[Tea Monster]

On his machine, 1 gig is the 'sweet spot' where it will actually begin to be usable. For machines made in this century, the absolute minimum is two gigabytes, and you should be looking at four for general use.

[Radar]

Lunick Prime, on 28 May 2013 - 06:39 AM, said:

I'd probably end up talking crazy like that too if I had to wait 5 minutes every time I wanted to load a new page

Didn't you read what I said about efficiency? I'm real good at optimizing my applications. A single page usually takes only a minute and a half.

Ok, I'll confess. I have a Windows 7 laptop too, but even if the fancy stickers and numbers represent a decent laptop, it doesn't stop it from taking a whole ten minutes just to open a web browser and another ten minutes to open piratebay.se and... yeah I'll stop there. Not to mention my Vista comp before that. That stupid computer died on me within two years. On the other hand, this 11 year old computer is the only thing that's lasted forever. Startup takes no more than a minute and I'm on the forum in 10 seconds. My PCI WiFi card was the perfect addition. This computer has put up with so much crap that I know it can't handle that I almost feel like it has a mind of its own. I don't even have virus scan or Windows Firewall on. It'll be a sad day when it break down on me, since I've had such a miserable experience with new computers. Not to mention the memories, oh the memories...

Limitations of this computer includes: stuttering YouTube vids, videos larger than 2 GB unplayable, only 1 major program can run at a time (hefty background programs cause a huge problem too, which is why I can't use a virus scan). One of the most interesting things I noticed is that the hDuke and xDuke source ports cause a ton of lag when running Skype, while EDuke32 is a breeze, which is peculiar considering that the former ports should be much simpler. Good job at optimizing your source port to the max, EDuke32 team! Every bit of power a programs hogs is noticeable on my computer. It doesn't have much longer; a strong slap on the side of the computer makes it freeze up until that magic 8-second button hold is executed. Any day now...

[Tea Monster]

486dx2 was right, you are crazier than a moth in a disco.

[Jimmy]

Totally. My machine has 756mb of RAM, and it's fucking unbearable.

[Mr.Deviance]

Radar, on 27 May 2013 - 06:27 AM, said:

Windows XP
Intel Pentium 4 1.8 GHz (Single Core)
512 MB Ram
NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 4000 64 MB

This thing used to have a ton of hanging and stuttering problems until I reserved 4 gigs on the hard drive as virtual ram. Keep in mind this is probably the best computer in my house. I could afford a new computer if I wanted. I guess this shows how much I care about new games.

I threw away at least 5 computers ranging from 2 to 5 times faster than your current pc and even though I afford to get pretty high end machines every 2 or 3 years I am not a super rich person either.
What you have there can't even play 2000 games properly.
Doom3 which was released in 2004 would not run even on low on your pc, without massive stuttering.

[Radar]

Need For Speed Most Wanted from late 2005 is perfectly playable on this computer at low settings. I'm positive I could run Doom 3 at 640 x 480 resolution and extra visual bells & whistles off.

[ReaperMan]

Radar... you have a screw loose.

[Mr.Deviance]

ReaperMan, on 29 May 2013 - 02:33 PM, said:

Radar... you have a screw loose.

Should I tell him that doom3 runs maxed out at over 30 fps on today's decent android mobile phones and tablets already and can even run at at least 10 fps with dynamic lighting and shaders on some of the better phones from 2 years ago?

[Radar]

Dude Crysis works on my computer without a problem on max settings at 60 fps.

[Mr.Deviance]

Radar, on 29 May 2013 - 03:01 PM, said:

Dude Crysis works on my computer without a problem on max settings at 60 fps.

Aww yeah of course

[leilei]

Crysis shouldn't even initialize without a shader model (GF4MX has no pixel shaders and will not run any UnrealEngine3 or CryEngine2/3 games).
FarCry does have a fixed function path and should run around 20-40fps on a Geforce2 and a Geforce4MX at the cost of stencil shadows and reflective water.

I know I shouldn't feed the retrotroll, but facts > *

[Inspector Lagomorf]

I can't believe that all of you are buying what Radar is saying right now.

[Kathy]

These forums should have higher system requirements so that the likes of Radar wouldn't be able to write. Can we add lots of flash here?

[MusicallyInspired]

I used to have to get away with minimal settings. Back in 1999 I was running Counter-Strike at an average of 10 FPS with a Diamond Monster 3D Voodoo 1 addon card with a Matrox Mystique on a Celeron 266MHz with probably less than 128MB RAM. I got real familiar with the necessary console command tweaks to lower the game settings even lower than they allowed by default. That is, until they started forcing a certain set of settings online to prevent cheating. Good times. It literally wasn't until a few years ago that I could actually afford to get something that could play modern games at mid to high range settings. Before that I was always below the line, compromising quality for bare minimum playability.

It's so nice to go back to these old games and see them load instantly with framerate in the hundreds.

[Radar]

Cathy, on 29 May 2013 - 07:21 PM, said:

These forums should have higher system requirements so that the likes of Radar wouldn't be able to write. Can we add lots of flash here?

Nooo. The "What are you listening to?" thread is already off limits for me.

[Kathy]

How much posts do you have per page?

[Radar]

I had 29 on the last page. I use Google Chrome, which is extremely optimized. Mozilla and Internet Explorer lag like heck on this computer.

