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[mckmas8808]

Interesting thoughts.

 

[KloetenQuetsche]

Look,

Microsoft announced the power of the cloud... Nothing happens.

Sony announced the Cell... Also nothing happens.

Microsoft gets lot of hate for that.
Sony gets much love for doing such a fine piece of tech that brought you nothing!

There is a thread about fan boys in which this behavior is all about.

 

[nowhat]

Look,

Microsoft announced the power of the cloud... Nothing happens.

Sony announced the Cell... Also nothing happens.

Microsoft gets lot of hate for that.
Sony gets much love for doing such a fine piece of tech that brought you nothing!

There is a thread about fan boys in which this behavior is all about.

Let's put that into perspective, shall we?

Microsoft announces the power of the cloud. And at best we get... Crackdown 3? Puddlegate all you want, but man has there ever been as much of a downgrade in terms of what was supposed to be delivered and what actually was delivered.

The Cell.... was a bitch to program for. And it took ages for even the first-party devs to really get hang of it. But we got the original TLoU as a swan song to the PS3, and arguably it does still look nice today, if not up to standards of the day (well duh, it's been almost seven years).

So, on the other hand, we have a technology that never delivered. And then a technology that did (with some incredible results, given the RAM constraints), although that took its sweet time. But surely you realize there's a difference there?

 

[Bernkastel]

So, on the other hand, we have a technology that never delivered. And then a technology that did (with some incredible results, given the RAM constraints), although that took its sweet time. But surely you realize there's a difference there?

We are getting this

 

[nowhat]

We are getting this

I also saw great Crackdown 3 footage before release. Until I'm seeing it running on real hardware, verified by a neutral party - fool me once and all that.

 

[Stiflers Mom]

PPC had its day but WHY doesn't cut anymore IF their performance are why better than X86? Power consumption is a reason... but why nobody have searched a solution?
Macs switched to X86 recently (10 years or less) but they have born with PPC architecture and always been superior to the X86 counterparts of their time (plus optimized software in general)

No, Macs were born 68k CPUs which are imo still the best architecture out there.

 

[01011001]

I also saw great Crackdown 3 footage before release. Until I'm seeing it running on real hardware, verified by a neutral party - fool me once and all that.

that footage was real and would have worked. it would just make for a really bad game.
calculating physics on a high end server is not a difficult task, it's rather trivial actually. it's just that a VS multiplayer game where after 2min the whole map is just flat, because everyone breaks all the buildings, isn't a good game

 

[sono]

Winks at my PS3 fat

Your time will come my boy..

 

[nowhat]

that footage was real and would have worked. it would just make for a really bad game.
calculating physics on a high end server is not a difficult task, it's rather trivial actually. it's just that a VS multiplayer game where after 2min the whole map is just flat, because everyone breaks all the buildings, isn't a good game

Calculating the physics themselves in the cloud - doable for sure. Delivering the results to people with varying network conditions, especially so that people can interact with each other in a meaningful fashion - not so much.

But honestly, if that would have made for a really bad game, why was that the selling point in the first place? I maintain that as far as downgrades go this generation, Crackdown 3 takes the cake easily. No, Watch Dogs or Witcher 3 (latter of which still looks bloody nice unless you're really bitter) are not near.

 

[Bernkastel]

I also saw great Crackdown 3 footage before release. Until I'm seeing it running on real hardware, verified by a neutral party - fool me once and all that.

Pretty sure everyone called it meh ever since reveal. Compare that with FS's reception.
It not just trailers. Microsoft also invited many Flight Sim streamers to test a pre-alpha build. Heres a review of the pre alpha build by a pilot and sim streamer


There will soon be an open beta.

 

[cookiemuffin]

lmao sure buddy. Prove it by making HZD2 for PS3.

 

[Negotiator]

We have a Guerilla developer who worked on Cell, PS4 and PC give his opinion and yet OP disregarded all this and asked a bunch of forum poster their take on this

If Guerilla dev say Cell is more powerful than any modern intel CPU today, I would believe him more that some of the edge lords here.

I hate edge lords more than you do (especially PCMR ones), but I have strong doubts about his claims.

Even a lowly 8-core Zen 2 @ 3.2 GHz will run circles around Cell thanks to AVX2 and its native 256-bit vector units (over 800 Gigaflops, which is 4x faster than Cell).

