First saw Unreal with software rendering, many years ago, and I thought WOW. Then I managed to play it on my various systems, and now I use it as a test for compatibility.
It stutters on a Celeron 466, or underclocked P 3 FCPGA (133 FSB originally, runs with an 100 FSB) 600/133, 450/100. With Voodoo 2 SLI. @1024

There's no doubt that Unreal's software renderer was an achievement and maybe the coolest use of MMX.

UT2004 packs one called Pixomaticthat gives you almost everything a 3D card can do for the game.

Wow, thanks for the feedback! I'm pretty sure that i was simply more tolerant of this when i was younger and had no choice but to accept it or not play at all!

I had the chance over the weekend to try unreal on a Pentium2 333 with a voodoo 2 and 128 mb RAM and it was still jerky! nowhere near as bad but you could see that it would still stutter in the same places that the Pentium 166 would. I was able to make Unreal play slightly smoother but it required so much of the eyecandy to be turned off that it was no fun any more!

As a result I've decided to build a dedicated (relatively) high end voodoo 2 machine...

I've had a DELL dimension 4100 knocking about for a while but someone had already taken all the drives and cards before it came my way and I've never really had any purpose to use it for anything but it is too well made to simply throw away!

so the specs of my new Unreal machine are:

Pentium 3 933 Mhz
512mb PC133 RAM
Intel 815E chipset
Nvidia FX5200 PCI
2 x Voodoo2 in SLI
SB Vibra 64 (wtf!!!)

40Gb 7200rpm Hitachi Deskstar
48x CD-Rom
CD/RW
I had to put a zip drive in also as there was a hole in the case otherwise and nothing to fill it!

Unreal runs as smooth as silk now in full 1024 x 768 and looks the way that I remember it! The only fly left in in the ointment is the crappy soundcard - Time to start poking around on Ebay again I think!

Nice "no BS" build, and I like the case... very similar construction as my old Micron MME [2x 5.25" over 3x 3.5" drives in front] except how they styled the front bezel. I kept the bezel as a momento after tossing the case several years ago..

My first big issue with unplayable FPS [well, at max resolution] came in Half-Life 1 when I got horrible stutter during battles with those electrical-arc zapping monsters... a P4/ATI 9700pro-128mb upgrade did the trick.

Reminds me of the following cartoon:

http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=19980606