VOGONS


First post, by CarlHopkinsUK

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So I dug up my original and first "new" pc build from 2003...amazingly Ebuyer still has the invoice on my account today.

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I was young and ignorant at the time, but looking at this now is there any suggestions anyone would make about the spec? I'm thinking all perspex and CCF lamps for the case 😎 I cut my first window kit on this case back in the day!

I ran this originally with 98 but shortly upgraded to XP later. I had this right up until I switched to Mac's in uni...

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Reply 1 of 9, by shamino

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It's fun to find stuff like this. I remember finding an old receipt for a 486, but then it got thrown out.

It's hard to find fault with anything given that prices were different back then, so you couldn't just buy the best of everything like you might be able to now. Athlon XP systems were good value for money, and I always liked Asus boards.
I would have wanted something better than a 9200SE, but it depends what games you were playing of course.

Reply 2 of 9, by F2bnp

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Nice, I was looking at my own systems from late 2001 and early 2004, so it's fun checking out the prices.

I think the motherboard and CPU were exceptional value at the time and 256MB RAM was pretty fine in 2003, although by 2004 the "gamer's standard" called for 512MB, usually in two sticks to get dual channel going ( I forget if KT400 and Athlon XPs supported dual channel). Of note is that the DDR you used for that system is quite slow at 266MHz, 333MHz was no more expensive I think and 400MHz became the standard somewhat quickly.

The videocard is the Achilles' Heel of that system. The best value gamer's video cards at the time were probably Radeon 9600 (non SE) and Radeon 9600 Pro or if you were lucky and found a Radeon 9500 or 9500 Pro, these were really amazing cards at the time. The Ti 4200 were also really good because the prices had skydived thanks to competition. FX 5200 and FX 5600 should have been avoided at all times, only the FX 5700 Ultra was competitive, but not at the prices it was going for. The FX 5900 XT started dislodging it a few months later, which was better value wise.
The 9200 SE was pretty terrible, mostly thanks to that 64bit bus, which is what the SE moniker brings to the table. It was probably on par with a GeForce 4 MX 440 performance-wise, but at least it had DX8 features...

Reply 3 of 9, by CarlHopkinsUK

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Great info, not to give too much away but I was 15 at the time and this was money saved from my first year of part time work...

I always remember AMD being far better value, I must have been reading MicroMart at the time and suppose this was recommended. I do remember that the card was brought with all I had left in the budget...so that would explain the budget nature of the card. I would have used my Voodoo 3 but it was PCI...so I guess I got caught up in the agp hype not knowing better.

Lot of firsts for me on this machine, Linux, CAD, Blender, Photoshop and Macromedia (before Adobe)...and my 1st year of university.

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Reply 4 of 9, by F2bnp

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You made some nice choices considering the budget 😉.

At the time I had a Celeron 900 with an integrated SiS 305 which was roughly equivalent to a Riva TNT or TNT2 M64 and later on I made insanely stupid choices as well, picking up a Celeron 2.4 (which was slightly more expensive than your Thunderbird 2200+ but immensely slower!) and a GeForce FX 5600XT which was awful, barely any better than an FX 5200...

Reply 5 of 9, by FFXIhealer

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CarlHopkinsUK wrote:

So I dug up my original and first "new" pc build from 2003...amazingly Ebuyer still has the invoice on my account today.

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Jesus... WHY does EVERYONE here have an 8x AGP Athlon motherboard except ME?! *facepalm* 🤣
(For the record, my Abit KX7-333 MB only supports 4x AGP)

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Reply 7 of 9, by SW-SSG

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FFXIhealer wrote:

Jesus... WHY does EVERYONE here have an 8x AGP Athlon motherboard except ME?! *facepalm* 🤣

^He didn't say whether or not he still has it. ;p

That spec looks very similar to the machine my family bought at the end of 2002 -- except ours had a T-bred 1700+ (1.47GHz), an ECS K7S5A motherboard, an SiS 305 32MB graphics card (that I still have), and a 40GB 7200RPM Maxtor HDD. Clearly 3D stuff of any kind was not a priority for ours.

Reply 8 of 9, by FFXIhealer

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SW-SSG wrote:

That spec looks very similar to the machine my family bought at the end of 2002 -- except ours had a T-bred 1700+ (1.47GHz), an ECS K7S5A motherboard, an SiS 305 32MB graphics card (that I still have), and a 40GB 7200RPM Maxtor HDD. Clearly 3D stuff of any kind was not a priority for ours.

Mine was an original Palomino Athlon XP, an 1800+ running at 1.54 GHz. I still have that CPU on my shelf, but now I have a Barton Athlon XP 3200+, running 2.3GHz.

It originally had 256MB of DDR-233 RAM, but once XP SP1 was released, it bogged down. I have since rectified that. It now carries 2GB (2x1GB modules) at DDR-400, running at 333 MHz speeds.

It originally had an ATI Radeon 7500 64MB AGP card, and it was pretty strong. But when it started glitching, I tried to "upgrade" to a 9550xl. Turns out...they're about equal in performance. >.< Now I want something better, like a 9800 Pro/XL or the x700 I have on my shelf that won't boot. Either the PCI-E<->AGP chip is causing the fault or my PSU needs more than the supplied 25 amps on the +5v rail. I want to pick up a new PSU, the Logisys PS575 which has 40 amps on the +5v rail. If it still doesn't POST, it's gotta be the chip, not the power delivery.

The motherboard started to have stability issues, but I traced that back to failing capacitors. I have since replaced all the caps - at a crazy expense, but it's now 100% rock-solid stable.

My thoughts about an Athlon build is just fine. If you have full AGP 8x speeds, then for that time period, I'd definitely consider the top-end for that era, which was ATI's Radeon line. It is my understanding that nVidia didn't surpass ATI in graphics hardware until the 6800 Ultra came out - the whole 6000 line, really.

Last edited by FFXIhealer on 2018-05-20, 13:46. Edited 1 time in total.

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Reply 9 of 9, by CarlHopkinsUK

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SW-SSG wrote:
FFXIhealer wrote:

Jesus... WHY does EVERYONE here have an 8x AGP Athlon motherboard except ME?! *facepalm* 🤣

^He didn't say whether or not he still has it. ;p

Alas unfortunately this went few years back, along with most of my computer stuff when I moved house...hindsight is a wonderful thing!

Love hearing about everyone else's experiences with these 😁

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