Trying to calibrate your DOSBox to the game you're playing is tricky. Fortunately, there's a series of DOS programs produced by Norton called SysInfo (300~ kb ZIP) that enable you to benchmark the internal DOSBox session to calibrate performance.
From using Versions 6 and 8 inside DOSBox with CPU Core Set to Auto, the following benchmarks shook out (Yellow), which I combined with actual benchmarks made by people on the VOGONS forums or from within SysInternal (Green).
This is mainly to help people optimize in DOSBox games that were designed to run game logic timing off of clock speed (Wing Commander I/II were notorious for this).
DOSBox Internal Benchmarks using Norton SysInfo |
|
|
Description |
Benchmark |
|
Pentium II @ 333 MHz |
836.5 |
|
DOSBox 140,500 Cycles |
835.3 |
|
DOSBox 71,000 Cycles |
422.1 |
|
Pentium I @ 133 Mhz |
421.3 |
|
DOSBox 35,600 Cycles |
211.6 |
|
Pentium I @ 60 Mhz |
211.4 |
|
DOSBox 24,000 Cycles |
142.7 |
|
486DX2 @ 66 MHz |
141.7 |
|
DOSBox 12,000 Cycles |
71.3 |
|
486DX @ 33 MHz |
71.2 |
|
DOSBox 6,100 Cycles |
36.3 |
|
386DX @ 33 MHz |
35.9 |
|
DOSBox 4,600 Cycles |
27.3 |
|
386SX @ 25 MHz |
27.1 |
|
DOSBox 3,300 Cycles |
19.6 |
|
286 @ 25 MHz |
19.4 |
|
DOSBox 3,000 Cycles |
17.8 |
|
286 @ 12 MHz |
8.9 |
|
DOSBox 1,500 Cycles |
8.9 |
|
286 @ 8 MHz |
4.4 |
|
DOSBox 700 Cycles |
4.2 |
|
DOSBox 200 Cycles |
1.2 |
|
IBM XT 88 @ 4.77 MHz |
1 |
|
DOSBox 167 Cycles |
1 |