douglar wrote on 2024-05-20, 15:34:

At the time, the Geforce 3 numbers looked inarguably awesome.

Not just the numbers, but the inclusion of programmable shader support.

I remember drooling over Morrowind's water effects and came extremely close to buying a GeForce3 for that reason alone.

Bruno128 wrote on 2024-05-20, 15:01:

It was called good because those P4 CPUs came with 850/RDRAM while majority of users were still on SDRAM. The boost was considerable and DDR266 was not yet widespread.

That's true. Even at the time when Intel released the i820 chipset for Pentium III, it made sense to go for RDRAM (consoles used them as well) as DDR wasn't available at the time. The bad thing was that Rambus has some crazy demands and we know how it went in the long run.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-05-20, 15:35:

VivienM wrote on 2024-05-20, 13:35:

Frankly, with the benefit of hindsight, I would argue that 2001 was a bad year for PC buying. If you had a PII/PIII from 1998 or so, you would have had a lot better options in 2002 - Athlon XP, Northwood, GeForce 4, etc. Then you keep that system with a few upgrades until 2006 and Conroe... (and then you keep that Conroe until Sandy/Ivy Bridge, then you... go the dark side with Ryzen, I guess)

No love for Coffee Lake CPUs?

I'm still running an i7-8700k in my "modern" gaming rig. 😁

Well, my modern computer has an Intel Core i7-12700K which I got it prior these Ryzen CPUs with V-Cache were available. 😀

For my usage, aside from the power consumption under full load (which is uncommon), it works and has good single-thread performance.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-05-20, 15:35:

VivienM wrote on 2024-05-20, 13:35:

Frankly, with the benefit of hindsight, I would argue that 2001 was a bad year for PC buying. If you had a PII/PIII from 1998 or so, you would have had a lot better options in 2002 - Athlon XP, Northwood, GeForce 4, etc. Then you keep that system with a few upgrades until 2006 and Conroe... (and then you keep that Conroe until Sandy/Ivy Bridge, then you... go the dark side with Ryzen, I guess)

No love for Coffee Lake CPUs?

I'm still running an i7-8700k in my "modern" gaming rig. 😁

No love for anything in Intel's 14nm period, really. I don't think there have been any era-defining processors in that time.

I'm still running a i7-7700 non-k in my most modern Windows desktop rig. Bought it because, well, my RAM-starved DDR2 C2Q just couldn't go further, not out of a great sense of excitement for the Kaby Lake architecture. Unfortunately, unlike yours, it landed on the wrong side of Windows 11's arbitrary processor age requirements - it still runs 11 unsupportedly just fine, though. I also have a i5-10500 in a cheap iMac.

And one thing that I have struggled to understand about the modern processors - if you are not a crazy person with 1000+W PSUs, liquid cooling, etc who is pumping 200-300W through them, how... well... do they perform? My guess is that the non-K version with the stock cooler is going to seriously, seriously underperform... but almost no reviewers benchmark those.

I'm cautiously hoping Arrow Lake will be appealing, although to be honest, now that Microsoft is 'enforcing' arbitrary age limits, I'm tempted to wait until Windows 12 before building the next box. Or I admit that I have been very tempted by the dark side lately... some of those new Ryzens seem quite nice.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-05-20, 15:35:

I'm still running an i7-8700k in my "modern" gaming rig. 😁

An i7-8700K is the most modern CPU in my house. 😁

VivienM wrote on 2024-05-20, 13:04:

Some Hercules thing, I think it was, with a crazy external breakout box. (And I call it a "crazy external breakout box" as someo […]
Show full quote

appiah4 wrote on 2024-05-20, 12:43:

Which sound card?

Also which magazine thought a Williamette S423 with RDRAM was the best system? 😁

Some Hercules thing, I think it was, with a crazy external breakout box. (And I call it a "crazy external breakout box" as someone who owned an Audigy Platinum eX at the time... this thing is much crazier than Creative's, it had all the outputs on the breakout box)

The video says the name of the magazine (Maximum PC maybe?), but I don't think they were necessarily wrong for a spring 2001 no-budget-constraints build. What were the other options? A Thunderbird Athlon? Tualatin PIIIs weren't out yet, a 1GHz P3 Coppermine would have felt dated. The P4 platform didn't really move away from RDRAM seriously until the i865 family and that's two years later.

That being said, some of their other recommendations aged even worse, e.g. IBM DeathStar 75GXP hard drives.

