Other Your rig(s) - 2000 vs. 2010

I had a Pentium III 600MHz @ 800MHz (100MHz FSB @ 133MHz FSB using a BIOS trick to change the CPUID from the 100MHz PIII 600 to the 133MHz PIII 600, thus increasing the FSB with the locked 6x multiplier) with 512MB of RAM and a Voodoo 3 3500 back in 2000.

I upgraded in the new year to an AMD Athlon 1GHz in an Abit KT7A RAID motherboard as soon as the former was released. I stuck with 512MB of RAM, but upgraded to some Mushkin modules that were (eventually, after replacing the CPU with an AXIA Y 1000, AXIA Y 1333 and then eventually an AYHJA R 1.4GHz) good for 159MHz FSB at 2-2-2. I also added a GeForce 3 in March when that was released.

Today I'm running a Core i7-940 @ 4GHz, 6GB of RAM in a Foxconn Bloodrage mobo with a GeForce GTX 285 and a Radeon HD 5670 (for audio over HDMI on my TV). Haven't bothered upgrading the main graphics card as a) I haven't really gamed much in the past 6/12 months and b) haven't been that impressed by the DX11 content which has come out so far.

 

Had an eMachines P3 800MHz system with 256MB of RAM and Intel integrated graphics. Only good for playing C&C games on and NFS3!

Then it was onto a Compaq machine; AMD Athlon 3500+, 512MB of RAM, Nvidia 6150LE graphics and an 80GB HDD. Quickly upgraded to 1GB, then put in a 8600GT, then a 160GB HDD on top of the 80GB, then upgraded to 4GB of RAM, then put in and AMD Athlon X2 5200+. The final upgrade was a Radeon HD4670 then it died a few months later.

Carried across most of the components into a Thermaltake Soprano case but bought a new motherboard, HDD and PSU. I soon after upgraded to the 4870 which I currently have, then the Phenom II and the fastest RAM I could use with it. Then I replaced the PSU and the case, et voila, my sig's rig.

 

I assume your Athlon was AM2-based? If so:
I like the smooth fragmented transition. I love the fact that you can actually do that with AMDs. In that time, Intel-based machines were being sold on Socket 478 and 775 motherboards, and now it's 1366 and 1156, right? Except that half of us still have Core 2 processors on 775 sockets. Not exactly upgrade-over-time friendly. Although I suppose AMD was selling Socket 939 and 754 CPUs for a while, too.

 

I had a dual celleron mobo then I think... fantastic machine over clocked well from what I remember... I think it was 333 but got significantly higher (I want to say 5 something but I'm probably remembering a different chip)

 

It must have been an early socket A Athlon because a little while later came out the Athlon Thunderbirds (between 1.1 and 1.3Ghz I believe) and then came out the Athlon XP (1400+ @ 1.2Ghz to 1800+ @ 1.53Ghz). This is when the CPU naming scheme degenerated... Frequency was not the only way to get better performance out of a processor anymore so they had to find a way to keep them attractive to the consumer.Intel had to do the same years later with the C2D

 

nice oc.. I had the k6-2 slot a 600 running as a 900 with the golden fingers mod =] amd batched some 900s as 600's if you remember to keep up with supply.. so it was a gamble buy that paid off when cracked the casing open

only had a voodoo 2 though.. was good enough to quake full up and think my roommate was still running a tnt- knew someone who swore on software mode xD

those p4's were expensive back then.. if you had one of those you were the kings dingaling

 

God, had to rack the brain cells for this one.
it was one of two systems....

either a

K6-2 400 overdrive to replace a K6 233
128 mb of SIMM ram (or was it a sdram..)
quantum fireball
ATI rage 3d II
Voodoo 1
Windows 95 osr2 (?)
56k WinModem (actually better than most)

or more likely 2000 machine

1ghz athlon thunderbird socket A
256 later upgraded to 512mb ram
voodoo 3 PCI
maxtor hdd
windows 98 SE
ISDN pci modem (BT home highway?) - i enjoyed being a LPB in CS for a few months before cable and adsl started to roll out....

