PCem v18 News (Was v17 Notice)

[unreal9010]

Yeah, he's constantly spamming here. I actually wanted to go with a really harsh approach two posts ago but then I realized it would probably trigger the same question one more time (and it probably would in any case).

He's not spamming because he is waiting patiently is the waiting for the new version is currently taking a while to develop?

Repeatedly asking the same thing over a relatively short period of time despite that he has already received a proper response is definitely NOT something that could be called "waiting patiently".

[MichaelJManley]

The ironic thing is you can get basically the latest and greatest from GitHub, https://github.com/sarah-walker-pcem/pc ... builds.yml

So there, thats your v18 if you can't wait for stable. People have a life, can't always develop on PCem.

[uniQ168]

The ironic thing is you can get basically the latest and greatest from GitHub, https://github.com/sarah-walker-pcem/pc ... builds.yml

So there, thats your v18 if you can't wait for stable. People have a life, can't always develop on PCem.

I was curious and downloaded the latest vNext Windows build. Thing is, that I always get the ROMset error message when starting the emulator. And yes, I have copied the proper roms into the rom-folder. Is it just me being stupid or am I missing something?
Thanks in advance!

[leilei]

It's now in C:\Users\username\.pcem\roms (for platform consistency)

[uniQ168]

It's now in C:\Users\username\.pcem\roms (for platform consistency)

So I guess it was me being stupid.

[MichaelJManley]

It's now in C:\Users\username\.pcem\roms (for platform consistency)

And the most recent build, if you create a .pcem folder before running, it will become the directory for configuration.
Added that feature for the people who ran it portably

[Katakis]

So there, thats your v18 if you can't wait for stable. People have a life, can't always develop on PCem.

I agree with everything Michael just said. It seems that every page of this thread, there is someone who is asking when the next release is. Some people just don't get that emulator developers have other commitments, and personally, I am happy with getting an emulator delayed so all the bugs have been ironed out and there are plenty of features have been added. If he released PCem now, then we would have been in a situation akin to games released by AAA companies who don't care about the consumer, where they get released in a severe buggy state. People who are impatient are welcome to switch to DOSBox-X or Bochs.

Not trying to troll, but if Sarah was still developing, she would have given all of you the middle finger and walk off. Kudos to Michael for putting up with people like that.

[moad6ytgn]

so i was looking for pcem code at github at page 3 i found this https://github.com/sarah-walker-pcem/pc ... 2522493094
it say Removed code for disabling optimization, as its causing lag issues. F… unfortunately we dont have full title of the Removed code for disabling optimization
but it say it causing lag issues so maybe michalmanley was tying to boost pcem performance without use multiple core

[leilei]

it say Removed code for disabling optimization, as its causing lag issues. F… unfortunately we dont have full title of the Removed code for disabling optimization

Check the commits for full untruncated messages.

without use multiple core

You can't force multi-core optimization for emulating a single core CPU.

[moad6ytgn]

https://i.imgflip.com/7i6swg.jpg

[sami910]

When the V18 has been two years that we wait. The project must be stopped

[Starfox]

I think @MichaelJManley is doing an excellent job and it's more than no PCEM to get right?!?

Great work keep it up

[masonicon]

when I can download this version of PCem(at least from outside github)?

[Fishworldwar]

Honestly, I've completely forgotten about this little project. I might have to do some tinkering this summer.

[tk421]

PCem is a great program, and a great project. If I buy a new PC, it has to be able to run PCem at full specs. I do not know if the new CPUs are able to do that.

With Pentium 2 emulation and Voodoo 3 emulation, there are very few, if any, Windows 98 tasks that cannot be done in PCem today. For budget PCs, the Pentium MMX is an excellent platform for most Win98 tasks. More powerful PCs are needed to run PCem at full specs, and hopefully that is much easier to do today without spending too much money. For games that need that extra emulated CPU power, the Pentium 2 is perfect. If that is not enough, the Celeron 533 is available as well in PCem.

[Relikk]

you can get basically the latest and greatest from GitHub, https://github.com/sarah-walker-pcem/pc ... builds.yml

All of those links have "expired". Does anyone have a link to the last build from 3 months ago?

[MichaelJManley]

you can get basically the latest and greatest from GitHub, https://github.com/sarah-walker-pcem/pc ... builds.yml

All of those links have "expired". Does anyone have a link to the last build from 3 months ago?

