The 199os were a time when we tried all sorts of tricks to get the last bit of performance out of the hardware. One book which stands out is the one Michael Abrash wrote:

Michael Abrash's "Graphics Programming Black Book" https://github.com/jagregory/abrash-black-book

https://www.drdobbs.com/parallel/graphics-programming-black-...

As CPU power, the number of cores, RAM sizes, HDD sizes, graphics card capabilities have increased, the developers are no longer as careful to squeeze out the performance.