Of course Intel's top desktop CPU (9900k at 5 GHz) is even faster than that, so I still don't understand his quite peculiar comment. Maybe he hasn't caught up with PC/x86 tech since the 2000s?

Cell was way ahead of its time back in 2005, most PCs still had crappy Pentium 4 CPUs with single-digit Gigaflop figures (slightly less than Emotion Engine's 6 Gigaflops).

With that being said, it doesn't make sense to oversell an ancient 90nm chip compared to what we have today. PS3/Cell is dead, Sony has nothing to gain from this PR.

I think it would be far more interesting if Sony tried to educate the masses about how Cell influenced the chip industry, including AMD and their Fusion project (APUs, semi-custom department).

It's no coincidence that programmers that excelled at Cell SPU programming were also the first ones to take advantage of PS4's APU to the fullest extent.

Problem is, a CPU shouldn't try to be a GPU.

Cell was a proto-APU, a heterogeneous processor.

I'm looking I these numbers are a lie, it seems.
The 400 GFLOPs is possible, but in 8bit precision. At 32bit is 25 GFLOPS, at 64bits is 20 GFLOPs. So in practice is the CELL was just better than PC CPUs at that time, but nothing so revolutionary.

It's 25.6GF in FP32 per core (1 PPE + 8 SPUs).

Cell is very good at the kinds of computations which GPU's are good at. This is because the original design of PS3 didn't have a dedicated GPU - Cell was supposed to do both CPU and GPU functions.

That didn't work out at all which is why the final shipping PS3 had an Nvidia GPU bolted on. But Cell is still pretty amazing for what it was designed to do, and while modern GPU's have since surpassed Cell, it's still a very unique design in it's own right.

Actually they wanted to use a custom Toshiba GPU (an evolution of Graphics Synthesizer).

Cell as a GPU isn't ideal, since it lacks fixed-function circuits dedicated to graphical operations (TMUs, ROPs).

Cell was meant to be a co-processor to assist the GPU in tasks that the GeForce 7 couldn't perform (proto-GPGPU compute).

Sony could not continue with Cell development because that 4 billion in R&D almost sunk them

Actually it was 1/10 of that:

news

news

www.gamasutra.com

Yet, if cell took off in a few desktops, laptops and more devices and STI (Sony, Toshiba, IBM) recouped some of that money to profit, they would have continued to develop cell and remove any niggles people had with the first iteration...….At it's inception, Cell was a powerful beast..... 13-14 years later, with continued development of cell......I think STI could have had by far, the most powerful CPU technology out there...

In essence......If cell 1.0 was so powerful, then think of Cell Technology Evolved...

For better or worse, GPGPUs and mobile SoCs (cheap video decode/encode) rendered it obsolete and redundant. Very interesting piece of tech and way ahead of its time, but ultimately an evolutionary dead end.

There's a catch with this comparison.
Contrary to the CELL, x86 desktop CPUs aren't trying to be GPUs.
The CELL was a good GPU without a doubt, but a not so good CPU.
Why have something like the CELL ever again instead of something else with a good GPU (contrary to RSX)?

AFAIK, even G80 with CUDA wasn't as flexible as custom Cell SPU coding.

I think GPUs became equal in terms of calculating graphics + compute tasks concurrently with GCN 1.1 (8 ACEs, which was a Sony-requested customization, possibly to mimic Cell).

It wasn't really good GPU either.
It was nice for some of the tasks ilke geometry pre-processing, yet was horrendous for texturing and such.

Correct. There's a reason modern GPGPUs still have TMUs instead of relegating it to FP32 ALUs.

 

[Negotiator]

Look,

Microsoft announced the power of the cloud... Nothing happens.

Sony announced the Cell... Also nothing happens.

Microsoft gets lot of hate for that.
Sony gets much love for doing such a fine piece of tech that brought you nothing!

There is a thread about fan boys in which this behavior is all about.

 

[polybius80]

We are getting this

what is in that game that requires the cloud? to stream the map because it doesnt fit on the disk?

 

[thelastword]

Actually it was 1/10 of that:

news

news

www.gamasutra.com

I know about the 400 million for Cell development amongst Sony and it's partners, I was talking R&D Sony spent on overall PS3 development where it brought more than cell to the table....

 

[Bernkastel]

what is in that game that requires the cloud? to stream the map because it doesnt fit on the disk?

