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

[bononos]

1st upgrade was a mouse - for Riders of Rohan.
For gfx it was a pci Trident card to replace an ISA card because Xwing/Tiefighter or a Lucasarts shooter was too slow.

 

[Zenoth]

The very first "upgrade" I did on my very first PC was a video card, and I ended up buying the GeForce 4 MX440 SE (yeah, the Sucky Edition), the PCI one of course. I bought that because the first "3D" PC game I ended up buying (before Diablo II) was S.W.A.T. 3, I was told I had to get a graphics card, so yeah. I knew absolutely zero about computers so I just went to my local Future Shop, asked the clerk for a video card around the budget I had (not much, I can't recall how much I had, around $80 I think) and he pretty much just took that box and said that I should go with it, and I did. That was back around summer 2001 if I recall correctly.

I die a little inside every time I think about that.

 

[Gillbot]

Supreme Commander

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

Warcraft II. It kept crashing with 8 megs of ram. My parents bought 4 more megs for the machine for something around 100$.

 

[nenforcer]

I bought a Xitel Storm Platinum Aureal A3D PCI Sound Card back in 1998 so I could listen to the spatial 3D audio in games like Thief:The Dark Project and Deus Ex 1.

 

[Demo24]

I was in the process of building my first AMD 64 machine anyway, but I think the most demanding game it saw shortly after was BF2. I ran that game on 512mb of ram, took FOREVER to load and once you did get in map had to wait a bit more for it to filter in, lol.

 

[IGemini]

Strange as it was, I went from a 14.4 to a 56K modem to play Dark Forces 2 online.

First performance-driven upgrade was going from an X300SE to an X800XL for Source/HL2. Also a first decision made on AT benchmarks. :thumbsup:

 

[Via]

The very first "upgrade" I did on my very first PC was a video card, and I ended up buying the GeForce 4 MX440 SE (yeah, the Sucky Edition), the PCI one of course. I bought that because the first "3D" PC game I ended up buying (before Diablo II) was S.W.A.T. 3, I was told I had to get a graphics card, so yeah. I knew absolutely zero about computers so I just went to my local Future Shop, asked the clerk for a video card around the budget I had (not much, I can't recall how much I had, around $80 I think) and he pretty much just took that box and said that I should go with it, and I did. That was back around summer 2001 if I recall correctly.

I die a little inside every time I think about that.

I got super lucky in that regard. I actually picked up a Voodoo 3 2000 PCI because it was $20 or $30 cheaper, and back then every penny counted.

I got home and tried to install it, and couldn't figure it out. I didn't know you had to physically remove the metal plate in front of the slot.

So I figured that maybe my PC couldn't fit the card and went back to return it. While returning it a different clerk assured me that if my PC had an AGP slot it would fit, and also told me the 3000 AGP would run circles around the 2000 PCI. I think the 3000 had just gone on sale for $99.99.

Not knowing what I was doing was a pretty fortunate thing for me that day.

 

[pontifex]

1st upgrade i ever did was ram, but I don't know if I had to buy it to play a particular game. I remember going to a computer show (do they even have these any more? lol) and buying the RAM. I think I got 16 MB for over $100. I also remember buying C&C: Red Alert

 

[brencat]

Went Voodoo 2 SLI so I could play Nuclear Strike. That game kicked so much ass when it first came out, but it wouldn't run smooth on any card which didn't support Glide...3DFX's proprietary engine. Turok 2 also looked awesome on the Voodoos as well...remember the nuke weapon?! :thumbsup:

 

[OVerLoRDI]

Original TA. Needed more Ram.

Thinking through my video card history... I upgraded from my Geforce 2 32mb to a geforce 4 ti4200 128mb. I have no idea what I upgraded for, but I remember it being a world of difference.

 

[hooflung]

I put a Tseng Labs ET3000 ISA for Doom on my Victor 300SX/33 (intel 386sx33). This was to play Doom shareware.

 

[novasatori]

Voodoo Rush for my family PC to play GLQuake and Mechwarrior 3dfx version

 

[fourty03]

My first upgrade was a Diamond 3d Monster accelerator card.. For the game Monster Truck Maddness 2. First game I played online back in the mid 90's..

