NorsteinB wrote on 2026-08-10, 10:06:

Sure, Morrowind falls into that era, but for one it was not a demanding game at all, running even on a 500 MHz Pentium III or the earliest Athlons. Also as it is less of a fast-paced action game, it's not as bad to play at only 30 FPS.
But if you want to play UT2003 without getting eye cancer whenever you turn around or there are 3 or more other players on the screen, that SDR memory is going to hurt.

Morrowind was the only reason for me, to upgrade from a thunderbird 1200 SDR to an Athlon XP 1800+ DDR system back then. Which from the perspective of clock speed makes no sense, but the performance boost was enormous, especially for the low fps scenes. I'm planning to recreate that expierience by building a duron 1300 System on both platforms.

The Problem was not the CPU time, but the amount of data, which was handled by the game for it's time.

NorsteinB wrote on 2026-08-10, 10:06:

Sure, Morrowind falls into that era, but for one it was not a demanding game at all, running even on a 500 MHz Pentium III or the earliest Athlons. Also as it is less of a fast-paced action game, it's not as bad to play at only 30 FPS.

Woa... this is so far from what I experienced with the game.

I guess if you are building retro systems to run a 25 year old game like Morrowind with the graphics settings and draw distance turned all the way down while barely managing fluid frame rates in towns... then you might be able to run it on a PIII 500Mhz.

My experience was that several parts of the game (mainly cities) brought my Athlon Thunderbird 1.33Ghz + GF4 Ti 4400 system to its knees, and continued to do so with an Athlon XP 1800+ Palomino, as well as a 1700+ Thoroughbred overclocked to 2Ghz. It was better with an Athlon 64 3000+ (S939) with a 6800GT but the cities were still a slog at max view distance, and going to an X2 4200+ didn't really make a huge difference in the CPU limited parts either. By then Oblivion was out and using the same engine, with even more crippling CPU load in cities.

I think the first thing that really seemed like it made a huge difference to the smoothness of Morrowind in the slowest parts of the game was getting my Core 2 Duo E6750 and overclocking the snot out of it. By the time I had an i5 2500K pushed to 4.2Ghz it finally seemed to eliminate the CPU bottleneck enough to use mods to extend the view distance out even further without much performance penalty.

I had a freak hardware failure right before Morrowind came out (after having it preordered and spending a year or two on the forums with the devs while it was still a work in progress), which left me without the Tbird 1.33Ghz + Ti 4400 system mentioned above. So, on release day I had to start playing it on an Athlon SlotA 750Mhz with a Geforce2 GTS 32MB... it was playable, but was NOT a great experience!! Playing that game on a 500Mhz PIII and a matching GPU (TNT2? Geforce2 MX 200?) would have been awful.

There was a tool called FPS Optimizer, which helped al lot by dynamicaly reducing the view distance when the fps dropped. This worked well, since you don't need to long view distances in battles or in towns. I still ised it on the Athlon 1800+.

I first tried Morrowind with latest official patch, and I got around 25+ fps in cities at default settings, sometimes it dipped down to around 20fps. In wilderness it was better, 35+ fps and more than that indoors. This is with Athlon XP 2500+ at stock speed on KT133A, with 133MHz memory. So playable but not smooth by modern standards.

However, there's a fan made mesh optimization patch which significantly improved performance, fps stays at around 30 even in cities.

https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/45384

I think for a really fast 9x system the best card is the 7800 GTX and other cards on G70. 77.72 drivers are fairly stable with the shutdown patch on them and I haven't had a whole lot of issues. For better compatibility you might wanna look at the GeForce4 or GeForce FX series, though.

NorsteinB wrote on 2026-08-10, 10:06:

I believe I already stated I am using my own KT133A and Intel i845G ISA systems for DOS and Windows 98 games (as in: nothing that was released when XP was already available). I only even mentioned I have these to underline that I know what I am talking about when I state that a Barton, which by the way probably does not even run its full clockspeed on such a board, does not "easily" play games from basically the early Windows XP era when bottlenecked by SDR RAM.
Bartons were usually running 166 or 200 MHz FSB (if not overclocked to 250!), and most often accompanied by not just DDR RAM running 333 or 400 MHz, but making use of dual channel increasing bandwidth even further. When I put the same AMD Athlon XP 2500+ Barton and Geforce 5900 XT on an nforce 2 Ultra board with 400 FSB and dual channel DDR-400 memory, the 3DMark 2001SE score almost triples compared to a KT133A board running 2x256 MB SDR-133!

