I wouldn't go far back than a 1.8A Northwood.

Pentium 4 would be good,fitted with a high end video card and 1GB or 2 of RAM,and a 80GB HDD.

King_Corduroy wrote:

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

I could get by just fine with Core2-era hardware. I could probably get by fine with a Pentium 4-era machine as well, but I'd have to change a few of my habits. Now, if the modern web weren't such a resource hog, and things were how they were before 2008-ish, I'd probably even be fine with a Pentium or Pentium II, but again, I'd have to change a lot of my habits.

You know what, I might just try that for a week. Hook up a Pentium 4, install Linux, see how well it does for day to day tasks.

Actually you can quite easily, I still use 2 Pentium 4 computers daily. One is an IBM with a 2ghz Pentium 4 (2gb RAM) and the other is a Compaq with a Hyper Threaded Pentium 4 @ 3ghz with 4gb RAM. Both run smoothly with Fedora 20 and the MATE desktop environment although you actually can run Cinnamon on both of these machines with minimal ill effects. Browsing the internet is quite fast on these machines.

Both computers are those tiny form factor business desktop computers (unfortunately I don't remember model numbers off the top of my head).

OK, but what about handling HD-quality YouTube videos, or games made past 2005, or more intensive emulators? Those are all things I do that need more than Pentium 4-era hardware, though I could probably manage without them.

Are we talking about with the amount of RAM that would have been used at the time (such as 16MB 486s, 32 MB pentium 1s and 256 MB pentium 4s) or are we talking about
those systems with the RAM maxxed out?

I think we're just discussing hardware of the era, not necessarily what was common.

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

King_Corduroy wrote:

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

I could get by just fine with Core2-era hardware. I could probably get by fine with a Pentium 4-era machine as well, but I'd have to change a few of my habits. Now, if the modern web weren't such a resource hog, and things were how they were before 2008-ish, I'd probably even be fine with a Pentium or Pentium II, but again, I'd have to change a lot of my habits.

You know what, I might just try that for a week. Hook up a Pentium 4, install Linux, see how well it does for day to day tasks.

Actually you can quite easily, I still use 2 Pentium 4 computers daily. One is an IBM with a 2ghz Pentium 4 (2gb RAM) and the other is a Compaq with a Hyper Threaded Pentium 4 @ 3ghz with 4gb RAM. Both run smoothly with Fedora 20 and the MATE desktop environment although you actually can run Cinnamon on both of these machines with minimal ill effects. Browsing the internet is quite fast on these machines.

Both computers are those tiny form factor business desktop computers (unfortunately I don't remember model numbers off the top of my head).

OK, but what about handling HD-quality YouTube videos, or games made past 2005, or more intensive emulators? Those are all things I do that need more than Pentium 4-era hardware, though I could probably manage without them.

Web based HD videos are an interesting beast due to the fact that video acceleration is all messed up most of the time. Compare the "Stats For Nerds" youtube stuff when in Windowed mode or Fullscreen mode. You'll get full acceleration in Fullscreen mode but only partial (or none) in Windowed mode. Each browser handles it slightly differently as well.

Non-web based HD videos (ie local .mp4 / avi) are handled quite easily on alot of older systems. My Pentium M based laptop can decode a 720p local video with no effort at all.

If we're talking about having a machine that can cope with the modern web world, I'd have to choose a Core2 Duo as the minimum. I finally upgraded my HTPC from a 3ghz Cedar Mill P4 to a Core2 E6550 and the difference is quite noticeable, especially in regards to YouTube HD videos. A few weeks ago I was trying to get an old MDD G4 dual 1.25ghz to function as an everyday machine, and I was truly surprised how terrible it was at YouTube. I know Flash is poorly optimized crap, but damn.

Now, if I had to choose the oldest computer that I could deal with, using contemporary software and completely ignoring the modern web, I'd choose at minimum an original Pentium running Windows 95.

mrferg wrote:

If we're talking about having a machine that can cope with the modern web world, I'd have to choose a Core2 Duo as the minimum. I finally upgraded my HTPC from a 3ghz Cedar Mill P4 to a Core2 E6550 and the difference is quite noticeable, especially in regards to YouTube HD videos. A few weeks ago I was trying to get an old MDD G4 dual 1.25ghz to function as an everyday machine, and I was truly surprised how terrible it was at YouTube. I know Flash is poorly optimized crap, but damn.

Now, if I had to choose the oldest computer that I could deal with, using contemporary software and completely ignoring the modern web, I'd choose at minimum an original Pentium running Windows 95.

