Why we were okay with 15fps games and hard drive noises in the 90's, but hate 30fps and fan noises now

[Commodore256]

I know there were games that ran at 60fps like Ridge Racer, but I think the issue is games back then didn't have cache or bus bottlenecks relative to how fast the CPU and GPU/PPU was, so when a game ran at 15fps, it didn't have microstudder and games made in the past 15 years that run at 30fps have microstudder, hell, it even happens with games running at 120fps. As for noises, Hard Drive noises were a progress indication and while they're louder than modern fans, fan noises are at a higher frequency and you can blast bass and be fine, but high frequencies even at low volumes can be very irritating.

[CompletelyNormalHumanGuy]

Why were we okay with 3-speed manual transmissions?

 

Remember when you had to spin your finger all the way around the dial for every digit in a persons phone number

 

What was Thomas Jefferson like in real life ya fossil?

 

Want me to ask the Archeologist's to check out your knee's while they're digging up your views on life?

[ToboRobot]

I wasn't ok with 15 FPS and hated HDD noise as much in the 90s as I do now.

[Commodore256]

7 minutes ago, CompletelyNormalHumanGuy said:

Why were we okay with 3-speed manual transmissions?

Some people prefer it, they like having more direct control with their machines even though modern automatics are way more efficient.

[Alex Atkin UK]

26 minutes ago, Commodore256 said:

I know there were games that ran at 60fps like Ridge Racer, but I think the issue is games back then didn't have cache or bus bottlenecks relative to how fast the CPU and GPU/PPU was, so when a game ran at 15fps, it didn't have microstudder and games made in the past 15 years that run at 30fps have microstudder, hell, it even happens with games running at 120fps. As for noises, Hard Drive noises were a progress indication and while they're louder than modern fans, fan noises are at a higher frequency and you can blast bass and be fine, but high frequencies even at low volumes can be very irritating.

The frame rate is actually kinda simple, 15fps on a CRT didn't look nearly as bad as 30fps on an LCD or even OLED as CRT effectively had zero persistence time.

 

You can't fix that problem with merely refresh rate either unfortunately, as its the fact the pixels take a long time to change state so will effectively be wrong for several frames as they are in the process of changing to the target colour.  So you need 120fps minimum to start to get as clear as CRT and its been suggested actually nearer 1000fps to fully clean it up.  Basically you need the difference between one frame and the next to never be more than a single pixel so any persistence becomes completely invisible to the eye, especially as were on much bigger screens now than we were back then.

Its why on really small screens like the Nintendo Switch and Steam Deck, 30fps doesn't feel nearly as bad as it does on a TV/monitor.

People also forget that in the late 90s we tended to be on 75Hz or even 120Hz monitors, its the 80s where it was lower.  I always pushed for a higher refresh rate back then as I'm sensitive to flicker and 60Hz was horrible, and the same rule applied that the bigger the screen, the higher the refresh rate you needed for comfort.

 

Fans and HDDs as already said, nobody was okay with it, we just had no choice.  There were plenty of office computers that were designed to be quiet back then, where they used 5400RPM HDDs and only higher end users chose 7200RPM and servers even higher where noise wasn't an issue.

[cooky560]

I think like many things, you don't know how much better something can be, until it is. Before the days of internet access, writing a message and it getting to a person the next day, and you getting a reply the day after was considered amazing and "modern". Now we can share much more than we could by letter, within seconds anywhere in the world.

 

Letter writers didn't complain about this, because at the time it was the fastest technology available, so no-one knew that messages could be delivered faster.

 

Computing has the same principle. I remember being old enough to think that a 10gb HDD would be all the data I'd ever need, now I have nearly 10TB. I didn't know at the time that a silent 6000mb/s m.2 ssd was coming in the future, so I was happy with 7200rpm 10gb HDD as it was the fastest thing I had at the time.

