swaaye wrote:

cdoublejj wrote:

Thanks for the info so then after 2000 pc performance skyrocketed as far as advancement rates at least in the past 8 or 9 nines years. At least it seems that to me.

Not at much of a different rate than previously. The '90s were much more exciting than this decade IMO. We went from 486 with VGA/EGA and very limited audio to a 1GHz P3/Athlon with 3D acceleration and CD-quality audio. If anything, tangible progress has slowed a lot.

If anything, the 90's were definitely more exciting then the 00's regarding hardware.
After the 90's it was all about AMD or Intel, ATI or NVidia, Creative or onboard...
Yes we had a few sidesteps like the Kyro and that soundstorm, but nothing like the jungle we had in the 90's.
Sure it was terrible then 🤣, what would you have to buy? And where would you get the right information from? Internet wasn't as common as it was now.

Back then we had AMD, Intel, Cyrix, Winchip, Rise, VIA, Overdrives and upgrade chips, ...
We had ofcourse ATI and NVidia, S3, Matrox, 3DFX, Rendition, Tseng Labs, ...
Now we all have USB and DVD-R.
Back then we had ZIP's, Superdisks, The floppy, a couple more floppies and of course CDR and CDRW and a whoole bunch of other obscure portable media.

I totally relied on magazines!

For me it was German like Powerplay, PC Player or Gamestar. Heck I didn't have Internet, so the CD's that came with PC Player was the only source for driver updates!

I remember getting a new CD driver and regular driver updates for the 3DFX Voodoo that way. I followed their advice very closely and they usually recommended you purchases the "de facto standard" stuff like Creative Sound Blaster instead of other alternatives or an S3 Trio PCI card or a 3DFX Voodoo.

And to be hones they where never wrong. Especially until 3DFX came along they advised against getting anything with 3D. But 3DFX changed all that and I got one as soon as it was released. My jaw dropped when I applied the 3DFX patch for Tomb Raider...

leileilol wrote:

Yeah, same. A Voodoo2 sorts it all out until 2002 which by then even a Geforce2MX will keep you on until 2005.

It is interesting to ponder how much hardware you should have avoided. 😁

Yup stick with a Voodoo2 until Radeon 9700 or so! Hindsight is fun!

Good work swaaye! Love looking at old articles. I either learn something new or a nice refresh for my memory.

Agreed those where the good old days for hardware/software, my teen years which had tons more time to play with equipment. I never had a Pentium2 machine back then. Used K6-2 after my Pentium 166mmx. As others it was OK but was alot happier once I moved to a ABIT BE6-II with a celeron 366@550 until it blew up! Then moved onto K7 750 which rocked till it died (bad caps), then to a Pentium 3 Tualatin that served me well while in college. Things weren't quite as reliable back in the day now that I remember as well 😉

I couldn't be pressed to make a pure late 90's system as I want flexibility over all, from all the dos games I played then to even the last released w98se supporting games if need be so my systems are a mixed 1998-2002 equipment. Sure love reminiscing about it all and one day may even dare into way older DOS games other than Wolfenstein3D/Doom/Carmageddon...

Bump!

Great stuff, although the CGW is available issue #1 through Nov. 96 currently, but is missing the great Oct. 93 issue which did Sound Card Survey and a Game Survey. Available at CGW Museum (LucusMuseum).

But its always good to have alternative information sources as sometimes they disappear from the net which is brutal.

Is he ripping the sampler CDs too?

textfiles is starting to put some of those up, but they're mostly the later ones.

I'm sure CGW Museum will eventually have every issue up. He posted that he's missing a few but I am sure they will show up.

I don't think he's doing CDs though. Not at this time anyway.

I really liked the old days because you had so many companies doing so many different things and there weren't as many established standards. Competition breeds innovation. Now you only have one or two companies dominating each market segment but back then you had a lot more and it was better for buyers of computers and parts. When you only have one or two companies they slack off on the innovation and settle for just making a product slightly better than the competitors existing product. They stick to standards and don't take chances by developing anything dramatically different from what the other guy is selling.

While the old days where fascinating, it was also a time of confusion, misleading advertisement, ton of incompatibilities and this sense of not knowing which technology to put your money on...

Looking back it was amazing at what kind of junk shops would try to sell you. My favourite word back in the day was "100% compatible".

I never bought into that, and just bought whatever held the de-facto standard.

Awesome information shared thanks

Well, the choices back then were VAST, very very... however Falcon [with Micron Computers coming very close in performance] seemed to have made some of the very best systems though, they were the "Alienware" of that era it seems. Falcon used top of the line parts instead of cheap crap, you really got what you paid for... VERY expensive systems but streamlined performance.

Back in those days, when it was 486 and Pentium the choice was pretty simple though; if you wanted to play "true" 3D gaming Quake, etc then you needed a Pentium, no question about that. However if you were happy with Duke Nukem 3D, Doom style engines, etc then the 486 DX systems were perfect [especially if the 486 PC you bought utilized the Turbo button, then you could play just about any DOS game! I miss that damn Turbo button on my "classic" Pentium PC... instead I have to go into BIOS and manually disable the caches... ugh!].