Filosofia wrote:

shamino wrote:

It's funny, at that point in time (when building the Cyrix), I remember looking at the CPU options for AMD and thinking "wow - these guys are waaay behind.. they're not going to be around much longer."

😁

I also predicted 3dFx would never catch on because they were too expensive. The standard would be cheaper all-in-one cards like the Virge.

Don't take stock investment tips from me.

bucket wrote:

To the best of my knowledge, we had a Cyrix 686 rig with a Matrox G200 card and a Sound Blaster AWE32. God, that Cyrix chip was good for squat. Anyone else have the extreme displeasure of owning one?

Cyrix chips were still better than the dreadful IDT Winchip at the time. I had the displeasure of owning a 240Mhz IDT Winchip C6 (with MMX ) and it was rubbish... It was very cheap to buy though compared to everything else.

PowerPie5000 wrote:

bucket wrote:

To the best of my knowledge, we had a Cyrix 686 rig with a Matrox G200 card and a Sound Blaster AWE32. God, that Cyrix chip was good for squat. Anyone else have the extreme displeasure of owning one?

Cyrix chips were still better than the dreadful IDT Winchip at the time. I had the displeasure of owning a 240Mhz IDT Winchip C6 (with MMX ) and it was rubbish... It was very cheap to buy though compared to everything else.

It was it's cheapness that was it's main feature. If you looked at it from a bang for the buck perspective it wasn't bad. It also wasn't bad as an inexpensive upgrade to extend the life of a slower system. Upgrading from a Pentium 75 or 90 to a Winchip 200mhz was still a huge improvement over what you had.

sliderider wrote:

PowerPie5000 wrote:

bucket wrote:

To the best of my knowledge, we had a Cyrix 686 rig with a Matrox G200 card and a Sound Blaster AWE32. God, that Cyrix chip was good for squat. Anyone else have the extreme displeasure of owning one?

Cyrix chips were still better than the dreadful IDT Winchip at the time. I had the displeasure of owning a 240Mhz IDT Winchip C6 (with MMX ) and it was rubbish... It was very cheap to buy though compared to everything else.

It was it's cheapness that was it's main feature. If you looked at it from a bang for the buck perspective it wasn't bad. It also wasn't bad as an inexpensive upgrade to extend the life of a slower system. Upgrading from a Pentium 75 or 90 to a Winchip 200mhz was still a huge improvement over what you had.

Buying a used 133Mhz Pentium probably would have been cheaper and would still provide the same level of performance as a 200Mhz IDT Winchip C6... It was definitely a CPU brand to avoid imo.

In 1999 I upgraded my trusty K6/200 to a Celeron 400A with 128MB RAM.
So it probably looked something like this:
Celeron 400A @ 450MHz
Abit BE6-II
128MB RAM
S3 Virge 4MB PCI
Quantum Fireball EL 5.1GB
SB compatible? soundcard
10MB NE2000 compatible NIC

I started with most of the hardware that was in my K6 at the time and upgraded all components in the ~2.5 years I used this system, rebuilding the K6 as an extra computer.
The videocard was upgraded later in 1999 to an AGP Diamond Viper V770 32MB TNT2 (and I still have that card in my collection), and I think I picked up a Quantum Fireball Ka 18.2GB drive in the same year as well.

sure you don't mean a C-300A...?

The Celeron 300A, overlockers rarely had it that good again. 1/2 the price of a Pentium II 450, overclocked from 66 to 100MHz, rock sold stability and just as good performance as the PII.

I couldn't get my 300A to go 100mhz FSB in a 440LX without a freeze 🙁

Months ago I was torturing a couple Slot 1 Pentiums and they confessed decently, specially the Katmai. Left Deschutes 350, right Katmai 450.

Do you people remember the mere two thousand bucks Intel pretended for a Pentium II 300 back in 1997? 🤣 🤣 🤣

sure you don't mean a C-300A...?

No, I do mean a Celeron 400A in a SEPP package - or at least, it was listed as such on my invoice. Back in the day people would refer to Mendocino Celerons as "Celeron A's" to distinguish them with the cache-less Covingtons, even though the only "true" Celeron A was indeed the Celeron 300A. Anandtech for example has an article referring to this CPU as a 400A. I think the 300A was not available anymore when I built this particular machine, and the 400 was not as good an overclocker as the 300A.

I think the overclocked 300A needed a BX board for optimal stability, the LX has no official support for 100MHz FSB.

PowerPie5000 wrote:

sliderider wrote:

PowerPie5000 wrote:

Cyrix chips were still better than the dreadful IDT Winchip at the time. I had the displeasure of owning a 240Mhz IDT Winchip C6 (with MMX ) and it was rubbish... It was very cheap to buy though compared to everything else.

It was it's cheapness that was it's main feature. If you looked at it from a bang for the buck perspective it wasn't bad. It also wasn't bad as an inexpensive upgrade to extend the life of a slower system. Upgrading from a Pentium 75 or 90 to a Winchip 200mhz was still a huge improvement over what you had.

Buying a used 133Mhz Pentium probably would have been cheaper and would still provide the same level of performance as a 200Mhz IDT Winchip C6... It was definitely a CPU brand to avoid imo.

A used 133mhz Pentium wouldn't have had MMX support.