 

in 2015, I had a 980TI and it felt amazing getting 144fps in 1080p and 60fps in 1440p. Because that was incredible tech for the time. Today we get 144hz in 4k with ease, but who knew in 2015 that the 4090 was coming. So no-one was unhappy.

[Commodore256]

I just think it's beyond not knowing better

[Alex Atkin UK]

Not sure where the 4090 reaching 144fps with ease is coming from, presumably competitive games where graphical quality is not a priority.  Most games the engines are heavily CPU limited so don't do that, its just the reviewers prioritise popular competitive games where frame rate is priority and avoid too many games that are CPU bound as it wouldn't show what the GPU can really do.

 

I'm actually holding off on getting a new CPU as I do not believe there is one on the market capable of maxing out the 4090 yet on most games.

[WildDagwood]

I'd boil most of this down to tech advancement and people acclimating to new "standards".

[porina]

1 hour ago, Commodore256 said:

I know there were games that ran at 60fps like Ridge Racer, but I think the issue is games back then didn't have cache or bus bottlenecks relative to how fast the CPU and GPU/PPU was, so when a game ran at 15fps, it didn't have microstudder and games made in the past 15 years that run at 30fps have microstudder, hell, it even happens with games running at 120fps.

Games were much simpler then. A modern game is doing a load more stuff in parallel which reduces the predictability. 

 

Not all games were at low fps. Like today, it depends on the complexity. I think it was early 90's I recall playing Microprose F1 GP. This was before real 3D hardware support was around, but there were graphical settings so you can balance looks and performance like you can now.

 

3D hardware going mainstream was around the release of 3dfx in late 90's. I recall the original Final Fantasy 7 running at 320x240 software rendered. No fps counter, but it was low, way below 30fps. That pushed me over to get a 3dfx and that enabled me to run a whopping 640x480 and it felt much smoother too. 30fps class or higher.

 

1 hour ago, Commodore256 said:

As for noises, Hard Drive noises were a progress indication and while they're louder than modern fans, fan noises are at a higher frequency and you can blast bass and be fine, but high frequencies even at low volumes can be very irritating.

Speak for yourself. Hard disk vibration and whine to me are far worse than a modern moderate speed fan. Air moving noise is softer as long as you don't push the rpms too high and it starts to whine.

 

56 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

The frame rate is actually kinda simple, 15fps on a CRT didn't look nearly as bad as 30fps on an LCD or even OLED as CRT effectively had zero persistence time.

CRTs definitely had a persistence time, but they worked differently from LCDs. Phosphor decayed over time, whereas with LCDs the content switched at refresh. 

 

For CRT TVs, the persistence of the phosphor was set to ensure no flickering at whatever the local TV rate was (e.g. PAL vs NTSC, not factoring in interlacing). CRT monitors had a sweet spot for refresh rate. Set it too low, and you get flicker.

 

I wonder now if the phosphor decay characteristic made it a bit like BFI on LCDs, or, if the persistence was on the long side of optimal for the refresh rate, you get a temporal blurring a bit like motion blur? I almost wish I didn't give away my 17" Trinitron last year, which was the last CRT monitor I owned. I'm not into retro and gave it to someone who was. Yes, I'm old enough that stuff I grew up with is in a museum.

 

40 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Not sure where the 4090 reaching 144fps with ease is coming from, presumably competitive games where graphical quality is not a priority.  Most games the engines are heavily CPU limited so don't do that, its just the reviewers prioritise popular competitive games where frame rate is priority and avoid too many games that are CPU bound as it wouldn't show what the GPU can really do.

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/nvidia-geforce-rtx-4090-founders-edition/31.html

A good proportion of games could hit >144 fps. With CPU limiting the delta between 1080p and 4k isn't that big.

 

40 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

I'm actually holding off on getting a new CPU as I do not believe there is one on the market capable of maxing out the 4090 yet on most games.

I recall when the 4090 first came out, it was pointed out that many cases became CPU limited. Will be interesting to see where we go with next gen from both sides.