Not only is 2 PB of map stored on Azure, much of the calculations like the weather simulation are done in Azure servers.
Here is some explanation

 

[MiguelItUp]

I'll believe it when it's out and has been spec'd and tested. I feel like we go through something like this every time a new console is on its way, and it's never wholeheartedly accurate to the original statement.

 

[Three]

So it could run games at 4K and at 60fps? This guy just wants to make headlines since the big boss left to Sony.

I don't think the CPU is what gets you 4k bud.

 

[Potato Chip PRO]

Cell V2 for PS6. You heard it here folks.

 

[ZywyPL]

Microsoft announced the power of the cloud... Nothing happens.

Sony announced the Cell... Also nothing happens.

Microsoft gets lot of hate for that.
Sony gets much love for doing such a fine piece of tech that brought you nothing!

Truth be told Sony DID shown that Cell was indeed quite capable processor, started in 2009 with the famous "Killzowned" meme and terabytes of gifs all over the internet, followed by UC2 that doesn't need any introduction, then with GoW3, and so on, and so on, while MS on the other hand quietly and (almost) unnoticeably withdraw from their initial claims, the only games that actually used the could were Titanfall for the AI, which was actually bashed for it, because MP stands for multi PLAYER not multi AI, people wanted to play versus actual other people, not AI controlled dummies. I personally LOVED the 1st TF, but hey, that's just me, and maybe few other guys out there, but the whole rest quit the game pretty fast, and those AI bots turned out to actually be necessity in order to enjoy the almost dead game. The other cloud-based game was Crackdown 3, which let's agree was a sad joke and was forgotten within a week.

So no, it wasn't "nothing" in both cases, actually, the ultimate outcome of the two couldn't be any more different.

 

[polybius80]

Not only is 2 PB of map stored on Azure, much of the calculations like the weather simulation are done in Azure servers.
Here is some explanation

yes but its only streaming parts of the world, sure it changes some stuff in the server but the system you use do the heavy work rendering the world and making physcis form the terrain and atmospheric data and there will be offline modes with cached data that is different from crackdown 3 where the server was suposed to take care of the physics and give the client the data of objects and position of the particles so the client doesnt have to calculate it, the demos were impresive but the final game is severely downgraded and there are games that do similar if not better physics offline

the problem with the cloud is that it was supposed to help the system with calculation of the graphics as if the console was many times more powerful or "unlimited power", then later it was changed for physics and updating baked light of the world and now is only streaming the world and "drivatars" naturally people are disapointed because "the cloud" is just a server and doesnt make the games look better

this flight simulator sure is impressive the details for the simulation, the size and how it works and maintains the world but the concept is not much different from an openworld game like WOW where a huge world is streaming from the server so your character can travel to the next town or like GTA SA where a ps2 with 32 MB of RAM stream parts of a 4+ GB stored on disk or an algorith to make a procedural world you can in thery create a world for a flight simulation game with similar data as microsoft flight simulator and run it offline

 

[Bernkastel]

yes but its only streaming parts of the world, sure it changes some stuff in the server but the system you use do the heavy work rendering the world and making physcis form the terrain and atmospheric data and there will be offline modes with cached data that is different from crackdown 3 where the server was suposed to take care of the physics and give the client the data of objects and position of the particles so the client doesnt have to calculate it, the demos were impresive but the final game is severely downgraded and there are games that do similar if not better physics offline

the problem with the cloud is that it was supposed to help the system with calculation of the graphics as if the console was many times more powerful or "unlimited power", then later it was changed for physics and updating baked light of the world and now is only streaming the world and "drivatars" naturally people are disapointed because "the cloud" is just a server and doesnt make the games look better

this flight simulator sure is impressive the details for the simulation, the size and how it works and maintains the world but the concept is not much different from an openworld game like WOW where a huge world is streaming from the server so your character can travel to the next town or like GTA SA where a ps2 with 32 MB of RAM stream parts of a 4+ GB stored on disk or an algorith to make a procedural world you can in thery create a world for a flight simulation game with similar data as microsoft flight simulator and run it offline

Actually in WoW, GTA SA or even Destiny for that regard, data is stored on your PC/Console not streamed from a server. Your device communicates your gameplay actions like when you press jump with the server. Flight Sim stores the whole data on cloud.

 

[teh_pwn]

Weird people are still obsessed with marketing specs of cell. Cell is weak at integer operations, a bitch to program for, lacks x86 compatibility, and its strengths are dwarfed by APUs.

