2007 "retro" C2D XP PC

[Pasi123]

Specs:

Asus P5B (P965 chipset) motherboard
Intel Core2 Duo E6300 @ 2.33GHz (Maybe someday I'll upgrade it to E6600 or E6700)
2GB DDR2 667MHz
NVIDIA Quadro FX 380 (I'm going to change it to some period correct one)
32GB SSD and 80GB HDD (I'm probably going to replace it with some 250gb drive)
19" HP LP1965 5:4 1280x1024 monitor
Windows XP Professional

Yeah, it's nothing special. I built it about 6 months ago from parts that I already had.

[Almoststew1990]

These make trouble free XP gaming PCs which I like. If you were in the UK you can get any C2D for a few pounds. I got a e8600 3.1GHz for £7. The much more common 2.8GHz 7500/8400 is £4 or so. Its definitely an upgrade worth doing! I personally would just stick one Hdd in and be done with it.

What do you do with the PC?

P. S. I'm going to Finland at Christmas (Tervakoski / Hameenlinna)!

[Pasi123]

These make trouble free XP gaming PCs which I like. If you were in the UK you can get any C2D for a few pounds. I got a e8600 3.1GHz for £7. The much more common 2.8GHz 7500/8400 is £4 or so. Its definitely an upgrade worth doing! I personally would just stick one Hdd in and be done with it.

What do you do with the PC?

P. S. I'm going to Finland at Christmas (Tervakoski / Hameenlinna)!

In Finland the E8400 costs about 7-9€, but I'd want to keep that PC 2007 period correct and I already have a E8400 on one PC. And with that motherboard I'd have to use a beta bios for 1333MHz FSB CPU's.

I mostly use it for older games and software that doesn't work that well on newer Windows versions.

[Thermalwrong]

Even the desktop is period correct lovely.

I must be getting old after all, I still have pretty fond memories of clocking up my Core 2 Duo E6600 from its paltry 2.4GHz up to a more tolerable 3.6GHz. It took a couple of months until the cheap Gigabit 965 board's VRMs started to burn up the board. That then got replaced with one of the first Asus ROG boards, the Commando- I eventually sold that board, but now I regret that a bit. Intel did a lot right with Conroe, that system could run Crysis...

I've got a similar setup from leftovers after upgrading my Dad's PC, still not sure what to do with it. We actually have a bunch of C2D machines for non-'main office desktop use' in the office

If you're considering a different GPU, definitely look at the original 768MB 8800GTX or the 640MB 8800GTS, they're comparatively worthless these days.

[gdjacobs]

Specs:

Asus P5B (P965 chipset) motherboard
Intel Core2 Duo E6300 @ 2.33GHz (Maybe someday I'll upgrade it to E6600 or E6700)
2GB DDR2 667MHz
NVIDIA Quadro FX 380 (I'm going to change it to some period correct one)
32GB SSD and 80GB HDD (That HDD died so I'm probably going to replace it with some 250gb drive)
19" HP LP1965 5:4 1280x1024 monitor
Windows XP Professional

Yeah, it's nothing special. I built it about 6 months ago from parts that I already had.

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Hey, shout out for the LP1965. I need to check out the CCFL supply section on mine, no screeny lightey atm.

[Pasi123]

If you're considering a different GPU, definitely look at the original 768MB 8800GTX or the 640MB 8800GTS, they're comparatively worthless these days.

Yeah, I've been planning to get some 8800 series card. The 320MB version of 8800GTS seems to be the easies to find, would it be good? I looked at some old review and in most games it performed about the same as the 640MB version.

Hey, shout out for the LP1965. I need to check out the CCFL supply section on mine, no screeny lightey atm.

It's a really nice monitor, though mine has 26694 hours of power on time so it's not that bright anymore. But that S-MVA panel still looks a lot better than even a lot newer TN panels.

[Azarien]

I personally would just stick one Hdd in and be done with it.

Perhaps a bigger one though. I think P965 should support big modern disks (just partition them in Vista+).
Unless you want a 100% period correct build.

[FFXIhealer]

The first Core 2 Duo chip I ever got was built into a 2008 system with Windows Vista and it ran it beautifully until the system was decommissioned in 2016. Vista totally got a bad rap. It was a good OS with solid security steps and integrated networking support (it wasn't clunky like the XP networking utilities can be).

[dr_st]

The first Core 2 Duo chip I ever got was built into a 2008 system with Windows Vista and it ran it beautifully until the system was decommissioned in 2016.

Mine is from the same year, but I still use it here and there. It's a Core 2 Quad, so its useful life has been a bit longer. It started hitting the wall on program compatibility, once Microsoft threw Vista support out of modern SDKs and all developers followed suit.

