How low can you o with system specs?

[oddech_wymarlych_swiatow]

Imagine if you had to limit yourself to as weak hardware as possible for decent amount of time (like - year or two, maybe moar) but there's is one condition - you need to have fun with and not forced yourself to play things you don't enjoy. I'ts only for gaming machine, you can keep your fancy OP PC for anything else. What will be your borderline?

At first, I was thinking about some overkill Win'98 PC but reconsidered. I really need that kind of hardware that offers few crucial titles with unlimited replayability (subjective merit!) so I''l go with high-end line of 386DX / 8 MB RAM which allows to run with decent speed Doom 1/2 (Icon o Sin excluded but it's a shitty level anyway) and first two Mortal Kombat. Then, there will be no excuse for not playing long-ass old RPG's like Ulitma (up to 8th) an Goldbox stuff anymore. Plus, such machine should be able to run some low-level Gameboy (NO$GB!) and propably some Spectrum stuff. Oh, and Colonization.

Weak 386, 286 and below will be unacceptable, I like WOLF3D but I'm getting bored with pre-Doom FPP shooters very fast.

Share your thoughs and If you wanne to keep your fancy juggernaut for modern popamole it's ok.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Commodore Amiga with RAM expanded to 1MB in order to play Dungeon Master, Sim City, et cetera.

 

[Wyatt_Derp]

Pentium 3 or 4/Windows XP, a gig or so of SDRAM, and a decent AGP card. That combo could do early 90s-mid 2000s games pretty well. If I dusted off my 90s build skills and bought a ton of extra IDE/ATA cables, I could probably be happy with a cheap early 2000s DIY PC.

Something like the 98 PIII build LGR did, only with XP and some extra bonuses.



I know some of you will wanna go with Amiga, TRS-80s, or your much beloved XTs, but I need something from the 20th century. I'll need this thing for more than just spread-sheeting or organizing my baseball cards.

 

[Gibson]

Imagine if you had to limit yourself to as weak hardware as possible for decent amount of time (like - year or two, maybe moar) but there's is one condition - you need to have fun with and not forced yourself to play things you don't enjoy. I'ts only for gaming machine, you can keep your fancy OP PC for anything else. What will be your borderline?

I already have that machine - it's an old laptop (costed around 30€) with WinXP as its OS. Games from 1995 up to 2010 work good/perfectly on it.
TBH that is my most played (if not main) gaming machine.

 

[Egosphere]

Imagine if you had to limit yourself to as weak hardware as possible for decent amount of time (like - year or two, maybe moar) but there's is one condition - you need to have fun with and not forced yourself to play things you don't enjoy. I'ts only for gaming machine, you can keep your fancy OP PC for anything else. What will be your borderline?

I already have that machine - it's an old laptop (costed around 30€) with WinXP as its OS. Games from 1995 up to 2010 work good/perfectly on it.
TBH that is my most played (if not main) gaming machine.

2010? Are you sure it's not just 1 or 2 well optimized games?

 

[Gibson]

Imagine if you had to limit yourself to as weak hardware as possible for decent amount of time (like - year or two, maybe moar) but there's is one condition - you need to have fun with and not forced yourself to play things you don't enjoy. I'ts only for gaming machine, you can keep your fancy OP PC for anything else. What will be your borderline?

I already have that machine - it's an old laptop (costed around 30€) with WinXP as its OS. Games from 1995 up to 2010 work good/perfectly on it.
TBH that is my most played (if not main) gaming machine.

2010? Are you sure it's not just 1 or 2 well optimized games?

Dragon Age: Origins and nwn2 on medium settings - that's "good" in my book :D
FPS/racing games would probably suffer a lot more, but I don't play those so it's not an issue for me.

 

[Egosphere]

Imagine if you had to limit yourself to as weak hardware as possible for decent amount of time (like - year or two, maybe moar) but there's is one condition - you need to have fun with and not forced yourself to play things you don't enjoy. I'ts only for gaming machine, you can keep your fancy OP PC for anything else. What will be your borderline?

I already have that machine - it's an old laptop (costed around 30€) with WinXP as its OS. Games from 1995 up to 2010 work good/perfectly on it.
TBH that is my most played (if not main) gaming machine.

2010? Are you sure it's not just 1 or 2 well optimized games?

Dragon Age: Origins and nwn2 on medium settings - that's "good" in my book :D
FPS/racing games would probably suffer a lot more, but I don't play those so it's not an issue for me.

DA:O runs well on old systems. I ran it on an old toshiba laptop without any problems, but games like mass effect 1 and bioshock were a mess, fps wise.

 

[aweigh]

yah i had to use a sony vaio laptop from 2010 for a few months, and i did gaming on it. All it means is you can't play GTA on it or whatever.

 

[oddech_wymarlych_swiatow]

Guyz don't you think that limiting yourself with gaming hardware would improve your overall gaming enjoyment? No choice paralysis, no Steam backlog and instead - a satisfaction of squeezing 200% of your 'underpowered" machine?

What if PC gaming stopped in Windows 95/95/ME era, with no WinXP and common internet access that turned our hobby into casual shit? I think it's just then when PC scene lost its identity.

 

[DalekFlay]

My favorite games are from the Fallout through Thief/Deus Ex years, so I'll say anything than can run Deus Ex at a good framerate. It wouldn't be hard for me to only replay those classics for a year, or to get around to games from around then I never really played, like Anachronox.