Do people with such heavily outdated computer systems buy software for them?

Bargain computers can be had for a cost less then many software packages or a few games that are easily within the spec of 2ghz and a GeForce or Radeon - especially if you consider an upgrade route and cut out the cost of a new monitor.

This is something I have considered myself when chosing which performance level to target. Gamers with gamer systems buy games, but people that don't prioritize their computer systems enough to keep them reasonably up to date - do they want to spend money on software? I don't know myself, but I'm winging it a little to target people with at least a GeForce 3 and 2ghz considering the low cost of such a system.

Projecting myself, if I had a really old system and didn't have the resources to upgrade it I think I would stick with buying a heavily modded older game like Half Life, and do the rest in freeware/opensource. I wouldn't buy a game unless it had longstanding value through mods or it was in a value pack or some other gimick with other games for a trivially cheap price.

Also, I would factor in that if the game targetted too low a spec, and I had a nice system, I would not want to run it. I would want to play a game that used the hardware I valued enough to keep up to date. For example, when I got a DVD player, I would no longer rent video cassettes as I was put off by the quality of them.

So, in this line of thinking, I think it's safer to target an audience that values having a decent enough computer enough to keep it up to date, and I'm not too terribly interested in limiting a game enough to run on an Intel video card and 500mhz cpu type system. Current games like Doom 3 hardly run on a 2ghz/GeForce 3 system as it is - so you are not competing head to head with AAA titles, but at the same time not dipping too low to cut off the upper ends of the market which actually spend money. Counterpoints are more then welcome though.

its not that people specificly go out to buy older computers. the fact is the average HOME users doesn't upgrade/replace their computer for at least 3-5 years. Im not talking about 20 year old jimmy the guy that 'needs' the best and newiest in hardware every month. More along the lines of mom and dad or aunt Phillis or little cousin Jane whome are realy the wider home market PC owners today.

They don't upgrade because

1. they don't know what it means or that it can be done
2. they see no reason to because the computer they got now works fine
3. cost is too much just for a an extra do dad they don't see needing


they are also the typical user that you know. don't know how to to defrag a hard drive or even empty the recyle bin. has to get the kid from down the street to install a program for them.

May be funny sounding but that is your wider base home PC market.

My advisor ( when I was in collage for Comp Sci) said statisticly the average home owners computer is 3-5 years behind in hardware technology. When you program you program with the hardware capabilityes of the target user in mind. Obvious a lesson many of software houses never learned.

Yes, I know many people like this. They just cruise the Internet from time to time, use email and fire up the word processor. I don't personally know anyone in this category that plays games though. They do seem to buy things like a current virus scanner or other things that are strictly necessary. But as you say Grimber - they don't know any better so why would they be interested in any do dads they don't need or are not savvy enough to even know exists? Like games?

I would postulate that a person into computers enough to enjoy playing 3D accelerated games would not fall into this category that often. Unless it's junior trying to run the latest games on his parent's outdated system. For example, I bought my parents a computer years ago that they are still happy with. I don't think they have ever seen a 3D accelerated game and they barely understand what I do for a living. Yet they do start up solitaire from time to time though and it's enough for them. If they really wanted to play any more games I imagine they would find all they need in the form of web based games and the like.

Also, I would think that if you looked at the entire PC market, and said something like most of them are running Intel video chips and 500 mhz, you would have to take in account the business sector. Business and government own far more PCs then any home users I would imagine. And they are rarely used for games of course. I know of a few business operations that still use a 486 as a fax server or in a voice mail system, etc, or use ancient Unix and mainframe systems for database storage.

So I still wonder.. do people with outdated systems buy many games?

You'd be surprised. Few yesrs back ( mid to late 90s) I worked a small buisness ( co owner) for computer services and repairs and did most of the work on site, not in the shop for home, school and buisness computers.