2010 Machine
Q6600 @ 3.34ghz
4GB of ram
64GB SSD
2TB+ of hard drive space
Nvidia GTX275

 

2000: (As you can tell, it was built some time before this)
Manufacturer - Myself
CPU - 200MMX
RAM - 64MB PC66
M'Board - Diamond Flower Incorporated (Before it was DFI)
HDD - 80MB
2D - 2MB Matrox Mystique
3D - 4MB Maxi Gamer 3D (Voodoo1)

2010:
Manufacturer - Myself
CPU Athlon II X4 620
RAM - 2x2GB PC2-6400
M'Board - Gigabyte MS57SLI-S4
HDD - 1TB, 250GB, 320GB
2D & 3D - ATI 3870

 

You're right... I've also since found the receipt!! August 2000. I've amended the post to reflect this.

 

Back in 2000.

Pentium II @400mhz
256mb ram
6gb hdd

Now 2010
Core i7 920
3gb ram
3.5tb hdd space

Things have changed slightly over the years.

 

2000:
Manufacturer: Gateway 2000
CPU: Intel Pentium , 200MHz
RAM: 128MB SDRAM
GPU: Integrated
HDD: 2GB Western Digital Caviar
Other Drives: CD-ROM
Networking: Directly to US Robotics Cable Modem (not sure on the exact date when we got the Cable Modem, except it was almost as soon as they were available, and years before anyone else I knew got one)
OS: Microsoft Windows 98

2010:
Manufacturer: Yeah, right, like I would buy a pre-built desktop
CPU: AMD Phenom II X6-1050T Thuban
RAM: 4096MB G.Skill DDR3-1600
GPU: MSI Radeon HD 5750 1GB
HDD: 1TB Seagate 7200RPM, 1TB Samsung 7200RPM
Other Drives: Lite-ON DVD-RW SATA
Networking: Asus Gigabit switch, FiOS 25mbps fiber
OS: Microsoft Windows 7 Professional

And, as a mid-point
2005:
Manufacturer: Me
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+
RAM: 2048MB Corsair XMS DDR-400
GPU: EVGA Geforce 7600GS
HDD: 250GB Samsung SATA
Other Drives: Lite-On DVD-RW IDE
Networking: Motorola Cable modem through Linksys BEFSR41 router
OS: Microsoft Windows XP Professional

It's interesting to see how much slower the RAM amounts have increased, compared to the hard drive sizes.
I went from 128MB and 2GB to 512MB and 80 GB (x4 and x40), to a 1GB and 160GB (x8 and x80), to a 2GB and 250GB (x16 and x125), now 4GB and 2TB (x32 and x1000)

 

2000:
Manufacturer: IBM laptop
CPU: 900mhz Intel
RAM: 128mb DDR1 ram
GPU: Integrated
HDD: 20gb unknown brand
Other Drives: Unknown brand CD drive
OS: Microsoft Windows 98


2004:
Manufacturer: Planet micro
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3200 1.9ghz
RAM: 512mb generic ram
GPU: Integrated
HDD: 120gb MAXTOR
Other Drives: Unknown brand CD drive
OS: Microsoft Windows XP
Later upgraded to:
Optical 1: Pioneer DVD-RW +/-
Optical 2: Pioneer DVD-RW +/-
GPU: Ati 9600 (later died)
then:
GPU: Ati 9600 XT 256mb

2009:
Manufacturer: Me
CPU: Intel core 2 Duo E6750 2.66ghz
RAM: 2gb OCZ Reaper HPC Edition 1066mhz PC8500
GPU: 8800GT OC 512mb
HDD1: WD Raptor 150
HDD2: Samsung spinpoint 500gb
Other Drives: Samsung DVD-RW
OS: Microsoft Windows XP
Then:
GPU: Ati 4890 1gig

Some lovely stuff to come in a few months time!