I didnt really know, what kind of computer iam was using in that time range. I only knew that my really self paid, and build system was a pentium 1 with a socket 7 motherboard i bought on a discount with a intel pentium 233MMX processor.. I guess the main rigs that time was the pentium II processor and intel 440BX motherboard.. But iam hadnt the money for that stuff. I had work in that time, but earning not that much because i was young. I guess it had 32 or 64mb of pc-100 memory with a simple graphics card on AGP2x and a simple soundcard in it.. I only knew that i want to make an pentium II rig.. But only i could afford was the case and a seagate Medalist 4.3GB hardisk.. the cd-rom drive was that famous Aopen model.. But soon after that i found that the system was to slow for my.. I sold this system to my dad a got build a pentium III system, that ended up not so good.. That got an AMD thunderbird slot A processor.. I had some problems with the first bord.(an Abit one)
When i bought a new gigabyte Slot A 7IXE i had my second running system..

Well, it was not really mid 1999 and I am not really sure if it was Christmas 1999 or 2000. I am 19 slowly approaching 20 so I was just 6-7 at that time. Our first multimedia family computer was a Pentium III based Celeron Coppermine 633 Mhz, with an nVidia RIVA TNT2 32 MB graphics card and 64 MB RAM. Except for the slightly anemic RAM it was a wicked machine, never remember any lag or stutter in any games from that period, and it played DVD quality 720x576 DivX movies without any troubles. I used it until 2004, since 2002 it was upgraded to a 1 Ghz Celeron, 320 MB RAM, and Geforce 2 MX400 64 MB, run Windows XP like a charm after this upgrade, played Morrowind on it without any lag or stutter.

This is slightly off topic, but before that we had a 1991 computer with a 40 Mhz Am386 with 4 MB RAM and a Trident SVGA 512 KB card, which was my introduction to computing. From reading both the 1992 and this thread, both of our computers were above average. I guess this is because my father tended to always buy the best (not extremely expensive through) electronics and not upgrade it much after that. I guess this stems back from the communist era (I'm from Slovakia, formerly Czechoslovakia), when electronics were really rare in the shops so when you bought a TV or a hi-fi system you expected to use it for decades and so it was much better to spend the money on the "top notch" system rather than use a piece of crap for the next 20 years.

I forgot to mention that the hard drive in that Celeron was 20 GB.

So in 1999...

Super Socket 7 Fic Motherboard
AMD K6-2 350MHz
512MB SDRAM
Voodoo 3 2000 AGP
Sound Blaster Live! Value
Creative Four Point Surround Speakers
CD Recorder from Philips and Traxdata
Can´t remember what the HDD was...

sprcorreia wrote:

So in 1999... […]
Show full quote

So in 1999...

Super Socket 7 Fic Motherboard
AMD K6-2 350MHz
512MB SDRAM
Voodoo 3 2000 AGP
Sound Blaster Live! Value
Creative Four Point Surround Speakers
CD Recorder from Philips and Traxdata
Can´t remember what the HDD was...

Wow, just such a crazy amount ram with such a lethargic CPU. The imbalance, hurts, my head.

bushwack wrote:

sprcorreia wrote:

So in 1999... […]
Show full quote

So in 1999...

Super Socket 7 Fic Motherboard
AMD K6-2 350MHz
512MB SDRAM
Voodoo 3 2000 AGP
Sound Blaster Live! Value
Creative Four Point Surround Speakers
CD Recorder from Philips and Traxdata
Can´t remember what the HDD was...

Wow, just such a crazy amount ram with such a lethargic CPU. The imbalance, hurts, my head.

Wasn't that the time when SDRAM became very cheap just before some of those factories had to shut down in Taiwan, making SDRAM very expensive again?
512MB of RAM was indeed a very large amount of memory to have in those days!

Tetrium wrote:

Wow, just such a crazy amount ram with such a lethargic CPU. The imbalance, hurts, my head.

Wasn't that the time when SDRAM became very cheap just before some of those factories had to shut down in Taiwan, making SDRAM very expensive again?
512MB of RAM was indeed a very large amount of memory to have in those days!

I also have to question this a bit. I just took out my receipt for 128MB SDRAM PC-100 I bought in Feb 2000. I paid 1500 NOK for that (for those who are too lazy to use Google that is 260 dollars).

vetz wrote:

Tetrium wrote:

Wow, just such a crazy amount ram with such a lethargic CPU. The imbalance, hurts, my head.

Wasn't that the time when SDRAM became very cheap just before some of those factories had to shut down in Taiwan, making SDRAM very expensive again?
512MB of RAM was indeed a very large amount of memory to have in those days!

I also have to question this a bit. I just took out my receipt for 128MB SDRAM PC-100 I bought in Feb 2000. I paid 1500 NOK for that (for those who are too lazy to use Google that is 260 dollars).

I also had a look at when I bought 2x256MB memory, but that was in 2001 while the really big earthquake in Taiwan was in 1999.
I paid 100 Dutch Guilders (approx €45) for a single stick of 256MB PC-133 (approx $50 now, don't know the exchange course back then though).

As a sidenote, I also paid 310 Guilders (approx €140, yikes!) for a 40GB Maxtor disk.

I was barely able to read the receipt btw 😁

So I don't know which disaster caused memory prices to triple in no time, I always thought that disaster happened shortly after I bought my 512MB memory.