When Did Digital Foundry Become Interested In PC Gaming?

[@PulseAttack]

Would have loved Alex's story considering how much younger he is

[@tdome3000]

Alex will laugh at consoles.

[@djwhitepeople]

Oliver is a few years younger than Alex, so...

[@fcukugimmeausername]

​@@tdome3000we all do mate, we all do.

[@AdamMi1]

​@@fcukugimmeausernamethis is the way

[@High.on.Life_DnB]

Who actually gives a crap about whatever these lifeless idiots talk about

[@retromuel]

My big brother put together a Pentium MMX 233 and a 3DFX Voodoo 1 in 1997. Need for Speed 2 was it for me. What a time...

[@Xilent1]

I like how fast John knew when Doom was released.

[@pale_green_telephones4346]

Unreal Tournament on a PII 266mhz beige box taken from a dumpster at parents friends job. Got a Savage 4 GPU and got to turn on those S3 textures. I was hooked.

[@MatrixPavarotti]

I love hearing the DF team’s superhero origins.

[@Lucromis]

I got into it with our first custom PC: A Pentium 166mhz, 32mb ram, probably a Matrox or Voodoo 3D accelerator & Windows 95... Need for Speed II, Warcraft Orcs & Humans, Simcity 2000, Duke Nukem 3D... I was hooked.

[@PeterPauls]

I've never been into console gaming in my whole life and I am 34 years old. I started on my older brother's Pentium 1 133 mhz, 32 MB RAM, no 3D acceleration PC. I played Diablo, Warcraft 1-2, Doom 1-2 on it and later in 2000 I got an Intel Celeron 466 mhz, 256 mb RAM, GeForce MX 400 PC from my parents and I played on it til I spared money and built my own PC with my own hands in 2004 when I was 15, I was very proud Intel Pentium 4 3 ghz (northwood core), 1GB RAM (because of Doom 3) and a GeForce 6600GT. And I've never stopped since...

[@chrissyboy7047]

My first PC was a Pentium 100 with 8mb of RAM. Think it was around 1995. Upgraded it with a Power VR card. How times have changed 😂

[@samcerulean1412]

I’ve been watching this channel’s videos, even before there was any faces to put to the videos and was merely framerate comparison, but I subbed because the quality was really high for it’s time.

[@EspireMike]

Really loving hearing this DF lore and backstory. Keep it coming!

[@djgoa]

I had a pentium mmx. I remember seeing actua soccer and was blown away. Real commentary and everything

[@jmtradbr]

When i got my first pc in 2006. At the time i knew nothing. I even though the hard drive was unlimited for some reason. Reality hit me when disk got full after copying a 3rd dvd movie to the hard drive.

[@eslamarida]

My first gaming PC I had was in 2019. it was the RTX 2060 Super. After owning almost every console ever released, starting from Atari to the PS4 Pro, which was my last console, I have to say moving to a PC was the best decision I have ever made. Everything about a PC is way better than any console. My current rig has 4090 now

[@locinolacolino1302]

When DirectStoragg and PC 2.0 coming?

[@Bristecom]

Now they are. I don't think PC's were superior for games prior to Steam and DirectX11.

[@Jimfowler82]

I’m unsure of the year but I remember going to London with my copy of cvg magazine. The front cover was I believe yellow with yoshi on the front. Must be close to 30 years ago but that sticks in my memory so well. Such a good magazine back then.

[@tektof5649]

I got in by my middle school friend teaching me how to download Rainbow Six Rogue Spear on Kazaa. Before that it was just those old education games, and Game Boy Color. I distinctly remember being like 11 years old on a family road trip around Lake Tahoe reading an issue of PC Gamer in the car and seeing a full page Planetside ad for Kingston memory, I think it was 256 mb.

