[markus_zhang]

This is a fascinating read.

Back in 1997 my father had a Pentium box with maybe 16MB of RAM. I was able to play Duke 3D and I stuck in E1M3 too and didn’t figure that out until much later.

I wonder how well Fabien’s build runs Unreal. It was the pinnacle of classic FPS IMO. I used to drool over a voodoo card but I immersed myself playing in software rendering mode in a netbar.

Good time.

[fabiensanglard]

What a timing you have :) ! Digital Foundry did a piece just 12 days ago (https://youtu.be/npMujOQsjGQ?si=4c8fmYDTMrRzFNhl&t=503).

"When Unreal came out, it supported three renderer. Software, Glide, and PowerVR."

My MMX Pentium MMX 233MHz (512x384 with Creative Voodoo 2, patch patch 223 from https://oldunreal.com/downloads/unreal/oldunreal-patches/) benchmark, the intro goes from 60fps down to 10 fps when the whole castle is seen in the intro. When I start the game, in the cell, I can see 20fps.

I think the CPU is too light for this game. Definitely a title that requires a Pentium II.

Note that all fps gathered with "stat fps". There is a timedemo (https://www.gweb.me.uk/gweb/unrealsetup.htm) that I shall give a try someday.

[pengaru]

I had pentiums with voodoos back then, when Unreal came out it did not perform particularly well on that hardware compared to nvidia and didn't have the same graphics quality. Unreal with the nvidia TNT2/GeForce 256 marked the beginning of the end for the voodoo era, if memory serves.

3dfx hay day was really quite quake-centric, you'd be remiss to not use their hardware in a vintage quake pc build.

[pjmlp]

Indeed, in 1998 I wanted a Voodoo for some 3D work I was going to do, and naturally wanted the best and also play with Glide.

However it had a problem with my PCI version, and the shop guy was nice to trade it back for a TNT, which not only had no issues with my motherboard, made me an early NVidia customer.

[markus_zhang]

Thanks, I do recall Unreal has a 3d fx video mode that is pretty good? Or was it bad memory.

[ahartmetz]

>16MB of RAM

Speaking of which, pretty sure that none but the earliest Pentium PCs had a chance of having less than 16 MB of RAM. The article says 8 MB were typical.

I got a 486 with 4 MB in mid 1994, which was shortly (months, I think) before 8 MB became the norm. Pentiums became the norm maybe in mid 1995. That was in Germany, but PC part prices have always been global and I suspect that all high income countries spent similar amounts on computers.