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|[[PCem]]/[[86Box]]/[https://pcbox-emu.xyz/ PCBox]/[https://www.varcem.com/ VARCem]:
These emulators provides an excellent compatibility and [[#Hardware_features_and_peripherals|hardware and peripheral support]] for MSDOS-DOS, based operating systems such as Windows 3.11x, Windows ME/98/95 (and even NT-based [[Windows_2000/XP/Vista_emulators|XP/Vista]],Win7 supported but not recommended) that is beyond what "DOSBox forks" can offer but unlike "DOSBox forks" these emulators usually requires modest to top-notch [https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html single thread performance of CPUs]. As of June 14, 2021, PCem's original developer, Sarah Walker, has stopped working on the project. It has now been taken over on December 18, 2021, by a new maintainer, Michael Manley. 86Box is a fork of PCem which is [https://github.com/86Box/86Box/issues/3577 developed more actively], while PCBox and VARCem are forks of 86Box.
:: One aspect commonly used to compare PCem and 86Box is the emulation performance. PCem v15 introduced a rewritten dynamic recompiler, which was primarily aimed at improving emulation performance in games; however, it also caused minor to severe performance regressions in other applications. 86Box uses the previous recompiler from PCem versions before v15, with optimizations performed by devs, as they have determined that the new one causes too many regressions to be adopted as a sensible default. There is a way for you to try out the new recompiler on 86Box, though. PCem’s emulation of some core system components, such as the Programmable Interval Timer (PIT), takes a few shortcuts to improve performance. These shortcuts are perfectly fine for games, which is what PCem targets; although, they have caused issues with the software preservation side of things. In addition to taking fewer shortcuts, 86Box also tries to follow the specifications of these components, rather than implement the minimum viable feature set, which is - once again - good enough for games, but not good enough for some other applications. Generally speaking, the more accurate a component’s emulation is made, the more host CPU horsepower it will require. In addition to taking fewer shortcuts, 86Box also tries to follow the specifications of these components, rather than implement the minimum viable feature set, which is - once again - good enough for games, but not good enough for some other applications. [https://86box.net/2022/01/07/pcem-migration-guide.html See this guide for more information].
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