First post, by Shponglefan
- Rank
- l33t
I've compiled a list of ultimate gaming build specs by year from 1994 1992 to 1999. It's based on what should have been available up to December 31 of that particular year. A lot of specs were compiled from old magazines and some educated guesses about when certain hardware was made available.
1995 is an exception since technically the Pentium Pro released in late 1994. But given the prevalence of speed sensitive games up to the mid 90's, I figure a Pentium 133 is probably more suited to a 1995 build.
I'm also thinking the Pentium 100 on the 1994 build might be a bit overkill, although for games going into 1995 it's probably more suited.
Any thoughts and feedback would be welcome.
Update #1:
Made some updates to the list including downgrading the 1994 and 1999 builds to a Pentium 90 and Coppermine 733 respectively. Tweaked some of the RAM amounts and a few other minor changes here and there.
Update #2:
Added 1992 and 1993 years, added notes for some of the years, and various other minor tweaks to recommended specs.
Update #3:
Another update to the list:
Added a line for modem specs based on what was available in a given year.
Added a year 2000 build with an Athlon 1200. I tried to find direct comparisons of the Athlon 1200C versus PIII-1100 / 1133 at the time, but couldn't really find exactly what I wanted. Ended up making an assessment based on what benchmarks I could find.
Added a couple alternate builds for 1993 and 1996 including a Pentium 66 and Pentium 200.
Finally, created a version of the list with a series of games released in the given year just as a point of reference for each system.
Update #4:
Fixed missing FDD drive for the year 2000 build.
Switched the graphics cards to the Matrox Mystique for the 1996 builds.
Added more games to the list.
Update #5:
Boosted RAM to 8MB for the 1992 build and 16MB for the 1993 builds based on specs available at the time.