Btw, I benchmarked FX 5900 XT on an nForce2 board with Athlon XP 2600+ Barton at stock speed of 1.917GHz. So it's clocked 6.5% higher than my KT133A setup, which is at 1.8GHz, but unfortunately this CPU is locked so I couldn't change the multiplier in BIOS.

I got 12923 points in 3DMark 2001SE, and with KT133A setup I got 10197 points after I got AGP to work at 4x. So it's a 21% reduction, part of which is caused by difference in clock speed rather than memory bandwidth. In UT2003 Demo benchmark I got 172.4 and 66.0 points at 1024x768, which means KT133A scored 22% less. Considering the clock speed difference, I'd say it's realistic to estimate that the SDR memory reduces performance by about 15-20%. Not ideal, but not anywhere near what you claimed, either.

Morrowind running fine on a P3 500 has to be a joke..

appiah4 wrote on 2026-08-31, 09:32:

Morrowind running fine on a P3 500 has to be a joke..

Of course it is

People famously complained about even late P4s still running the game choppy, it took socket 775 for stable frame rates really everywhere in the game, not just staring at a wall in the mountains with no NPCs or monsters near.

Key DifferencesMemory Bus: The standard TNT2 uses a 128-bit memory interface. The TNT2 M64 cuts this down to a 64-bit interface, which halves memory bandwidth and limits performance at higher resolutions.Performance: Most users on PCMasteRace Reddit Discussion agree that the M64 is a "gimped" or budget-reduced version that struggles heavily when bandwidth matters. While a "Pro" or higher clock on an M64 variant might slightly boost raw core speeds, it cannot overcome the severe 64-bit memory bottleneck.Visual Quality: The standard TNT2 handles 32-bit color and textures much more smoothly in late-90s games, whereas the M64 sees sharp drops in frame rates and performance as soon as resolutions or color depths scale up.

TNT2 Ultra > TNT2 Pro > TNT2 > TNT > TNT2 M64 > TNT2 Vanta

Personally I like the TNT.

bitzu101 wrote on 2026-09-02, 07:50:

Key DifferencesMemory Bus: The standard TNT2 uses a 128-bit memory interface. The TNT2 M64 cuts this down to a 64-bit interface, which halves memory bandwidth and limits performance at higher resolutions.Performance: Most users on PCMasteRace Reddit Discussion agree that the M64 is a "gimped" or budget-reduced version that struggles heavily when bandwidth matters. While a "Pro" or higher clock on an M64 variant might slightly boost raw core speeds, it cannot overcome the severe 64-bit memory bottleneck.Visual Quality: The standard TNT2 handles 32-bit color and textures much more smoothly in late-90s games, whereas the M64 sees sharp drops in frame rates and performance as soon as resolutions or color depths scale up.

Copypasting AI without even correcting the spacing has to be a new low

NorsteinB wrote on 2026-09-01, 12:26:

Of course it is

People famously complained about even late P4s still running the game choppy, it took socket 775 for stable frame rates really everywhere in the game, not just staring at a wall in the mountains with no NPCs or monsters near.

What? I tried that game specifically because it's infamously CPU limited, and it turned out to be quite playable if you don't mind FPS dipping in cities. If you really couldn't tolerate FPS dipping below 60 anywhere, sure, then you'd need something like Core 2 Duo. Or even better, play OpenMW on a modern PC. Not to mention that Bartons were quite close to late P4s, especially in lower tier models.

Also, why so angry?

Mike_ wrote on 2026-09-03, 04:49:

NorsteinB wrote on 2026-09-01, 12:26:

Of course it is

People famously complained about even late P4s still running the game choppy, it took socket 775 for stable frame rates really everywhere in the game, not just staring at a wall in the mountains with no NPCs or monsters near.

