douglar wrote on 2023-11-29, 00:52:

The crazy thing about these rigs to me wasn’t so much their high cost, but how much faster they were than the system you might have owned at the time when they came out and how quickly they became too slow to play the latest games.

Yup... and that continued until, basically, the rise of the C2Q/C2Q in 2006 and following.

Before then, you replaced your 4 year old computer and you got like 3-4X the performance and 3-10X the RAM. Not to mention HUUUUUUGE increases in storage too. Equally true at the high end, low end, and middle end. And, really, unlike the situation nowadays, there was no low/middle end back then, the middle end was just 18 months earlier's high end and the low end was 3 years earlier's high end. That started to change around 1998 with the launch of Celerons and the like - dedicated low-end stuff with a nearly-full complement of modern interfaces. And you started to see things get discontinued rather than moving lower-end, e.g. PIIIs on 440BXes were not sold as low-end systems in 2002, you got a Celeron HotBurst on an SDRAM i845 instead.

Thinking back about it, I understand a lot more why parents and older folks were just 'wait, I just spent $2500 on this thing three years ago and it needs to be replaced again?!?" When you're 12, three years feels like an eternity; when you're 40, three years is like... yesterday.

I’ve been really loving this thread and the resulting list. Great work so far! It’s super handy to see what the best hardware available was for each era, really helps put things into perspective. Loving the results so far!

midicollector wrote on 2023-11-29, 01:39:

I’ve been really loving this thread and the resulting list. Great work so far! It’s super handy to see what the best hardware available was for each era, really helps put things into perspective. Loving the results so far!

Thank you! I've had fun doing the research and putting the list together.

Now I'm in the process of building all of these machines, which is even more fun. 😁 I'm planning to benchmark each build and then see how performance of each system held up year-over-year.

I've currently got the 1994 and 1995 systems built. Currently in the process of building both 1996 rigs (Pentium 200 and PPro 200) and the 1997 rig.

douglar wrote on 2023-11-29, 00:52:

The crazy thing about these rigs to me wasn’t so much their high cost, but how much faster they were than the system you might have owned at the time when they came out and how quickly they became too slow to play the latest games.

Yeah, I'm finding that these systems probably had a shelf-life of only a couple years tops when it came to practical performance.

Doing partial upgrades (e.g. new video card) would help a bit, but performance-wise things moved so fast that they got eclipsed pretty quickly.

VivienM wrote on 2023-11-29, 01:30:

Thinking back about it, I understand a lot more why parents and older folks were just 'wait, I just spent $2500 on this thing three years ago and it needs to be replaced again?!?" When you're 12, three years feels like an eternity; when you're 40, three years is like... yesterday.

Can confirm! 😁

Especially having parents that treated computers as glorified typewriters, trying to explain that it already was obsolete was a real challenge.

VivienM wrote on 2023-11-29, 01:30:

Thinking back about it, I understand a lot more why parents and older folks were just 'wait, I just spent $2500 on this thing three years ago and it needs to be replaced again?!?"

Heh, this happened to me in back in the day.

In 1996, my parents had spent a decent chunk of money on a Pentium 133. Three years later, I barely managed to convince them that it was too slow to run current day software (read: games). Technology moved so fast during that time.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-11-29, 02:47:

VivienM wrote on 2023-11-29, 01:30:

Thinking back about it, I understand a lot more why parents and older folks were just 'wait, I just spent $2500 on this thing three years ago and it needs to be replaced again?!?"

Heh, this happened to me in back in the day.

In 1996, my parents had spent a decent chunk of money on a Pentium 133. Three years later, I barely managed to convince them that it was too slow to run current day software (read: games). Technology moved so fast during that time.

I don't think it's just games - I think even productivity applications would have struggled on a P133 in 1999. If not in 1999, then definitely in 2000. Worth noting - a P133 is the minimum system requirement for Windows 2000, and... knowing that the minimum on any Microsoft OS in that era was less than half of what you needed for half-acceptable performance... ouch. Microsoft's recommended minimum for Windows 2000 is a PII 300, which was released only 2.5 years before Windows 2000.

It's hard to imagine in a world where I can take a 2008-era C2Q and it screams running this month's Microsoft 365 that, once upon a time, businesses replaced their computers every four years... to keep up with Microsoft Office. There used to be a world where I had to put more RAM in April 1995 to run Office 4.2 (released in spring 1994) on a computer purchased in January 1995 with 4MB of RAM...

If anything, I think games were less bad back then. Productivity applications could require businesses to upgrade every 3-4 years, but if you limit the market for a game to people whose parents bought a top of the line machine in the last two years, that's... not great for your revenue.

VivienM wrote on 2023-11-29, 03:23:

If anything, I think games were less bad back then. Productivity applications could require businesses to upgrade every 3-4 years, but if you limit the market for a game to people whose parents bought a top of the line machine in the last two years, that's... not great for your revenue.

