First game you had to upgrade to play? What did you buy?

FancyTurtle

Member
Oct 7, 2011
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I remember clearly needing to buy a new video card so that I could play quake II; I purchased a voodoo card.

What game did you first have to upgrade to play and what did you buy to make the damned thing run?
 

Kabob

Lifer
Sep 5, 2004
15,248
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Starcraft 2, I built a new computer for it although really it was in preparation for Diablo 3.
 

Modular

Diamond Member
Jul 1, 2005
5,027
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91
FarCry. My fx5200 was brought to it's knees by that (and pretty much any other game). I picked up a 6600gt and man, it was amazing.

Then it was Crysis. I picked up a 4850 for that game. Totally worth it!
 

UberNeuman

Lifer
Nov 4, 1999
16,937
3,087
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It was a Rendition card so I could play one of the earlier accelerated versions of Ouake and Shadows of the Empire, this was a bit before I could get one of the Voodoo series....
 

Maximilian

Lifer
Feb 8, 2004
12,604
15
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GTA Vice city, my FX5200 that came with the comp didn't cut it. It came with an A64 3200+ right after release, 2nd most powerful processor on the market behind the FX51 and they bundle it with that pile of suck FX5200 :(

Got a 9800 PRO and everything got much better :thumbsup:
 

Ackmed

Diamond Member
Oct 1, 2003
8,498
560
126
From 16mb ram to 32mb for Unreal. With 16 it bogged down so badly when I stepped outta the ship for the first time. Either that or a Voodoo for Motoracer/JK I forget.
 

zokudu

Diamond Member
Nov 11, 2009
4,364
1
81
My first pc game was oblivion and it wouldn't run on my 3 year old junker at the time. So I built the pc in my sig :D
 

JamesV

Platinum Member
Jul 9, 2011
2,002
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Heh, the same game I mentioned in the nostalgia thread. Darklands.

It required 4MB of memory, and I only had 1MB. My buddy wanted to play as badly as I did, so we found a place an hour away that would let us pick up the memory. What we didn't know was that going 2 miles in that area during rush hour could take 30 minutes and we were running out time... but my buddy had a Jeep with huge oversized tires for 'mudding' as he calls it. Drove up onto the grass median and basically hacked ourselves a new route!
 

Karstein

Senior member
Mar 31, 2011
392
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I didn't HAVE to upgrade, but I had a Matrox Millennium G200 (8Mb) which could only run Half-Life in software mode (640x480) at a maximum of 20fps. Bought a 32Mb TNT2 which bumped it up to a mind-boggling 60-70 in OpenGL.
 
Oct 30, 2004
11,442
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Arguably, years ago, the reason I bought a new rig (a mighty PIII 533 Mhz) back in 2001 was so that I could play the original Unreal Tournament (UT99).
 

Via

Diamond Member
Jan 14, 2009
4,670
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I'm pretty sure Half Life is the reason I finally bought a voodoo 3 3000.

IIRC I was getting ready to buy it at Babbage's when the clerk told me not to bother without a 3d accelerator.
 
Sep 23, 2011
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Normal computer buying progression aside (vic 20, commodore 64, etc), I built a 2nd computer in 1995 so I could dual box The Realm Online (MMO). Sadly, this was the start of a very bad obsession. :D
 

Dman8777

Senior member
Mar 28, 2011
426
8
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I bought a voodoo II so I could play Xwing Alliance, my first 3D game that required dedicated acceleration.
 

PrayForDeath

Diamond Member
Apr 12, 2004
3,478
1
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GTA Vice city, my FX5200 that came with the comp didn't cut it. It came with an A64 3200+ right after release, 2nd most powerful processor on the market behind the FX51 and they bundle it with that pile of suck FX5200 :(

Got a 9800 PRO and everything got much better :thumbsup:

Man I fukin hated the FX5200 (as well as the Geforce 4 MX440). I didn't have one, but many of my friends did. It was horribly slow, yet still ubiquitous for some reason. Very frustrating.

The first serious upgrade I bought was a 9800 SE which I unlocked into a 9800 Pro ():) It ran Farcry 2, HL2, and Doom 3 like a champ :thumbsup:

My brother bought everything before that (RivaTNT and Voodoo etc...)

p.s: what was the name of the proprietary technology that UT99 used which only worked on certain video cards? My brother used to boast about having it enabled on his video card (forgot which one), and he would constantly point out how the "Earth" in CTF Facingworlds looked very spherical and realistic or w/e.
 
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Elcs

Diamond Member
Apr 27, 2002
6,278
6
81
I never upgraded specifically for a game.

I did however purchase new core parts not long before Hellgate: London was released. In fact, until next week I'll still be using the same motherboard, ram and cpu that I purchased back then. Until quite recently, my dad was using the 8800GT that I bought along with my CPU/Motherboard/RAM at that time.
 

Arg Clin

Senior member
Oct 24, 2010
416
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First game specific driven upgrade; probably would be the GeForce256 for Unreal.