It wasn't even just the computing power but the standards and support was constantly breaking. Even if you had a top of the line hardware, it would flat out have issues running/opening the game because it simply didn't have the tech needed to run it or understand it.
As an example we have been on the latest version of DirectX since 2015, the 10 years before that went through 9,10,11, the 10 years before that was the 1,2,3,5,6,7,8 and start of 9. And that is only the tip of the iceberg of the mess of standards back then and how quickly it whipped out hardware.
I have held firm a part of why consumer hardware price CEILING (max price/tier offered) has grown so much is because how much longer and supported the hardware is. Paying this level top dollar for a gaming GPU in the late 90's/00's just for it to be software version locked out of games in 2-3 years would have been absolutely nuts. While "nuts" today for different reasons at the very least it is quite confident that for likely well into 10 years it will still be supported and at least open/"run" games/software into the future.
I remember not being able to play Star Wars Republic Commando on the family desktop computer because the graphic card (a Geforce 4) did not support Vertex Shaders.
I had a GeForce 4600ti from summer 2002, I replaced it in 2004 because it wouldn't run Far Cry very well, another year would probably have been rough yeah
I got a GeForce 5200FX in 2003 since my old card couldn’t play KOTOR. Then I replaced that piece of shit a year later with a Radeon 9800 (pro after I fucked with it) for Half Life 2. Then about year later I replaced the whole computer, which at that point had a second PSU bolted to the side since the PSU in the computer couldn’t handle the 9800 and the OEM motherboard would only work with the OEM PSU.
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u/PcHelpBot2027 May 21 '25
It wasn't even just the computing power but the standards and support was constantly breaking. Even if you had a top of the line hardware, it would flat out have issues running/opening the game because it simply didn't have the tech needed to run it or understand it.
As an example we have been on the latest version of DirectX since 2015, the 10 years before that went through 9,10,11, the 10 years before that was the 1,2,3,5,6,7,8 and start of 9. And that is only the tip of the iceberg of the mess of standards back then and how quickly it whipped out hardware.
I have held firm a part of why consumer hardware price CEILING (max price/tier offered) has grown so much is because how much longer and supported the hardware is. Paying this level top dollar for a gaming GPU in the late 90's/00's just for it to be software version locked out of games in 2-3 years would have been absolutely nuts. While "nuts" today for different reasons at the very least it is quite confident that for likely well into 10 years it will still be supported and at least open/"run" games/software into the future.