Yeah… I see that builds over time get removed. I am going to set somthing up that pulls those files and posts them in my repository so they don’t expire.

For now I did do some merges so there is now a build.

It’s probably due to me not doing a commit since May but I should now have some free time since my major projects I had to take tons of time on are mostly complete.

[Starfox]

Hi,

great work you're doing there.
I tested the last release of pcem v18 and it runs very well.
However, I could observe one thing in comparison to pcem v17.
The performance of v18 is currently slightly lower than that of v17.
I had e.g. Lands of Lore 3 tested with the same Hardware and Gamesettings and there v17 shows 96% with less sound stutter, whereas v18 is 70% with more sound stutter.

But maybe that's because of the beta version. I tested the Mingw64 PCEM v18 on Windows 11

[leilei]

PCem release builds use profile-generated optimization.

[finalspace]

PCem is a great program, and a great project. If I buy a new PC, it has to be able to run PCem at full specs. I do not know if the new CPUs are able to do that.

With Pentium 2 emulation and Voodoo 3 emulation, there are very few, if any, Windows 98 tasks that cannot be done in PCem today. For budget PCs, the Pentium MMX is an excellent platform for most Win98 tasks. More powerful PCs are needed to run PCem at full specs, and hopefully that is much easier to do today without spending too much money. For games that need that extra emulated CPU power, the Pentium 2 is perfect. If that is not enough, the Celeron 533 is available as well in PCem.

I like PCem too, so i had PCem in mind when i built my current PC last year. But even that system with a "AMD Ryzen 7950X" cannot handle a "AMD K6 III with 400+ MHz" or "Pentium II 450 MHz" system at 100% at all time It works most of the time, but sometimes it drops to 70% in some cases - especially when doing installation of applications/games or you play "Unreal Tournament (1999)" with a voodoo 3 or SLI voodoo 2 setup in PCem. UT makes heavely use of the CPU, so you will see drops even pretty fast.

But know that the Ryzen 7000 CPU's does not have the best single-thread-performance! So a 13. Gen Intel CPU or the next Ryzen generation can handle it much better.
I would love to know how a Ryzen 7000 X3D handles PCem? Will this benefit from that huge L3 cache?

[tk421]

Thank you for your advice.

I really hope the 13th gen Intel laptop CPUs can do the job. Unreal Tournament (1999) is always fun to play, but it would be nice to get it running at 100% in PCem. VMWare runs the game fine, but PCem is so cool.

[UPerschke]

I really hope the 13th gen Intel laptop CPUs can do the job. Unreal Tournament (1999) is always fun to play, but it would be nice to get it running at 100% in PCem. VMWare runs the game fine, but PCem is so cool.

Just curious why would one want to use PCem for this game, aside cool? It does run native on Win10 22H2, at least on my machine.

[tk421]

Sometimes it really is easier to run certain games native on Win10. Both Rome Total War and Medieval 2 Total War come to mind. Unless you want to run a music mod for RTW, even a modest one, Steam is not enough.

Most of the time, and for a lot of us this meant years, PC compatibility issues necessitate the use of virtualization or emulation software to run games or programs that just work better on older PCs. UT is one of my favorite games, and I am sure most people reading this post think very highly of UT. Once my XP laptop died I ran UT exclusively on XP through VMWare, eliminating most, if any, compatibility issues.

It is nice to know UT will run on Win10. I may try it one day.

Running UT on PCem is a great way to test PCem on your PC. You will know very quickly if your PC can handle PCem. As finalspace pointed out, the Ryzen may not be the best way to do this. Given those machines are two generations ahead of the Ryzen 9 5900hx I tested over a year ago, that is not promising. That is why I am hoping the 13th gen Intel laptop CPUs are much better for PCem.

Why is PCem so amazing? It is that good.

[Arjen42]

I really hope the 13th gen Intel laptop CPUs can do the job. Unreal Tournament (1999) is always fun to play, but it would be nice to get it running at 100% in PCem. VMWare runs the game fine, but PCem is so cool.

Just curious why would one want to use PCem for this game, aside cool? It does run native on Win10 22H2, at least on my machine.

I guess tk421 choose a poor example of a game from that era to make his point. There are other games from that era that require a machine faster than PCem, and are not compatible with contemporary Windows, and are worth playing. Fans of those games would look to alternatives, a physical retro PC from that era or an API level emulation layer like Wine or Proton, etc. Of course alternatives are beyond the scope of this forum. The Vogons forum is a good starting point.