 

[polybius80]

Actually in WoW, GTA SA or even Destiny for that regard, data is stored on your PC/Console not streamed from a server. Your device communicates your gameplay actions like when you press jump with the server. Flight Sim stores the whole data on cloud.

I mentioned GTA SA was stored on disk and the examples are about the concept, flight simulator also will include offline modes with part of the world stored on your PC but if you prefer an example of the whole world in the server then second life is a good example of it, the point is flight simulator and the cloud are not doing anything new and that is why people are disappointed with the cloud in general, at least cell was used as a relatively cheap CPU very powerful for games at the time

 

[nkarafo]

A couple of years ago i suggested in an emulation forum that the last gen console CPUs could be just as good or better than the current ones, especially Cell, given how crappy current ones are. And i got so much shit for said post, i still remember it today.

So now you are telling me not only Cell is better than current gen console CPUs, it's also better then current gen Desktop PC CPUs?

 

[Bernkastel]

I mentioned GTA SA was stored on disk and the examples are about the concept, flight simulator also will include offline modes with part of the world stored on your PC but if you prefer an example of the whole world in the server then second life is a good example of it, the point is flight simulator and the cloud are not doing anything new and that is why people are disappointed with the cloud in general, at least cell was used as a relatively cheap CPU very powerful for games at the time

The offline mode involves you downloading a part of the map. But you need one hell of a server to download the whole 2 PB of data, otherwise almost everyone is going to play them off Azure server.

 

[ZywyPL]

So now you are telling me not only Cell is better than current gen console CPUs, it's also better then current gen Desktop PC CPUs?

For GPU-related tasks, it surely is, WAY better than any CPU currently available on the he market, and I would even go as far as saying that we will never see such a powerful CPU when it comes to graphics processing ever again.

But for a typica CPU workload? Nah, PPC architecture is surely more capable than Jaguar found in current consoles, but I'm not sure if that single PPC core from the PS3 was more powerful than all 8 Jaguar cores combined in PS4/XB1, or even an ordinary quad-core ARM found in a typical smartphone nowadays, let alone a modern multi-threadded Intel/AMD CPU.

 

[polybius80]

The offline mode involves you downloading a part of the map. But you need one hell of a server to download the whole 2 PB of data, otherwise almost everyone is going to play them off Azure server.

a hell of hdd yes but like other games/servers, wow uses 1.3+ PB of data for example and second life is immense(200+ PB some people say) and that is because it let you create content and that is the problem with the cloud after all the hype its use is like other game servers mostly to store data from the world with some physics implementation

 

[brian0057]

The Cell was so powerful it caused Sony to bleed obscene quantities of money for the first three years of its life cycle.

 

[nowhat]

For GPU-related tasks, it surely is, WAY better than any CPU currently available on the he market, and I would even go as far as saying that we will never see such a powerful CPU when it comes to graphics processing ever again.

I think that's quite given - the separation of CPU and GPU is so strong nowadays that there's no point having the CPU do the functions of the GPU anymore. I'm not sure if it made sense when PS3 launched either. And as stated, it was a bitch to program for.

Still, I'm quite happy Cell exists in the first place. x86/x64/even PPC is just, well... I mean, it works. But it's a bit boring, innit? Cell is just alien. Independence Day would have been much more realistic if they'd hacked the alien mothership with a PS3 instead of a Macbook.

(and I realize PS3 was released after the movie, but my point still stands)

 

[Sophist]

WAY better than any CPU currently available on the he market

 

[Negotiator]

A couple of years ago i suggested in an emulation forum that the last gen console CPUs could be just as good or better than the current ones, especially Cell, given how crappy current ones are. And i got so much shit for said post, i still remember it today.

But for a typica CPU workload? Nah, PPC architecture is surely more capable than Jaguar found in current consoles, but I'm not sure if that single PPC core from the PS3 was more powerful than all 8 Jaguar cores combined in PS4/XB1, or even an ordinary quad-core ARM found in a typical smartphone nowadays, let alone a modern multi-threadded Intel/AMD CPU.

