Red Dead Redemption appeared on consoles 14 years ago—here's the kind of gaming PC it could have been ported to back then

HardwareRed Dead Redemption appeared on consoles 14 years ago—here’s the kind of gaming PC it could have been ported to back thenWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

(Image credit: Pixabay)

Inside an old gaming PC with lots of dust

As I’m over half a century old, going back 14 years doesn’t feel like a big deal. What’s significant about that very specific length of time is that’s how long it’s taken Rockstar to release a port of Red Dead Redemption. In the world of PC technology, it’s very much a big deal, a yawning canyon of time, and an awful lot has changed with CPUs, graphics cards, RAM, storage, and displays. So let’s see just what kind of gaming PC you could have been using back then.

First up, let’s consider the best gaming CPUs money could buy in 2010. From AMD, you could get aPhenom II X6 1090T Black Edition. Ludicrous name aside, it boasted some pretty serious figures: six cores and six threads, a boost clock of 3.6 GHz, 6 MB of L3 cache, and a TDP of 125 W—all for a little under $300. How times have changed.

I say sixcoresbut a lot of the internal hardware was shared and the K10 architecture wasn’t best suited to gaming. (Edit: A sharp-eyed reader has pointed out in my dotage that I was thinking about Bulldozer, the successor to K10.) Over at the Intel camp, the same kind of money could have got you aCore i7 930. That was a four-core, eight-thread, 3.06 GHz processor, with 8 MB of L3 cache and a TDP of 130 W. It even had a triple-channel memory controller.

Of course, these were high-end processors, and you could easily spend far less and still have a great gaming chip. Motherboards back then didn’t look half as nice as they are these days and they were certainly less user-friendly, especially regarding BIOS settings. But they were seriously cheap: $50 would get you a decent board to lob your expensive Phenom into, though boards for the i7 930 were more expensive.

A great gaming PC needs a great graphics card, of course, and there were some excellent options from both AMD and Nvidia. One of my favourites from Team Red at that time was the Radeon HD 6870. Even though it only cost $240 or so, you got 1,120 shaders, 1 GB of VRAM, and 134 GB/s of memory bandwidth. And it only used up to 150 W of power.

One of Nvidia’s best cards in 2010 was theGeForce GTX 480. It boasted 1.5 GB of VRAM and 178 GB/s of memory bandwidth, but only had 480 shader units and a whopping 250 W TDP. Oh, and it cost just under $500. Despite its unusual specs, compared to the Radeon card, the GTX 480 wasfaster in most gamesthan the 6870, though mostly at high resolutions or when AA was enabled in games. Drop the pixel count down and there was little between them in terms of performance, on average.

The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals

As for system RAM, well you were looking at between four and six GB in a decent gaming PC, roughly a third of what you might find in a rig today. DDR3 was all the rage, though data transfer speeds were a fraction of what they are now: 1,333 MT/s was considered hot stuff, whereas now you’d think something was broken in your PC if the RAM was that slow.

If you had cash to flash at your gaming PC back then, you might have bought a new-fangled SSD to speed up Windows and your games. Sizes ranged from 64 to 120 GB, though the latter would have set you back a good $300 or so. Most PC gamers still used traditional hard drives at that time and the same amount of money would have got you a whopping 2 TB of storage. The fact that you can get the same capacity of ultra-fast Gen4 SSD for less than half the money shows just how much storage technology has advanced.

Lastly, the monitor. While 16:9 aspect ratio screens are standard fare these days, they were quite rare in 2010, with 16:10 being cutting-edge for gaming and 4:3 for basic PCs. Resolutions were usually 1024 x 768 to 1680 x 1050, and at most 1920 x 1200, but top-end displays could be had witha dizzying 2560 x 1600.

(Image credit: Future)

AMD ATI Radeon HD 5970 4GB PC gaming graphics card in an attic

There was nothing like upscaling to boost performance back then, so if your GPU wasn’t up to that pixel count, your options were to either lower the resolution or buy another GPU and use them in tandem (aka CrossFire/SLI). Or you could buy a dual-GPU card, like the Radeon HD 5790, which is stillsurprisingly good even today.

The best gaming monitors then used VA panels but they weren’t super fast like they are today. Refresh rates were usually not much more than 60 Hz; in fact, it was so rare to see anything higher that refresh rates were hardly ever mentioned in reviews. Thank goodness I don’t have to stare at those kinds of screens any more!

None of this is to poke fun at old hardware. If you had a high-end gaming PC in 2010, you were spoilt for choice with games to enjoy on it: StarCraft 2, Mass Effect 2, BioShock 2, Aliens vs Predator, Assassin’s Creed 2, Mafia 2, Civilization 5, Call of Duty: Black Ops, and Just Cause 2 all racked up countless hours on my PC.