[Commodore256]

These clicks sound pretty pleasing.

[TVwazhere]

2 hours ago, cooky560 said:

I remember being old enough to think that a 10gb HDD would be all the data I'd ever need

Ads from the 80's

 

[cmndr]

13 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

The frame rate is actually kinda simple, 15fps on a CRT didn't look nearly as bad as 30fps on an LCD or even OLED as CRT effectively had zero persistence time.

I'll push back on that... 

15 FPS is just horrible (for most genres). Sorta playable but not good.
30FPS on a modern LCD is going to be MUCH MUCH better. Even some older ones. 

I say this as someone that had a CRT and an LCD from 2007 and who had some jumps between "higher end" and "lower end" video cards back and forth (sold last gen high end card for cash, waited a month bought brand new higher end card). 

 

I'll also go on record and say that 60FPS is mostly fine. The CRAZY push for "I need to be above 144FPS 99.99% of the time" is a little weird to me. It's a game. It'll be smooth and fluid even if you have some drops to 30 FPS if you're hoovering in the 100+ range 99+% of the time. 

 

Most people are more than fine targeting >60FPS or (90/100/120/144/240 depending on use case - are you doing it professionally?) for 1% lows and just not caring after. There' s a LOT of gear that can drive 60+FPS 99+% of the time with solid settings.

[Echothedolpin]

I get a kick out of folks complaining about a drop from 550 to 250 fps and typing up a panicked forum post asking for desperate help.

 

I mean, I started gaming on a 133mhz pentium 1 with some sort of Voodoo card. Launching a full LRM20 salvo in Mechwarrior 2 brought me down to 1-3 fps and I was still blown away.

 

Literally— I was usually blown away because I was bad at that game.

[thrasher_565]

we were ok with it because we could not afford not to...

my dad some how got a metal 120mm fan back when 80mm was standerd and p4 and athlons and we had to 7volt it... but it was better then the volcano 7...

case airflow was prity good with all the 5.25 bays. psu on the other hand not so much... probly why they die in 4 years. same with gpus and thow blower...

 

we had a voodoo 2.

[Dabombinable]

@Commodore256
Straight up - it depended on what you could get, with most people not being able to afford high end or high-quality components. The 1997-1998 system I refurbished only has the HDD audible (rather muted by the tick side panels though) with both actually sounding nice. And I can say that even though the FPS attainable in games such as Unreal and UT are low and stuttery - due to the Voodoo2 and Riva TNT being held back by the PII 233 (using PII 350 @ 233 as a stand-in for OG Klamath as its fan is dead) - both games are still very enjoyable and playable. 

I used to enjoy gaming on a Celeron D 2.4GHz with 1GB RAM, SiS iGPU, 160GB 7200RPM HDD (all under XP Home) and a case that had its side panel vibrating horrendously due to the screw threads being stripped. Because my previous PC only ran Windows 3.1 with; a 386 of some description, no soundcard and no mouse (had twin gameport card though). That kind of upgrade is huge enough to make putting up with a "bad" PC quite easy.

[Needfuldoer]

Go back far enough, and just seeing any 3D graphics rendering at playable framerates on your computer was a treat. If you only listen to the retrocomputing influencers, you'd think everybody had a Voodoo card and a Sound Canvas back in the day. Maybe you did if you were lucky, but until the late 90s most of our 3D gaming looked like this:

 

I like how you can tell which logos Papyrus was able to license.

 

Or this:

This is a shareware game that could get hilariously janky. I highly recommend playing it if you can find a copy! It ran better than this on my Power Mac.

 

Or this:

Come get some.

 

Who cares if it dips below 30 FPS? I'm playing 3D games on my computer!

[Echothedolpin]

8 hours ago, Caroline said:

Speak for yourself, I love hard drive spinning and clicking, floppies, spinning discs, thick fans ramping up as I turn a series of potentiometers at the back of the case, I love pressing buttons and not touching a screen.