This is mid 90s mind you had delt with MANY schools, homes an buisnesses still using apples IIEs and even 8088s ( 3 buisnesses I worked with had networked 8088s) many home users had 8088s to 486s rare to even see a normal pentium except for more updated offices or buisnesses that were computer orientated.
And this was around the time of the realy big PUSH by the industry to get the home user into the internet. only 10 years ago


The schools and the home owners many had games for thier machines ( was always a common question why they bought a program or game in a stoe and never ran on thier computer). Working IN the owners homes,schools and buisness for about 7 years. Even the local District Attorny ( who was only in his mid 30s, used a lap top etc) couldn't figure out how to install windows into a clients computer, wnet I was called in to look at it ( the home of fairly big buisness owner), it was an arcaic IBM 8088 with a 5 1/4 floppy drive with a 20 meg 'chittering' IBM Hard drive ( the big black box ones)

because of the BIG internet in the home push of the mid 90s many homes, schools and buisnesses seriously then looked at getting or replacing exisiting computers to become more upto date from mid to late 90s. Only places that have people that keep informed on technology advances and the benfifts of those advantages will keep thier systems updated as possible/budget wise allows. (its why you see more buisnesses/schools with computer trained techs in thier service). You can bet, if you worked in a computer servies buisnees now, the average machine you would see is about a pentium1 grade machine with a tnt2 or equivalent vid card 5-20 gig hard drive 16 bit sound card. In fact around this mid to late 90s early 2000 we seen a big re emergnace of the 70's standerd integrated motherboard. ( 80-s to 90s most motherboards wern't integrated)
WQhich helped pull computer system prices down just when sellers had a BIG opening market for mroe home buyers and schools,buisnesses upgrading/replacing systems. ( its when compaiens like Gateway made thier real money and Compact came reappeared after it shirvled up in the 80s.)

People like ourselves ( game and application enthusiests) tend to keep up on that technology, if not in actual hardware, at least in knowlage of the technology because we have an active intrest in it.

like someone that is very avid about cars, they know allot of the NEW hardware, equipment and tools dealing with automotives as they come about, but they probably don't know much about postage stamps other then to stick them on an envelope.

Your average computer user ( even in most buisnesses) is that avid auto fan. They know what they need to know about computers and that is enough for them.

One major problem with older cards (especially MX based Nvidia) is the horrible fillrate. When you changed resolutions you saw an increase in performance because the frame buffer size decreased. Less pixels to move on a fillrate bound card is a good thing. Stencil shadows are very fillrate intensive, which you saw affects your performance. If you have lots of transparent sprites or particle systems with massive overdraw, you will see a big hit on fillrate. Your card is most likely fillrate bound and not geometry bound based on the tests you have run. Believe it or not, you may be able to boost your performance by increasing the number of triangles. Large triangles take a bigger hit on fill rate than smaller triangles. If you have say 2 very large triangles that make up one wall and which fill a large portion of the view in one area, you could split them into maybe 10 smaller triangles and actually increase your performance. Obviously, there is a balance. If you split into to too many tris you will eventually become geometry bound. I am new to 3DGS, so I am not 100% sure on the way you could easily do this with the engine if you are building your geometry with blocks in WED.
The "locked numbers" on your frame rate are explained by the fact that your frame rate is locked with the refresh rate on your monitor (vsync). Let's say your refresh rate is 60Hz and your card is filling the frame buffer 61 times per second (fps). Although it was early, the card will have to stall until the monitor is ready. So it effectly caps your FPS to 60. If you add more processing for the card to perform, and this causes it to only be able to update 59 times per second, the card will miss every other time the monitor is ready to refresh. This will cause it to have to stall until the *next* update, and drop your FPS to 30. Turn off vsync to see the true rate at which your game is updating.
I also want to warn you about using frames per second as a number to profile your performance (although it is an important number). What you really want to know is how much time (in ms usually) you are spending in a single frame. There is a really good article that discusses the pitfalls of using FPS to profile:
Article
Just wanted to give a heads up on that!