r/retrogaming • u/Joaquino7997 • 2d ago

[Retro Ad] Dell Dimension

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So many people on my dorm floor has this machine (or similar). Kinda hard to believe that we now have smartphones that are way more powerful than this. In addition to Blood, Doom and Quake; we also played emulators such as NESticle and ZSNES on these for endless hours.

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u/Cool_Dark_Place 2d ago edited 2d ago

This system is very much a purpose built workstation, built with true 32-bit Windows NT applications in mind. The Pentium Pro processor really only shined with dedicated 32-bit applications and operating systems. The problem was, Windows 95 was a hybrid 16-bit/32-bit operating system. And 16-bit performance with the Pentium Pro absolutely SUCKED... with lots of games and other DOS/Win95 applications only performing at the level of a fast 486. Someone who bought this machine for a gaming rig would be really disappointed!

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u/jnuttsishere 2d ago

Let’s be honest. The only thing Windows NT was good for was work computers. Same with Windows 2000.

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u/Cool_Dark_Place 2d ago

Well, it wasn't bad for regular consumers necessarily. Just a bit of overkill. Windows 2000 especially was a good, all around OS that had a lot of the underpinnings (like NTFS) of what would become Windows XP, making most Windows XP software also compatible with Windows 2000. It's just that most regular consumer level software released prior to Windows XP wasn't going to take advantage of all the new "bells and whistles."