What was PC gaming like in 2006?
>>12517291>inb4 someone says "I dunno I wasn't born yet"
>>12517291That GPU is not that great. SLI never really worked the well
>>12517291Everything ran hot and loud.
>>12517293I was.... 3 years old.Fuck you>>12517291Lots of meme franchises that are still going and lots of console ports.It was likely the best era for RTS: total war, AoE, stronghold, rise of nations, C&C, empire earth, star wars, anno, etc etc etc etc.I dunno, i prefer DOS era (1992~1998). Lots more garbage to sift through and a lot more entertaining at times. Sometimes you find neat stuff like Firo & Klawd
>>12517291PC gaming was still its own thing. There was no expectation that every console game was gonna be coming to PC.It was also about to implode due to concerns about piracy. Copy protection on PC games had gone truly insane, with shit like StarForce killing disc drives and causing non-gaming software to cease functioning. Consumer hated it but it was undeniably effective, with Splinter Cell Chaos Theory taking an infamously long time to crack.As consumer hatred grew, publishers started looking into online-based DRM solutions instead. You'd see things like GFWL and Securom Limited Lifetime Activations. Your copy of Bioshock could only be played on 3 PCs, ever (until they patched it)!The modern gaming landscape wouldn't be born until Modern Warfare 2 released as a Steam exclusive in 2009, and by 2011 most PC gamers were refusing to buy games that weren't on Steam. This is also when gamers began expecting that most console games would eventually get ported to PC even if not available day one.A lot of games ended up being lost in the transition though. Early 2000's PC gaming was very much powered by bargain bin re-releases of games. Most of the games you think of as legendary from the late 90's and early 00's like Deus Ex and MoHAA ended up doing most of their sales as cheap budget re-releases but many of those titles took a long time to transition over to digital stores.This has continued to this day even, to the modern PC gamer any title that is not available on Steam basically doesn't exist.
>>12517291>What was PC gaming like in 2006?I was playing MOHAA + the spearhead expansion pack on an emachines pc with integrated graphics that were barely strong enough to play it on low settings. Good times actually.
>>12517291It was pretty good. We now started getting xbox 360 ports with fucking insane graphics, but old games from early 00s/late 90s were still playable without requiring some directx emulator. Dual core CPUs did wonders to stability (if any program locked up with an infinite loop, you didn't need to reboot because your system was still running on the other core), and since everyone used XP, you could get by with 1-2GB RAM for everything. Videocards were still a two horse race and used maybe 50W tops unless you used the retarded factory OC 9999XTX models which used 80-110W; most normal cards were single slot. The xbox 360 controller came with USB and windows drivers, so you finally had a gamepad that didn't suck or didn't require to be imported from japan, or didn't require a dongle/adapter/esoteric driver combination.The downsides I remember is that tower coolers and 4-pin PWM fans weren't yet standard so you had to go through all sorts of very weird heatsinks with front panel/back panel manual fan control, or voltage-based fan controls via Speedfan that sometimes didn't work. GPU fans didn't have custom curves. And neither Noctua nor silent cases did not exist yet, so all PC fans were stupid fucking loud unless you modded the Molex to 7V (at 5V most fans didn't start) or got a front panel fan controller; and even then PSUs and hard drives used to be very loud.Also onboard sound cards were not the best quality (yet) and Creative cards had this stupid fucking bug where they had garbage internal resampler, the only other option was something using Via Envy like the Terratec or Turtle Beach, which in turn did not support EAX so no 5.1 audio in most games. On the up side, most mid-range motherboards already had SPDIF output and even analog 5.1, so hooking up to external receivers was relatively simple.
>>12517291Slightly less boring than it is now compared to consoles.
>>12517310Well those cards were really bad but paying to magazines made it sell a lot.They are considered rare, super rare or ultra rare if they are in working conditions currently depending on model.
Well, you know how you can slam your face into the corner edge of a brick wall as hard as you can? It was a lot like that.
