I can't give you any advice on graphics cards, but I can give you some advice on sound cards.

If you want to use SoundBlasters, I'd steer clear of several SoundBlaster 16 and AWE32 models and not even consider ANY AWE64 due to the use of CQM in place of genuine Yamaha OPL3. If this matters to you, do not go for the SoundBlaster 32 PnP CT3620, it's a card that has CQM on it.

Personally, I prefer to use at least two sound cards for DOS, usually a SoundBlaster Pro 2.0 CT1600 or a SoundBlaster 16 with OPL3 alongside any other card (or even a SoundBlaster Pro 2.0 CT1600 alongside any SoundBlaster 16 to AWE64). If you want to get the CT3620, I suggest getting a SoundBlaster Pro 2.0 CT1600 to go along with it. Otherwise, you could try going for a slightly less compatible all-in-1 approach with a sound card based around a Yamaha YMF7xx chipset (YMF715 to YMF719, usually). The SoundBlaster Pro 2.0's sound is very muffled, which I personally like, but I don't know how you like to listen to DOS audio, so this excessive low-pass filtering may not be for you. YMF7xx-based cards generally have virtually no low-pass filtering, which may be more what you're looking for.

Thanks for the information, I went on a search for information OPL3 vs CQM and you're right, OPL3 sounds much better.

I'm new to the whole sound card thing to be honest, I started gaming in the late 90s on Windows 98 and by that point it wasn't really as much a difference between game sound other than EAX!

I may go for a Sound Blaster 16 CT2830, do you think this is a good choice? Seems to be supported well, has the OPL3 chip and more affordable than AWE32

See the link in my signature. I have an online spreadsheet of various CPU benchmarks and how they perform with caches disabled.

Just my opinion, but I think a P133 will not be fast enough for Blood and Duke3D--not in SVGA at least. You will want something closer to 200Mhz. In general, SVGA DOS gaming (Blood, Duke, Descent2, System Shock, etc) will run best on 200Mhz+ Intel or AMD socket 7. And these cpus will give you more flexibility with caches disabled. Again, see my thread. Lots of good info in there. K6 III+ is supposedly one of the best with providing a wide range of performance. My Pentium Overdrive 200MMX has been pretty good too. Performance levels at 386DX-25, 486-25, Pentium 133, and of course 200Mhz.

The TNT PCI will be very good. It's one of the fastest, most compatible DOS video cards!

SBB wrote:

Thanks for the information, I went on a search for information OPL3 vs CQM and you're right, OPL3 sounds much better.

I'm new to the whole sound card thing to be honest, I started gaming in the late 90s on Windows 98 and by that point it wasn't really as much a difference between game sound other than EAX!

I may go for a Sound Blaster 16 CT2830, do you think this is a good choice? Seems to be supported well, has the OPL3 chip and more affordable than AWE32

I prefer Vibra 16S based cards as I've never been impressed with the noise level of the CT1745 mixer chip.

I have a CT2770 with real OPL3, and I've been very impressed with it. The noise level is negligible, and it's very compatible with everything I've thrown at it.

I'd recommend a faster machine for late DOS games, a P133 will struggle with the SVGA modes of Duke3D and Blood for example. My P166MMX + Matrox Millennium setup is nearly OK but I still break out my PIII if I want to get serious with SVGA games - Nascar, System Shock, etc.

Don't be afraid of buying Noise Blaster 16s provided you do some research and most of them are often dirt cheap as they are not the most popular cards out there. Also check for reviews on youtube as there are some good views showing the differences between multiple cards as well how they sound. I wouldn't even bother with a AWE64 due to the emulation.

If all else fails there are several other low to mid cost brands out there that offer acceptable to decent performance.

My advice is to start off with cheap parts, once you have your system up and running, which will take you a while, you will get an idea of what is important.

I wouldn't worry much about OPL3, all the games you mentioned support MIDI, so I'd get a cheap wavetable board like the Dream Blaster S1 and use it with a cheap Sound Blaster 16 or Yamaha card.

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

My advice is to start off with cheap parts, once you have your system up and running, which will take you a while, you will get an idea of what is important.

I wouldn't worry much about OPL3, all the games you mentioned support MIDI, so I'd get a cheap wavetable board like the Dream Blaster S1 and use it with a cheap Sound Blaster 16 or Yamaha card.

Definitely keep your costs low, at least until you have a clear requirement for more expensive parts. You have lots of options for gear and there's typically a revolving conversation regarding the pluses and minuses of different hardware (especially audio). For instance, check out the recent Aztech thread.

