The retail version of the game had a software renderer. This would use the systems CPU to render everything in-game. However, a few years back this, along with the DirectX and 3DFX renderers were removed and replaced with a single OpenGL one.
The reason for this was because maintaining one renderer is a lot easier than maintaining three and since most systems have reasonable OpenGL support there really was no need for it.
Chances are your system used the software renderer as opposed to the DirectX one (most cards which support DirectX normally have some level of support for OpenGL).
(please, no "buy newer hadware" posts)
People give away hardware capable of playing the game regularly. That GeForce 3 you thought was useless? It will play the game.
The retail game started in few seconds but the beta loads forever, even on my C2D 2Ghz laptop <.<
Do you mean it starts loading but never finishes?
Regards, Freddie.