Would You Use a Retro Rig with These or Similar Specifications?

[Shaina11]

Would you consider using a retro PC with these or similar specifications for old Windows 9x era games? Along with DOS games with DOSBox and some XP-era games. (TES Oblivion might run on this... I think.) This is just a thread for your opinions. Feel free to post your own specifications or retro build ideas.

Note: No need to mention upgrading, this has nothing to do with modern games/systems and upgrading things, this is specifically retro. It's called "retro" or "vintage" for a reason. And please don't mention "Just use a VM for old games." that's not the point. Plus, real hardware performs much better when it comes to 3D games.

• Pentium 4 (478) Northwood 3.2 - 3.4 GHz
(Prescott I hear runs a bit on the hot side, and there doesn't seem to be a huge performance boost between Northwood and Prescott.)
• GeForce 6600 GT AGP 128 MB
• 1 GB(2x 512 MB) DDR PC3200 RAM
• 80 GB IDE HDD (Any brand)
• 3.5" Floppy Drive
• DOSBox
• Windows 98 SE/Windows XP Dual-Boot

P.S. I haven't even built this system yet, just thinking about what I could do.

 

[ComputerSecurityGuy]

I would swap to AMD. The Athlons of the day were much better than the P4, and find a board with SATA support. Any IDE drives still around are probably close to death.

 

[bootcher]

To run older dos/earlier directx games/software usually you don't need much CPU/GPU power. I think your current build will do fine, but it's made of older parts, I guess you still have them gathering dust? If made of new parts any current CPU would do well really. You won't need a separate GPU as both AMD as Intel have their built-in graphic processor which would perform more than good enough.

 

[Shaina11]

Thanks for the responses.

ComputerSecurityGuy
If I were to go with an Athlon it would have to be a motherboard that would support Windows 98, as that is the primary OS I would be using, and I have a few IDE drives that still work, and I'm sure I could find more online. Not like I'd be storing sensitive data that's not backed up. Plus SATA isn't supported by Windows 98/XP unless you enable legacy support in the BIOS.

bootcher
It's actually something I'm planing on building for nostalgia reasons. If I want it to be sort of a hybrid I could use some powerfulish parts that are compatible with Windows 98, can handle DOSBox, and even some XP-era games such as TES Oblivion, along with later Tomb Raider games. This way I could hopefully support most of the old games out there from about three different eras. (As I'm also planing on dual-booting Windows 98 SE and XP.)

The reason for the GPU is because integrated graphics of the time were not exactly up to snuff, and I'd need it to handle XP games.