Remember The Slow Days?

Nabz · 17 Apr 2009 at 16:46

Well now we have all these quad core 8 core whatever, remember the "slow days". Waiting for games to load up taking 5 minutes to actually join a game. Whats your memories?

One specific memory i had was trying to play Max Payne 2 on a low end pentium 4. All settigns were on low and it took an age to load through cut scenes and was still sluggish, what are your memwars

.

Nabil.

strumpusplunket · 17 Apr 2009 at 16:56

I still have traumatic memories about Jedi Knight II stuttering to death on the second level because my PII 350/Voodoo Banshee just couldn't render the outdoor scenes...

Played through the first level and loved it, only to have everything lock up on me.

It was another 18 months before I finally upgraded my PC and was able to finish the game.

Fillado · 17 Apr 2009 at 17:01

Playing Counter-Strike Source on a 1Ghz Athlon, 32MB Geforce 2MX & 256MB RAM. I remember it was actually playable...

On a slightly different note, downloading Half-Life 2 & Counter-Strike Source over Steam (preloading and such) using a 56k modem :eek:

Nabz · 17 Apr 2009 at 17:13

Fillado said:
Playing Counter-Strike Source on a 1Ghz Athlon, 32MB Geforce 2MX & 256MB RAM. I remember it was actually playable...

On a slightly different note, downloading Half-Life 2 & Counter-Strike Source over Steam (preloading and such) using a 56k modem

made me lool.

UKDTweak · 17 Apr 2009 at 17:17

Ha, you should have tried loading any tape based game on the ZX Spectrum...now that really took five minutes to load

strumpusplunket · 17 Apr 2009 at 17:19

R: Tape loading error

<Fiddles with screwdriver in that mysterious little hole on the front of the tape deck>

<Rewinds tape>

<Load "">

<Time passes>

R: Tape loading error

Arrrgh!

Yeah, those were the days!

toon_mad · 17 Apr 2009 at 21:01

i remember my one of my old pc's, solitaire and winamp at the sametime sucked the life out of it, here was the spec:

intel celeron 533mhz
64mb sdram
onboard 8mb graphics
15" crt (extra thick size - in pretty grey

)
keyboard and one very unresponsive mouse

i remember it would take programs like delphi 7 to load up after about 3 minutes :eek:

games like tomb raider were practically a no no

Fatpigeon · 17 Apr 2009 at 22:28

I remember installing windows 95 on a 486 DX2 66MHz using i think 24 floppy disks....That was SLOW!!!!!!

Greenlizard0 · 17 Apr 2009 at 22:54

I had an old Pentium 60MHz beast of a machine that crawled to a halt by loading up Encarta

DirtyJester · 17 Apr 2009 at 23:16

yesterday ..... d/load speed 53kbps ooh Orange the future is so much (rhymes with brighter but begins with a 'S')

oddjob62 · 17 Apr 2009 at 23:17

UKDTweak said:
Ha, you should have tried loading any tape based game on the ZX Spectrum...now that really took five minutes to load

HAHAHA.... as i was reading the OP this is what i was thinking about. Remember how thrilling it was when the game had a loading picture, and watching it gradually appear. But then yeah as strumpusplunket said, loading error and having to play with the volume on the seperate tape player (spectrum 48k with rubber keys) till it worked

CowboyTony · 18 Apr 2009 at 00:29

I had either a 386 or a 486 when at Uni in 1996. I used to run SIM tower 24/7 - each morning I'd spend the cash that had been accumulated overnight and then in the evenings spend teh cash taht I'd got that day - It was soooooo slow...

Amnesia · 18 Apr 2009 at 00:44

UKDTweak said:
Ha, you should have tried loading any tape based game on the ZX Spectrum...now that really took five minutes to load

that was a race horse compared to the acorn electron.
acorn electron loaded like a donkey and even sounded like one when loading games.

SourChipmunk · 18 Apr 2009 at 11:30

I miss the days of hacking the AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS to move as many items to extended memory as possible in order to free up base memory enough to play X-Wing.

Wiggins · 18 Apr 2009 at 11:41

Staring at this for 30 minutes only to find that it hasn't loaded.

Smit · 18 Apr 2009 at 12:15

UKDTweak said:
Ha, you should have tried loading any tape based game on the ZX Spectrum...now that really took five minutes to load

But you got cool loading music with the tapes

TheVoice · 18 Apr 2009 at 12:29

I had an eMachines Celeron 633Mhz with 192MB of RAM and a 32MB GeForce 2MX for a month shy of three years, which I got for Xmas in 2000. That was reasonably capable of playing games when I first got it - I had GTA2, Motocross Madness 2, Hitman, NFS High Stakes and used to play loads and loads of Rogue Spear/Urban Ops. It did start to feel very slow after about a year and a half though. In the final year I had it, my friends and I would have small LAN parties and my machine did start to act up a bit! Homeworld 2 kicked up errors about not meeting system requirements, not having sufficient video memory, not having shaders etc although surprisingly it still allowed me to attempt to play it, albeit with bizarre looking graphics and missing pieces. Suffice to say, I lost that fight.

We also gave MoH:AA a go which actually ran OK, although for some completely unknown reason the main menu music kept going (and looping) even when I was actually playing. Oh, and every time I picked up health or ammo it'd say "Got 10 Got Got" instead of telling me what I'd actually collected. By that point I just found it hilarious.

I used to do everything I could to reduce system overheads with that machine though, by not having a background image and closing anything unnecessary that was running in the background. So nice to not need to bother with that sort of effort these days!