In my case, the lack of a 3D accelerator on that Pentium 133 limited my gaming options quite a bit. It could (barely) run 2D games from 1999 like Heroes of Might and Magic 3, but trying something 3D like Unreal in software mode was painfully bad.

I suppose I could have put a Voodoo 3 in there and gotten some more mileage out of that system, but as you say, the CPU was starting to feel slow with productivity software as well.

You went from about 100mhz in 95 to about 1000mhz in 2000. Roughly a 10x increase in speed in only 5 years. And that’s not even mentioning going from before the voodoo 1 to a GeForce. All in 5 years.

midicollector wrote on 2023-11-29, 03:39:

You went from about 100mhz in 95 to about 1000mhz in 2000. Roughly a 10x increase in speed in only 5 years. And that’s not even mentioning going from before the voodoo 1 to a GeForce. All in 5 years.

Even going from early 3D accelerators (e.g. Matrox Millennium, NV1, S3 Virge) to the original Voodoo was a huge leap. And that was within a year or so.

Internet speeded up obsolescence too.
Needing to have an updated browser, updated system antivirus etc added a lot of overhead compared to a system strictly kept offline.
My grandfather used a typewriter during most of his life and we installed him a computer in mid 2000. It was our old Pentium2 but was totally sufficient to run OpenOffice 1 with a printer strictly offline. (Except that my grandfather could not get used to saving files. Just using the computer like a typewriter: type, print, power off)

@Shponglefan : if you want to crowdsourcr the benchmarking, feel free to ask as I already have the 99 system (P3 700@933 on BX board. GeForce DDR. Vortex 2 (Turtle Beach instead of MX300)). Surprisingly the system can run HL2 low details with playable frame rate. So was not obsolete immediately.

VivienM wrote on 2023-11-29, 03:23:

It's hard to imagine in a world where I can take a 2008-era C2Q and it screams running this month's Microsoft 365 that, once upon a time, businesses replaced their computers every four years... to keep up with Microsoft Office. There used to be a world where I had to put more RAM in April 1995 to run Office 4.2 (released in spring 1994) on a computer purchased in January 1995 with 4MB of RAM...

Once upon a time? Every 4 years? I have to replace my laptop and all servers every 3 years at work. The strange thing is that its not about performance anymore. Mostly, I think the policy is there because they don't want some old forgotten "one-off" computer in the corner driving the business running Windows XP w/ long forgotten service accounts. Rebuilding the servers every 3 years forces the current staff to know how to build the servers. It also forces all of the build variances rechecked. It also insures the latest drivers & firmware & ESXi & secure boot stuff. Finally, I think our personal laptops are leased hardware, so that's also built in obsolescence there too. Not looking forward to the paper work required to get my 3rd party Visual studio plugins reinstalled next year.

As for performance, it's a sad story. Once you get Tanium Endpoint management installed, doesn't matter how fast your computer was, it's now slow. It all makes sense considering that it's not uncommon for us to get targeted by advanced persistent threats, but in practice it's maddening. And every rebuild seems slower because the VM hosts are more overprovisioned, the storage is more abstract & encrypted, there more threat management software, etc. The days of predicable performance from physical hardware, directly attached storage, and a clean from disk install seem like a distant memory. I have not built one of those 10 years and those 10 year old servers would wipe the floor with the locked down, viscous VM's I get to use today. *sob *

Sorry to derail the discussion.

@Shponglefan I hope you are looking for period correct cases for each of those builds.

acl wrote on 2023-11-29, 07:35:

Internet speeded up obsolescence too. Needing to have an updated browser, updated system antivirus etc added a lot of overhead c […]
Show full quote

Internet speeded up obsolescence too.
Needing to have an updated browser, updated system antivirus etc added a lot of overhead compared to a system strictly kept offline.
My grandfather used a typewriter during most of his life and we installed him a computer in mid 2000. It was our old Pentium2 but was totally sufficient to run OpenOffice 1 with a printer strictly offline. (Except that my grandfather could not get used to saving files. Just using the computer like a typewriter: type, print, power off)

@Shponglefan : if you want to crowdsourcr the benchmarking, feel free to ask as I already have the 99 system (P3 700@933 on BX board. GeForce DDR. Vortex 2 (Turtle Beach instead of MX300)). Surprisingly the system can run HL2 low details with playable frame rate. So was not obsolete immediately.

To be fair bloatware like Chrome continues the web driven hardware obsolescence trend to this day..

douglar wrote on 2023-11-29, 13:08:

@Shponglefan I hope you are looking for period correct cases for each of those builds.

For sure, I am trying to keep these looking period correct.

I have a collection of 1990s beige box cases with specific cases picked out for these builds. I don't know if they match the exact year for each build, but they should be close enough.

acl wrote on 2023-11-29, 07:35:

@Shponglefan : if you want to crowdsourcr the benchmarking, feel free to ask as I already have the 99 system (P3 700@933 on BX board. GeForce DDR. Vortex 2 (Turtle Beach instead of MX300)). Surprisingly the system can run HL2 low details with playable frame rate. So was not obsolete immediately.

