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I Used To Play Videogames on WHAT?

4 Comments

Wow, I’m sorting my documents folder (in prep for my big hefty reinstall) and I come across this from years ago (the earliest date is 4th Feb 2004, which seems about right):

[OS]
OS=Windows 2000 v5.0 build 2195 Service Pack 4
Result=2
Skip=0
[Processor]
Type=Intel Pentium IIIXC
Vendor=Intel
NumCPUs=1
Speed=987
Result=2
Skip=0
[RAM]
RAM=256
Result=2
Skip=0
[Video Card]
Type=NVIDIA GeForce2 GTS/GeForce2 Pro                                                            
VRAM=32
Desktop Resolution=1024x768
Desktop Color Depth=32
Result=2
Skip=0
[Open GL]
OpenGL Installed=1
OpenGL Version=1.3.1
Result=2
Skip=0
[Direct X]
DirectX Installed=1
DirectX Version=DirectX (8+) (4.09.00.0902)
DirectX Build=4.09.00.0902
Result=2
Skip=0

It was, since the box still exists, a 1Ghz Pentium 3, and yes, 256MB RAM. I think Half-Life played okay at 1024×768 and, as you can see Neverwinter Nights (where this is from) did okay too, despite the pathetic 32MB of GeForce2 VRAM (I certainly couldn’t enable the 64MB texture option, thank goodness the game catered to 16 and 32 meg cards!), and the support for only OpenGL v1.3!

After this family PC I moved to University and had my own PC made from scratch, which was nice. The specs of that machine are much more game-friendly. I must admit, thinking about it, how many Dell/HP/Whatever white boxed PC’s are used to run games, it must hurt supporting lower-then-expected specs.

4 thoughts on “I Used To Play Videogames on WHAT?”

  1. That’s nothing. I used to play games on a 50 MHz 486, with 8 MB RAM and a 300 MB hard disk. It ran DOS and Windows 3.1. The CD-ROM drive was purchased separately in a CD/Sound Card/Game bundle. The first bundle (Pro Audio Spectrum 16) didn’t work very well, so it was exchanged for a Sound Blaster bundle. There was no DirectX. There wasn’t even WinG (go ahead, look it up).

    On that awesome computer I used to play Civilization (no II, III or IV), Railroad Tycoon (no II), Sim City (no 2000, 3000 or 4), Microsoft Flight Simulator, Return to Zork and The 7th Guest, among others.

    Boy… I feel old.

  3. Yeah, I used to play on older computers too (going back to an IBM machine for classic Doom, SimCity 2000, etc.). This just struck me as bad for playing anything that required a 3d graphics card. It was a major breath of fresh air getting a new PC after it, games at the time were getting beyond it’s meagre specs. That set of specs is likely just before my Windows 98, Voodoo 2 box (came with G-Police, yeah!)

    As for Windows 2000; was what came with the PC, XP wasn’t out (or at least usable, remember pre-SP1?) at the time! 🙂

    I still would use 2000 if they hadn’t stopped updating it. XP adds on a lot of cruft, but once tuned, acts similarly to the sleeker 2000 ways (although on the UI side, I did lament not having “Lock Toolbar”, heh). All the games worked on it too, since XP was very new at the time.

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