectX 10 renderer plugin on a current system, but a Voodoo 3 should be fine in Glide mode.

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    Quote Originally Posted by NayusDante View Post
    I personally like using 95 over 98, for compatibility. If you're playing the Journeyman series, Legacy of Time requires DirectX hardware acceleration to be disabled on 98, otherwise there's bad popping in the audio. Not an issue with 95.
    There are a number of possible explanations for that. Perhaps the bad popping in the audio occurred because you were using WDM drivers for your soundcard rather than VXD (which are the only option under 95). Or perhaps it was a DirectX 9 or 8.1 issue (since DirectX 8.0a is the last version supported by 95). I really doubt the problem was caused by some feature inherent to Windows 98.

    Quote Originally Posted by LaughingMAN.S9 View Post
    games im most looking forward to playing
    Those can all be quite easily run in XP, y'know. Building a whole new computer for them is serious overkill.

    You're going to want to read the definitive Torment install guide in any case.
    Last edited by J'orfeaux; 06-26-2010 at 11:34 AM.
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    na the main reasoning behind it is that i already have all if not most of the spare parts lying around from other computers i've had over the years lol



    basically the main reason i wanted to build it was just for pretty much all da classic lucasarts adventure games i missed growing up, most of the games after that tend to be closer to the millenium


    game i really need to play is grim fandango and quest for glory v, both maxed out with as little problems as possible, the other games are just bonuses (system shock 2 and that one game where you're like a god or something, black & white i think it was called? )


    if i could those games running perfectly under xp and with my nvidia gts 2 card, i'll go that route, do u think i should just stick to what i have then? or just get a voodoo 3 card cheap and build a windows me/98 machine???
    "Kidnap the presidents wife without a plan..."

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    Are you are familiar with ScummVM? That won't help with Grim Fandango, but a Google search immediately turns up this page. Relevant patechs for Q4G V are also easily found. They're not exactly obscure games and you can easily imagine that many have eagerly sought to run it on newer machines already.
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    From the archived support page at Red Orb:

    Garbled or Popping Sounds Using Windows® 98
    At times, when Journeyman Project® 3: Legacy of Time™ is used in a Windows® 98 environment, popping sounds are heard. Also, the sounds can be distorted or garbled. An improper sound setting can cause this condition. Changing the hardware acceleration setting in the Advanced Audio Properties window should allow the sound to play normally.

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    drowning in medals Ed Oscuro's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by PC-ENGINE HELL View Post
    Quake 3 Team Arena, Undying
    These two I've played recently on XP (well, not Team Arena, but regular Quake III and the HeadHunters 3 mod) with no problems. Quake III does even better with ioquake3 than with the original executables, check it out.

    It just takes some tweaking to get working right on widescreen - I spent a good half hour / hour trying to get a working configuration, and almost gave up when I didn't realize that ioquake3 puts the configs in a different folder (see the Readme), so the config in your old Quake III mod data directory goes unused. (It seemed to carry over the regular Quake III one somehow though).

    Undying also can use a lot of tweaking; the low color-count and terrible fullscreen effects (like the Haste spell, my favorite, is basically an ugly gamma upper) can't be overcome, but you can still do a LOT to make it look great. Only problems here are widescreen (you lose a bit of the journal pages) and you have to be aware that changing the "curved surfaces" settings is not good for the game.

    I couldn't get the first Legacy of Kain games working on XP - certainly not the Diablo-like first one (eh what do I care about that though, but not getting the one with Raziel working makes me sad, I remember that from a PSX demo).

    Man, I still want to play Journeyman Project 3...actually, I should start with the first, I know.

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    Default 96-99 Era

    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

    <3

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