The biggest game-changing PC upgrade of all-time?

[ShadowDeath]

You want a game changer? Windows.... Windows was a game changer. Without windows we would still be typing commands for everything we want to do.

 

[Reehahs]

The first time I used a graphic card to play Halo: Combat Evolved... the glorious GeForce 2 MX. Raging battle going on in the background and here is MC just watching the bugs crawl through the grass. The game before was greyscale and 640*480 on Intel IGP.

 

[Gadgety1]

Personally, it was a motherboard, the Evga SR-2 which, warts and all, enabled dual overclockable Xeons and up to seven GPUs pci-e 2.0 8x, for Octane rendering. I must say, it was software driven, because without Octane I wouldn't even have considered getting it.

 

[Nobina]

Social media, it changed not only the game but the whole world. For the worst that is.

Just kidding it's not a PC upgrade.

I would say multiple core CPUs.

 

[Deevo324]

Looking back on my 35 years in the industry I'd have to say the mouse and the associated graphic user interface. All the others listed above such as SSDs, LCD monitors and sound cards are really just incremental advances, but the mouse and GUI were truly revolutionary.

 

[VitalyT]

About 15 years back, I had an AMD FX-60 PC, which was quite slow after I put Windows Vista on it. And to solve the problem, I put an "Intel Inside" sticker on my PC case. After that it was running like a rabbit. Best upgrade ever!

 

[Joe Seijo]

3Dfx Voodoo and it's Glide API.

I still have mine stashed in the attic along with the Voodoo 2 and Voodoo 3 3500TV.

 

[nismo91]

5.1 surround sound for me. That's what differentiate gaming on a laptop or handheld vs a proper desk setup. Sure Dolby Headphones and other sort of virtual surround catches on, but nothing beats a properly arranged 5.1 setup for me.

High-res screen, Powerful GPU, Higher DPI mice, and SSD are important, but most of today's gamers would already be using those anyway.

 

[Mister_K]

There are three letters in it.

S S to the fakin' D.

 

[Steve]

SSD

 

[Tgard]

I am torn about a SSD or the first gamer Video cards, but nothing, not one thing, made more difference in my computer than that first Sound Card that came with CDRom. Changed everything about the computer way back when.

 

[fps4ever]

Recently, SSD's and long ago the first time I switched to OpenGL in Quake instead of software mode. Amazing!

 

[marktherob2011]

The gaming laptop, it got me out of the dingy dark basement.

 

[Musician]

The first upgrade that made me really excited was the very first GeForce card (from a Trident 4MB PCI card) many years ago.

The recent one was the SSD a few years ago. Redefined the whole PC experience.

 

[Bas Keur]

I remember when the sound card was added... no more simple "beeps" as sound effects... now we get 5.1 (or even 7.1) dolby digital...

I was rocking the the Creative Soundblaster Awe 32, so yeah, women were standing in line ....
Rocked 8 megabytes in a 1mb world, felt like a CERN super cluster ..... ow yes.

 

[Cycloid Torus]

Mouse and CGA. Up to 1981 it was CRT and text mode only. The Color Graphics Card and the Mouse changed every users perception of computers and computing. 16 colors and 160x100 resolution wasn't much, but it represented a watershed event on a global scale. I can remember being impressed - as I was not far from 2k main memory on a 7094.

 

[noc81]

I'd have to say the Nvidia Riva TNT.. It was really a revolutionary product, the first 2d/3d board that made 3d pc gaming mainstream. Before that we were relegated to running separate 2d and 3d boards, attempting to get glide to work in some sort of usable fashion. The Riva TNT made all that a thing of the past -- put it in, install directx, and you were good to go, able to easily play dozens of top shelf games.

 

[noc81]

Transistor

Bwahaahaha.,. I almost said that. x]

 

[Julio Franco]

It's been 30+ years of huge improvements and jumps on both the hardware and software side. For computing in general, I'd say definitely the internet (remember when laptops just started to get WiFi as standard?). But Shawn's open forum seems to be mostly about hardware and building your PC so I'll say the GPU.

 

[EndlessWaves]

The Novint Falcon Haptics controller. Being able to feel surface textures, move stuff around in three dimensions and physically put effort into actions was just amazing.

Of course, it bizzarely never took off. Since then I've been watching in bemusement as the gaming world goes for minor fads like 3D screens and mechanical keyboards when such amazing technology could become mainstream if only there was a big enough push for it.

Fighting with a monster in virtual reality? I'd rather have it try and rip off my arm in actual reality.


In terms of past rather than future stuff I'd have to go for Windows Vista. Sure, the interface was sluggish, but the stability was astounding compared to previous Windows versions. Prior to Vista I don't think I had a Windows install that made it to two years old, my Vista install lasted five or six years.

 

[mcborge]

I'd have to say the Nvidia Riva TNT.. It was really a revolutionary product, the first 2d/3d board that made 3d pc gaming mainstream. Before that we were relegated to running separate 2d and 3d boards, attempting to get glide to work in some sort of usable fashion. The Riva TNT made all that a thing of the past -- put it in, install directx, and you were good to go, able to easily play dozens of top shelf games.

The first card I brought was a Riva TNT 2 m64 to play quake 2... I still have it somewhere along with the k6-2 400 chip I paired it with.

 

[Lurker101]

Just for the sake of contrarianism, I'm going to say the current console generation, since before that, people still cared about console games. Now, all the focus is on the system that has allegedly been dead and buried for about 20 years and may still be dead, depending on which clickbait news sites you peruse.

 

[TomSEA]

All the peripherals in the world would be meaningless without the advent of stand-alone graphics cards. They took computing out of the 8-bit world, so my vote would be the ATI Mach series VGA cards.

 

[Scavengers]

Hard Drives

Lets see. Late 70's or early 80's. Bought my first one. It was 40 MB. Mounted in my case like DVD\Bluray drives do now except it took up 2 5.25 in. bays. Motherboards didnt have any controllers built in then. It came with a controller card that plugged into a PCI slot and the ribbons ran to the drive from there. Im pretty sure it was right around $600.

 

[cliffordcooley]

It came with a controller card that plugged into a PCI slot

I'm fairly certain you mean ISA