[@masterquake7]

While I had played around with PC in the early 90s with DOS, I didn't really get a revelation on PC gaming until we got a Windows PC in 1995. We got dial-up internet, and my dad downloaded the share ware version of Doom first thing. It was over for me, and I became a PC gamer. I didn't build my own PC until probably 2004/2005 though. These days, I still do PC gaming and have a Steam Deck, but I'm primarily console and rarely game on PC. This is because I just don't have the time or disposable income to maintain my PC or upgrade parts. I bought a 3080 in 2021 to be able to play Quake 2 RTX and Cyberpunk with ray tracing, I think that's the last card I'm going to buy for a very long time.

[@BPMa14n]

My brother got an nvidia GPU to play Crysis, Age of Empires, Starcraft, World of Warcraft , Sim city. still enjoyed console Xbox for racing and shooting games but PC opened a new batch of Genres. I made the transition in 2014 because PS4 and Xbone were hitting 720p max 900p at 30 fps when equivalent PC games were doing 1080p 60 maybe and PC pricing was not that expensive. Plus you could study and work and browse the internet w PC as well.

[@papalazarou7880]

2000 for me, my first PC was a Tiny (Brand) Pentium III 700Mhz, 128Mb RAM, 40GB HDD with Intel 810 graphics, had to go and buy a PCI Voodoo 5 5500 to play games properly. Didn’t last long though and upgraded to a AGP GeForce 2 (Had a new motherboard on warranty as mine died) which was unreal… I can remember buying a 4x CDRW for around £150-200 not long after 😂.

[@ZratP]

My first PC was a 386 SX16 with a Soundblaster 16 ISA. I played a lot of fabulous DOS games on it. I upgraded it more and more through several 486 and Pentium but it was only when i got a Pentium 166 MMX and a Voodoo Banshee (my first 3D graphics card) that i could enjoy 3D games.

[@TheUballe]

I want to get back into PC gaming, but the price of these new GPUs are absolutely ridiculous. The last rig I built in 2016 was about as bleeding edge as you could get at the time with an Intel 6950x, 128GB of DDR4 RAM, and the GTX 1080 FE. All-in-all -- with a new Dell 32" 21:9 monitor, keyboard, and mouse included -- this came in at about $2800 USD. The CPU was the most expensive component, costing just under $1k, if I remember correctly. If I remember correctly, that GTX 1080 FE was no more than ~$600. It outpaced my Xbox One and PS4 most of the time -- though there were some ports that actually ran worse. Today, if I were to attempt to build a rig of that caliber, it would likely come in around $5,000 USD. I love gaming, but I'll be damned if I contribute to normalizing the $1,500-2,000 GPU. PC gaming has always been a luxury -- don't listen to the naysayers -- but it started to become more accessible in the early 2000s, with mid-tier CPUs and GPUs hitting the market. Today's prices remind me of the late 90's, when you had crap like the 3dfx Voodoo5 costing an arm and a leg, just to get play 3d games.

[@fcukugimmeausername]

Yeah, 1080GTX launch price was $599 USD. 4090RTX launch price was $1599 USD. 4080RTX launch price was $1199 USD. I'd love a 4080 or 4090, but not at those prices 😲

[@GeneralS1mba]

Maybe in a year things will be better. Right now value has stagnated this generation due to trickery with naming and pricing of products to make us spend more.

[@fafski1199]

It was early 1995 with me. It was just a couple of months after I had played a few games on a friends new PC, whilst I was house sitting for him one week (Wing Commander III, Doom II, Magic Carpet, Master of Magic, Decent and Warcraft). They just blew me away so much, that I soon jumped ship from my Amiga 500 and MegaDrive, over to PC. I was fairly lucky at the time, since I'd almost saved up for an Amiga 1200. However, those funds along with those that I made from selling my A500 & MegaDrive (+ games), soon got diverted into a brand new self-built PC (AMD DX2-66 + Diamond Stealth 64). In hindsight, it was a very wise decision and probably one of the best that I've made in gaming. Games on the Amiga went downhill pretty fast after that and MegaDrive games where also beginning to look dated in comparison.