Was a bit of a strange build. Like "Ultimate builds" here seems like the goal was more about what was cutting edge at the time more than actual usefulness.
Case in point the soundcard. The Hercules Game Theatre XP wasn't really aimed at gaming but if it wasn't a gaming rig then why the "powerful" graphics card and all the gaming devices?
Keyboard was a bit random as well, I know back then the whole gaming/mechanical craze hadn't really started but that did feel like paid product placement.

I had a subscription to PC User Australia during this time and they had a recommended build at the end of each month. More aimed at best value then ultimate but was annoyed they were recommending WinME even before it was released but was often included in bundles as a free upgrade once it did come out. I thought how can you recommend something before you have even tested it?

chinny22 wrote on 2024-05-21, 01:35:

Was a bit of a strange build. Like "Ultimate builds" here seems like the goal was more about what was cutting edge at the time more than actual usefulness.
Case in point the soundcard. The Hercules Game Theatre XP wasn't really aimed at gaming but if it wasn't a gaming rig then why the "powerful" graphics card and all the gaming devices?

I looked up the original article in Maximum PC. They listed the Game Theatre XP in part because of the connectivity (gameport and USB) on the external box.

Hercules GTXP = Turtle Beach Santa Cruz = Videologic Sonic Fury = TerraTec SiXPack 5.1+. Crystal CS4630 based cards generally regarded positively on these forums for Win98 games.

Bruno128 wrote on 2024-05-21, 08:06:

Hercules GTXP = Turtle Beach Santa Cruz = Videologic Sonic Fury = TerraTec SiXPack 5.1+. Crystal CS4630 based cards generally regarded positively on these forums for Win98 games.

CS4624 also.

elszgensa wrote on 2024-05-04, 22:22:

Speaking of... I've encountered 486es in business use as recently as ~7 years ago, albeit in extremely niche use cases. Switched employers since then but I'm pretty sure they're still there to this day. So... would anyone like to argue that makes them not retro?

> albeit in extremely niche use cases

Yes I'd argue that that makes them decidedly retro.

Shortsaid it always took time to realize new ways, and SBEMU and other things emerged since then. If you look at very old posts then 386 is the thing and super socket 7 is boo, and then it’s i815 that’s not cool, and then we have almost crossed willamette line now and we are seeing more retro builds based on 775

Bruno128 wrote on 2024-05-21, 11:33:

Shortsaid it always took time to realize new ways, and SBEMU and other things emerged since then. If you look at very old posts then 386 is the thing and super socket 7 is boo, and then it’s i815 that’s not cool, and then we have almost crossed willamette line now and we are seeing more retro builds based on 775

In fact, beyond that. Today, today's machine can be seen as a rertroker with modern modds. It is not possible to imagine a converter that the Chinese would not have invented. Here you can see at Vogons that Win98 is running on state-of-the-art machines. Dos again, by developing SBEMU and CPUSPD, is true that on an ultra modern machine only, others can't adjust it properly.

appiah4 wrote on 2024-05-21, 09:43:

CS4624 also.

CS4624 is a fairly mediocre chip.

A lot of mediocre hardware gained popularity through availability as more desirable parts got expensive. Something good enough is still better than nothing.

RandomStranger wrote on 2024-05-22, 04:55:

Something good enough is still better than nothing.

this should be the vintage computer enthusiast's mantra 😀

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2024-05-21, 21:23:

appiah4 wrote on 2024-05-21, 09:43:

CS4624 also.

CS4624 is a fairly mediocre chip.

It gets the job (AEX 1.0 / EAX 2.0) done for me.

I kind of use CS4624 and CS4630 cards interchangably. Particularly with my Terratec DMX Xfire 1024 and Terratec Santa Cruz there doesn't seem to be a tangible benefit to using either over the other.

I'd be happy to get educated about what 30 brings to table over 24..

Meanwhile I will continue hoarding decent 875P boards...

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2024-05-23, 15:47:

Meanwhile I will continue hoarding decent 875P boards...

yep, I'll bet my BX motherboards these will become the next defacto reto PC starting point for many in the coming years

chinny22 wrote on 2024-05-23, 23:57:

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2024-05-23, 15:47:

Meanwhile I will continue hoarding decent 875P boards...

yep, I'll bet my BX motherboards these will become the next defacto reto PC starting point for many in the coming years

Are all i875 boards socket 478, or did some enterprising folks do an LGA775 i875 board?

LGA775 i865 boards, or at least those that can do C2Ds/C2Qs, are already near unobtainium...

DFI did the LanParty 875P-T.

Does the Asrock 775i65G support Core2Duo? The website doesn't list them among supported processors, but the manual does... 🤔