If you ignore the existence of flash you can go much lower. Flash was a horrible terror released on the computing world
On my low end machines I can pipe the output of youtube-dl into mplayer and play youtube videos even on very low end hardware at the expensive of convenience

I used a Pentium 4 (2.8 ghz) w/ 1 gb ram and (sadly) AGP until 2011 as my main machine. Now, I can't say I've been terribly interested in any "new" games after, say, Half-Life 2, but the horrendous post-2008 trends in web design drove me nuts. While it seems like most commercial websites are designed for total morons now, somehow they still end up being even more confusing and counter-intuitive. Part of this bad design is the BLOAT and dependence on scripts, flash, etc. My Pentium 4 had a rough time with full-screen HD videos in a web browser.

But aside from the resource demands of the awful modern web, most of any standard native-code application would work fine on technology going back pretty far. Can you believe that the system requirements for MS Office 2010 are a Pentium 3 500 MHz with 256 MB ram? Yeah - when it comes to "old fashioned" applications like this, we don't need eight cores, let alone 8 GB of ram!

Obviously the art and magic of code optimization is long over (good examples: the source code for any old id software game!) and I believe what happens is that once our systems got (what I consider to be) overpowered for the average computer tasks - I estimate this happened around the Core2 era - it gives developers the green light to abandon any efforts of optimization. Welcome to post-2008 computing - BLOAT BLOAT BLOAT. Where your web browser carves out 500 MB of memory to sit there and do nothing. (Correct me if this is not a valid complaint...?)

On the topic of optimization, I believe the final frontier here is optimizing for network bandwidth. 20 years ago just moving data six inches from one side of your motherboard to the other was on an exciting upward climb in speed... nowadays that frontier is getting that data to go six thousand miles. Someday I believe even network bandwidth will no longer be an issue, at which point developers will no longer care about network code optimization either.

Minus Modern Web browsers\Flash.
I would be content with a Pentium 133-200 class performance with 128mb of ram, and a 16mb vcard card so I can run @ 1024x768 flawlessly on say a Voodoo3\VB\TNT1\2.
Most of my favorite PC games run fine on such a machine, without hitting virtual memory to hard.

I never understood why some would complain when Adobe didn't support flash on new or alternative platforms. Do people really need to play those cheap browser games?

I remember I gained a whole hour on my laptop before I had to find the nearest socket when I removed flash from my macbook. Loading pages became quicker, it ran cooler, and the fan no longer became audible when playing youtube videos. The only thing I felt I lost were flash-based ads, and I never wanted to see those anyways. This was with the cheapest early 2008 macbook.

My main desktop had an E6300 up until last year, and I thought that was fine. Compiling stuff took a long time, but using it for general desktop tasks felt comfortable. It was responsive, but it had a hard time with 1080p video. I upgraded to an E7600 last year. It let me watch 1080p videos, but most desktop tasks still felt like they did on my older E6300.

If I took away 720p and 1080p video, I think I could be pretty happy with a 98-00 era computer. Looking at how other people use their computers, I think most could go back to a computer from that age, assuming browsers improved and scripts were used less. There are so many sites that lag even on a current i5.

This is silly.

"The world" don't just leave machines idle, run office apps and browse internet and play some rudimentary-looking games. Oh, let me just extend on that last one for now.

Ever wonder why even today's most trying-to-be-visually-realistic 3D games would still look fake/artificial to your eyes? No, geometry isn't even the #1 reason. And let's even forget natural character motion and accurate physics for a moment. Every frame rendered would still look cartoonish because they aren't yet made to simulate light properly in real-time (i.e. pathtracing). Why, you ask? Severe lack of resource of course!

Yes I still want the power of hundreds of GTX Titans in a tiny little box. In this case, the only timeframe I'd go back to is the future. Maybe one or a half century would suffice. Maybe. Just because 99% people will waste technology doesn't mean the advances aren't worth having for the few who could use them for something productive.

And if you said you could stay with a Pentium MMX, please, please, don't watch high-res digital videos ever again for the rest of your life. The good news is that you can still watch regular 35mm and 70mm IMAX films (edited by hand using scissors and tape of course) which would still be awesome regardless.

I'm perfectly OK with VHS. 😜

In fact I should probably go watch Blade Runner again. 🤣
This will make the 20th time in 2 years I think? 😜

archsan wrote:

This is silly.

"The world" don't just leave machines idle, run office apps and browse internet and play some rudimentary-looking games. Oh, let me just extend on that last one for now.

Actually that is exactly what the general population does.

Ever wonder why even today's most trying-to-be-visually-realistic 3D games would still look fake/artificial to your eyes? No, geometry isn't even the #1 reason. And let's even forget natural character motion and accurate physics for a moment. Every frame rendered would still look cartoonish because they aren't yet made to simulate light properly in real-time (i.e. pathtracing). Why, you ask? Severe lack of resource of course!

I am quite aware of the reasoning why CGI looks "fake" but consider this forum is based
on running old games with even more primitive graphics. Many people do not require stunning
visuals to remain entertained

Yes I still want the power of hundreds of GTX Titans in a tiny little box. In this case, the only timeframe I'd go back to is the future. Maybe one or a half century would suffice. Maybe. Just because 99% people will waste technology doesn't mean the advances aren't worth having for the few who could use them for something productive.

