Ha, A yearly upgrader then! 😈 I used various P3s, the most powerful of which was a 1ghz P3 until 2005(!) when I upgraded to an A64 3000+ s939, then a year plus later to an single core AM2 system, a year later to a 5200 X2 and a E2180 system, then next year a 7750BE AM3 system which I upgraded last year with a 955BE, so yeah I know a little about the yearly upgrade bug too 🤣

hmm, I started with the first 10MHz 8088 and awesome 8 bit VGA card and monitor back in late 87, upgraded that to 12MHz 286 mobo in 88, then 386-40 after that, on to 486 dx2-66, then Pentium 60 with a 17" monitor, then P166 when I bought my Orchid Righteous 3d, slowed down after that...sort of, 🤣 Have a Phenom 4 core with HD4650 now. Funny thing is, I still have ALL the previous systems too. Yeah, my girlfriend thinks I'm crazy.

sgt76 wrote:

Ha, A yearly upgrader then! 😈 I used various P3s, the most powerful of which was a 1ghz P3 until 2005(!) when I upgraded to an A64 3000+ s939, then a year plus later to an single core AM2 system, a year later to a 5200 X2 and a E2180 system, then next year a 7750BE AM3 system which I upgraded last year with a 955BE, so yeah I know a little about the yearly upgrade bug too 🤣

Lol, sounds so similar to me, except I kept my 1Ghz Coppermine till at least 2007(!) then upgraded to a s939 3500+. I only went 955BE (lol, same CPU again 😜) 1 1/2 years ago.

But otoh, instead of yearly upgrades, I tend to build a rig then hardly change it for a long while. I build tons of "lesser demons" instead 😜

The closest I ever came to having a high-performance PC was in mid-2001 when I had a 1.2ghz Athlon with a Geforce 2. Today the only original part left in it is the motherboard.

For me it'd have to be my first brand new built system.

A Core 2 Quad Q6600 with 4GB RAM and an 8800GS. The lowly GS because I was 16 and on a budget at the time! (2008) The first game I remember playing on it was Unreal Tournament 3, and I was absolutely gobsmacked by the beauty of it. Even now its amazingly pretty. I *loved* that PC, although it was my first proper build which is probably why I'm sentimental 🤣 Before that I was lucky enough to have a slew of old PCs thanks to my brother, so I owned a 386, 486, 486 Overdrive, Pentium, Pentium II and Pentium 3 in a short space of time (probably over 3 years I think)

But alas I sold it recently as it was sat there gathering dust while my laptop got all the use. Got a 40" TV to replace it, will have to plug my P3-800 into the TV and do some big screen gaming 😜

Unfortunately I was low end until 3 years ago. I got my first PC at the age of 6, in 2000. It was a Pentium 133. In 2002 I got a Celeron 900 and some SIS integrated GPU. In 2004 I got a Celeron 2.4 and a FX5600XT which I upgraded 3 years later to a P4 2.8 and a 7600gs.
In 2008 I decided I knew enough about computers that I could build my own setup from the ground up and that's what I did. I got a Core2Duo at 2.33 GHz, 2GB RAM, a 7800GTX (lame choice unfortunately but at least I got it cheaply enough, 80Euro I think in late 2007) and a Gigabyte P35-DS3L or something.
The 7800GTX would overheat after a certain point and it restarted the whole system when trying to play games... I applied new thermal paste but I could never avoid the temperature hitting 100 C with the fan speed set at 100%! Turns out there must have been some lame bug on the fan controller program or maybe I hadn't created good flow of air inside the case, because the same card now gives me 60C at worst...
Funny story, a friend of mine was playing Unreal Tournament 3 while I was lying in bed when I heard a "beep". So I stand up and tell him "hey, someone's locked a missile on you" and he replied "no they haven't". And truth was, no message was displayed on the screen whenever the "beep" was heard. So I quickly checked the temps and that's when I saw 100 C!!! Hilarious! 😁
Performance wise, the 7800GTX was kind of a dog in 2008 so I used the temps (as well as my birthday which was close) as an excuse to get my dad to give me half the money I needed for the then brand new Radeon 4850. It had been only a week since it was released. I payed the rest of the money. Best 160 Euro I've ever given on PC hardware probably. This card was very powerful back then, I beat Crysis with it at High Detail and 1280x1024 and got a steady 30 fps most of the time. I also enjoyed the amazing graphics of Assassin's Creed, beautiful game although very repetitive. To this day, I can still play almost every game at 1600x900 and Medium to High details. Certainly the greatest graphics card I have ever owned.
The second huge problem I've encountered with this PC haunts me to this day and is probably the worst thing I have ever experienced with PCs. The hard drive would fail for no reason at all! I had a Seagate 7200.11 at first which was one of the error prone ones. I replaced it with a WD. I got a new motherboard (dirt cheap though, 30 Euro for an Asus P5K back in 2009), new PSU and it would still continue. I think with the 2nd replacement it was finally over, but there have been a couple of times where the system wouldn't recognize the drive at all. Occasionally the drive kinda lags during everyday use, once in 2 months or so, for like a second or two and I get this terrible feeling.

