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

[Aluvus]

From a Pentium 90 to a Pentium 200, to run Total Annihilation (which refused to run on less than 100 MHz, to my consternation). Worth it.

 

[PrayForDeath]

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

Why else would you upgrade? You use your computer for professional tasks? (video editing, photoshop, 3d modeling, rendering, etc...)?

 

[Childs]

Bought the math coprocessor for my 486SLC2 to play Doom better.

 

[Mike Gayner]

Upgraded from 16mb RAM to 32mb RAM to install so we could move from Win 3.11 to Win 95 to enable better games/other software. That's the earliest I remember upgrading.

 

[GoStumpy]

I don't remember what I *had* to upgrade, so I suppose I'll use right now.

I want to play NFS: Shift and similar games, but I only have a single-core processor...

Thats when I know it's new computer time!

 

[BFG10K]

I upgraded my 200 MHz PPC Mac to a 500 MHz Celeron + Voodoo 3 PC so I could play Quake 3 better.

 

[Qbah]

Anything close to a trigger was Crysis for me. Had a Pentium D 820 with a X1950XTX and the game didn't run well even on medium. Other games ran fine though... I was moving to a new apartment, so I bought a new PC as well. Q9450, HD4870 - this thing plowed through everything (Crysis still ran like sh!t though, this time at max, heh...).

In general no single game was pushing me to upgrade. When I feel games don't run well enough for me, I just do the upgrade. My OC'ed HD5850 runs everything I play like a champ, so I can't really say when I'll upgrade now. I need to see how Skyrim runs and then decide. But I expect the game to be smooth...

Before the Pentium D I had a laptop with a Mobility 9800 (was a 9600Pro-level card). Had a Pentium M 1.4 and a slow 4200 RPM (bought it when moving places too ). I had to run so many games on low settings... Then I bought the Pentium D with a 7800GT and had so many problems with the GeForce, this triggered a switch to X1950XTX.

Another example... moved to a new apartment during university time and got a PII 233 with a TNT2 card.

So there

 

[sandorski]

Unreal, bought a Voodoo2. 13fps to 33ish and with much better Graphics to boot.

 

[endlessmike]

Upgraded from 4 to 8 megs of ram in my Packard Bell 486DX2 50mhz; before that I needed to use a boot disk to be able to play Simcity 2000 and Flight Simulator 5.0.

Before that though I think I borrowed a 14.4 modem from my buddy to replace the original 2400 on that same computer. Why? So that I could connect faster to his BBS to play Legend of the Red Dragon, Yankees vs. Rednecks, and whatever that space trader/nation door game was.

Man...

 

[Miklebud]

Counter Strike: Source & Half Life 2. From a Ti4200 to a Radeon 9800

 

[slag]

I had an 8088 that booted dos that I used to access a MUD (valhalla). I kept dying in fights because my 300 baud modem couldn't scroll the text across the screen fast enough so that in fights where there was a lot of text, I'd die and wouldn't know it for about 5 seconds. I upgraded to a 9600 baud modem and the difference was amazing.

Second upgrade would be going from 4mb of RAM to 8MB on my then girlfriends AMD 586 system so I could play Diablo on BattleNet.

 

[zinfamous]

Upgraded from 16mb RAM to 32mb RAM to install so we could move from Win 3.11 to Win 95 to enable better games/other software. That's the earliest I remember upgrading.

I ran Win 95 on 8mb of RAM and Pentium 75mhz. Then again, we had superior Packard Bell computers back then.

 

[zinfamous]

Why else would you upgrade? You use your computer for professional tasks? (video editing, photoshop, 3d modeling, rendering, etc...)?

I actually started putting together computers for video editing. ...so that has always been my "must upgrade mantra." Then again, I do very little video editing...they just happen to run games a bit faster each time.

:sneaky:

 

[zebano]

It was a Voodoo 3 but I cannot remember what game it was... must not have been very good.

 

[Kyanzes]

I think it was Dark Forces II. IIRC I moved from Voodoo Elephant to Voodoo2. Or bought a Voodoo2 for my Elephant. Something like that. Sometime in 1997 or 1998 perhaps.

I could have mentioned a dungeon crawler game (Underworld????) since I moved from 286 to 486 but truth be told I didn't upgrade in order to be able to play but due to other necessities. So Dark Forces II.

 

[Mike Gayner]

I ran Win 95 on 8mb of RAM and Pentium 75mhz. Then again, we had superior Packard Bell computers back then.

Our system was just a 486dx66, so it would have been pushing it anyway.

 

[Possessed Freak]

Upgraded ram from 4 to 16 meg in my 486 to play Mech 2 Mercenaries. Then for the same game I promptly went to a Pentium 120 with 32 meg of ram.

 

[PeeluckyDuckee]

I ran Win 95 on 8mb of RAM and Pentium 75mhz. Then again, we had superior Packard Bell computers back then.

I remember some tower computers had a turbo button to overclock some CPUs from a P60 to a P66, or a P75 to a P83 if memory serves me right.

 

[thespyder]

Had to upgrade my entire rig to play the SSI Gold Box game Curse of the Azure Bonds. If I recall, it was the first machine that needed a Hard Drive to play, not to mention a 386 CPU.

 

[drizek]

9600xt to get a free copy of Half Life 2. I then bought a 6600GT for Battlefield 2.

 

[lsv]

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!

I played through FarCry with an FX5200 :|

 

[drizek]

You know what the crazy part is?

You paid as much for your FX5200 as I did for my GTX 460.

The games might have gone to shit in recent years, but the hardware is a much much better value than it was 5 years ago.

 

[theb144]

upgraded for The Sims id spent weeks turning tricks on the street corners of dallas and when the time came to finally upgrade i didnt know what i needed so my dad went and bought it and toldme to keep my hard earned money adn i dont know what he purchased but the game ran perfectly

 

[Fallen Kell]

Mechwarrior (1989). Needed to upgrade the CPU from a 33Mhz chip to a 66MHz CPU. Now technically, I did do this even though I was only 10 or 11. And I think this happened in 1990. All you did back then was open the case, remove the old chip, pop in the new one, and you were done (no heatsinks, no BIOS setting changes).

It was a pretty expensive upgrade at the time as well if I recall, but since it also had benefits for other applications, my parents found a way to get the upgrade.

 

[prism]

Gah, if only I could remember what specific components my dad and I upgraded the family computers with over the years....it started after he paid over $80 to download the Doom demo off of a BBS.

A couple of years ago I built my newest rig for about $500, and it's been able to handle pretty much anything I've thrown at it since. In a way, I almost miss having that next big game on the horizon that requires an upgrade...