Don't Forget The Turbo Button (October 16, 2006)

[ChrisReid]

Goku wanted to share this brief editorial about the difficulties in keeping up with PC games. The author compares trying to run modern graphical marvels with demanding Origin titles in the past.

I remember the early 1990s all too well, when... the first Pentium processors rolled out. Developers like Origin Systems were falling over themselves to make games that could only be properly run if you had these bleeding-edge chips, while the majority of gamers still laboring with standard 486 processors had to endure Strike Commander experiences akin to a 3D slideshow.

A 486 was still pretty darn fast in 1993 when Strike Commander and the first Pentium came out. Quite a few of our readers can talk about waiting 10 minutes or more for missions to load in Wing Commander 3 the following year. The wait was always worth it though, and all that cutting edge tech has helped the series age extremely well.


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Original update published on October 16, 2006

 

[gwydion]

oh i often had to wait 10-20minutes for a mission to load in WC3, and i did it anyway! it made losing a mission that much worse and scramble missions were the same - i'd turn the volume right up so i could hear the sound fx when i was about to launch then dash back. Same thing when the Behemoth was destroyed and other missions. The final run to Kilrah took a while!!

 

[Dran]

I remember those days. The Pentium 90 was still pretty unstable cause of a floating decmial error.. I also remember waiting forever for the missions in WC3 to load. I always would get to the part where Blair would stare at the dash waiting to take off, and I knew it was time to go grab a drink of water or something

 

[ChrisReid]

A lot of the slow loading had to actually do with RAM. People with 16 megs on their 486es had fairly short wait times.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

The Pentium 90 was still pretty unstable cause of a floating decmial error..

Did this actually hurt anything any of us did? I think it was more of a fun 1990s joke than it was something that actually hurt gaming.

God, I miss floating point jokes.

 

[KrisV]

I think it was only the very first batches, like 60s and 66s. I had a Pentium 90 that was not affected.

 

[Death]

I remember those days. The Pentium 90 was still pretty unstable cause of a floating decmial error..

The FP error was only with the P60 and P66 models, and them only for as long as it took the fix to be implemented. Also, even when the bug was an issue, it had no effect on stability, just the accuracy of some mathematical formulas (like spread sheets, for example).

(further info)