Early PC gaming from my perspective

[Data]

I defined the PC as a computer which can be used for home, office, recreation and at an affordable price.  I made a chart listing the most popular and successful machines starting in 1977 all the way through 1990 which led the way to everything we do now that has a chip in it. 

 

In the 70's and 80's computers were built like furniture. 

There where only a few choices of CPU's and they determined the price of the machine. 

Motorolla 68000, MOS, Zilog Z-80 and Intel eventually raised the clock rates but only Intel survived.  The Z-80 did get used in lower power devices such as game consoles.

 

In 1985, the Compaq Deskpro 386 was an important machine in time because they took Intel's latest high end 80386 cpu and built the most powerful workstation 6 months before IBM.  This would be Compaq's last great moment because as the 90's approached, the competition between computer manufacturers left smaller margins of profit.

 

 

All prices are adjusted for inflation for 2016.

 

Altair 8800  Jan 1975 Kit $1,969  assem $2786 Basic Interpreter by microsoft
Apple I April 76    $2652
Commodore PET  77 $3,166  Basic
TRS-80 77 $1561 - $2343 wmonitor custom dos
Apple II 77 $5,170 - $10,506  BASIC
Atari 800  1979 $3324 atari os
Sinclair XZ80 80  $591  Custom basic
Commodore Vic 20 80 $879  basic 2
Apple III 80 $12,485 SOS Closed Source
IBM 5150  1981 $4145 - $7965 No floppy or monitor PCDOS 1
Xerox 820  1981 $7,985 CP/M 2.2
Commodore 64 82  $1461 basic
NEC PC-9800 1982 $3001
Apple Lisa 1983  $24,220
Sony MSX 1983 MSXDOS MSX Basic
Amstrad PC 1984 $1792 with color  DOS
IBM PC AT 5170 1984 $13,938 PC DOS 3
Compaq Deskpro 1984 (XT Class)
Atari 520ST 1985 $1346 Atari TOS/GEM
Commodore Amiga 1000 1985 $2905-4015 with or without monitor  AmigaDos 1-1.34  Workbench GUI
Macintosh 1985 $5596 mac OS
Compaq DeskPro 386 1986  $15571
Commodore Amiga 500 1987 $1487 AmigaDos 1.34 Workbench
Sharp X68000 1987 OS9 NetBSD Human68k
Fujitsu FM Town 1989
 

 

 

Between 1990 and 1999, you only needed 2 computers.  A decent 386 in 1990 and a Pentium I in late 1995.  Intel upgrades were slow to come and expensive but all that mattered was the release of the Voodoo which needed at least pentium I.  You could use a very good I486 with a Voodoo 1 but the framerate suffers.  Pentium with MMX is much better than 486.

 

Arcades were an important contribution to the development of 3d graphics which we all take for granted.  When Playstation came out December 1994 in Japan, it was cutting edge.  It sounds kind of funny but only a few of the most cutting edge arcade cabinets had better 3D polygons.  Even the most high end computers were struggling to make a 3D card but it didn't really even matter much because the games were designed  2 Dimensional or they were CPU intensive.

 

Playstation was released September 1995 in US as the most poweful console and 3D home computer for about a year.  ATI, NVidia and others could not come up with a good 3D card.  Enter 3DFX Interactive.  This company was known for the arcade cockpit game San Francisco Rush.  They took their technology, wrote some drivers for it and released what is called the Voodoo 1 3D accelerator for Windows 95 and DOS.  No other manufacturer came remotely close to the Voodoo and later the Voodoo 2 for the next 3 - 4 years. 

 

3DFX Interactive didn't like making generic products for manufactureres and was slow to building their AGP card so by the time they realized they couldn't get by on the enthusiast market, they went bankrupt and sold to Nvidia.

 

But the race between ATI and Nvidia, AMD and Intel was not over yet.

 

[Data]

AMD existed for one reason, IBM had a policy that there needs to be more than one choice of manufacturers for chips.
AMD was always relegated to the low end of computing.  Intel was cozy with the hardware manufacturer's and they made sure that the nice computers recieved Intel chips and the peasants got the alternative.

Until the late 90's AMD got by on using Intel's socket and they also got good at cutting into Intel's market share by allowing overclock speeds at a time where 100 MHz meant $1000.
In the early 2000's AMD was very competitive.  AMD was the first to introduce true multicore cpu's and 64 bit architecture.  All this while loweing the price for mainstream users.

I listed the purchases required to have a good gaming experience.  Certain games were must have's such as Grand Theft Auto 3 in mid 2001.  The thing is, you realy wanted 1024 x 768 with mid to high draw distance so I bought the Radeon 8500.  This played the majority of the games until late 2004 and mid 2005 when Battlefield 2, GTA San Andreas and Far cry released.  For this was a big upgrade of the X800 Pro.  This would play the majority of the games all the way past the fist World of Warcraft Expansion in 2010.  



The jump from 28 nm to 20 nm never happened because of poor yields.
This is why graphics cards didn't enjoy a shrink for 4 to 5 years.
AMD cpu division really took a beating.  Look at Bulldozer.  The reason Intel pulled away is because Intel manufactures their own chips and enjoyed a shrink to 20nm and again to 14nm.  The other reason is because of poor decisions at AMD back in 2008 and 2009 when they began architecturing the Bulldozer.  Bulldozer was theoreticaly a very good idea, it could scale up to 12, 16, or 20 cores much better than Intel but the problem was, the industry isn't ready for this kind of scaling back in 2010.  The Bulldozer was seriously lacking single thread performance.  It also never helps when manufacurer's have exclusive deals with Intel to use their chips in the nice computers but use AMD's in the $hit.

[Data]

And the history of sound devices.

 

[KiwiArcader]

Nostradums states

 

"And lo unto the world Nintendo's Switchable will sweep all before it, rendering every previous gaming device irrelevant, casting thine Xcrement Boxes and Playtoys into the gutter from which they will never to return" 

[Data]