HardwareThis is what your PC looked like when Fallout first came out and it was wonderful and terrible at the same timeWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
HardwareThis is what your PC looked like when Fallout first came out and it was wonderful and terrible at the same timeWhen 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: PhilsComputerLab)
With everyone going stark raving overAmazon’s new TeeVee adaption of Fallout, a pertinent question arises. Just how proto-industrial was the PC back when the OG Fallout game launched in 1997? After all, we’re talking glass-tube CRT screens, ribbon IDE cables and less processing power than your bank card, right, something barely better than the monochromatic, diegetic Pip-Boy wrist computer from the game itself?
Of course, any self-respecting proto-tech bro of the time wouldn’t countenance mere minimum specs. So, what would the ultimate gaming rig du jour have looked like when Fallout first came out?
You’d definitely have wanted an Intel Pentium II which had the legs on the AMD K6 of the time. You’d probably have been looking at a mighty 300MHz model.
If that choice was straight forward, choosing a video solution back then was much harder. It was the early days of dedicated graphics for the PC and the market was a veritable wild west of competing standards, formats and form factors.
For starters, you had the choice between an old-school PCI card or one of those new-fangled AGP or Accelerated Graphics Port beasts. Yup, a specialised port just for graphics.
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You also had to decide if you wanted a card that could do both 2D and 3D rendering, or split those duties across different boards. As it happens, it was the Creative Labs 3D Blaster and its 3D-only 3Dfx Voodoo 2 chip that gave peak results for 3D rendering in Anandtech’s late ‘97 testing, though the Voodoo 2 didn’t go on sale until February 1998.
Its 66fps in the Quake II timedemo walloped the next best board based on Nvidia nascent Riva 128 chip, which could only manage 37fps. Other graphics chipset choices at the time included ATI’s 3D Rage Pro, the PowerVR PCX2, Rendition Verite V2100, 3DLabs Permedia 2 and the Matrox Millennium II. You certainly didn’t lack for choice, that’s for sure.
Behold, the majesty of PC gaming circa 1997, coutesy of the original Fallout.(Image credit: Bethesda Softworks)
Your next machine(Image credit: Future)Best gaming PC: The top pre-built machines.Best gaming laptop: Great devices for mobile gaming.
Your next machine
(Image credit: Future)Best gaming PC: The top pre-built machines.Best gaming laptop: Great devices for mobile gaming.
(Image credit: Future)
Best gaming PC: The top pre-built machines.Best gaming laptop: Great devices for mobile gaming.
Instead, Fallout was developed using oblique projection to give a somewhat 3D feel to what was ultimately a 2D engine. The rest, as we’re obliged to recount, is history.
As for how it performed on thehardware of the time, that’s pretty hard to dredge up from the annals of history. And frame rates arguably don’t apply to a 2D projection title like Fallout in the same way they do a full 3D game.
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