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sufficient host hardware for Win98SE and WinME?

Posted: Thu 28 Nov, 2019 10:18 pm
by swapjim
I'm planning to buy a machine just to emulate these two OSes. I did a test with Win98 (but not WinME) on an Intel i3 2021 and a AMD Ryzen 5 2500U (one had 4GB and the other 8GB of RAM) and they did fine (15-45% load), but I didn't had the chance to stress-test them.

The emulated hardware is a Pentium MMX 233 with 128MB RAM and a Phoenix S3 Trio64 (without Voodoo).

My questions are:

1. are these two CPUs capable of running desktop apps comfortably?
2. do I need to beef up for Voodoo games?

Re: sufficient host hardware for Win98SE and WinME?

Posted: Wed 11 Dec, 2019 3:30 pm
by Xanarki
In order to run Voodoo games, it's suggested to use a processor that's 4ghz or more. Even more so, the processor needs to have good single thread performance. That Intel I3 won't run any Windows 9x games, and that AMD might run a Pentium 133 but I'm not certain. Check single thread performance here: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html

For comparison, I have the Intel I5 7400 @ 3.4ghz. I can only run the Pentium MMX Overdrive 180. Any higher processor, it drops below 100% during gameplay. I wouldn't consider 15-45% to be "fine", you'll get frustrated at the lag. You need to be 95% and above.

Re: sufficient host hardware for Win98SE and WinME?

Posted: Wed 11 Dec, 2019 9:42 pm
by swapjim
Xanarki wrote: Wed 11 Dec, 2019 3:30 pm In order to run Voodoo games, it's suggested to use a processor that's 4ghz or more. Even more so, the processor needs to have good single thread performance. That Intel I3 won't run any Windows 9x games, and that AMD might run a Pentium 133 but I'm not certain. Check single thread performance here: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html

For comparison, I have the Intel I5 7400 @ 3.4ghz. I can only run the Pentium MMX Overdrive 180. Any higher processor, it drops below 100% during gameplay. I wouldn't consider 15-45% to be "fine", you'll get frustrated at the lag. You need to be 95% and above.
The host machine had 15-45% load. The lower the better, no?

So, the two CPUs I mentioned are good for desktop apps on the emulated hardware, but not games, correct?

Re: sufficient host hardware for Win98SE and WinME?

Posted: Wed 11 Dec, 2019 11:16 pm
by Xanarki
They'll be fine for apps, yeah. And I thought the percentage you're referring to is PCEM's emulation speed percentage, which is shown on the top bar of the PCEM window. If you're talking about the CPU percentage in Task Manager, then I can't judge by that alone.

Re: sufficient host hardware for Win98SE and WinME?

Posted: Wed 05 Feb, 2020 12:18 pm
by swapjim
Thank you for the answers.

Sorry for taking so long to respond, I paused this project. I'm resuming now. I'll look for used CPUs with the single core benchmark that these two have. If I stumble again, I'll come back with more questions.