/vr/ - Retro Games

>>10928484
It was essentially my Windows 2000 time. It was what I had to deal with. The Tualatin was very efficient and the P4 era was dominated by Intel due to the very high clock speeds that AMD just couldn't reach. ATi was fine since they had the all-in-1 solution if you wanted connectivity to standard broadcast TV, but for computing, aside from the 5 generation of nVidia which was the FX line, they moved on quickly to the 6 series and immediately overtook any ATi offering. Being stuck with the cheaper options, I will admit it was nice to get marginal improvements with driver updates, but it was taxing on the one contracted person jumping between AMD and ATi to program the drivers across both companies stack of products. To this day, AMD drivers are notorious for crashing systems with instability, a friend had to learn the hard way with Dragon's Dogma 2 and spent the extra on nVidia becoming much happier. Tessellation is pretty much a standard implementation these days, with enough information from normal maps. AMD seems to cook the numbers for benchmarks, but in practical use it is an extremely unhealthy diet disproportionally affecting impoverished communities.

>>10078761
I fondly remember my PC of 2001. Even with a great PC, I still got the Dreamcast because I loved the Saturn and the Gamecube held me through quitting video games with cheap under $5USD loose GBA games. I would like to rebuild it at some point because it was so great in some ways. I only vaguely remember the parts, since I still have some of the original driver CDs, but corrections are welcome:


It was some AMD Athlon because it was the poverty option and they couldn't keep up with the clocks Intel was achieving so they used names like "1600+" or "2400+" of which could have been the processor. The motherboard was an ASUS A7M266 or A7N266. RAM somewhere between 512MB and 2GB. It originally had a Hercules 3D Prophet III, but later it was some BFG 6800 GT. It sported a Sound Blaster Live! (Platinum?, it came with the front bay, DeusEx, UT1999, MDK2, and one other game). A friend loaned me Windows 2000 Pro which I maintained was better than XP for as long as I could, skipping past 98 and ME headaches. Now here is where the build went off the rails: I went SCSI using an Adaptec 29160. That was for the Plextor CD-ROM (40X) and Plextor CD-RW (I think 16/12/12). The C: drive was some tiny Seagate 10000 RPM model.

DVDs were way to expensive then. I distinctly remember the small Segate, because it was fast but the lack of space meant the MAME set I had did not have the .CHD games. I remember the GBA set I was getting back then numbered the releases in order when they came out in packs of 10 to the day. The SCSI drives were primarily for supporting the Dreamcast, sharing free games for the system with others in hopes it would be a success. Eventually I had to add ATA drives for storage, and cable management plus airflow was atrocious due to going SCSI. The PC complimented the consoles of the day for me.

>>9537774
I am out of touch not by choice. I'm not done with PCs, they have just priced me out. I really enjoyed PC gaming, but even the generic poverty AMD option expects a certain level of income. I hope to win the Megamillions to partake in the fun again.

>>7938005
The Thermaltake cooler you have there looks like a Volcano 7 which I had in those days, which I am trying to recreate with my Win2k machine. In building your own computers, they tend to reflect the person a bit which is what makes them so interesting. I get you're going with period correct, and that period did have a lot of great games to play.

>>7938824
Pretty close, but you do have a nice ISA slot for that classic SoundBlaster audio that I love. I'm not going to make suggestions, as that's for you to decide what is the best for your situation. Maybe consider, as I am at the moment, to make dueling P3s, as that time period was great for networked RTS and FPS games.

>>7897327
I remember still being on Windows 2000 Pro at the time around the early 2000s. Since I was poor, I had to go with the poverty AMD option. Athlon XP 2600+ (Thoroughbred), GeForce 3 (loved the blue Hercules card), Asus A7N266, 1GB RAM, SoundBlaster Live!, Adaptec 29160 SCSI card for 10000rpm C: drive and Plextor CD-ROM/RW drives. Eventually upgraded the GeForce 3 to a 6800 (non-Ultra) because it was a great deal when someone didn't know how to install an aftermarket cooler for it.