What? I tried that game specifically because it's infamously CPU limited, and it turned out to be quite playable if you don't mind FPS dipping in cities. If you really couldn't tolerate FPS dipping below 60 anywhere, sure, then you'd need something like Core 2 Duo.

I think the discrepancy between one person saying a game is "cpu limited" or "not fast enough" and another saying it is fine is purely down to personal preference, which can sometimes even involve vision-related differences. Like, if I get a headache from what I perceive as a 20fps slideshow while someone else isn't affected by it, that's fine. If I can't stand playing games that dip down to 40fps because I can feel the added ~25ms of input to display lag but someone else thinks that is totally acceptable, that's fine. We're all different. The existence of monitors with native refresh rates of 120, 240, 360, 500hz and higher tells us that people appreciate the difference for one reason or another.

Personally, I have played games at at least 85hz (wherever possible) since I got my first Voodoo3 back in 1999-2000. I think I got my first really nice CRT in 2003, and after that I was playing everything at 85-160Hz until I had to tolerate a 60Hz LCD for a few years. Then I switched to a 120Hz LCD. Having higher than 60Hz refresh rate is very noticeable to me. Since using a 240Hz display for the last 3-4 years, I can say that in most games (or even on the desktop) I can tell very clearly when the frame rate goes from 200 down to 100.

That said, I think 100fps is "enough" for most things for me personally. I won't generally lower graphics settings to get higher FPS than that unless it is a setting that makes no difference to me... unless it is a fast paced game or it fluctuates a lot due optimization issues. Then, I will tweak things to make it run better.

The issue with CPU limited games is that the settings that can be lowered to alleviate the CPU bottleneck either don't exist or they can have a significant impact on visuals and gameplay. Like, reducing view distance in Morrowind does work, but if you are someone like me that just does not want to play a game with frame rates that ever go below 60 (or 80, or 100, etc.), then having to sacrifice a lot of view distance to achieve that is annoying, makes the game look terrible (IMO) and can actually impact gameplay (like not being able to see something coming or shoot an arrow at a distance, etc.).

We could just force ourselves to tolerate it, which we used to back in the day, but many enthusiasts build and upgrade PCs specifically because we enjoy doing so and we enjoy getting rid of bottlenecks. I didn't use up all of my spending money back in the early 2000s to tolerate games... I used it to make them look and run amazing. Now that the hardware exists to make all of the old games run beautifully with basically zero visual compromises in their original state (without modern ports, emulation, etc.), it is just hard for me (and others I assume) to relate to running games on underspecced systems.

Still. Everyone has different preferences. I won't tell someone they are wrong for playing Morrowind at 10-20fps on a system that is more comfortable playing Daggerfall. I think it is weird and hard to relate to, but I have been hearing about the opposite (wanting high frame rates) being weird and unnecessary for over 25 years 🤣 ... so I think it's normal, and is just a fact of having different preferences.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2026-09-03, 16:02:

I think the discrepancy between one person saying a game is "cpu limited" or "not fast enough" and another saying it is fine is […]
Show full quote

Mike_ wrote on 2026-09-03, 04:49:

NorsteinB wrote on 2026-09-01, 12:26:

Of course it is

People famously complained about even late P4s still running the game choppy, it took socket 775 for stable frame rates really everywhere in the game, not just staring at a wall in the mountains with no NPCs or monsters near.

What? I tried that game specifically because it's infamously CPU limited, and it turned out to be quite playable if you don't mind FPS dipping in cities. If you really couldn't tolerate FPS dipping below 60 anywhere, sure, then you'd need something like Core 2 Duo.

I think the discrepancy between one person saying a game is "cpu limited" or "not fast enough" and another saying it is fine is purely down to personal preference, which can sometimes even involve vision-related differences. Like, if I get a headache from what I perceive as a 20fps slideshow while someone else isn't affected by it, that's fine. If I can't stand playing games that dip down to 40fps because I can feel the added ~25ms of input to display lag but someone else thinks that is totally acceptable, that's fine. We're all different. The existence of monitors with native refresh rates of 120, 240, 360, 500hz and higher tells us that people appreciate the difference for one reason or another.