Thank you, it would be nice to get benchmarks from folks that have builds already built. I'd be curious to see any differences between systems, since I imagine things like different motherboard, RAM timings, etc., would play a role.

douglar wrote on 2023-11-29, 13:08:

VivienM wrote on 2023-11-29, 03:23:

It's hard to imagine in a world where I can take a 2008-era C2Q and it screams running this month's Microsoft 365 that, once upon a time, businesses replaced their computers every four years... to keep up with Microsoft Office. There used to be a world where I had to put more RAM in April 1995 to run Office 4.2 (released in spring 1994) on a computer purchased in January 1995 with 4MB of RAM...

Once upon a time? Every 4 years? I have to replace my laptop and all servers every 3 years at work. The strange thing is that its not about performance anymore. Mostly, I think the policy is there because they don't want some old forgotten "one-off" computer in the corner driving the business running Windows XP w/ long forgotten service accounts. Rebuilding the servers every 3 years forces the current staff to know how to build the servers. It also forces all of the build variances rechecked. It also insures the latest drivers & firmware & ESXi & secure boot stuff. Finally, I think our personal laptops are leased hardware, so that's also built in obsolescence there too. Not looking forward to the paper work required to get my 3rd party Visual studio plugins reinstalled next year.

It's probably also warranty/support. Out of warranty hardware support for your typical businessy laptop, say, is annoying to get. e.g. with Lenovo, you can't just call up phone support, give them a credit card number, and they'll send a technician out like they would if you were under warranty. Oh no - if you're outside warranty/support contract, then you need to send the laptop to an independent Lenovo certified service provider, deal with them, etc. Then you have to add the battery issues - with built-in batteries, ouch, your options for getting these replaced on a large businessy scale are not great unless you got the specific battery service contract up front (and presumably your legal department doesn't really want Joe Schmoe hired last week installing aftermarket knock-off batteries from eBay). At some point it just becomes easier to standardize on a 3-4 year term, buy the fanciest support contract available for that term, lease the machines (which also makes your accounting department happy) and call it a day.

But my point remains - you're not doing this to keep up with Microsoft Office. You're not doing it because the machines' performance is improving, and you want the improved performance in 4 years. You're doing it for the same reason that, say, a police department replaces their fleet of police cars with potentially-nearly-identical new ones every X years/kms.

VivienM wrote on 2023-11-29, 03:23:

I don't think it's just games - I think even productivity applications would have struggled on a P133 in 1999. If not in 1999, then definitely in 2000. Worth noting - a P133 is the minimum system requirement for Windows 2000, and... knowing that the minimum on any Microsoft OS in that era was less than half of what you needed for half-acceptable performance... ouch. Microsoft's recommended minimum for Windows 2000 is a PII 300, which was released only 2.5 years before Windows 2000.

As far as MS Office went, the Office 97 release ran fairly well on a 486 with 20MB of RAM, better on 32+, but we had it on 486dx4-75 laptop and P133 into 2000. The web bloat was fairly low until 2000ish too due to home users and small businesses being mostly stuck with diallup, so everything was kept fairly light until DSL and cable internet made significant penetration beyond early adopters. So you could get around on the web pretty well on a 16Mb faster 486 until a year or so into the millenium... then things bloated up fast. Not only because of broadband availability, but because everything got a lot more graphical as cheaper digital cameras got around. By 2001 a P200/32MB was "sorta okay" for minimum then that rapidly became 500mhz/64 (on 98, needed 256+ on XP) then 1Ghz/512 by 2007.

May I suggest Pro Audio Spectrum 16 as an alternative for 1993 builds? It is better quality card than any early SB16 and in 1993 it is yet unknown how those cards will be supported. So in 1993 the PAS16 would have been an excellent alternative for Creative cards. Plus it gives more variety between all of those builds.

Modified the builds for 1992 and 1993 to boost the RAM to 8MB and 16MB respectively.

For the 1993 specs, this is based on the December 1993 CGW Ultimate Gaming Rig showdown, with a pair of 486 DX2-66 systems from Gateway and Falcon. The Gateway system boasted 16MB of RAM, so there were systems being sold with that much RAM at the time. Probably not entirely useful for gaming until 1994's Under a Killing Moon released, but it was a spec at the time.

I also bumped the 1992 build to 8MB based on Links 386 Pro, released in 1992. It had the capability of using up to 8MB of RAM and even listed that in its recommended requirements.

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-12-17, 19:04:

Modified the builds for 1992 and 1993 to boost the RAM to 8MB and 16MB respectively.

One thing you may want to look into: I believe there was an earthquake or something in 1994 that significantly, significantly affected RAM prices for a significant while. I suppose that wouldn't affect the 'ultimate' rigs per se, but it wouldn't surprise me if average RAM quantity stagnated or actually went down for a year or two as a result.

The other observation I will make is that 16MB in 1993... makes you able to run Windows NT 3.1. Wow.