I truly wish this never happens again!!!

F2bnp wrote:

Unfortunately I was low end until 3 years ago. I got my first PC at the age of 6, in 2000. It was a Pentium 133. In 2002 I got a […]
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Unfortunately I was low end until 3 years ago. I got my first PC at the age of 6, in 2000. It was a Pentium 133. In 2002 I got a Celeron 900 and some SIS integrated GPU. In 2004 I got a Celeron 2.4 and a FX5600XT which I upgraded 3 years later to a P4 2.8 and a 7600gs.
In 2008 I decided I knew enough about computers that I could build my own setup from the ground up and that's what I did. I got a Core2Duo at 2.33 GHz, 2GB RAM, a 7800GTX (lame choice unfortunately but at least I got it cheaply enough, 80Euro I think in late 2007) and a Gigabyte P35-DS3L or something.
The 7800GTX would overheat after a certain point and it restarted the whole system when trying to play games... I applied new thermal paste but I could never avoid the temperature hitting 100 C with the fan speed set at 100%! Turns out there must have been some lame bug on the fan controller program or maybe I hadn't created good flow of air inside the case, because the same card now gives me 60C at worst...
Funny story, a friend of mine was playing Unreal Tournament 3 while I was lying in bed when I heard a "beep". So I stand up and tell him "hey, someone's locked a missile on you" and he replied "no they haven't". And truth was, no message was displayed on the screen whenever the "beep" was heard. So I quickly checked the temps and that's when I saw 100 C!!! Hilarious! 😁
Performance wise, the 7800GTX was kind of a dog in 2008 so I used the temps (as well as my birthday which was close) as an excuse to get my dad to give me half the money I needed for the then brand new Radeon 4850. It had been only a week since it was released. I payed the rest of the money. Best 160 Euro I've ever given on PC hardware probably. This card was very powerful back then, I beat Crysis with it at High Detail and 1280x1024 and got a steady 30 fps most of the time. I also enjoyed the amazing graphics of Assassin's Creed, beautiful game although very repetitive. To this day, I can still play almost every game at 1600x900 and Medium to High details. Certainly the greatest graphics card I have ever owned.
The second huge problem I've encountered with this PC haunts me to this day and is probably the worst thing I have ever experienced with PCs. The hard drive would fail for no reason at all! I had a Seagate 7200.11 at first which was one of the error prone ones. I replaced it with a WD. I got a new motherboard (dirt cheap though, 30 Euro for an Asus P5K back in 2009), new PSU and it would still continue. I think with the 2nd replacement it was finally over, but there have been a couple of times where the system wouldn't recognize the drive at all. Occasionally the drive kinda lags during everyday use, once in 2 months or so, for like a second or two and I get this terrible feeling.

I truly wish this never happens again!!!

My friend had a 4850. Got it for his birthday too! 🤣 Awesome card. His brother has it now afaik and is playing new games on his PC still 😁 The Geforce 8 Series and ATi 4 series were some of the best cards made imo. They really raised the bar for performance.

Yeah the HD 3800 and 4800 line, and 4770 are all pretty solid even to this day. My son uses a HD 4830 and my daughter a HD 3850, and there is no complaints on either end. Rock solid cards. The GF 8 line was awesome too. I love my 8800 GTS Sli system, still handles anything out currently pretty well.

I had a used Sapphire OEM 4850 (plain black cooler with no markings) for a while. It was a great card for the few months I was able to use it. I was playing STar Trek Online at the time and was finally able to zoom arund the galaxy in high detail with all the bells and whistles turned on. One day it started showing green dots on screen like it was artifacting heavily so I sent it back for exchange but the guy I got it from didn't have any more so he refunded my money. I got a really good price on that card, too, which really disappointed me. It was only $70 when everyone else was selling them for $130. The seller had sold almost 100 of these before mine and had good feedback so I took a chance. I was stuck with the onboard 4250 video on my motherboard for a few months while I waited for the 6870 to come out and got one of those. 4250 isn't bad on low settings or if your game has a DX9 mode to fall back to if DX10 is too slow, but as soon as you start to turn things up it fades. I remember trying to run the Froblin r700 demo and it failed miserably on the 4250 but ran great with the 4850.

My first bleeding edge PC was a Pentium 60. I previously had a 486SX/20 before that. The jump in speed between the two was quite amazing at the time. All that despite the floating point bug the early P60s had.

You guys are going to laugh - it was a 486 d4x/100.
BUT consider the progression - I went from a C64 (used for a long time) to a used XT (short time) to a used 286 (short time) to the 486.
286 to 486 DX/4 was a big jump 😎