[@derptyderp5287]

I remember as a small child I'd go up to my Dad's home office (little corner of the garage that had been boxed off) late in the day to watch him play Doom, he never let me play it (probably for the best, I'm sure it was the cause of several nightmares, lol.) That and watching him play Civ are probably what got me really interested in games. But didn't get into PC gaming until I got a laptop for college and started trying to run games on that poor overworked mobile Celeron.

[@Bristecom]

I was almost the opposite; my much older brother built computers and played PC games on them but I was never very impressed with those games compared to console games. Even when we got a PC with a good Matrox 3D graphics chip in 98, I was impressed with the graphics but the games just weren't as bountiful or fun for me. It wasn't until 2010 or so when Steam started getting nearly every console port that I gave up on consoles, so I haven't bought a console since (other than handhelds like 3DS and Switch).

[@CheckmateStallioN]

Anyone remember the glory days when Geforce 4 dominated the industry? That GPU was light years ahead of its time and lasted a good 5-7 years barely needing an upgrade

[@printicewhite]

Doom got me intereested, Quake 2 made me a PC guy, I built my first PC and the first game I played was Quake 2, my next PC was for Doom 3... built the PC specifically to play that game. Also ended up being in IT as a career.

[@kevinpascual]

Dusting off my Voodoo Ranger…

[@Rem_NL]

I started playing games on the IBM XT, simple monochrome display, with basically a motherboard speaker for the audio. Then came the sega, nes, 368, 468, playstation, back to pc again, than first sli build, than xbox 360, ps3, pc again after the horrible experience on the ps3 and skyrim I kept buying top line pc's until this day. Pc all the way man, no more sub par experience, and the flexibility the open platform gives made me never look back. Still dedicated to controllers though, even after not playing on consoles for 10+ years.

[@aberkae]

Crysis 1 made me into a PC enthusiast but, I got into PC gaming since Doom 1, Duke Nukem, Wolfenstien 1.

[@CheckmateStallioN]

Whats the diff between SNES and Famicon? Is Famicon what SNES was called in Japan? Also what is a Commodore 64? A console like N64 or handheld? Dont think I ever herd of it

[@fcukugimmeausername]

Famicom is NES in Japan. Short for Family Computer I believe. Commodore 64 was an earlier version of a PC around mid 80s I think.

[@W4l0p]

Japanese Famicom is a different design than the US and EU NES (different colour, top loaded instead of front) and had lot more general computing software and peripherals than the gaming only NES. Commodore 64 is a LEGENDARY microcomputer from the 80s. It is different design and lineage than (IBM) PCs which didn't become prominent in households and gaming before mid 90s around the time of DOOM. C64 was a all in one machine built inside the keyboard and usually plugged in a TV because very few had dedicated monitors at their homes. Programs were usually loaded from c-cassettes (and sometimes even broadcast on FM radio with varying success) or you copied the source code by hand from a magazine since even the cassette drive was an optional extra. Or if you were wealthy enough you could later buy a floppy drive, but it was as expensive as the computer itself because it basically had the same processor. In late 80s Commodore Amiga was the thing to have for a home computer with its cutting edge graphics and and sound, while the boring grey office PCs had little hardware support for neither.

[@fcukugimmeausername]

Amiga 500 was my first system, but first PC was AMD K2 233MHz, 32mb RAM, 2MB S3 trio video. Used to have to edit many unreal .ini's to get higher frame rates 😂 anything around 20 was great.

[@2drealms196]

I'm curious about the scar of Alex's face, did that come from fencing?

[@bettergaminghd4718]

is there any way to reach digital foundry? they must look into witcher 3 ps4 free updated to ps5 grass glitch. People have got witcher 3 on ps5 without update do not have grass glitch popping issue. It is important! since the game breaks immersion with every few seconds grass popping in front of you and then disappearing ,not in distance, but in front of player

[@formulaic78]

I got into it when I decided i wanted to learn how to use a mouse and keyboard to game. I failed miserably at that but have now spent thousands of pounds trying to play at 4K 60+ with ray tracing. It's a blessing and a curse and mostly thanks to DF.

[@locinolacolino1302]

Well at least NVidia shareholders are happy I guess...