Read this carefully:


Also (regarding PS3/XBOX 360 CPUs):

Burn The House Down

Jeez, if there was one thing that could make up for missing Will Wright's talk earlier, it's sitting at his feet while this session was delivered! So my mood is slightly improved, although we have to wait between 2-6 weeks...

crystaltips.typepad.com

Gameplay code will get slower and harder to write on the next generation of consoles. Modern CPUs use out-of-order execution, which is there to make crappy code run fast. This was really good for the industry when it happened, although it annoyed many assembly language wizards in Sweden. Xenon and Cell are both in-order chips. What does this mean? It’s cheaper for them to do this. They can drop a lot of cores. One out-of-order core is about four times [did I catch that right? Alice] the size of an in-order core. What does this do to our code? It’s great for grinding on floating point, but for anything else it totally sucks. Rumours from people actually working on these chips – straight-line runs 1/3 to 1/10th the performance at the same clock speed. This sucks.

Intel's Atom Architecture: The Journey Begins

www.anandtech.com

Cell/Xenon PPE is as crappy as Intel Atom in terms of IPC. Yes, it's THAT bad! Cell SPUs (DSP-like SIMD co-processors) were its saving grace.

And a cross-platform benchmark:

7-Zip LZMA Benchmark

TL;DR: just because (PCMR) people keep parroting that Jaguar is worse than PPE, it doesn't mean it's true. Don't listen to the hive mind, do your own research if you care about the truth (the "consensus" isn't always true).

Come on guys, it's 2019! There's no need to perpetuate myths, especially when there's so much valid info available.

 

[Ar¢tos]

Considering how the CELL was good at GPU tasks, I wonder how it could have evolved to replace both CPU and GPU. Not like an APU, but like in the old days before GPUs existed. A new CELL based design 7nm processor dealing with both graphics and cpu tasks. Probably not good for gaming, but as an ARM competitor for portable solutions.

 

[Negotiator]

Considering how the CELL was good at GPU tasks, I wonder how it could have evolved to replace both CPU and GPU. Not like an APU, but like in the old days before GPUs existed. A new CELL based design 7nm processor dealing with both graphics and cpu tasks. Probably not good for gaming, but as an ARM competitor for portable solutions.

But Cell was a proto-APU, it heralded the heterogeneous processor paradigm shift/era:

Heterogeneous computing - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Plot twist:

 

[IzukuMidoriya]

A PowerPC CPU being the most powerful? Something that Macs haven't used since 2005?

That's rich. PowerPC is severely irrelevant, and it has been even in '06. x86 is eons better, even ARM is getting something usable as of recent.

 

[SurprisedPikachu]

AFAIK Cell was ~250GFs... which is really good for a CPU. The problem is that it is very wonky and you have to code stuff specifically to run well on it. And not everything you try to run on it will run well. So there's that. It's like a Ferrari with a really shitty gearbox and steering wheel.

It's more like Canadian cars.

 

[Bernkastel]

a hell of hdd yes but like other games/servers, wow uses 1.3+ PB of data for example and second life is immense(200+ PB some people say) and that is because it let you create content and that is the problem with the cloud after all the hype its use is like other game servers mostly to store data from the world with some physics implementation

I have never hard of a 2 PB HDD. And I dont know what drug you are on but MMOs including WoW dont stream the map, they stream your player data. The map is locally stored on your device and is not that big.

How World of Warcraft Works

World servers are essentially complete, self-contained copies of the game world. Learn more about world servers and how the world servers work.

electronics.howstuffworks.com

 

[megreotsugua]

Is a tiny Cell chip at 7nm be faster than a latest Intel cpu at decompression on the fly?

 

[polybius80]

I have never hard of a 2 PB HDD. And I dont know what drug you are on but MMOs including WoW dont stream the map, they stream your player data. The map is locally stored on your device and is not that big.

How World of Warcraft Works

World servers are essentially complete, self-contained copies of the game world. Learn more about world servers and how the world servers work.

electronics.howstuffworks.com

I forgot the "s"

HDDs as in hard disk drives(plural)

I said WOW has 1.3 PB of data in total I wasn't referring to stream the map, the state of enemies, player stats, actions, items and much more need to be streamed to your PC to represent the current state of the scene is not like flight simulator where as long as you have the area of the map you will need during gameplay you can play offline, the gameplay is different because of that it has different requirements, FS need giant maps to traverse and Wow require smaller scenes with players and enemies

MMOs are very varied, games like WoW store the map in your computer before you play but other MMOs like Second Life stream to your PC the map and objects during gameplay

 

[Kumomeme]

Doesn't matter how strong something is if you can barely get anything out of it.
It's like bragging about the power of the sun to some nuclear reactor site but the best you can do is sunshine. lol

but the sunshine did play big role of revitalize life XD

 

[Memorabilia]

 

[Knightime_X]

but the sunshine did play big role of revitalize life XD

Benchmark wise how long did it take? lol

 

[Kumomeme]

Benchmark wise how long did it take? lol

certain species of bambo can grow 91 cm per day though lol

 

[thelastword]

Guerilla knows what they are talking about...……...