It was real good computer for me but eventually I did change over to different hardware in a whole new build for a Win XP32 machine.

If you are talking about the late 90s, I was still on a 486 DX4-100 and often visited cousins with a Pentium-75 or K6-III.

>>7824230
>no SCSI
I had SCSI in my Windows 2000 system. It was for a 10000rpm Segate HDD which was used for the OS drive at the time. The many cables inside the machine really affected the airflow so in remaking the system here I opt to just go with the limits of IDE.

>Why not just go with Athlon and a board with ISA at this point?
My Windows 2000 machine, was an Athlon XP. That's the processor. The previous image was for Windows 98SE. Even back then, the Athlon board I had did not have ISA slot.

>>7824379
There is no memory in the AWE because I have not decided which board and sound card to use in the 98 build. The left motherboard has an ISA slot while the right one does not. The left can only handle 1.2Ghz processor while the right can handle the 1.4Ghz processor. The AWE is an ISA card, but maybe the Pro is a better choice if going with ISA for DOS from 98.

>>7702026
I remember that Intel was always faster and had higher clock speeds. The Athlon XP I had was just simply cheaper and supposedly more efficient per clock, but that didn't matter to anyone so AMD started giving fake names like "3000+" and "3200+" to pretend like it was almost at Pentium 4 specs when it was really running at 1/2 to 2/3 the speed of the P4 matching the fake name. Websites like Anandtech and Tom's recommended the P4 over the Athlons all the time. I loved using my Athlon XP, but AMD is just what people put up with when the alternative is so costly.

>>7482326
I am jealous. I am trying to recreate my 3rd computer which had Windows 2000. It was given to me from a friend and I skipped over 98 and Me because it worked so well. Of course being stuck in poverty, Intel was always out of the question, so I had went AMD until 2012. I too tried out SCSI at the time and having 10k rpm HDDs were very cool but the cost was not worth it in the end.

Granted my recreation is using a different mobo, but same nforce2 chipset. I think it used to be Asus A7?266 but I think this is cooler looking in purple. A 2.2Ghz AMD and I got a neat Aerocool heatsink to go with it. The video card used to be a Hercules GeForce3, and I loved its blue board/heatsinks (eventually upped to a 6800), but I threw it out so this X1950 should work since it still has win2k drivers. I am still trying to figure out what kind of RAM would work on this. Good times playing the early Illusion games and Ragnarok Online.

>>7181621
Their Yamaha emulated sounds are a lot harsher, but they pretty much are there for the unique A3D sounds. Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament were some of my most favorite games to play on the system, and since I always had SoundBlaster cards, I was curious to the option I was unable to enable in those games. You have good eyes, they are Pentium 3s to go with the motherboards, the one on the left only accepts up to 1.2Ghz the right can take the 1.4Ghz. I haven't decided which amongst all those parts would be best for a J-Win98SE machine.

>>7182590
I only remember it was Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix in those days for RAM. I believe they still exist to this day.

>>7182607
As with all hardware back then, there are pros and cons to choosing one over the other. The Voodoo card doesn't use AGP functions but can use that slot just fine. The Tseng is great for its 2D, but it will give issues with Commander Keen so maybe the Cirrus Logic would be better but slower all around.

What is the smallest and most beautiful case available for ATX (mobo and power supply), full height cards, and a 5.25in drive?

>>6585484
I skipped over 98 when I went from 95 to 2000, but I do want to build a J-Win98 SE machine to recapture the time with some Japanese games I played back then. Visiting friends who had 98 machines we'd have LAN gaming fun with games that really took advantage of the platform like RPGs (Diablo/Bioware), RTS (Total Annihilation/Blizzard/Microsoft/Red Alert), and FPS games (Q3/UT/AVP2/Tribes) which controlled best to me using mouse+keyboard. At that time I learned Intel/nVidia were the ideal systems to build around but their unaffordable premiums forces me to make due with the poverty AMD/ATI options with their multitude of issues. While AMD/ATI will never be as good, I still like them for nostalgic reasons.