 

I THINK I started in the forums in 2001 with an 800MHz Duron system that had about 128MB of RAM and a 20GB hard drive... I think the graphics card was something awful like an S3 Savage (does that sound about right?).

I then went to a 1GHz Athlon (OC'd of course!) very soon after on a much better mobo with a GeForce 2 of some sort.

Now I run a 2.66GHz 24" iMac and things aren't quite as reckless, haha.

 

2000
Asus i440BX motherboard
512MB DDR ECC
Intel Celeron 300a
Matrox Millenium 1 (iirc)
Twin VooDoo 2 SLI
60GB HDD IDE
Soundblaster Live Value
Sanyo JA240 amplifier + speakers
Generic 17" CRT

2010
Abit KG7-lite motherboard
1GB DDR
Athlon XP 2.0Ghz
XFX FX5700 256MB
80GB IDE
640GB SATA2
PCI SATA controller card
Soundblaster Live Value
Sanyo JA240 amplifier + speakers
Unknown brand subwoofer
Iiyama VM1451 LS902UT 19" CRT

... and I can't wait for the new stuff... once I get the money.

 

'Twas indeed an AM2 Athlon.

AMD may not have the performance crown but for ease of upgrading they win by miles and they don't have stupid names for their sockets; AM2, AM2+ and AM3, simple. LGA775 etc., not simple! The CPUs are so easy to install too! Just put it in, pull down the lever, bit of thermal paste, shove on the heatsink, clamp it down and away you go!

 

The Palomino core (first-generation Athlon XP) wasn't launched until 2001. That was when AMD introduced the performance ratings to compete with the highly clocked Pentium IVs as they'd lost the GHz race (I like to think they won it, in fact).

 

Haha, I remember those chips. There were some great mods back in those days, but they're all closed nowadays and most motherboards have all the options that overclockers used to mod their boards to enable. I had a couple of Voodoo 2s before I got the Voodoo 3, but they struggled in Counter-Strike on some levels (which was why I swapped them).

The early P4s were expensive and rubbish, frankly. Part of the expense was because of the Williamette core's reliance on Rambus memory (which was very very expensive), but the chips commanded a premium as well. They were also slow because they lacked IPC and needed to hit 20GHz (remembering an Intel target speed by the end of P4's life... how far short it fell ). It wasn't until the Northwood core came along in 2002 that things started to shape up for Pentium 4 and then it all went downhill again when the Presch ott came along.

 

Man its bad enough thinking about last week lol.

2000

I brought over a HP from South Africa
Windows 95
on board gfx card 1gb ram
and everything was as you buy that far back with everything basically onboard and did not know the first thing about pc's

Now
My main PC is as follows
Coolermaster Cosmos S case (waiting for the HAF X)
ASUS Rampage Gene II mobo
DDR3-2000 PC3 16000 3GB(1GB x 3) / 6GB(2GB x 3) Gskill Trident
HIS 5870
i7-920 standard CPU
Noctua H12 with the titan ferir 4 pin fan
2x150 raptor X WD HDD
1x1TB samsung spinpoint F3
I WD 500GB external HDD (all my back up files)
Logitech G15 keyboard
Logitech G5 mouse
Nostromo N52te gamepad
Razer destructor mouse pad
Roccat mouse bungee
Genuis pad (for my photoshopping
24 LG widescreen and a 20 inch samsung T200 widescreen monitors
Logitech 2.1 speakers
and Logitech G35 headset

 

yep

They actually had two reasons to do this. As you said, they had to find a way to compete with the Pentium 4s (marketing wise) but they also had to justify a slight drop in frequency for the first few XPs

Oh and they did win the first Ghz race. Do you remember how the Pentium III 1Ghz had been announced 8 months before it came out ? AMD won the 1Ghz race by a few weeks with its Slot A Athlon

 

found it

ABIT BP6 440BX Dual Celeron Motherboard

it had 2 333 mhz processors clocked to something like 450 mhz