To celebrate Eurogamer’s 20th anniversary, Digital Foundry dusted off a PC from 1999 to relive Quake III Arena, Half-Life, Unreal, and other classics on what was then state-of-the-art hardware. It’s an amusing look at how far we’ve come from CD keys, 640×480 resolutions, sub-30 frame rates, lack of rag doll animations, and CRT displays. (Actually, the latter is still pretty great, aside from weight.)
Hardcore 1999 PC Specs:
- CPU: Intel Pentium III 700 Mhz Coppermine Slot 1 version (0.18 μm fabrication process) with 133MHz FSB
- Mainboard: Biostar M6VBE motherboard
- Memory: 384MB RAM
- Primary Display Adapter: ELSA Erazor III TNT2 Pro graphics card
- Secondary Display Adapter: 3DFX Voodoo 2 12MB
- Sound Card: Sound Blaster PCI sound card
- Storage: 20GB IDE HDD
- Display: Sony G400 19-inch CRT monitor
…we’ll be running Windows 98 on original hardware, installing games from original, physical CDs (remember those installer dialogues?) and seeing just how performant two of the most powerful 3D accelerators of the era actually were – the classic 3DFX Voodoo 2 and underdog Nvidia’s Riva TNT2 Pro.