Quake.

I remember upgrading from a 7600 GS AGP to a 8400 GS PCIe and being disappointed that I still could not play IL-2 smoothly at high resolutions. (That had to wait until I got a 550 ti a couple of years later.)

I love a good retro necro! 😜

I never really upgraded my hardware based on any specific games. In the early days, upgrading for me was all about adding new functionality. Moving from cassette tape to floppy disks for storage, adding a cool toy like a speech synthesizer, getting a faster modem, adding more memory so it all ran faster. Though, I did buy different computers just to play games only on those platforms at the time. To be fair, I got them all used after they were "outdated". 😀

Once I got into the "IBM" world of computers, I still wanted more storage and a faster modem, but now I also wanted more colors and pixels on my screen and a faster processor. Two games come to mind that really pushed me to buy hardware I otherwise would have probably waited longer to buy, that was Doom and Command & Conquer. Beyond that, and to this day, it's all about the overall performance of my machine since I use them for much more than just gaming. No single piece of software has made me upgrade anything since if memory serves.

So, I guess my simple answer is games really don't make me upgrade. If something dies or I'm having issues across more than just a couple pieces of software or games, then I look into making whatever change is needed.

Wing Commander III was a very demanding title for its time, launched a year after the first Pentium, a lot of us were still using 386s and 486s at that time and stood no chance.

I had three games around the same time, Porsche unleashed, 4x4 Evolution, and Ford Racing 2, that I didn't think ran smooth enough on my overclocked K6-2 and Voodoo3, so I ended up splurging on an Athlon XP and GeForce 3.

Morrowind

I got my Voodoo 3 3000 AGP just because I loved playing Tribes so much. I'm not sure there was a better card for that game than Voodoo 3.

Quake2: S3 Virge DX to Voodoo Banshee
Quake3, Half-Life, CS: Voodoo Banshee to TNT2 Ultra
Battlefield, MoH/CoD: TNT2 Ultra to Geforce 4 MX 440
Doom3: ? to Geforce 6800
Laptops

Half-Life Alyx made a lot of people upgrade for VR... The software/experience always drives sale of the hardware

I remember wanting to upgrade to a Voodoo2 to play Tomb Raider and Resident Evil.
I didnt but I remember wanting to.

The only time I upgraded to play a game was while playing World of Tanks, I upgraded from a 4850X2 to a 980Ti to increase the distance I could see. Which worked.
I used to play platoon games and the guys I was playing with could see and shoot enemy tanks I couldnt even though we were side by side because the card just couldnt render enough detail. That was about 10 years ago now. Dont play much any more.

Deus Ex: Invisible War 😁 Moving from a PIII/GF2MX to PIV/9550 for this garbage was the last time I trusted someone from the gaming industry to make a proper sequel to a PC game with consoles/multiplatform (which is just consoles) in mind. Spared me from losing it when "Fallout" "3" came out, though.

I upgraded my cyrix 6x86 to a pentium 1 233 to be able to play Final Fantasy 7. The game actually refused to run on the Cyrix, maybe that is a topic if its own.

I also bought a GeForce 256 to play Sacrifice, one of my favorite games that I haven't touched for years.

I replaced my 386sx20 w/ 64kb cache with a 486-33 motherboard because darklands was coming out soon.

I am not sure how much influence the likes of Doom and Doom2 was out by then, played into decision to upgrade from 386sx40 to 5x86 100GP, but maybe it had a bit. Maybe DN3D and quake made me get more RAM too.

Upgraded to a Geforce 6800GT for GTA San Andreas. My Geforce 4 Ti4200 was just not cutting it.

I went from a 486/160 to a Pentium 133 because of Quake, and a Voodoo 1 because of Quake as well.

256 color game that use vga convinced me to upgrade from amiga500 with 32mb on the graphic adventure to a pc with 256color vga… and i still love the 320x200 256 color… Monkay Island 2 for exhample is a picture, every screen..

Upgraded my Voodoo2 8Mb to a 12Mb just to have visible dashboard with the inside camera on one of the Need For Speed games 🤣

Dark Forces.
Upgraded my 486 dx2 66mhz from 4 to 8mb ram , 4x CD-ROM and sound blaster 16

mferrocosta wrote on 2024-08-06, 17:06:

Dark Forces.
Upgraded my 486 dx2 66mhz from 4 to 8mb ram , 4x CD-ROM and sound blaster 16

Good Choice! And you set the table for a not so entirely disappointing windows 95 experience.

I begged my father to upgrade our computer to a Pentium from a 486 DX2 after I played the QTest. All I did was walk around those empty maps, but they blew my mind in 1996, even at the 10 fps I was probably getting in them. Of course my father grumbled because upgrading to a Pentium wasn't just a matter of the CPU, but the motherboard, CPU, RAM and video card because the VLB system we had was such a technological dead end. Still, he did it at some point.

Doom 3 turned out to be another must upgrade game for me. I spent a bunch of my summer internship money on a hot shit Athlon 64 system with a Geforce 6800 GT.