For an early, low-end Core 2 Duo, I'd still rather use XP and not Vista, especially with low RAM and rotational media. My T60 laptop with XP feels noticeably snappier than the X61 with Vista, even though the X61 is one generation newer and has a slightly faster CPU. So I'd say for this 2007 build, XP is spot-on.

[chinny22]

Gotta go Xeon,
"upgraded" my parts build E5200 to the Xeon equivalent pulled from a dead server, same speed, cache, everything No benefit at all accept seeing Xeon at the post screen
Socket 775 seems to just at that perfect stage, cheap and plentiful

[RandomStranger]

If you're considering a different GPU, definitely look at the original 768MB 8800GTX or the 640MB 8800GTS, they're comparatively worthless these days.

Yeah, I've been planning to get some 8800 series card. The 320MB version of 8800GTS seems to be the easies to find, would it be good? I looked at some old review and in most games it performed about the same as the 640MB version.

I'd go for the 8800GT for a Core2 Duo. It's cooler and perform/ed better than the GTS 640/320MB.
If you ever go for a quad like a Q6600 or QX6700 or something, an 8800GTX or Ultra would be a good match.

[BeginnerGuy]

Mmm yes. 8800GT and a q6600. If I had such a machine I surely would have gamed right through finals and failed out of college.

I have a q9400 in the closet, maybe i should get an 8800 myself for it heheh.

I like the setup OP, can't tell pics arent 10 years old :p

[FFXIhealer]

I really do like the fact that we have 10-year-old hardware in the Core 2 Quad and the Xeon quad-cores that are still PERFECTLY ABLE to run modern Windows 10 for everyday tasks and even gaming at 1080@60 with moderate graphics settings. Even Phil showed that, using a Radeon RX 570 with the Q9650 in some desktops. He got good framerates around the 50-60 mark with Medium settings in most games.
And they really are cheap.

It's sort-of surprising, considering the LGA775 platform never really supported PCI-Express 2.0 bandwidth, which limits the RX 570 to almost 1/4 of the data throughput that it would get on a PCI-Express 3.0 slot.

[dr_st]

It's sort-of surprising, considering the LGA775 platform never really supported PCI-Express 2.0 bandwidth, which limits the RX 570 to almost 1/4 of the data throughput that it would get on a PCI-Express 3.0 slot.

I believe the last LGA775 chipset (45-48, and even X38) support PCIe 2.0.

[RandomStranger]

I really do like the fact that we have 10-year-old hardware in the Core 2 Quad and the Xeon quad-cores that are still PERFECTLY ABLE to run modern Windows 10 for everyday tasks and even gaming at 1080@60 with moderate graphics settings.

Yeah, I sort of find it odd that in earlier times if you had a 5 years old high-end setup, like a Pentium 1 or 2 with a Savage 3D, Voodoo 1 or whatever time correct card around 2000-2002, it was basically worthless trash for "modern" games. While today you can easily get by with a 6 years old 2nd gen i5 and a better GTX600 or HD7000 and not impossible to game with a 10 years old C2Q and a high-end Fermi or HD5/6000.

[Tetrium]

I think this is a nice no-frills rig . I've build 'boring' spare-parts systems myself several times, depending from what I had laying around and what I wanted to try out next and the Intel C2D is quite legendary.
In a way I prefer reading about these 'average' rigs instead of the ones that are maxed out over the top (though these have a charm of their own). I especially like that you simply used a 80GB mechanical HDD for your rig. It's not as rad as a modern SSD, but it works and I think the added loading times (even though they may be insignificantly slower compared to modern and faster drives) add to the experience.

I've never really minded longer loading times, it's the noise of these drives (not the coffee grinder, but the high pitched howling from hell) that I dislike .

I really do like the fact that we have 10-year-old hardware in the Core 2 Quad and the Xeon quad-cores that are still PERFECTLY ABLE to run modern Windows 10 for everyday tasks and even gaming at 1080@60 with moderate graphics settings.

Yeah, I sort of find it odd that in earlier times if you had a 5 years old high-end setup, like a Pentium 1 or 2 with a Savage 3D, Voodoo 1 or whatever time correct card around 2000-2002, it was basically worthless trash for "modern" games. While today you can easily get by with a 6 years old 2nd gen i5 and a better GTX600 or HD7000 and not impossible to game with a 10 years old C2Q and a high-end Fermi or HD5/6000.

I am still using a Phenom II as my daily rig. It's been holding up for about 9 years now and I can still play modern games in it at low settings (though not the most demanding games anymore).

[RandomStranger]

I am still using a Phenom II as my daily rig. It's been holding up for about 9 years now and I can still play modern games in it at low settings (though not the most demanding games anymore).

Yeah, my Phenom X6 is also in active duty with an HD7850 OC. Sometimes I'm surprised how well it handles itself in more receng games. Though I've only upgaded to X6 in 2012. Previously I've been using an X2 5050e and then an X3 710.