One thing doesn’t seem to have changed all that much, though, and it’s that game publishers just love a sequel or two. Or three, or four…

TOPICSHardware

TOPICS

More about hardwareIs the new RTX 5070 really as fast as Nvidia’s previous flagship RTX 4090 GPU? Turns out the answer is yes. Kinda.It’s time for me to admit that AI-accelerated frame generation might actually be the way of the future and that’s a good thing

More about hardware

Is the new RTX 5070 really as fast as Nvidia’s previous flagship RTX 4090 GPU? Turns out the answer is yes. Kinda.It’s time for me to admit that AI-accelerated frame generation might actually be the way of the future and that’s a good thing

Nvidia RTX 5070 graphics card

Is the new RTX 5070 really as fast as Nvidia’s previous flagship RTX 4090 GPU? Turns out the answer is yes. Kinda.

Nvidia RTX 5090 Founders Edition rendered on a green background.

It’s time for me to admit that AI-accelerated frame generation might actually be the way of the future and that’s a good thing

Latest

Double headed wizard man holding arms up looking sad

See more latest►

Most Popular

2024 was the year updates for old games beat out all the new ones for me

Train like you game with this adventure-inspired workout

‘It’s simply impossible to make a difficulty level that’s just right for all players’: How Final Fantasy 14’s lead battle designer has been playing a precarious balancing game for Dawntrail’s dungeons and raids

Please join me in getting super excited for all the cool looking survival games coming in 2025 (and beyond)

Competitive shooters are at a crucial crossroads in 2025: ‘sweaty’ teamplay vs. casual fun

Call of Duty’s $28 Squid Game skins are the perfect crossover for our capitalist dystopia, and Activision knows exactly what it’s doing

These are the 14 biggest upcoming RPGs of 2025—get ready for another amazing year for the genre

Five new Steam games you probably missed (January 6, 2025)

I’ve seen enough: No more forcing singleplayer studios to make mediocre live service games

6 games that could be bigger hits than you’re expecting in 2025

HARDWARE BUYING GUIDESLATEST GAME REVIEWS1Best Steam Deck accessories in Australia for 2025: Our favorite docks, powerbanks and gamepads2Best graphics card for laptops: the mobile GPUs I’d want in my next gaming laptop3Best mini PCs in 2025: The compact computers I love the most4Best 14-inch gaming laptop: The top compact gaming laptops I’ve held in these hands5Best Mini-ITX motherboards in 2025: My pick from all the mini mobo marvels I’ve tested1Thank Goodness You’re Here! review2Shiren the Wanderer: The Mystery Dungeon of Serpentcoil Island review3WD Black SN850X 8 TB NVMe SSD review4Ikea Utespelare desk review5Asus ROG Harpe Ace Mini wireless mouse review

HARDWARE BUYING GUIDESLATEST GAME REVIEWS

1Best Steam Deck accessories in Australia for 2025: Our favorite docks, powerbanks and gamepads

A bunch of the best Steam Deck accessories on a blue background.

1Best Steam Deck accessories in Australia for 2025: Our favorite docks, powerbanks and gamepads

Best Steam Deck accessories in Australia for 2025: Our favorite docks, powerbanks and gamepads

2Best graphics card for laptops: the mobile GPUs I’d want in my next gaming laptop

Best graphics card for laptops: the mobile GPUs I’d want in my next gaming laptop

3Best mini PCs in 2025: The compact computers I love the most

Best mini PCs in 2025: The compact computers I love the most

4Best 14-inch gaming laptop: The top compact gaming laptops I’ve held in these hands

Best 14-inch gaming laptop: The top compact gaming laptops I’ve held in these hands

5Best Mini-ITX motherboards in 2025: My pick from all the mini mobo marvels I’ve tested

Best Mini-ITX motherboards in 2025: My pick from all the mini mobo marvels I’ve tested

1Thank Goodness You’re Here! review

Thank Goodness You’re Here review

1Thank Goodness You’re Here! review

Thank Goodness You’re Here! review

2Shiren the Wanderer: The Mystery Dungeon of Serpentcoil Island review

Shiren the Wanderer: The Mystery Dungeon of Serpentcoil Island review

3WD Black SN850X 8 TB NVMe SSD review

WD Black SN850X 8 TB NVMe SSD review

4Ikea Utespelare desk review

Ikea Utespelare desk review

5Asus ROG Harpe Ace Mini wireless mouse review

Asus ROG Harpe Ace Mini wireless mouse review

The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals#

The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals