so i have been watching this LGR
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbjYkPKRm-8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g15J44xB2zU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4rw3d7mu28

and wayback tech
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5M4b2JdaZIk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxofyIcLqrs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjJMlvakvQE

and phills computer lab
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wd9lQ8o_NKI

all building their own retro gaming pc
a 486 ( im going to be honest the 486 build was mostly voodoo to me especially the software side of things )
pentium II 300
and a pentium III if wondering

and i decided to go for a retro gaming pc my self although my idea of retro pc gaming is late 90's to late 2000's
and my "retro gaming pc"
reflects that
an hp 6000 pro micro tower
with a core 2 duo 3,0 ghz cpu
4 gig of ram
a 500 gig hd
a geforce 9800 with 512 mb of ram
and windows xp

overkill ? yes
but i can be sure things WILL run
and i can run crysis ..ahem

and why ? well mostly because i want a windows xp gaming pc
so it can run games that plain refuse to play ball with 7
like midtown madness 1 and 2
trespasser
and so on
i could have gone laptop but iprefer the ability to upgrade my pc as i choose

so does anybody here have a retro gaming pc ?

I have this (unused for 5 years):
Core 2 Duo E6400 2,13GHz
Nvidia Geforce 8800GT
2GB RAM
640GB HDD

also this:
.....well, I don't remember the configuration..... but could be:
Athlon XP 1700MHz ???
ATI 9600
512MB RAM ?
120GB HDD

I've often contemplated this but seeing your spec makes me feel old O_O. That still feels like new tech to me and I vividly remember building a similar spec. In fact I think that's pretty much the spec my parents still use which I built for them using old parts (though I added an SSD so it's nice and fast & it runs windows 7.)

Your spec is definitely way over powered for some mid-late 90s and you might find some games refuse to run as that was such a messy time for tech advances. A lot of games didn't work on XP properly so I used to dual boot it with windows 98SE, however 98SE only supports up to 2gb of RAM so you might be better off just running a virtual pc on your modern system for old games not on gog (pretty sure Midtown Madness 2 had major XP issues).
If you're fine with losing some compatibility for the sake of XP & more ram, you'll only be using 3.5gb of the 4gb as the max limit for a 32bit OS is 4gb and that includes the graphics card's (should be plenty).
Microsoft did release a 64bit version of XP but I really don't recommend it as it doesn't support 16bit programs so that'd be even more potentially compatible games down the pan (a lot of 90s games used 16bit installers).


This is where GOG really shines for me as games could be so temperamental back in those rapidly changing times.
I remember games that wouldn't run if you had more than 32mb of RAM (Might & Magic VII was one I think) and the early 3D accelerator/graphics card days when the software mode actually looked better than your brand new expensive hardware :p.

Is my PC gaming retro?

I3 3.6ghz, 4gb ram, nvidia gtx240 1gb vram. Probably :D

My most modern games would be Shadow Warrior remake, spec ops the line and Outlast. This machine can't handle Shadow of Mordor that's sitting in my library untouched for a year now

If I throw XP there it will be a little bit faster than your retro gaming PC

Lucky for me I don't find new games very appealing and I have great tolerance for old graphic and gameplay

I put together my retro gaming PC around a year ago from my dad's PC which was a monster HP media PC for the time with Pentium 4/D and Geforce 6800. The monitor is a Samsung SyncMaster 19 inch 4:3 LCD which I got used for 20 euros, I love it. I occasionally play Xpand Rally on it, and recently started the Riddick game.

P4 1.8Ghz
768Mhz RAM
40GB HDD x2
Can't remember what VGA it had
WinXP

I built it from parts lying around but after a while the motherboard failed and i couldn't bother fixing it (well, i'm no good with voltmeters & soldering irons...). I disassembled it, gave away the VGA to a good friend and kept the rest of the parts in a box again. :P I thought about building a bartop arcade cabinet at some point since i have several spare parts available, but due to other priorities i haven't had the time to do it yet.

Hehe..my family's main computer has lower specs than yours retro gaming PC :-P

I have a few, mostly Macintoshes, though I am looking to expand my collection. Some probably don't fill the "gaming PC" criteria, especially old portables with slow passive-matrix screens.

My first Windows box -an Athlon 550 with 128 MB RAM, 13 GB HDD, and a Voodoo 3 3500 TV AGP- have, unfortunately, been disassembled and some parts have been given away, though I'm looking to rebuild that (though likely update the HDD to a 16 or 32 GB SD-card which hopefully is a bit quicker, less likely to break, and easier to replace if necessary) and shove Windows 98SE on it. I do have the case, though it has been painted black.

I still have my first computer -a Macintosh Performa 475- which has been upgraded from the original 150 MB HDD to a 4 GB one, and to 36 MB of RAM from the original 4 MB (though I'm missing the M1212 screen which fits the machine like a glove).

Beyond that, a couple iMacs (one G3 and one G4), a couple Mac Minis (G4 and Core 2 Duo), a Power Macintosh G4, a Performa 6200, a Dell 425s/L, and a couple laptops (one Victor V386PX and one that I can't remember, probably a Pentium machine), perhaps a couple other older machines that I've forgotten.

I'm still looking for some more machines from the 486 to Pentium III eras. especially an IBM 300PL and early Aptivas, as well as some HP, Dell and Compaq machines.

I agree that you'll prob find most wount work. Alot of games from that decade want a 3DFX card. When I get around to it, my older PC will be a Pentium III, Voodoo as thats what I had when I originally had all the older games.

You can patch 98SE to run with 4gb of ram, but tbh for the older games 2GB should be more than enough. Even then some might struggle with it. And i'd def go with 98SE over XP for the older games. As said above many older games had issues with XP, but thanks to the many talented people online you can usually find some sort of fix.

If some of the 90' windows games aren't a must have on the same computer, putting Retropi in a rPi2/Rpi3 will get you a long way of playing everything from saturn and spectrum to PSX. Event starcraft and quake.

The Raspberry pie 3 uses only a few watt while it delivers lots of gaming power. Or just install EMulationstation and wine on a normal install with an external drive. It works really well!

I have a Win98-era PC in my gaming room, donated by a friend of mine, although I'm not sure what's in it beyond a Geforce 4 MX440. Haven't connected it yet.

I do think a Pentium 3 or early Athlon (possibly Athlon 800), 128-256MB RAM and some flavour of a GeForce FX5 range GPU, running Win98SE, would probably hit the sweet spot between retroness and performance. That'll run most DOS games with ease, most Win95/98-era titles also pretty well.

The oldest DOS games will probably be too fast, but slowdown tools are more effective on single-core systems, and besides, that's what DOSBox on modern PCs is for.

Most games that are too demanding for that PC will probably run just fine on modern architectures, with a few exceptions.
I have a Pi 3 downstairs on my 55" TV with RetroPie installed, and yes, it's wonderful for emulation, including DOS games under DOSBox. Cut-off point performance wise is roughly 1994-1995 - don't expect to be running Tomb Raider on it. But I'm playing Jurassic Park (the old one by Ocean) just fine on it right now.

Curious about your claim about WINE though. WINE only emulates the Windows API, not the underlying hardware, so it won't work on the ARM-powered Pi.

Yeah, that was an error on my part. While it's a myth that you can't run WINE on arm is false, I was mixing rPi with another setup and didn't specify both that and that I haven't tried wine specifically on arm.

To clarify, I have a low powered AMD AM1 that I tried as an alternative, before I got the rpi.

snowkatt: You just called my desktop PC retro. How rude! *shaking with his big CRT and breathing heavily*

lmao. Comment of the day.