base pc requirements to run n64 roms

i want to buy my friends pc for a hundred bux, but if it cant play my n64 roms i dont want to bother. i dont hav the specs of his pc now, but i am wondering if any of you know what kind of pc it would take to run a game like perfect dark or mario 64 smoothly. he has a p3 and i think its 600-800 mhz, and a voodoo card. it has 64 mb of ram, but if i buy it i can upgrade that, so it isnt aproblem. i'll prob buy a nother graphics card that can run it. so please tell me specs of a pc that should be able to play it fine, or the cheapest card i can buy that will run it smooth. and if specs or card doesnt play smoothly, but itwill be playable and not slow and buggy than you can list that here also, with description of how good/bad it will run. he has an emachins comp, i think he said he bought it for 300-400 bux like 3-4 years ago, so its def not top of the line. also if u feal like telling me how much his pc is worth and how much i should buy it for, feal free


thanks!


-Mr. Powerbook

an emachine? geh..

depending on the size of the hd and exactly what videocard it is, i'd say it'sworth anywhere from $75 to $100 USD at the most.

faster cpu's and motherboards can be had for dirt cheap, sdram is cheap as well. with that cpu and a 3dfx card, it'll never be a great gaming machine(could probably get some stuff to run reasonably at lowest settings), and since it's an emachine the case is crap too.

you should just get a cheap case, one of those amd cpu/mobo combos for cheap in about the 1400 range, toss 256mb of sdram in it, geforce 3 card, and whatever hard drive you can find. if you want a cheap computer. the only reason i would ever bother with a pentium 3 is because i have some lying around i'm not using, but if i had to buy components, not a chance.

Yeah, that doodoo card's got to go. If a game requires higher then DirectX7, a Voodoo card will likely have issues with it. They were great in their time, but that was a long time ago in the lifespan of video cards. You can nab a GF3/GF4 or Radeon 9000 pretty cheap these days and it would give it a nice shot in the arm. That P3 is a decent CPU, but it is dated. You would probably want to look into a really good H/S and fan so you could push the clock up a bit. More memory is a must--push for 512MB so it has something to work with to compensate for the CPU bottleneck. In the end, you're likely to sink an axtra $200 in it over the next year just to keep things really playable on it.

I think you would be better off buying a barebones 1.5GHz or higher for the same or less. That box would be best for a casual home user that wants to browse the web, maybe play some cheesy games and do a little CD ripping. Not exactly a gamer's machine for what's on the market now, and surely not a good candidate for running emulators on. Even some MAME rom's could have issues with that setup.

Raist

Ultrahle, the best N64 emulator last I checked, requires a 3Dfx card to work, so the voodoo has to stay, otherwise you can try a glide wrapper, but that usually doesnt work well.