this post was submitted on 24 May 2024
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The reason Doom got a reputation that it can run on anything is that it did run on just about anything.
The original requirement was for a 386 CPU which ran between 12 and 40 MHz. The 386 was launched in 1985. That means that at the time the Doom was released, it could run on 8-year-old hardware.
It ran like absolute ass on 386 hardware though, and it required at least 4MB of RAM which was also not so common for 386 computers. Source: I had a 386 at the time, couldn't play Doom until I got a Pentium a few years later.
Even on lower clocked 486 hardware it wasn't that great. IIRC, it needed about a 486 DX2/66 to really start to shine.
I ran it perfectly on a 33MHz 486 with 4mb RAM for a long time. Even Doom II with some of its heavier maps ran fine.
But the point was that the hardware requirements were low enough that it could be ported to just about any hardware. It ran on SNES which was like 4MHz
"Perfectly" would mean it ran at 35fps, the maximum framerate DOS Doom is capped at. In the standard Doom benchmark, a dx33 gets about half that: 18fps average in demo3 of the shareware version with the window size reduced 1 step. Demo3 runs on E1M7, which isn't the heaviest map, so heavier maps would bog the dx33 down even more.
I'm sure you found that acceptable at the time, and that you look back on it with slightly rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia, but a dx2/66 and preferably even better definitely gave you a much better experience, which was my point.
nuts.wad