Personally, I have played games at at least 85hz (wherever possible) since I got my first Voodoo3 back in 1999-2000. I think I got my first really nice CRT in 2003, and after that I was playing everything at 85-160Hz until I had to tolerate a 60Hz LCD for a few years. Then I switched to a 120Hz LCD. Having higher than 60Hz refresh rate is very noticeable to me. Since using a 240Hz display for the last 3-4 years, I can say that in most games (or even on the desktop) I can tell very clearly when the frame rate goes from 200 down to 100.

That said, I think 100fps is "enough" for most things for me personally. I won't generally lower graphics settings to get higher FPS than that unless it is a setting that makes no difference to me... unless it is a fast paced game or it fluctuates a lot due optimization issues. Then, I will tweak things to make it run better.

The issue with CPU limited games is that the settings that can be lowered to alleviate the CPU bottleneck either don't exist or they can have a significant impact on visuals and gameplay. Like, reducing view distance in Morrowind does work, but if you are someone like me that just does not want to play a game with frame rates that ever go below 60 (or 80, or 100, etc.), then having to sacrifice a lot of view distance to achieve that is annoying, makes the game look terrible (IMO) and can actually impact gameplay (like not being able to see something coming or shoot an arrow at a distance, etc.).

We could just force ourselves to tolerate it, which we used to back in the day, but many enthusiasts build and upgrade PCs specifically because we enjoy doing so and we enjoy getting rid of bottlenecks. I didn't use up all of my spending money back in the early 2000s to tolerate games... I used it to make them look and run amazing. Now that the hardware exists to make all of the old games run beautifully with basically zero visual compromises in their original state (without modern ports, emulation, etc.), it is just hard for me (and others I assume) to relate to running games on underspecced systems.

Still. Everyone has different preferences. I won't tell someone they are wrong for playing Morrowind at 10-20fps on a system that is more comfortable playing Daggerfall. I think it is weird and hard to relate to, but I have been hearing about the opposite (wanting high frame rates) being weird and unnecessary for over 25 years 🤣 ... so I think it's normal, and is just a fact of having different preferences.

I want to clarify that while personally I find gaming under 60 Hz/FPS to be a strain on my eyes, and strive to keep every game that will do it at 85+, I'd call everything "playable" although not great, that at least runs at a stable 30 FPS.
With a 500 MHz P3, Morrowind will run below 30 almost all of the time, and dip to LITERALLY LESS THAN TEN FPS in Balmora, Vivec and Ebonheart, regardless of GPU, even if you happened to stuff a Geforce FX 5950 Ultra in there. And this is mostly independent of resolution and detail settings, too, since the main reason for the performance drops is the NPC wayfinding and ai, as well as filling the RAM with objects, not even actually rendering them.

Even Cyberpunk 2077 did not fully drop into the single digits on the PS4 and Xbox One S, but drops into the 10-15 range caused such a shitstorm that blanked refunds were issued. I believe that at that point it is no longer a matter of personal preference but general consensus that a game is no longer considered playable.

The "insult" I wrote was by the way not even a word you wouldn't use in front of your two year old kids. It was just calling out the fact that this amount of misinformation is for all intents and purposes the same as a lie, and the person was, to me, someone who lies, because if they truthfully played the game with a P3 500 system, there is no way they would call this slideshow "playable". I will refrain from interacting with this person or posting in this specific thread again from here on out.

I felt the need to clarify that neither did I become "angry" nor did I use any swear words, and the way my moderated post reads "insult removed" now looks like I suggested to shag someone's mom when I really stayed family friendly.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2026-09-03, 16:02:

I think the discrepancy between one person saying a game is "cpu limited" or "not fast enough" and another saying it is fine is […]
Show full quote

I think the discrepancy between one person saying a game is "cpu limited" or "not fast enough" and another saying it is fine is purely down to personal preference, which can sometimes even involve vision-related differences. Like, if I get a headache from what I perceive as a 20fps slideshow while someone else isn't affected by it, that's fine. If I can't stand playing games that dip down to 40fps because I can feel the added ~25ms of input to display lag but someone else thinks that is totally acceptable, that's fine. We're all different. The existence of monitors with native refresh rates of 120, 240, 360, 500hz and higher tells us that people appreciate the difference for one reason or another.

