5 ms·

How does this compare to dosbox for running games?

hexmiles 6y ago
Generally speaking if you want to run dos games, dosbox tend to be a better choice for most games, is simpler to use and there is a bigger community around it. however, Pcem really shine in the amount of hardware supported and better support for windows. Also it seem to be more accurate, but i, personally, never found a game that needed it, but if you have some games that don't work with dosbox it may be worth a shot.
Narishma 6y ago
IME it tends to run very old games written for the original PC better out of the box. With Dosbox you have to fiddle a bit with the cycles so they don't run too fast or too slow.
- sebazzz 6y ago
  Yes, but its x86 emulator is unfortunately very slow. I wanted to re-experience the little click game "The Green Mouse Disaster" and barely got it running, with only a few frames per second - practically unusable. This game is built on Shockwave and contains some Qt-based movies as animations.
  - Narishma 6y ago
    I was talking specifically about games targeting the original 4.77 Mhz IBM PC, so from the early to mid 1980s.
anthk 6y ago
Bochs like performance, even worse. With Bochs I can tweak the IPS count and get a closer performance near to Qemu.
badsectoracula 6y ago
Note that i've mainly tried 86box, which is a PCem fork (but AFAIK it is kept in sync with PCem and the main difference is a nicer GUI for Windows and that it provides nightly builds optimized for various CPUs). For DOS games, DOSBox is generally the better and -especially- faster choice with the main exception being mid80s games that assumed a 4.77MHz CPU (you can still play them on DOSBox but you need to fiddle around with the cycles and even then it assumes 1 cycle = 1 instruction, whereas PCem counts cycles correctly and also it takes into consideration the graphics card performance whereas DOSBox draws things as fast as it can). For Windows games, assuming you cannot run them in modern Windows, it is basically the best choice - assuming you have a really fast PC, otherwise you'll get sound stuttering and slowdowns (with my AMD Ryzen 7 3700X i can emulate a Pentium 75Hz -mostly- fine but anything above that starts to cause sound to stutter). Though in my experience 99% of the Windows games out there will work in modern Windows with something like dgVoodoo2, a framecapping tool like RTSS and perhaps adjusting the compatibility options. It might take some fiddling here and there. Notable exception being mid-2000s games with DRM.
- anthk 6y ago
  If you use Linux DOSEmu will run much faster.
  - snvzz 6y ago
    Is dosemu maintained in any form or shape?
    - anthk 6y ago
      A 2nd version on the going, and the 1.x branch boots current FreeDOS just fine. It's the fastest and most secure way to run DOS except the native one. No, I tried Qemu+KVM+FreeDOS, and is not as good.
      - snvzz 6y ago
        It's apparently a fork, and really actively developed: https://dosemu2.github.io/dosemu2/ https://dosemu2.github.io/dosemu2/ PCem and the like do have some advantages, such as emulating specific hardware, or not being limited to running in x86/amd64.
danmg 6y ago
PCem shines for emulating all the old hardware required to run old operating systems that were not DOS. VirtualBox and VMWare do not work will for this since they usually since they don't have guest extensions and working drivers for things like OS/2 2.1 and Slackware 3.0.
- anthk 6y ago
  Qemu can emulate an ISA pc, with a Sound Blaster and a Cirrus ISA VGA just fine. People has been running really old Slackware releases under Bochs/Qemu since forever.

Generally speaking if you want to run dos games, dosbox tend to be a better choice for most games, is simpler to use and there is a bigger community around it. however, Pcem really shine in the amount of hardware supported and better support for windows. Also it seem to be more accurate, but i, personally, never found a game that needed it, but if you have some games that don't work with dosbox it may be worth a shot.

Narishma 6y ago

IME it tends to run very old games written for the original PC better out of the box. With Dosbox you have to fiddle a bit with the cycles so they don't run too fast or too slow.

sebazzz 6y ago
Yes, but its x86 emulator is unfortunately very slow. I wanted to re-experience the little click game "The Green Mouse Disaster" and barely got it running, with only a few frames per second - practically unusable. This game is built on Shockwave and contains some Qt-based movies as animations.
- Narishma 6y ago
  I was talking specifically about games targeting the original 4.77 Mhz IBM PC, so from the early to mid 1980s.

anthk 6y ago

Bochs like performance, even worse. With Bochs I can tweak the IPS count and get a closer performance near to Qemu.

badsectoracula 6y ago

Note that i've mainly tried 86box, which is a PCem fork (but AFAIK it is kept in sync with PCem and the main difference is a nicer GUI for Windows and that it provides nightly builds optimized for various CPUs). For DOS games, DOSBox is generally the better and -especially- faster choice with the main exception being mid80s games that assumed a 4.77MHz CPU (you can still play them on DOSBox but you need to fiddle around with the cycles and even then it assumes 1 cycle = 1 instruction, whereas PCem counts cycles correctly and also it takes into consideration the graphics card performance whereas DOSBox draws things as fast as it can). For Windows games, assuming you cannot run them in modern Windows, it is basically the best choice - assuming you have a really fast PC, otherwise you'll get sound stuttering and slowdowns (with my AMD Ryzen 7 3700X i can emulate a Pentium 75Hz -mostly- fine but anything above that starts to cause sound to stutter). Though in my experience 99% of the Windows games out there will work in modern Windows with something like dgVoodoo2, a framecapping tool like RTSS and perhaps adjusting the compatibility options. It might take some fiddling here and there. Notable exception being mid-2000s games with DRM.

anthk 6y ago
If you use Linux DOSEmu will run much faster.
- snvzz 6y ago
  Is dosemu maintained in any form or shape?
  - anthk 6y ago
    A 2nd version on the going, and the 1.x branch boots current FreeDOS just fine. It's the fastest and most secure way to run DOS except the native one. No, I tried Qemu+KVM+FreeDOS, and is not as good.
    - snvzz 6y ago
      It's apparently a fork, and really actively developed: https://dosemu2.github.io/dosemu2/ https://dosemu2.github.io/dosemu2/ PCem and the like do have some advantages, such as emulating specific hardware, or not being limited to running in x86/amd64.

danmg 6y ago

PCem shines for emulating all the old hardware required to run old operating systems that were not DOS. VirtualBox and VMWare do not work will for this since they usually since they don't have guest extensions and working drivers for things like OS/2 2.1 and Slackware 3.0.

anthk 6y ago
Qemu can emulate an ISA pc, with a Sound Blaster and a Cirrus ISA VGA just fine. People has been running really old Slackware releases under Bochs/Qemu since forever.