I present to you my latest build... "Blackout" (aka - the Y2K build 'Part Deux')

For this build, I decided to stick with hardware from the year 2000. Staying true to my 'black' theme for these latest builds, I named this one after the collective fear that ensued during the Y2K rollover. Of course with a few exceptions, all the hype and fear was for naught and while people were building their bomb shelters and hoarding water and canned goods, I was just getting started with my professional career in the IT industry and trying to stay current with my own PC hobby, and on New Years Eve of 2000 I was "partying like it was 1999."

Besides fear of a massive blackout, the year 2000 was an interesting year for computing. During this year, the fan-favorite 3DFX imploded on itself and sadly the 3DFX V5-6000 never saw the light of day - at least in retail form 😀. On the CPU front, this was an interesting year as the big players, AMD and Intel, were running a vigorous Mhz race. Each company was trying to push their 1000Mhz processors out the door and AMD got theirs out first. Also interesting was the way each company achieved this level of performance, with AMD choosing to slice the external L2 cache with a 1/3rd divider - at least in the first Orion-based "Classic" Athlon 1Ghz. I miss the days when AMD led Intel in the benchmarks...

On with the show!!

The goods...
Black Ultra X-Blaster Mid-Tower
Asus K7V Deluxe Rev 1.01 with 1008-D Beta Bios (2000)
AMD Athlon “Classic” 1000Mhz (AMD-K7100MNR53B) (2000)
1 x 256MB PC133 SDRAM
Corsair 400W Power Supply
Western Digital 80GB IDE Hard Drive
IDE DVD-RW
NVIDIA GeForce2 Ultra – Esla Gladiac Geforce2 Ultra 64MB AGP (NV15) (2000)
Aureal SQ2500 PCI Vortex 2 Rev. B PCI Sound Card (2000)
Thermaltake Golden Orb Slot A Cooler (2000)
Scythe GentleTyphoon 120MM Case Fan (D1225C12B5AP-15) (Exhaust)
Antec 120MM Case Fan (Intake)
Windows 98SE

Motherboard and CPU
For the motherboard I'm using the ultra-stable, VIA-based Asus K7V Deluxe Rev. 1.01 with the latest 1008-D Beta Bios. This board is paired with the increasingly difficult to obtain 1000Mhz Orion-based Athlon Slot A processor. Of course, the 'cool' factor is amped up a bit by my favorite cooler - the Thermaltake Golden Orb beauty. My original build used a 1Ghz Intel Coppermine so it was fun flipping the coin and using AMD at the heart of this build.

Storage
For storage I'm using an 80GB IDE drive. I also threw in a DVD-RW as well and skipped the floppy.

Memory
Not too exciting here. Just 256MB PC133 Memory

Sound Card
Still waiting for it to arrive from Russia (SLOW economy shipping), but this build will use the awesome Aureal SQ2500 PCI sound card.

Video Card
For the year 2000, nothing was more bad-ass than the NVIDIA Geforce2 Ultra so that's what I threw in here. One could also use a Voodoo5 5500 PCI along side the AGP Nvidia card for classic GLIDE support and better FSAA, but I figured it was too much of a hassle to deal with both cards in a single system and I would need a beefier power supply as well. The Geforce2 Ultra is such a powerhouse with it's 250/450 clocks and 64MB of DDR memory - plenty of horsepower to run games in 32-bit color @ 1280x1024 resolution. I totally forgot how many cool games were released in 2000!

How about some hardware pr0n?!?! 😊

Case

The Guts

Asus K7V Deluxe Rev 1.01

AMD Athlon "Classic" 1000Mhz Slot A

NVIDIA Geforce2 Ultra

Aureal SQ25000 (Not here yet 🙁)

Screen shots:

Benchmarks (all done using defaults & NVIDIA Detonator 12.41 WHQL drivers)

3DMARK 99

3DMARK 2000

3DMARK 01 SE

Atto