Tech Enthusiast Got Half-Life 2 Running On Just 8 MB Of VRAM

Half-Life 2 isn't particularly demanding to run, as it was released in 2004 with minimum system requirements of just 256 MB of RAM, a 1.2 GHz processor, and a DirectX 7-compatible GPU. Budget-Builds Official, a YouTuber known for tech reviews and budget-friendly advice, tested the game on what he called "possibly the worst graphics card" he's ever used, the Pine Technology 3D Phantom XP 2800, and shared the results of his experiment.

This card only has 8 MB of VRAM from the mid-2000s, and after launching Half-Life 2, Budget-Builds was treated to a glorious 10-20 FPS, well, for about five minutes, until the game crashed. In his quest for stable performance, Budget-Builds spent hours fine-tuning every setting in the game's configuration files. And guess what? He actually got it working. Not just running, but running smoothly, because hitting 60 FPS was the ultimate goal.

With reflections, shadows, anisotropic filtering, and antialiasing turned off, minimal textures, DirectX 6 mode, and a 320x240 resolution, the game looks like a chaotic mess with eerily empty, void-like spaces, but honestly, there's a certain charm to it now.

As the YouTuber points out, many graphics cards back then only had 64 MB of VRAM, yet even that was 8 times more than what's being used to run the Half-Life 2 here. And looking at things today, most modern graphics cards come with at least 8 GB of VRAM, which really puts everything into perspective.

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