[@techsamurai11]

*The Golden Era of PC gaming was in the early 2000s... * Pentium 60 for Myst, then custom built Celeron 300A and Pentium II and III before building my final gaming machine on which I played the super games of the early 2000s Half-Life System Shock 2 No one Lives Forever Max Payne Giants Citizen Kabuto American McGee's Alice Undying Diablo 2 Homeworld Age of Mythology Return to Castle Wolfenstein Star Trek Elite Force Chronicles of Riddick The Longest Journey

[@ricepony33]

DF moment, remember comparing Mortal Kombat 1 on the Genesis vs the SNES?

[@Nate-lp2cu]

i own all of the consoles, i buy them every generation (i don't know why), but I am without a doubt a pc gamer. there is nothing better than playing the brand new AAA titles maxed out at ungodly framerates.

[@Fusion05]

I got interested when the RTX series first released. It was the first big idea I had personally seen.

[@locinolacolino1302]

It's crazy how I'm sure others in the comments would've had the same experience reading computer magazines in the 90s, discussing how 'Raytracing is the next big thing in videogames', and it only becoming a reality in recent years.

[@FPSmodz-]

Console for the lounge, PC for the study.

[@Vashkey]

Man, I didn't realize Olie was so young

[@nisnast]

Same, he mentioned being 10 years old in 2006, I was 10 years old in 2006, I wasn't expecting that lol That being said our experiences were pretty different, the PC I had was bought in 2008, and it was low end, I was a Intel graphics kid, around 2013 my parents bought me a GeForce 8600 GS on the cheap and that finally allowed me to play Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Fallout and Skyrim at low settings and maybe 30 FPS on a good day lol When I turned 18 I got a job and bought my PS4 And last year I built my first ever PC, and I've been a very happy boy since

[@АлександърЗапрянов-ь7э]

@@nisnastDamn, I was 10 in 2006 as well, had the same GPU as you but a bit earlier, played Crysis at low as far as I remember but still loving it!

[@djpep94]

I was very late to move over to PC I had played games on PC since I was a child but they were limited to titles like Football manager and The sims I was almost 28 by the time a PC replaced console as my main gaming medium

[@Boss_Fight_Index_muki]

Doom1

[@alumlovescake]

Never, they still focus too much on console even though half of them don't understand anything or care about anything Digital Foundry does

[@grcigar9911]

Thanks for sharing. PC gaming today is sadly more hobby than entertainment. After holding out way back in the day and waiting to jump into a whole new rig upon release of Half-Life 2 Ep3, gave me a reason to jump to consoles and never look back as we know how that story ended. Thank you Gabe and Windows Vista for killing my original love of PC gaming and nothing since has enticed me enough to come back.

[@YellowBriefs]

Sounds like a petty reason

[@grcigar9911]

@@YellowBriefsnot really. Just stating a tipping point. Sometimes you break up, move on and best not to hold grudges.

[@High.on.Life_DnB]

Ok... 3 notifications today... this is getting out of hand, unsubbed

[@High.on.Life_DnB]

I wasn't even subbed to get all notifications, and to get 3 of them, that's too much for something I don't have all notifications turned on for...

[@rezaghasemi7651]

since nvidia paid you

[@Kingofconsoles54]

Ps5 is still outselling the homobox series x

[@FilthEffect]

I'm glad you got your comment in before the nurse takes your phone away for the day, homie

[@jameswatson5807]

You got issues bro

[@folver91]

Both barely hits 60fps lol

[@jameswatson5807]

@@folver91 You get what you pay for, but most PC folks are doing 1080p 60fps there rig is less than what a PS5 and Xbox series X can do. 4k 60fps gaming on PC is only 5% most PC gamers don't even want 4k, PS5 and Xbox series X both have to do 4k but drop the frame rate. What's the point in doing less than 4k when we have 4k TVs.

[@fcukugimmeausername]

​@@jameswatson5807even a PC that runs games at 720p 30fps is still a PC and is considerably better than a console. the two really can't be compared.