From: davisson@milton.u.washington.edu (Jamie Green)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games
Subject: Re: Good Game Hardware
Date: 29 Sep 92 01:09:46 GMT
Article-I.D.: u.1992Sep29.010946.2151
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle

In article <1992Sep19.232620.361@u.washington.edu> I wrote:
> I'm seriously considering buying a DOS box for assorted reasons, and I'd
> like to play games on it as well.  Hence, I'd like to make sure it's beefy
> enough to work well with all the snazzy games I see out there.  Unfortu-
> nately, I'm next to completely ignorant about PCs, so I'd like to ask the
> experts a few questions.

I was happily surprised by the many helpful responses I got to my query.
I'd now like to thank the following people:
    primus@netcom.com (Robert keng)
    cl129502@ulkyvx.louisville.edu (Jude Greer)
    mccullou@cae.wisc.edu (Mark)
    dallas@ravel.udel.edu (Paul Lewis Fincke)
    jmcocker@eos.ncsu.edu (Mitch)
    edg@ingres.com (Ed Goldman)

Question 1) related to what flavor of CPU I should get.  The 486DX was, not
surprisingly, the processor of choice.  The 386SX is generally considered to
be obsolete already, and the 386DX is the next to go.  Several respondents
felt that the 33MHz or 40MHz 386DX is plenty adequate to run most software
currently available, but the consensus was that games are only going to get
more power-hungry.  A dissenting opinion was that the performance difference
between a 40MHz 386 and a 33MHz 486 wasn't that great.

Several people cited the small difference in price between a 386 and a 486
system, but my experience has been that the price difference is fairly
large.  Have 486 prices been falling in the last month or so?

Another point that was brought up was the speed of the bus.  The standard
ISA bus can be a significant bottleneck in the system.  The EISA bus is
faster, but a "local bus" would seem to be a preferred solution.  Putting a
video card and hard disk controller on a local bus would dramatically
improve performance, but there is no standard for a local bus yet.

Question 1a) was about the difference in price/performance between the
486SX and DX.  The consensus here was that the performance difference was
noticeable, whereas the price was not.  Consequently, the SX is not a good
buy.

Question 2) was about video cards.  Anything below VGA is to be dismissed
out of hand, to no great surprise.  SVGA games are just starting to hit the
market, but as with the CPU question, it was generally recommended to go
ahead and get an SVGA card, to be compatible with future games.

Cards with 1 megabyte of buffer were recommended, but a couple of people
warned that cards with graphics coprocessors on-board (designed primarily to
speed up Windows) could actually slow some games down.  The Tseng ET-4000
based cards were recommended by a couple of people as being good and
inexpensive.  Other recommended cards were the Orchid Prodesigner IIs,
Diamond SpeedStar and any card from ATI.

Question 3) was about game cards.  It seems several of the respondents use
the game port that is part of the SoundBlaster Pro sound card.  This was
very interesting to me, since I was not aware that it had such a feature.
This board was given high marks all around.

Question 4) was about particular brands of equipment.  The only specific
info I got for an entire system was for CompuAdd, (the respondent warned me
away from this company) and DTK (the respondent was happy with it, but has
heard that they are generally regarded as being fairly unreliable).  I did
get some info on components to look for.  People recommended boards with an
AMI bios and an OPTI or Chips chipset.  Video cards with Tseng ET-4000 chips
were recommended, as mentioned above.  The Sound Blaster Pro was noted as
being a must.

Finally, I got a fair bit of other information and advice.  It was
recommended that I get at least 4 megabytes of memory, an 80 megabyte hard
drive and a non-interlaced SVGA monitor (I had already decided these
points).  The CH FlightStick got a recommendation as a good joystick.

Finally, the recommendation was to keep reading the magazines.  There is no
substitute for research.  I definitely agree with this, and intend to keep
looking.  Fortunately, now I am much better informed, and so can get more
out of what I read.  Again, a hearty "thank you!" for all of your help!

So what am I going to buy?  At this point, it looks like I'm going to go
with a 40MHz 386 machine.  The motherboards are cheap, and I can upgrade
to a 486DX once a standard has emerged for local bus.  Plus, with luck, the
prices will have dropped by the time I'm ready to buy.  I haven't decided
on a video card yet.  I have an option to get a friend's spare Orchid 1280
card.  This is one of the ones with a graphics coprocessors, so I am leary;
it will have to depend on the price I can get it for.  For a monitor, I'll
first borrow a friend's spare black and white monitor, then save up for a
good color one.  I am looking at the Seiko CM1440 non-interlaced SVGA
monitor; I have the Mac version (the CM1445), and like it very much.  It
doesn't make sense to me to get a cheap monitor, since I'd just get fed up
with it and buy an good one anyway :-)  Lastly, I will start saving my
pennies to get a Sound Blaster Pro.

--
		       Jamie Green @ Gordon's account                         
		      davisson@milton.u.washington.edu                        
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games