PCem

Hi,

After what seems like a biblical search for a new PC, I seem to have settled on one of two Intel CPUs, the i7 7700k or the 8700k. It has been a very long search, but I think I have a good solution now with one or either of these CPUs.

The i7 7700k has 4 cores and 8 threads running at a base speed of 4.2 Ghz, and a turbo speed of 4.5 Ghz. The i7 8700k is the new Intel CPU, very highly ranked on the CPU benchmark website:

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html

The i7 8700k has 6 cores and 12 threads running at a base speed of 3.7 Ghz, and a top turbo speed of 4.7 Ghz. May I ask if either of these CPUs would run PCem at full specs? Which do you think would be the better buy?

Also, I am researching the feasibility of buying a Eurocom laptop. The prices are not that much worse than typical gaming laptops, but the Eurocom laptops boast being able to run the desktop CPUs, namely the 7700k or the 8700k, even on WIndows 7. I would be eager to receive your advice, as you are the experts on running this great program.

I can run VMWare , virtualbox, Parallels, and until 2-3 years ago even Virtual PC 2007, on almost any modern laptop. A laptop that could run PCem on full specs would easily run a virtual machine, so this program has immense potential.

I have had the chance to test PCem 13.1 on an old amd 6 core PC running at 2.7 ghz with a turbo speed of 3.2 ghz. The PC worked at a top speed of 3.11 ghz, and produced very respectable performance for any Pentium 90 task. Jedi Knight looked and ran great, with no sound issues. The emulated 286, 386 and even high end 486 PCs also ran well. A pentium 200 MMX was a different story though, with PCem typically running from 55% - 85%. My emulated Pentium 166 MMX ran reasonably well with the Voodoo 2 video card. Stuttering audio was an issue, but even at 56% the P166 ran Episode I Racer with reasonable frame rates. The sound was the only issue. I found the Voodoo 2 SLI mode to be very useful. The new user interface is very easy to use, and greatly improves the user experience. The reason why this same version of PCem will not run on my old amd A8 laptop remains a serious problem, but a new PC may fix that issue.

I am grateful for any advice you can offer me on this matter.

Thank you for your time,

tk421

Either of those CPUs should run Pentium MMX + Voodoo 2 at decent speeds. I'm currently using a 7700k at stock frequency, and most games will run 100% with a 200 MMX and Voodoo 2, usually the CPU can be clocked higher. I don't think the additional core count of the 8700k is going to make much of a difference vs the 7700k, and I think the single threaded performance of the two chips is pretty much the same.