Btw, I just checked my system to verify if my specs were accurate. My computer actually has a 1.5 GHz single-core instead of 1.8 GHz. My bad.

[Kathy]

You can decrease posts per page to 20.

Me, having a good PC, can go to ultra settings with 50 posts per page.

[leilei]

MusicallyInspired, on 29 May 2013 - 07:36 PM, said:

I used to have to get away with minimal settings. Back in 1999 I was running Counter-Strike at an average of 10 FPS with a Diamond Monster 3D Voodoo 1 addon card with a Matrox Mystique on a Celeron 266MHz with probably less than 128MB RAM

I blame the Celeron for stinking the experience for that one. A PowerVR PCX2 (less than a Voodoo1 in many cases) in a "proper" Pentium II actually is playable even with the smoke detail. The slowness of Half-Life had a lot to do with texture switching (which the PCX2 can tolerate fine through the tiled approach), colored dynamic lighting updates (pushing 24-bit lightmap texture processing and uploading per tic) and skeletal rendering.

Radar, on 30 May 2013 - 10:40 AM, said:

I use Google Chrome, which is extremely optimized

I'm gonna have to call bullshit on this one as Chrome needs multiple cores for it to work well. For an old early generation Pentium IV single core system like that you'll need either Opera or an older Seamonkey (like 1.1.x) for an "optimized" browser experience. Using Flash is pretty much futile at this point.

[Radar]

I just changed it to 50 posts per page. Runs like butter. Does that mean I have a good PC too?

I'm really considering grabbing a copy of Doom 3, Farcry, and Half-Life 2 and showing the world that they work on my 11-year-old supercomputer.

leilei, on 30 May 2013 - 11:50 AM, said:

I'm gonna have to call bullshit on this one as Chrome needs multiple cores for it to work well. For an old early generation Pentium IV single core system like that you'll need either Opera or an older Seamonkey (like 1.1.x) for an "optimized" browser experience. Using Flash is pretty much futile at this point.

Well, I dunno then. What do you want me to say? Somehow, things work.

[leilei]

Doom3 and Farcry will run because it has a legacy path in the renderer. I don't know what you're trying to prove. Some sort of retro rig "pissing contest"?

You can forget Half-Life 2 since it had an 'orange box' engine update which deprecated its DX7 rendering path for visual consistency with the HL2 Episode series.

[Radar]

Then I'll get the non-'orange box' version. Great! I'll be picking them up soon now that I know they have things in place to support my computer half-decently.

[leilei]

You can't get that version at all. The way Half-Life 2 is distributed is exclusively through Steam which will always only provide the latest version.

[Radar]

Lol you think that'll stop me? I'm running a stone-age computer like it's an i7. I do what I want. I'll get it from somewhere...

[leilei]

"A man's got to know his limitations" - Harry Callahan

I haven't been "stuck" on DX7 hardware like the GF4MX since 2003. That was 10 years ago and shader model 2.0 was already rolling out to the masses. Hardware was advancing so fast, even being on hardware just one year old was considered as "living under a rock".

and if this is about "haha my pc so old it is the best" then you should give up. Some of us that build retro PCs enjoy it as a guilty pleasure, getting around old finicky game compatibility issues, and for the curiosity of hardware quirks (such as what happens when a Matrox pre-G200 card meets an Unreal engine game).

This does not appear to be one of those situations, and looks more like "haha i'm cool bcuz im living on grandpas handmedown oem PC", and thanks a lot for shitting up the ROTT thread with that. Please consider a new PC so you can play ROTT 2013 and not whine "requires shader model 3 what the fuck does that mean!"*.


* - UnrealEngine3/UDK generally requires a DX9 card w/ SM3 (with UT3 and RoboBlitz being exceptions), though I don't know if ROTT bumped that up to some DX10 path

[MusicallyInspired]

Sometimes I go through nostalgia stints and lower all my graphics settings to the lowest possible settings and even force a maximum fps for the experience. Was interesting getting HL2 to work on my wife's 1Ghz netbook. Its just a fun project sometimes.

[Ronin]

Get a room you guys.

I keep checking this thread to see if there's any single player footage, instead it's just a bunch of people boasting about how shit their computers are.

[----]

Ronan, on 30 May 2013 - 12:42 PM, said:

Get a room you guys.

I keep checking this thread to see if there's any single player footage, instead it's just a bunch of people boasting about how shit their computers are.

This. I was about to write that 20 minutes ago but refrained from it since I was in a bad mood (grumpy after waking up) and then had downvoted every "I am so great coz I have the crappiest PC" post and it's replies.

I'd say, make a dedicated a thread for it where you lot can masturbate over your ultra-low-spec-PCs.



So, back on Topic, Box-Art:
http://www.vg247.com...e-trad-box-art/

[Komenja]

So....

How 'bout that box art?

[Radar]

Darn it guys. My computer just broke and now I need to revert to my old Windows ME with a 900 MHz processor (only other half-decent computer in my house). Given my skillz-that-killz in application optimization, I'm sure I'll be kicking the crap out of Ivy Bridge setups with a few tweaks. Crysis 3 at 60 fps, here I come.

EDIT: Ok ok, I did it because I thought it was funny. I'm done now, and in the meantime I'll go get a new sense of humor.