Hardware wise everything before 2015 or so was a shitshow, you could get a midrange CPU and GPU from the current generation and get mogged the next week by a game that wouldn't run at all. The flipside is that top end components were still affordable to most adults with a job, but those would still get run out of town in 2-3 years
>>12517291I used a 2008 pc to play csgo until 2014
>>12517291very loud. thats mostly what I remember from pc gaming back. I basically had headphones on all the time because of it.
>>12517291I had just upgraded my PC from a P4 2.8GHz w/ a Radeon 9800 Pro to an AMD Athlon X2 4200 w/ a GeForce 7800GTX at the beginning of that year. Played tons of BF2 around that time. It was kind of an awkward era to get a dual core processor since a lot of games weren't optimized for them. I remember the Splinter Cell Chaos Theory demo running in slow motion on my new rig while it played fine on my previous system. I think I had to install some patch directly from AMD to alleviate that problem. Same thing with widescreen monitors, those were starting to become more popular and quite a few new games still needed INI tweaks or special command line parameters to match your monitor's native res and aspect ratio. Freaking Battlefield series still didn't support them, hell they didn't even support 1280x1024 OOTB for some dumbass reason.
>>12517291>What was PC gaming like in 2006?Lots and lots of lots of RTS games.
>>12517910Aftermarket air coolers for graphics cards were a common thing back then because stock coolers were so loud and shit. You can always spot a LARPing faggot on /g/ if they're pining for the "good old days" of small, single-slot graphics cards (which sounded like a leaf blower to cool a 65W GPU).
>>12517912Oh yeah, I had also switched to water cooling around that time since I was fed up with the fan noise from the P4 era. Got one of those Koolance external rad systems. Worked great for a couple of years until the reservoir cracked. Replaced it then ran with that setup for about a year until the radiator cracked, too. Fortunately no computer parts were damaged in either incident but that was enough for me to get back into air cooling my PCs.
>>12517291I miss when multiplayer games were mostly player hosted servers that let communities form and have fun, also allowed for some servers to use fun or interesting mods for the game to allow for an interesting time. I burned thru so much time on Star Wars Jedi Academy modded servers back then.
>>12517291In 2006 I bought my first gaming PC that wasn't a pentium III hand-me-down with a Rage Pro card missing a side panel for airflow. I believe it had an AMD Sempron 3500+ CPU, a GeForce FX5700 GPU and 2GB RAM. The case was a generic grey case but with a stylized "X" on the front with USB 1.0 ports behind a flap.My most played games were WoW, CS Source, a bunch of HL1-2 mods, and Diablo 2. Oblivion ran on low settings at around 30 FPS.
>>12517918>(which sounded like a leaf blower to cool a 65W GPU).Only on Geforce cards. Radeons never had that problem until the HD2000 series.And with aftermarket coolers you could put a 2 slot heatsink on the card and it would run without a fan, as long as your case had bare minimum airflow (ie. one fan in front, one on the back: having two case fans at the time was a rarity even, which is why all gpus had to use leaf blowers).
>>12517293>>12517291i was busy working when i wasn't starving.vaguely recall that the GeForce 6600s was madly popular in LAN shops(because cheap mid card) that were 99 percent Starcraft 2 autist gamers. i might remembered the wrong year.
>>12517419>This has continued to this day even, to the modern PC gamer any title that is not available on Steam basically doesn't exist.this is /vr/, my dude. if the modern steamfags only want to talk about steam and /vr/ games on steam, they can fuck off forever.
>>12517457>Dual core CPUs did wonders to stability (if any program locked up with an infinite loop, you didn't need to reboot because your system was still running on the other core)that's not how progs worked before or today. games made for single cores screw up on duo and quad cores.usually running slower than on older CPUs. or refuse to install at all. games made for duo-cores would use both cores, and hang your system if it screws up.
>>12517291I had gotten a PC in 2002 with a Pentium 4 2.4Ghz and a GeForce 4. By 2006, a lot of games were simply unplayable on it (and not modern 'unplayable' where it's below 60 fps, I mean framerates in the teens on some new titles). I got one of the last Radeon cards to support AGP at my local walmart which lasted me a few more years until the P4 platform and DDR1 RAM became way too low-end to really run new releases (the game in question for me was the Wticher).It was fun. PC gaming existed in its own kinda separate space and normies were not welcome.
