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Maes
Senior Member

Posts: 1319
Registered: 07-06

deathbringer said:
Also my first PC had a 2-4mb graphics card but ran Half-Life decently well regardless, 128mb RAM though, which was vast at the time. Plus a non-"prettied up" resource hogging OS

Phew, you had quite a lot of RAM for the time -such amounts were once considered necessary "only for CAD professionals"-. Most of the shitty systems I saw between 1995-2000 had OK-ish CPUs and GFX cards, but RAM was so horribly expensive that anything above 32 MB was a rarity, and while 16 MB was OK for Windows 95 maybe, anything below 64 was just miserable in Windows 98, making the "user experience" a continuous hard disk trashing fest.

06-24-08 20:59 #

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leileilol
dork stalker

Posts: 2436
Registered: 06-04

pft i had 64mb RAM in my 486 back in '95, tell me that's not excessive :)

ATM I'm messing with two YMF262 equipped sound cards, then i'll mess with the non-Yamahas and do some comparison charts (A Creative ViBRA16 and Sound Blaster 32 (CT3600) will do nicely)

06-25-08 04:47 #

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Maes
Senior Member

Posts: 1319
Registered: 07-06

leileilol said:
pft i had 64mb RAM in my 486 back in '95, tell me that's not excessive :)

Yup...48 MB was definitively excessive, unless if used with with Windows 95 or some version of Unix, at the time. Win 3.1 couldn't even use that much RAM...DOS could see more than 16 MB in protected mode games, but I am not aware of any pure DOS titles requiring more than 16 MB RAM.

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06-25-08 18:07 #

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leileilol
dork stalker

Posts: 2436
Registered: 06-04

http://openarena.ws/crap/sauervoodoo2.png
lol sauerbraten
though the big factor here is the cpu, it's barely on par with the performance of a 486 dx4 100

(Zdoom 2.1.7 runs smooth btw ;) )

Last edited by leileilol on 06-27-08 at 06:18

06-27-08 05:52 #

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Maes
Senior Member

Posts: 1319
Registered: 07-06

deathbringer said:
Also my first PC had a 2-4mb graphics card but ran Half-Life decently well regardless,

Had Half Life a software rendered engine or at least a selectable mode? If so, then video ram doesn't really matter for anything else but for the maximum single frame buffering resolution/color depth (4 MB is enough for 1024*768, either 24 or 32 bit color depth).

Also, more video ram would help if your software can use it for smooth scrolling/double buffering/fast page flipping, but hardware accelerated 3D is really a special case, as there is texture and 3D node information stored as well.

06-27-08 06:52 #

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MikeRS
Doomworld is so about bullshit excuses

Posts: 457
Registered: 06-05

Maes said:
Had Half Life a software rendered engine or at least a selectable mode?

I could be wrong, but I believe it did; Half-Life was based on the Quake 1 engine.

06-27-08 08:04 #

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POTGIESSER
Senior Member

Posts: 1299
Registered: 06-04

Yep heavily modified Quake 1 engine.

06-27-08 15:51 #

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deathbringer
Post invalidated by first word being "uhhh"

Posts: 2849
Registered: 04-02

uhhhhhhhh

Oh that was probably why, then.

It's specs where
450mhz
10 gig HD (also vast at the time)
128mb RAM
2-4mb graphics (don't remember)

I guess the ram and mhz where perfectly good to run software mode. It was Windows 98, too... it accessed folders and opened apps pretty much instantly when it was new... but we knew nothing about defragging etc (other than "it takes all day so we won't bother with it") so before it died (lightning) it was stupidly slow

06-29-08 18:30 #

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myk
patron mod of ugly ducklings and black sheep

Posts: 10408
Registered: 04-02

I ran the demo on a 166 MHz pentium with a 6 GB HDD, 16 MB RAM, and a 2 MB Trident video card. At 320x200 or something, but it worked pretty well.

06-30-08 02:18 #

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Maes
Senior Member

Posts: 1319
Registered: 07-06

An update:

I "upgraded", so to speak, my S3 Virge with an Ati 3D Rage Pro with 4 MB of RAM, again with a PCI interface.

The results?

Well, now I have proper 32-bit color modes support, enough RAM to use my favourite desktop resolution (1024*768*32), proper video overlays and video playback acceleration, resulting in MUCH improved video playback.

Most games won't work with it though. I only managed to run Quake I in OpenGL and Absolution, both in 640*480 mode.

08-28-08 22:25 #

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