Heck, I'd have an amber 7-segment clock indicator on my case if I could.

 

You know, one thing most people might find weird is that I tend to replace the power supply switches for their equivalents with neon lamps, it's just... my thing, I find the dim glow of them to be amazing, not eye-burning bright like bare LEDs, it's just the right amount of brightness to tell the unit is getting power. I do it ever since I got my first power supply that had one of these switches installed. Got a 12 volt one for my desk lamp, I like modding and creating my own stuff rather than buying a new one, sure there are many lamps with sick designs out there, but this one is all mine.

I have my quirks and likes like everyone else.

 

About FPS, I don't mind FPS lower than 60, I finished Cyberpunk and other intensive games at half the VSYNC rate of my screen (that'd be 42) and it was pretty enjoyable. 15 though... that'd be reserved for text-based RPGs or obscure 80s games. Matter of fact, I find older games like Wolf 3D, Doom, Quake, etc. to be horrible when running at more than 30 FPS.

The monitor is capable of 100Hz but I don't want to overdrive it and bust the vertical for some extra frames.

I’m with you on those neon lamp power switches. Plus that solid click feel/sound is so satisfying.

 

We had an old PC/AT that was my first computer, the power switches on those were perfect.

[Zodiark1593]

Back in the 90s, computer hardware was horrifically expensive, but tech also moved very fast too. It’s far from today, where a 6 year old GTX 1080 TI holds up decently well. 
 

Additionally, in the early-mid 90s, getting 3D graphics at all was a feat. Given the expense of computer hardware, 3D accelerators were actually fairly rare. Many gamers relied on Software Rendering, usually on their 1st gen Pentiums or Pentium MMX. You got your 15 fps, 320 x 240 if you wanted to experience 3d gaming, or you didn’t play at all. 

 

The original Celeron was also favored later on, for the heavy overclocks that can be squeezed, though the caveat is the lack of an L2 cache at all. 

[Mark Kaine]

if u had said 80s im with u, but 90s? nah, most games i played on pc were rock solid even on integrated board graphics  ...  hdds where slightly noisy, just like in the 2000s...........

 

 

 

So "this thing back then how did we cope" thing wasn't really a thing at all, or at least avoidable for the most part. 

 

 

 

3 hours ago, Zodiark1593 said:

Additionally, in the early-mid 90s, getting 3D graphics at all was a feat.

i think ya'll mighty misremembering this. so early 90s? yeah, you didn't even need a dgpu, p much every game ran fine on integrated...

 

mid 90s and later? Even cheapo Aldi PCs came with dGPUs...  

 

So was there *really* an issue? 

[ApolloX75]

I remember making the leap from a 486 DX2 to a Pentium MMX 133 with a S3 Virge and it was a crazy difference. I also remember jumping up to my K6-II 400 and Voodoo 3, then S3 Savage 3D, then Radeon 7200. Every piece of hardware had an improvement that was quantifiable. What I don't remember? Giving a shit what my screen was doing. We ran 15-17" CRTs and no one gave two shakes about whether or not your refresh rate was higher than "Whatever keeps the scan-lines at bay."

 

I switched to a LCD panel around 2006 or 2007, I still have it, it's a Samsung 226BW, works as well as the day I bought it. CRT screens and their nasty ass usage are what caused me to need glasses, I am happy they are gone.

 

As for hard drive noise? Cases were made of rolled steel and completely encased, it was like having a decorative suit of armor on or under your desk, you couldn't hear squat out of those things unless you really tried. Plus I for one was constantly making mish-mash sound systems using Creative subwoofers and oversized bookshelf speakers and then stereo speakers to shake the house. I don't think I ever cared what my hard drive was doing as long as it wasn't grinding.

 

I have a friend, known him for 20 years. We used to have LAN parties every month from 2002 til about 2008 where everyone would come over to my place and half would bring their own computers the rest would use systems I had built in the basement out of spare parts. He never brought his own, and always complained he was waiting for "XXX next big hardware thing" to come out so he could build the best. He has yet to build a system.

