My Geforce2 MX 200/400 with an Athlon and 256MB of RAM began to become useless in ~2002/2003 with the new DX9 games.

Doom3? Missing textures. Half Life2? Maybe at 640x480. F.E.A.R? More like L.A.U.G.H. Times changed so fast (and on top of that, shitty console ports) that PCs didn't achieve great numbers at home until 2009 with a new machine.

Altough I began to play games like Angband, Nethack and the like in that era and in opened an amazing libre/indie world until today.

And, yes, I replayed Deus Ex because it had tons of secrets and it ran on a potato. Perfectly playable at 800x600 at max settings.