It was a ''slave'' card ... Last year, I went ahead and built my current system for FSX, DCS Black Shark and DCS A10 Warthog.

This system I have now allowed me to experience other titles that I wouldn't have otherwise tried..

I sure do remember the computer shows in the Mid Atlantic region.. 7$ to get in .. Last time I went, the vendors were selling the same stuff .. I bought a printer (which seemed every vendor had for sale).. Best Buy had it cheaper lol

 

[Elcs]

I'm waiting to hear someone tell us that their first game-initiated upgrade was a KillerNIC for something like CS

 

[skipsneeky2]

7800gs agp for BF2 which is the first fps iv'e ever played during the time most people bought 8800gtx and 8800 ultra cards but still the 7800gs was a big step from a 6200le paired with a 2.4ghzs socket 478 p4 clocked at 3.4ghzs

Built a entire e6750/8800gts 512mb machine the week the 8800gts 512mb came out

 

[Stuka87]

Back in the day it was for Quake World. Which was the multiplayer version of Quake 1. Software mode ran decently, but I really had to use line skipping to get 72fps (The engines max, which was required if you wanted to be able to run full speed or jump full height). So I got a 12MB Voodoo 2. Ran the game beautifully.

 

[WT]

Quake 1 .... performance of Qtest (its early beta build) was abysmal on my 486/DX2 50. I bypassed the early Pentium 90 chips and patiently awaited the day that I could splurge on a Pentium 120 (wow !).

 

[Dacalo]

Voodoo Banshee for FF7 PC port. Hah.

I upgraded to Voodoo 2 for port of FF7 too.:thumbsup:

Actually that was for a 3D game. I think I went from Trident card with 1MB memory to a Matrox Millenium 4MB to play Duke Nukem and Doom.

 

[coloumb]

Since you didn't specify PC -

A Speech Synthesizer for my TI-99/4A so I could hear the cool speech sound effects for Parsec.

 

[PeeluckyDuckee]

Back in the days when IBM PCs were much distinguished from their "clones", around 1991, we got a PS/1 Expert PC tower. It was a monster back then, but with only 4MB of ram. I found Street Fighter II for DOS on sale at Office Depot for like $25. Problem was ram was not enough. Ram was around $50/mb back then. Upgraded 4MB when it was at $50/mb, then added another 8MB when it dropped down to $25/mb. After spending $400 on ram did SF2 ran half decent.

Multimedia on PCs were all the rage, except old mighty IBM couldn't run VCDs for crap, and we wanted to run karaoke VCDs. Being able to run VCDs was the next best thing to having to spend $1000 on a LaserDisc player and spend $100 per disc. So we went about and spent $1200 and built our very first computer. The Pentium Celeron 266 processor was the processor that made multimedia truly enjoyable experience, not to mention a free overclock bump up to 450mhz without so much of an effort. Good times, good times.

 

[zinfamous]

I've never upgraded anything for any specific game, or because of games, really.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

Upgraded to a Voodoo 3 to improve my Tribes experience, although I didn't need it, was able to play it in software mode for a few months, although after upgrading to the Voodoo 3, I didn't have any idea how I was able to ever put up with what I was playing with before that upgrade.

Needed an entirely new computer to play Tribes 2, so that would be my first (an Athlon XP 1400+ Palomino + 64MB Radeon 8500)

pretty much have upgraded hardware on a regular enough of a basis that I've stayed ahead of the curve and haven't really fired up a game thinking I absolutely needed faster hardware and/or gone out of my way to obtain faster hardware in anticipation of any one game ever since.

BF3 is coming close to making me want to either add a second 580 (although I know I ultimately wont because I really can't stand the downsides to multi GPU) but ideally I'd like to throw in a SoutherIslands or Kepler GPU to better run the game, although I'd be getting that for gaming in general and not just BF3.

 

[happy medium]

Upgraded my velocity 4mb card to a TNT 16mb card for Battlezone's AGP high res graphics pack. I think I had a overclocked pent 2 233.

 

[Rifter]

Voodoo 3 3000 for UT 99.