[Xanarki]

I've managed to get UT (and most games, up to 2001) to run at 100%. And my Intel CPU is from 2017. But I guess AMD's CPUs, at least up until last year's models, weren't great at single thread performance.

I completely agree that PCem is great for testing how well someone's CPU is. More realistic than any benchmark program tbh.

But PCem is perfect for anything prior to 2001 in my opinion, and that focus should forever stay the same.

[UPerschke]

I guess tk421 choose a poor example of a game from that era to make his point. There are other games from that era that require a machine faster than PCem, and are not compatible with contemporary Windows, and are worth playing. Fans of those games would look to alternatives, a physical retro PC from that era or an API level emulation layer like Wine or Proton, etc. Of course alternatives are beyond the scope of this forum. The Vogons forum is a good starting point.

Agreed. So far I have one stubborn title in my collection which needs PCem or an era-appropriate machine: IF-22 Raptor v5.0.
All others I can handle via VMWare+Win98||VMWare+WinXP+3D||VMWare+Win7+3D||Win10+dgVoodoo2||Win10 native, which is nice since it hardly involves performance sacrifices.

Quite a few of my titles do need non-trivial modifications for native Win10, e.g. patches or somehow work around 16-bit installers.
My latest success is mentioned here.

Certainly PCem is the path of less resistance in these cases, and it obviously is more accurate than hypervisors or wrappers.
Kudos for that, I also like PCem very much.

Eventually I will share my findings at Vogons if I ever overcome my procrastination to re-shape them into something usable for the public.

[tk421]

One game that always ran better in PCem than any other compatibility solution was Dominion Wars. It is a 2001 era game that runs ok using the Voodoo 2. Before PCem v17 it was the best way to run that old game. I find the Voodoo 3 emulation to be so good in PCem v17 that it is by far the best way to run that game.

I can certainly agree that PCem is best for games made in 2001 and earlier.

[leilei]

I'm very content with the performance from K6/233 emulation and that's adequate for a lot of stuff from early 2002 and earlier (having dealt with PCs of a similar performance target at the time). The real cutoff is the later 2002 stuff that demanded DXTC and HWT&L as there was an emerging DX7/8-capabilities-minimum shift after the release of DX9 hardware (9500-700 and FX), and enough Geforce2MXs were spread around by that point. Most of this were AAA games though, the casual game market had already gone through a new boom that'd be fine in theory for then low-spec targeting until like Vista. Voodoo3 emulation covers quite a bit of that ground.


And a reminder that PCem doesn't emulate cache penalties. A real K6/233 is slower! OTOH, real Voodoo cards are getting memory rot and loose traces lately.

[xenaretos]

I really hope the 13th gen Intel laptop CPUs can do the job. Unreal Tournament (1999) is always fun to play, but it would be nice to get it running at 100% in PCem. VMWare runs the game fine, but PCem is so cool.

Just curious why would one want to use PCem for this game, aside cool? It does run native on Win10 22H2, at least on my machine.

Nostalgia could be a significant factor. Having played that on a Pentium 2 back in the 1999-2000 and wanting to relive this experience as close as possible with minimal investments (and sometimes on a more desired hardware such as a 3dfx card).

I'm very content with the performance from K6/233 emulation and that's adequate for a lot of stuff from early 2002 and earlier (having dealt with PCs of a similar performance target at the time). The real cutoff is the later 2002 stuff that demanded DXTC and HWT&L as there was an emerging DX7/8-capabilities-minimum shift after the release of DX9 hardware (9500-700 and FX), and enough Geforce2MXs were spread around by that point. Most of this were AAA games though, the casual game market had already gone through a new boom that'd be fine in theory for then low-spec targeting until like Vista. Voodoo3 emulation covers quite a bit of that ground.


And a reminder that PCem doesn't emulate cache penalties. A real K6/233 is slower! OTOH, real Voodoo cards are getting memory rot and loose traces lately.

Well, it might work for something but in real 2002 this was a hopelessly obsolete CPU. Game-wise, I'd put the limit at about late 2000 with a lot of 3d stuff from that year already being significantly cpu-limited.

[Arjen42]

Yes, 2002 was the time I replaced my Pentium 2 from 1997 with an Athlon XP.