Well enough but you have to wait it out because we are not there yet. Remember this is a vintage hardware section of the forum

And if you said you could stay with a Pentium MMX, please, please, don't watch high-res digital videos ever again for the rest of your life. The good news is that you can still watch regular 35mm and 70mm IMAX films (edited by hand using scissors and tape of course) which would still be awesome regardless.

Off topic nonsense. First of all I don't have HD TV service (don't care - not much worth watching anyway)
and the only HD video I watch is ocassional HD videos on youtube. I'm perfectly okay with 640x480 of whatever

And don't forget if *somehow* (remember its theoretical anyway) CPUs got stuck at Pentium MMX,
someone would develop a wickedly optimized video decoder to play higher resolution video.
Just like trixter played 40x25 video on an 8088. I am quite sure 1280x720 is achievable on a PMMX

Sorry if I came on a little strong but this is about vintage games and vintage computers
yet you come in here blasting people for liking old tech.

--posted on my 486

--posted on my 486

+1

BURN. 🤣

smeezekitty wrote:

If you ignore the existence of flash you can go much lower. Flash was a horrible terror released on the computing world
On my low end machines I can pipe the output of youtube-dl into mplayer and play youtube videos even on very low end hardware at the expensive of convenience

This is such a shame too. Flash pisses me off so much, I actually just built a new system and haven't even installed Flash on it. The only primary use I had for Flash was YouTube anyways, which has implemented an HTML5 player in most of its videos, so with the exception of a few little things on other sites, its almost not necessary to have Flash installed.

It's a huge security risk, and ads just love to abuse it.

And it runs videos like shit, relative to local videos. Cool idea of piping the output of youtube-dl into mplayer. :p

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

King_Corduroy wrote:

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

I could get by just fine with Core2-era hardware. I could probably get by fine with a Pentium 4-era machine as well, but I'd have to change a few of my habits. Now, if the modern web weren't such a resource hog, and things were how they were before 2008-ish, I'd probably even be fine with a Pentium or Pentium II, but again, I'd have to change a lot of my habits.

You know what, I might just try that for a week. Hook up a Pentium 4, install Linux, see how well it does for day to day tasks.

Actually you can quite easily, I still use 2 Pentium 4 computers daily. One is an IBM with a 2ghz Pentium 4 (2gb RAM) and the other is a Compaq with a Hyper Threaded Pentium 4 @ 3ghz with 4gb RAM. Both run smoothly with Fedora 20 and the MATE desktop environment although you actually can run Cinnamon on both of these machines with minimal ill effects. Browsing the internet is quite fast on these machines.

Both computers are those tiny form factor business desktop computers (unfortunately I don't remember model numbers off the top of my head).

OK, but what about handling HD-quality YouTube videos, or games made past 2005, or more intensive emulators? Those are all things I do that need more than Pentium 4-era hardware, though I could probably manage without them.

With the proper video card, a P4 can run YouTube videos in HD just fine (assuming it's being accelerated by the GPU). I was running 720p YouTube videos just fine fullscreened using a Pentium 4 and a Radeon X800. Emulators... ehh, you could do NES, SNES, PS1 and maybe N64? PCSX2 / Dolphin is no dice, but not that big of a deal in my opinion. You wouldn't be missing much. XP is blazing fast on a Pentium 4 too.

The 2D desktop on XP is much faster and more responsive than Windows 7 /8's GPU based desktop.

Yeah he's right, on my Compaq I put in an AMD FirePro card and I could watch HD movies, run minecraft (very slowly) and almost use Cinnamon without any delay time. 🤣

King_Corduroy wrote:

Yeah he's right, on my Compaq I put in an AMD FirePro card and I could watch HD movies, run minecraft (very slowly) and almost use Cinnamon without any delay time. 🤣

Try Crunchbang, it's a Debian based Linux distro with a tiny footprint and minimalist desktop using OpenBox. Blazing fast and I bet your Compaq would love it. Here's a pic of it installed onto my laptop:

http://oi61.tinypic.com/2h7nf3q.jpg

Well actually I now use Fedora 20 with MATE. It's my desktop of choice, literally it's the desktop I never knew I wanted but when I started using it even windows felt foreign when switching back. 🤣

This is such a difficult question to answer. I grew up in the 70s and 80s and was
a young man in the 90s, so I remember how amazing it was seeing something
like Doom or Quake for the first time. My answer probably depends on a
couple things: can I access the internet at speeds where it is useful, and can
I get software? If the answer is "yes" to both, then I would probably be happy
with a high-end 486 or maybe a P-Pro 200. That was right around the time I
could first start doing CG without it being painful.

If I have to wait a day for my OS or apps to load, and the internet is super
slow do to Flash/java/whatever, no thanks.