Seriously don't fret too much about OPL vs CQM. Side-by-side, you can hear a difference, but the CQM is just fine in its own right. So are ESFM and Crystal FM, really.

There's a lot of snobbery and elitism around it, but a cheap-as-free card with CQM is better than nothing at all. Especially if your focus is on newer DOS games.

For a cheap starter-soundcard, I can recommend a couple of card's. You can go for a cheap Vibra16 card, as long as it has an OPL chip. Because you will only loose the bass and treble settings in the mixer-tool. This is really roughly speaking as some cards may still be noisy and other things to look for. Another card that are cheap compared to good Creative SB16 cards, are one of those YMF-718 or YMF-719 cards. As the Yamaha chips on those cards have a true OPL core build into them. As I said. They are cheap starter cards, compared to good top-dogs.

GFX cards on the other hand. If you only play games in those 640x400/640x480 or so resolutions, or other old "standard" resolutions, you can go by with cards such as CirrusLogic-CL5440/CL5446 cards. Look for 2mb cards. Or you can source some old S3-Virge cards. They are all PCI cards, and they seem to have a better VGA output signal, compared to older ISA cards.

For the CPU. Go for something just a bit faster. P166 to 233 or something. Or if you can source an old K6 system of some sort, from a friend or family related person. There might be one or two persons that have some old machine that they have forgotten about. For RAM, 32mb is cheaper, and for pure a pure MS-Dos-6.22 machine, 32 megabyte is enough. You can even run it with 16 megabyte and have lots of fun. It is when you run DOS games through Win9X you really want a bit more. If it is Dos-only games you are running, then Win9x does not serve a real purpouse as such, other than a fancy "launch-panel".

Thanks for the great advice everyone! Its great to see how many people are passionate about these topics 😎

I have been doing some more research and learning about all these old sound cards! I have found some youtube videos and I definitely prefer the sound of OPL3 against CQM .. although I would be happy with either.. like a lot of audio issues, you only truly realise when you have a direct A-B comparison! Of course I have not tried it with my own speaker setup (Creative Inspire T20) so that may factor in ..

I found online that the Creative SB16 CT2900 card is very affordable where I am (United Kingdom) ... about 25% of the price of an AWE32, for instance. I think this is a good starter card for me to use to begin with DOS gaming. It has OPL3 and is based on the Vibra chipset. I also like the idea of maybe upgrading to a Dream Blaster later .. it sounds great! I can see that it has a 26 pin header on, so I believe that means I can add the Dream Blaster if I want to?

I will upgrade the CPU to 200MMX or 233MMX for the games I want to play, the board supports up to 233 according to the manual and there's not much difference in cost.

Yes, you can add an S1 later, but most Creative 16 bit cards suffer from the so-called "hanging note bug". Depending on the software you run, this may or may not be a deal breaker.

This doesn't mean a Creative card is a non-starter, just that you may have an issue to work around down the road (by installing a cheap Crystal based sound card to host MIDI, for instance).

The parts I needed are ordered along with some i've found in my spare parts collection 😎

System build as follows... i've gone with a stealth DOS machine look using a modern case, black CDROM and black floppy emulator! Hopefully everything works well ...

Gigabyte GZ-M1 MicroATX Case
FSP 350W PSU (I already had this lying around, it has floppy connectors and strong 5 volt rail)
Intel Pentium 200MHz MMX Socket 7 CPU
Samsung 40GB IDE Hard Disk (it has the 32GB Capacity limit, not sure if its needed. I had this lying around so will try it out for now, may switch to CF card later)
Coolermaster Socket 7/370 HSF
Biostar M5SAA Socket 7 MATX Motherboard
64MB Samsung SDRAM 100mhz
NVIDIA TNT 16MB PCI Graphics Card
Creative SoundBlaster CT2900 ISA Sound Card
Liteon CDROM (Black to match the case)
GOTEK USB Floppy emulator (Black)

I will post something in the system specs thread once I get it booted up ... hopefully! 🤣

Looking forward to learning more about DOS gaming!

HDD capacity will depend on what version of DOS you use. DOS 6.22 will limit you to 8GB (four 2GB parititions). Phil has some good tips on using DOS 7 for larger partition sizes. FWIW, I use 6.22 and have over 100 games and have not come close to filling 8GB. 😀

If this is a pure DOS system, 64MB might give problems with some older games. My understanding is that there is no benefit to having more than 32MB in a pure DOS system.

Looks like it's going to be a sweet system! Looking forward to reading about it!

That's a good high end DOS system. I would use DOS 7.1, and get as much capacity as you can.

If you load up MP3s on that hard drive, you can play them with MPXPlay and it will sound freaking awesome.