>>12517912>I remember the Splinter Cell Chaos Theory demo running in slow motion on my new rig while it played fine on my previous system.this is still a problem with many windows /vr/ games on modern hardware.
>>12517291>2006not far different than it was when you were a child in the 2010s
>>12517291In the '90s you bought games in indoor shopping malls at specialty stores like Babbages. In the 2000s it had split into strip mall Gamestops (which is actually the same company as Babbages, but they had a different strategy), which hated PC because of their resale scam, and "Big box stores" like Best Buy and Walmart, which hated PC because it sold lower volumes than consoles so they got a half a shelf and a wire rack. If you weren't into the biggest 2-3 PC releases you could fuck off and die all through the 2000s.
Better, no zoomcucks to shit it up with moronic questions.
>>12518663>that's not how progs worked before or today.>games made for duo-cores would use both cores, and hang your system if it screws up.It's how they work even today. If a program enters an infinite loop at max priority, it would eat all CPU cycles and halt your system, since there's no CPU cycles left for the OS to fall back to. This problem went away when you had an extra core. If a program infinite loops today on 16 cores and you had only 16 cores, it would do the same, unless you had 16+ cores.>games made for single cores screw up on duo and quad cores.Never happened to me and I was a relatively early adopter (socket 939). I've known people on dual socket pentium 3s who didn't have that issue either. The only concern was finding apps to take advantage of the extra cores, but I was multitasking often so I didn't have that issue: I could run, say, a compression task and could game along while it ran, instead of the machine being unusable until it completed.>usually running slower than on older CPUs.Because you had 2 cores in the same TDP, so they had to be clocked lower than single core equivalents. That's still an issue today, a threadripper with 128 cores won't be as fast as a 9700 with 16 cores because the 9700 clocks higher.>or refuse to install at all.never ever happened to me.I do remember AMD having a dual core cpu driver though, but I honestly don't remember if it did anything or not.
>>12518707there are games where you need to set processor affinity
>>12518661Of course, but even within the context of this board it is an important reminder as some hold the idea of GOG and Steam re-releases of older PC games as a requirement to even consider a games existenceIt has effects on things like how much a game is talked about outside of dedicated spaces like /vr/, how likely a game is to get community patches for things like widescreen or general QOL improvements, active multiplayer population, and even just general acknowledgement that a PC version of certain games exist at all.As an example, the recent GOG releases of the Resident Evil games have very much revitalized discussion around their PC ports. When's the last time before then that you saw someone recommend the PC versions at all when discussing what version of RE2 to play? At best you might've seen some discussion around the SourceNext version, but certainly not the western release.
>>12518650>Only on Geforce cards. Radeons never had that problem until the HD2000 series.Horse shit. I still own a bunch of older Radeons than that and many of them are loud as fuck. The stock cooler used on the X850 XT (and several other variants of the same GPU) is one of the loudest in my collection. The dinky coolers on the Radeon DDR and 8500 aren't exactly quiet either. The stock cooler on the high-end GeForce 3 cards is better than either, though the GF4 one is bad.
>>12517319the one true answer
>>12518854Yeah but those are high end bullshit cards with twice the TDP. Midrange cards were almost always single slot, often even passive (I remember owning a passive Gigabyte 7600GT). The X1950Pro I still have was also single slot and ridiculously overpowered.
>>12518728>When's the last time before then that you saw someone recommend the PC versions at all when discussing what version of RE2 to play?i think all the RE threads on /vr/ need to be burned with hellfire.
>>12518707>>or refuse to install at all.>never ever happened to me.a duo or quad core sometimes get detected as a single core with lower Hz speed than a P4.
>>12517293>"I dunno I wasn't born yet"jokes on you. You have to be 18 to post ... holy mother of god.
