Question Is this computer way too fast for playing pre-Windows XP games?

[berserker0]

I'm thinking of building a computer to run Windows XP with a Pentium 4 (3GHz), GeForce4 Ti or GeForceFX 5700, and 512MB of RAM. I wouldn't want to build another dedicated computer just for Windows 95 or early Windows 98 games, so will I have any problems playing those games on this machine? I mean problems with a too fast processor or compatibility issues with Windows XP? Would Windows 95 compatibility mode help me out?

 

[TerryLaze]

It all depends on the game, if the game has no measure to prevent running too fast then it will run too fast, although that is mostly a thing with early dos games were people had no idea that CPUs would be getting any faster, by the time of windows 95 we had a new faster CPU every so often so games mostly had ways to deal with it.
Compatibility mode is always a matter of luck, you can always look up games on pcgaming wiki to see if there are tips and tricks to make games run.
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Home

 

[boju]

Shouldn't be a problem but have you checked if old games you want to play aren't already offered from Gog or Steam? They'll be using dosbox and everything would work on modern systems.

If you go ahead with an XP machine, see here how to activate.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/windows-xp-offline-activation

 

[gamerk316]

By about '93 or so games had either ways to manually set their speed or automatically handled faster CPUs. There were some exceptions (the first Wing Commander immediately comes to mind), but by the Win95 era this was mostly a non-concern.

 

[NedSmelly]

A great chart of CPU speed-sensitive games can be found on Vogons:

https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/List_of_CPU_speed_sensitive_games