Personally, I have played games at at least 85hz (wherever possible) since I got my first Voodoo3 back in 1999-2000. I think I got my first really nice CRT in 2003, and after that I was playing everything at 85-160Hz until I had to tolerate a 60Hz LCD for a few years. Then I switched to a 120Hz LCD. Having higher than 60Hz refresh rate is very noticeable to me. Since using a 240Hz display for the last 3-4 years, I can say that in most games (or even on the desktop) I can tell very clearly when the frame rate goes from 200 down to 100.

That said, I think 100fps is "enough" for most things for me personally. I won't generally lower graphics settings to get higher FPS than that unless it is a setting that makes no difference to me... unless it is a fast paced game or it fluctuates a lot due optimization issues. Then, I will tweak things to make it run better.

The issue with CPU limited games is that the settings that can be lowered to alleviate the CPU bottleneck either don't exist or they can have a significant impact on visuals and gameplay. Like, reducing view distance in Morrowind does work, but if you are someone like me that just does not want to play a game with frame rates that ever go below 60 (or 80, or 100, etc.), then having to sacrifice a lot of view distance to achieve that is annoying, makes the game look terrible (IMO) and can actually impact gameplay (like not being able to see something coming or shoot an arrow at a distance, etc.).

We could just force ourselves to tolerate it, which we used to back in the day, but many enthusiasts build and upgrade PCs specifically because we enjoy doing so and we enjoy getting rid of bottlenecks. I didn't use up all of my spending money back in the early 2000s to tolerate games... I used it to make them look and run amazing. Now that the hardware exists to make all of the old games run beautifully with basically zero visual compromises in their original state (without modern ports, emulation, etc.), it is just hard for me (and others I assume) to relate to running games on underspecced systems.

Still. Everyone has different preferences. I won't tell someone they are wrong for playing Morrowind at 10-20fps on a system that is more comfortable playing Daggerfall. I think it is weird and hard to relate to, but I have been hearing about the opposite (wanting high frame rates) being weird and unnecessary for over 25 years 🤣 ... so I think it's normal, and is just a fact of having different preferences.

Yes, this is all true, and I'm probably less sensitive to low fps than most. I don't notice difference between 60fps and higher unless I specifically pay attention to it and depending on game 30fps can be OK-ish. But this discussion didn't start from Morrowind on a 500MHz PIII, it started from whether Geforce FX 5900 XT is too powerful for an Athlon XP 2500+ running on a KT133A motherboard (which has SDR memory) and whether such a system is usable for later than 2001 games. At least the former is an objective question, while the latter is somewhat subjective. So I tried Morrowind at first because it's the most infamous example of a CPU limited 2002 game. The point was that if it's playable, other 2002 games should run pretty good on the system. I'd expect most 2003 games to work fine as well, but some will probably be a bit sluggish.

I also did some benchmarking with 3DMark 2001 SE and UT2003 demo, and it looks like SDR memory is causing a 15-20% performance reduction in those.

NorsteinB wrote on 2026-09-03, 21:12:

I want to clarify that while personally I find gaming under 60 Hz/FPS to be a strain on my eyes, and strive to keep every game t […]
Show full quote

I want to clarify that while personally I find gaming under 60 Hz/FPS to be a strain on my eyes, and strive to keep every game that will do it at 85+, I'd call everything "playable" although not great, that at least runs at a stable 30 FPS.
With a 500 MHz P3, Morrowind will run below 30 almost all of the time, and dip to LITERALLY LESS THAN TEN FPS in Balmora, Vivec and Ebonheart, regardless of GPU, even if you happened to stuff a Geforce FX 5950 Ultra in there. And this is mostly independent of resolution and detail settings, too, since the main reason for the performance drops is the NPC wayfinding and ai, as well as filling the RAM with objects, not even actually rendering them.

Even Cyberpunk 2077 did not fully drop into the single digits on the PS4 and Xbox One S, but drops into the 10-15 range caused such a shitstorm that blanked refunds were issued. I believe that at that point it is no longer a matter of personal preference but general consensus that a game is no longer considered playable.

