Minecraft on 8MB VRAM? YouTubers Push the Limits of Retro Hardware

The creators behind the YouTube channel Budget-Builds Official have taken on an extraordinary challenge—running Minecraft on severely outdated hardware. Their goal? To push the game to its limits on a system most modern gamers wouldn’t dream of using.

To conduct the experiment, they built a PC using early-2000s components, including Windows XP, an AMD Athlon 64 processor, and a Pine 3D Phantom XP-2800 graphics card equipped with just 8MB of video memory—a figure that pales in comparison to modern GPUs, which boast thousands of times more VRAM.

Reversing Time: A System Far Below Minimum Requirements

Minecraft’s official system requirements today include Windows 10, 2GB of RAM, and a GPU on par with the Intel HD Graphics 4000 or AMD Radeon R5. But instead of meeting these standards, the Budget-Builds team dove deep into the past—selecting a graphics card based on a SiS chipset that was considered outdated even when it first launched.

Their initial attempt to launch Minecraft Alpha 1.2.6 was unsuccessful due to OpenGL compatibility issues. Only after installing special Microsoft drivers tailored for SiS architecture were they able to get the game running—though only on a CRT monitor, a relic from the pre-LCD era.

Beyond Alpha: Pushing for a Full Build

The true goal wasn’t just booting up an alpha version—they wanted to see if the system could handle a more complete release. The team managed to launch Minecraft 1.6.4, but the result was far from playable. The game limped along at one frame per second and crashed after just two minutes.

To keep the game stable, they disabled all visual effects, reduced the resolution to its absolute minimum, and installed a simplified 8×8 texture pack. Even world generation was handed off to a separate laptop to ease the burden on the aging hardware.

A Test of Ingenuity, Not Just Power

The project brings to mind earlier efforts to run Doom on everything from smart fridges to calculators. But unlike Doom, getting Minecraft to run on this legacy system involved far greater effort—including sourcing obscure drivers and relying on CRT technology just to get a display.

Yet despite the extreme limitations, Budget-Builds Official succeeded in proving a valuable point: true creativity in tech doesn’t always come from cutting-edge specs—it comes from pushing boundaries with what you have.