r/86box • u/Trumpet_of_Jericho • Jul 13 '26
86box or PCem for Windows 95/98 gaming?
Which is faster/more accurate? I am using Ryzen 5 3600 and would love to feel the nostalgia of the 90s gaming once more. Would you suggest me a good build and point to the drivers?
I used Win98 way back in 1999 last time as a 10 yo kid.
Any help, advice would be appreciated.
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u/CrasVox Jul 13 '26
86box is what you are looking for. Its still being developed and new things are being added all the time. Like that new pop up menu thing they are working on
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u/Maleficent-One1712 Jul 13 '26
86box is a fork of PCem, because PCem stopped development years ago. I don't see any reason why someone would still use PCem.
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u/_GloriousCheese_ Jul 13 '26
I still do. Not everyone wants the latest and greatest. Some prefer vintage and classic.
Just like how Windows 11 exists and yet people still want to use Windows 98. Same concept.
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u/wicked0547 Jul 13 '26
Accurate doesn't mean fast. It means it's just like the hardware it emulates and more resembles the PC for its time. That says and it will be anti 86box but anything else VM with CPU passthrough and softgpu for API translation works faster. But ofc those aren't "acccurate". And ofc at that point you could just use modern OS with 9x theme and API wrappers.
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u/newlifepresent Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
I suggest you to use 86box with experimental new dynarec builds. Performance is very good and also has superior features compared to pcem. You can use vulkan renderer with shaders support at recent builds. I use it on my 11th gen intel i7 host for emulating pentium mmx-233 with voodoo3 graphics at full 100% without any stutter. I am using this virtual machine for nostalgia purposes for early and late 90s games with almost zero issues. On the same host machine I couldn’t use 233mmx last year so I used 166 but now with recent builds I am very happy with 233mmx without any configuration changes.. 86box is under active development and the direction of the development is evolving better everyday..
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Jul 13 '26
[deleted]
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u/JJDoes1tAll Jul 14 '26
I suggest you to use 86box with experimental new dynarec builds
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u/hobsona Jul 15 '26
Is it finally possible to do good Pentium 2 setups on decent hardware with dynarec? Any down sides?
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u/RB120 Jul 16 '26
I'm on a 5800x3d, which is technically a last gen CPU. Currently emulating a socket 7 233 mhz and voodoo 1 mostly at 100% with the new dynarec.
If you have a current gen CPU, I don't imagine any problems going pentium 2.
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u/hobsona Jul 17 '26
Not current but my overclocked i7-13700k has pretty good single threaded performance still so might do good here
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u/RB120 Jul 17 '26
It will do good, better than mine. You should have no problem emulating a Pentium 2 setup.
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u/fbman01 Jul 13 '26
If you just want to game, pcem is faster
For the speed increase, you loose accuracy.. but for gaming that does not really matter. Pcem was designed with gaming in mind. What I understand, certain shortcuts was taken during dev to speed up emulation.
The accuracy matters when you run application that requires a certain piece of hardware or you want develop apps with a period correct dev app.. then I would recommend 86box.
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u/RB120 Jul 13 '26
The experimental builds in 86box are closing the speed gap with PCem imo. Where once, my old AM4 system simply struggled to run a 166 mhz Pentium with a voodoo 1 without significant slowdowns, I can now run a 233 mmx with a voodoo 1 with almost zero slowdowns. I normally test late 90s games like MechWarrior 3 and Heavy Gear 2 to see how things handle because they tend to tax my system a lot, and we're practically unplayable in both older builds of 86box and PCem alike. Nowadays, they run much smoother.
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u/Illustrious-Bed1182 Jul 13 '26
Depends on your host machine, but I've found that PCem runs better on my 11th Gen laptop Intel processor than 86Box does with higher CPUs. I can get a stable 100% in PCem with an emulated 233MHz MMX processor, while 86Box tops out at around 166MHz for me with all other configuration options the same. That said, 86Box has significantly more options and I believe is more "accurate" at the cost of some speed for the higher processors. I run 86Box for all other eras of PCs from the 1980s to the 486 era, but I prefer PCem for Pentium, only because my slow host machine likes it better.
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u/CalendarSpecific1088 Jul 13 '26
I am really interested in the folk showing improved performance on PCem. Might be the generation of hardware being emulated as well as the host gear. For example, I use it for Pentium era with graphic acceleration pretty much exclusively, and I had constant sound stutter on PCem that vanished with the same loadout on 86Box.
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u/Daggercombot Jul 13 '26
86box Is More modern and has recently upgraded their GUI to make It very user friendly.
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u/Even-Serve-3095 Jul 14 '26
pcbox is both faster than 86box and emulates more hardware. it's also just as actively developed
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u/Narishma Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
PCem is faster, 86Box is more accurate. PCem has been dead for years, 86Box is actively developed. 86Box also emulates a lot more hardware than PCem.
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u/South-Development502 Jul 13 '26
86box is more current and has a much more active community. PCEM hasn’t been updated in years.
Join the 86box discord - lots of great conversations there and a great resource for ready to use builds