A look back at yesterdays gaming PC

[Shlouski]

At the age of 15 I build my first PC, I had no idea and no references, but in the end I managed to get it working. I have been a gamer for as long as I can remember, but I mostly played on console as a kid and the PC was a distant second. In the mid 2000's I got my first job, and some cash I could spend how I saw fit, this is when I really got into PC hardware, building, gaming and overclocking. Over the years I held on to a lot of my hardware, I built computers out of spares parts so my friends could use them when visiting, started overclocking to get the maximum performance possible, and even started building PC's on the side for a little extra cash. The past few years I have even started to collect older hardware, checking they work and cleaning them up, so now I have quite a large colection of hardware which will hopefully continue to grow going into the future.

 

Enough back story and on to why I have started this thread. In this thread I will be taking a look at older mid and high-end pc gaming hardware, and seeing how it performs. I will comparing hardware available within a specified year, and to hardware in preceding and superseding years, so we can see progression over the years. Testing and comparing hardware of the same year isn't so hard, but it becomes difficult when comparing hardware released many years apart, many things changed over the years such as operating systems, drivers, resolutions and APIs.

 

I want to see what the average users experience would have been with the hardware, I don't think its going to be possible to set strict rules for testing, I believe testing will have to be flexible in order to best portray the average user, so its likely I will have to make some judgment calls. The tests will be carried out as period correct as possible, this of course means that the cpu's, gpu's and ram must have been available within in the specified year, this includes using operating systems available at the time. I may at times have to simulate different hardware by altering its settings, this will only be done if I believe will achieve accurate results. Its fair to say many users would have used their PC's for many years before upgrading, keeping this in mind and my desire to avoid software and driver issues, I will be using updated drivers, games and operating systems. For the testing I will be using a wide range of games and benchmarks spanning
many years and technologies, this I hope will give a good overview of what the hardware is capable off. As games and benchmarks are updated over the years, performance and scores may be affected, so for this reason I will only be using software that is no longer being updated. I will be using MSI Afterburner whenever possible to track frame rates, average, minimum, maximum, 1% lows and 0.1 lows.

 

Games I own with benchmarks I believe are no longer being updated:

 

 

Fear
Resident Evil 5
World in Conflict
Call of Pripyat
GTA 4
Metro Last Light
Batman Arkham Origins
Warhammer Dawn of War 2
Crysis
Counter Strike Source
Total War Rome 2
Unreal Tournament 2003
Comanche 4
Serious Sam
Half Life 2

 

Benchmark Software I believe are no longer being updated:

 

Cinebench R15
Aquamark 3
3dwinbench
3dmark99
3dmark2000
3dmark2001
3dmark03
3dmark05
3dmark06
3dmark11
3dmark Vantage

 

Before I jump into testing I wanted to reach out to the community for ideas and advice, any help would be much appreciated. Let me know about games, benchmarks or hardware you would like to see tested and I will look into adding them to the list.

 

I wont be doing the testing in any sort of order, what I test and when I test it will depend on circumstances such as what parts I have available, and how I feel. I continue to add new part to my already large collection every week, so I hope one day we will have a large comparison database to look over. I'm currently trying to figure out how to compile all of this data so its clear and easy to ready, hopefully by the time I have a decent amount of data I will have figured this out.
 

 

[Shlouski]

I decided I wanted a test bench to make live easier, unfortunately I cant find any in my area and getting one shipped to me would be incredibly expensive, so I build one.

 

First I ripped the insides out of an old case

 

Then I sanded it down and cleaned it up

 

 

Of course was very flimsy so I had to strengthen it up, and I made a cut out behind the cpu

 

 

I added some wood so I could mount a radiator, screwed on a plate with ssd mounting holes, and added a couple of buttons, then painted it

 

 

I will be testing a lot of power hungry hardware, so I also went with a large PSU. Now its all assembled and ready to go.