Hey, imagine if Sony was secretly in development with AMD to develop a 7nm Cell Co-Processor to help with PS3 emulation...…….It could also be used for physics, sound processing for PS5 games and media functions, when not used in BC processing....

 

[Negotiator]

Hey, imagine if Sony was secretly in development with AMD to develop a 7nm Cell Co-Processor to help with PS3 emulation...…….It could also be used for physics, sound processing for PS5 games and media functions, when not used in BC processing....

IIRC, Cell had scaling issues below 45nm (something to do with EIB).

Zen 2 has 8 powerful 256-bit SIMD co-processors for audio/physics processing (media will be handled by AMD VCN):

It should be enough to emulate Cell's SPUs (128-bit SIMD).

 

[thelastword]

IIRC, Cell had scaling issues below 45nm (something to do with EIB).

Zen 2 has 8 powerful 256-bit SIMD co-processors for audio/physics processing (media will be handled by AMD VCN):

It should be enough to emulate Cell's SPUs (128-bit SIMD).

Very good, AMD cpu's are very capable no doubt, but in my scenario, if they use cell to make PS3 BC easier as a very small co-processor, in it's downtime, nothing stops the devs or Sony from using it for extra physics simul, media, sound or even OS functions...…...

 

[Sosokrates]

So it could run games at 4K and at 60fps? This guy just wants to make headlines since the big boss left to Sony.

Who? Shawn layden?

 

[StreetsofBeige]

I would say so did size limits on XBLA games. Lots of devs said they hard a hard time fitting the file size restrictions. They had to learn to code and recompile games that on last gen they made to fit in a gig. This gen they just toss in bloat code and we get download it all. When indie games are over 10 gigs you know that code isn’t optimal.

That's the drawback of giving gamers big HDD.

You'd think it would be to install games, saved game files and gamers filling it with media clips.

Instead, devs use it as a dumping ground for huge files and patches, with the assumption every gamer has a big HDD and bandwidth........... "let all those asshole gamers figure it out".

My 486 in the early 90s had I think about 200mb space. So a system with tons of games installed, Win 3.1, shitty versions of Wordperfect and Lotus 123, and whatever other junk was on it used no more than 200mb.

And a patch is 13gb alone?

13 GB Dead Rising 3 Patch Raises Questions About Gaming's Future

There's a 13-gigabyte update live for Dead Rising 3 today, and if you think that seems kind of big, well, that's because it's kind of big.

kotaku.com

 

[Negotiator]

That's the drawback of giving gamers big HDD.

You'd think it would be to install games, saved game files and gamers filling it with media clips.

Instead, devs use it as a dumping ground for huge files and patches, with the assumption every gamer has a big HDD and bandwidth........... "let all those asshole gamers figure it out".

My 486 in the early 90s had I think about 200mb space. So a system with tons of games installed, Win 3.1, shitty versions of Wordperfect and Lotus 123, and whatever other junk was on it used no more than 200mb.

And a patch is 13gb alone?

13 GB Dead Rising 3 Patch Raises Questions About Gaming's Future

There's a 13-gigabyte update live for Dead Rising 3 today, and if you think that seems kind of big, well, that's because it's kind of big.

kotaku.com

To be fair, it's also broadband/always-on internet that made devs kinda lazy.

Back in the early 90s, chances are you didn't have internet access, or at best you had dial-up internet (probably no more than 14.4k).

 

[StreetsofBeige]

To be fair, it's also broadband/always-on internet that made devs kinda lazy.

Back in the early 90s, chances are you didn't have internet access, or at best you had dial-up internet (probably no more than 14.4k).

Didn't have home internet until I think 1998.

Although way back in the 80s my brothers would do bulletin board downloads for Apple games on those loud squeaky modems. Games would take all night to download and they were maybe a floppy disk or two. lol