[porina]

50 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

i think ya'll mighty misremembering this. so early 90s? yeah, you didn't even need a dgpu, p much every game ran fine on integrated...

 

mid 90s and later? Even cheapo Aldi PCs came with dGPUs...  

 

So was there *really* an issue? 

You might be misremembering. I know I'm struggling to remember as it was so long ago.

 

CPU integrated graphics came much much later, around 2010. Even graphics in chipset was later than 90's I think. Nvidia nforce was 2001, don't recall if there were others before that. (Edit: Apparently SiS made one for PCs in 1995, but I don't think that was widespread in the then enthusiast space)

 

Every PC had a video card because without one you'd see nothing. They typically were designed to draw 2D and no more. That was ok for gaming before the 3D accelerated era which was at the end of the 90's.

 

To me the first useful 3D card that came out was the 3dfx Voodoo, which was 1996. It didn't even do 2D, so you had to pass your 2D output to that. Before then, video cards might have some 3D capability but they weren't used in games. I had a Matrox Mystique around that time, but it was released in 1996 also. It had some 3D capability but outside of the bundled demo nothing ever used it.

 

To give an example of the requirements of a game of the late 90's: Final Fantasy 7, the original. Not the repackaged version on Steam, not the remake. The original one that came on CDs. It required:

Pentium 133 MHz if you have 3D card

Pentium 166 if you didn't

32MB of ram

Don't forget to have a sound card.

And a CD drive of course.

[Zodiark1593]

15 minutes ago, porina said:

You might be misremembering. I know I'm struggling to remember as it was so long ago.

 

CPU integrated graphics came much much later, around 2010. Even graphics in chipset was later than 90's I think. Nvidia nforce was 2001, don't recall if there were others before that. (Edit: Apparently SiS made one for PCs in 1995, but I don't think that was widespread in the then enthusiast space)

 

Every PC had a video card because without one you'd see nothing. They typically were designed to draw 2D and no more. That was ok for gaming before the 3D accelerated era which was at the end of the 90's.

 

To me the first useful 3D card that came out was the 3dfx Voodoo, which was 1996. It didn't even do 2D, so you had to pass your 2D output to that. Before then, video cards might have some 3D capability but they weren't used in games. I had a Matrox Mystique around that time, but it was released in 1996 also. It had some 3D capability but outside of the bundled demo nothing ever used it.

 

To give an example of the requirements of a game of the late 90's: Final Fantasy 7, the original. Not the repackaged version on Steam, not the remake. The original one that came on CDs. It required:

Pentium 133 MHz if you have 3D card

Pentium 166 if you didn't

32MB of ram

Don't forget to have a sound card.

And a CD drive of course.

Motherboard integrated was a thing w the 90s. I had an old PC in 2000 (Windows ME fml) with an Intel i810 integrated on the motherboard. 

[porina]

1 minute ago, Zodiark1593 said:

Motherboard integrated was a thing w the 90s. I had an old PC in 2000 (Windows ME fml) with an Intel i810 integrated on the motherboard. 

Yup, I did find reference as early as 1995, which I had edited in (also present in your quote). Such a long time ago!

 

So it is still correcting the post I was replying to, which was suggesting integrated graphics were present in PCs in the early 90's, which doesn't appear to be the case. Everyone had video cards.

[Mark Kaine]

32 minutes ago, porina said:

CPU integrated graphics came much much later, around 2010. Even graphics in chipset was later than 90's

nope...? i have a pentium 1 pc with integrated graphics (from ATi funny enough) and windows 95 which came originally installed on it (pc is still working btw ) so that doesn't quite align?  and is exactly what i mean,  i agree we all might be misremembering, but the notion you *needed* one of those fancy dGPUs was probably only true for a handful of titles.

 

note; pentium was released in 1993, but i think mines a later version,  but not by much (since i got the pc in like 1996 iirc)