The "insult" I wrote was by the way not even a word you wouldn't use in front of your two year old kids. It was just calling out the fact that this amount of misinformation is for all intents and purposes the same as a lie, and the person was, to me, someone who lies, because if they truthfully played the game with a P3 500 system, there is no way they would call this slideshow "playable". I will refrain from interacting with this person or posting in this specific thread again from here on out.

I felt the need to clarify that neither did I become "angry" nor did I use any swear words, and the way my moderated post reads "insult removed" now looks like I suggested to shag someone's mom when I really stayed family friendly.

Except I never talked about playing Morrowind on a 500MHz PIII, *you* did, even if it was just a joke. I played it on my Athlon XP 2500+ / KT133A system.

appiah4 wrote on 2026-08-31, 09:32:

Morrowind running fine on a P3 500 has to be a joke..

Morrowind was virtually unplayable on even the high end for about 3 years.

So it ran fine on nothing that existed at release.

Sort of like a crysis situation.

So most likely played it as a slideshow as a matter of course during the release window, there was no other way to play it.

rmay635703 wrote on 2026-09-04, 06:31:

Morrowind was virtually unplayable on even the high end for about 3 years. […]
Show full quote

appiah4 wrote on 2026-08-31, 09:32:

Morrowind running fine on a P3 500 has to be a joke..

Morrowind was virtually unplayable on even the high end for about 3 years.

So it ran fine on nothing that existed at release.

Sort of like a crysis situation.

So most likely played it as a slideshow as a matter of course during the release window, there was no other way to play it.

To be fair, Morrowind ran a lot faster on the DX7 codepath, because that eliminated a lot of the resource hungry shaders.. But still, in terms of CPU power it needed, PIII 500 for Morrowind was more or less a 386DX for Doom.

You could do a 500 mhz celeron and still clear the minimum….. Sometimes it’s fun to see how you system does on the most demanding game you can stuff down its gullet.

https://www.systemrequirementslab.com/cyri/re … morrowind/11563

CPU: 500 MHz Intel Pentium III, Celeron, or AMD Athlon
CPU SPEED: 500 MHz
RAM: 256 MB
VIDEO CARD: 32 MB Direct3D Compatible video card with 32-bit color support and DirectX 8.1
DEDICATED VIDEO RAM: 32 MB
OS: Windows ME/98/XP/2000
FREE DISK SPACE: 1 GB
SOUND CARD: Yes

rmay635703 wrote on 2026-09-04, 06:31:

Morrowind was virtually unplayable on even the high end for about 3 years. […]
Show full quote

Morrowind was virtually unplayable on even the high end for about 3 years.

So it ran fine on nothing that existed at release.

Sort of like a crysis situation.

So most likely played it as a slideshow as a matter of course during the release window, there was no other way to play it.

C'mon, it wasn't quite *that* bad. 😀 A high-clocked P4 or Athlon 64 could manage over 30fps even in cities, and those came out in 2003. An Athlon XP with Barton core clocked at over 2GHz could probably manage that as well.

Mike_ wrote on 2026-09-07, 16:57:

rmay635703 wrote on 2026-09-04, 06:31:

Morrowind was virtually unplayable on even the high end for about 3 years. […]
Show full quote

Morrowind was virtually unplayable on even the high end for about 3 years.

So it ran fine on nothing that existed at release.

Sort of like a crysis situation.

So most likely played it as a slideshow as a matter of course during the release window, there was no other way to play it.

C'mon, it wasn't quite *that* bad. 😀 A high-clocked P4 or Athlon 64 could manage over 30fps even in cities, and those came out in 2003. An Athlon XP with Barton core clocked at over 2GHz could probably manage that as well.

Yeah I played it on my P4 Prescott 3.2Ghz OC'd to 3.6 with an X800 pro. It ran very well, over 60 FPS most of the time but it wasn't buttery smooth all the time that's for sure.

First time I played it though was on an Athlon XP 1800+ with a Geforce 4 MX 440 and honestly it very very smooth to me even on that system. Mind you I likely had settings lowered or in mid range.