>>12517291It was a weird time. TONS of people playing games from the late 90s still.Generally, if a game was ported to PC (Windows), it was a buggy, shitty version of the console version. Online PC games were still light years ahead of console in every capacityPC gaming was also more of a niche nerd thing. Nowadays every normalfag has a gaming PC, today only the most turbo normalfag FIFA player doesn'tGames were still distributed by physical CD and most online platforms, including Steam, were heavily criticizedBlizzard ruled the PC game marketPiracy was rampant, most people shared CD keys for online games and straight up did not pay for single player games
>>12517291imagine buying one of these a few months before the 8800 obsoleted it entirely, I would be seething
>>12517291You weren't there?
>>12519284>8800Now that was a good fucking card.
>>12517291I remember still getting over my quitting World of Warcraft withdrawal but in to save the day was GGPO to be my new addiction. While there was a slight bit of input lag from my cheap Sega Saturn to USB converter, I used the hell out of my cheapest Sega Saturn controller. Met a lot of cool people online and got better at a lot of old games I used to enjoy thanks to learning new techniques. I remember enjoying the demo to the upcoming Unreal Tournament 3, since I loved both the original and 2003/2004. Given the great work they did for Gears of War, was ready to see how much more detailed the normal maps can be on PC.Sadly I didn't focus as much on PC aside from GGPO play. I got a lot of old console games I had wanted over the years since I had quit, not just from Demonoid/Underground Gamer/BitGamer/Blackcat/Pleasuredome, which is what my downtime from GGPO was for my system, but also physically as they were very inexpensive.Someone saved some old footage of me playing: https://youtu.be/DpY-8govQCA
Piracy was the norm there werent any idiots telling you that you should use Steam and if you were legal you played WoW but WoW wasnt good it was just a novelty for many being their first online game MMOs were all the trend there were many shovelware MMO games
>>12517291Affordable.
I remember how our family computer had a matrox g400 gpu. it was shit even back then but at least we had more than just 2 options in terms of gpus.
>>12517419Ha my exact og copy of Deus ex, near 30 years later I still remember the cheat console commands."set Deus ex.JCDentonMale bCheatsEnabled True"One of the few boxed games I kept over the years
>>12518854Gee anon I wonder if after 30 years the bearings might need some tlc?
>>12519278I spent 2005-2007 playing runescape and that was the pinnacle of PC gaming for me
The first GPU I owned with my own money was the nvidia 9800 GTX+. the final product to ever be released under the GTX+ product line. Yeah, I know, 2009 isn’t 2006, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t gaming back then. This was simply hardware from my own first personal build. there is a lot to miss about this era of computers and PC gaming as a whole. feeling both sad about how much of it is lost, and grateful for how far platforms like steam have come. getting controllers to work right used to be a total nightmare. a lot of people were still using ball mice for some reason. I was still using a PS/2 keyboard. To this day, the only thing to surpass the responsivity of that old ass PS/2 keyboard I had is the wooting HE. desktop stereo setups were real baller back in those days. I still have a set of Altec Lansing desktop speakers from then. they still sound incredible, too. computers as a whole were a mixed bag. cases almost always had a lot of sharp edges inside. unless you spent a lot of money, the inside of these cases were almost never de-burred. cutting your hands open aside, cases had strange geometry. one thing that these old cases did right was having the PSU in the top rear corner of the case, instead of the bottom. Modern cases don’t even give us the option to do this anymore. I had how modern cases have these stupid basements in them. All they do is get in the way of your build. Some nicer gamer focused cases back then would have massive MOLEX powered fans that mounted to the side panel, and took up almost the entire side panel itself. It was like having a box fan on the inside of your pc. Really cool stuff. I wish we could get back to that. Another thing I miss a lot is the side vent on cases. We used to be able to mount an intake fan on the side panel through a vent that allowed us to blow fresh air directly onto the GPU. it is incredibly stupid almost no case manufacturers offer this vent fan anymore. cables from this era were almost always junk.
>>12520406cont. i could continue on for much longer than this. i am now running late for work. looking forward to keeping up with this thread later.
>>12517291instead of trsnny depression sim therapy sessions it was all hyper-autism strategy games
>>12519676I was born in 2008 bro
