I think the northwood P4 stuff could be of interest. But carlostex makes a good point, nobody wants a Prescot CPU 😀

Now the Athlon 64 was the king back in those day, but I don't think there is much available, so I doubt they will ever get cheap. Nforce boards isn't something you find in OEM machines, it was very specific to gamers and overclockers.

The other issue is that Windows XP was around for such a long time and if you want to build a XP gaming machine you might as well go with a Core 2 Duo or Athlon/ Phenom II.

I have not heard of computers being destroyed in volumes. This terrible news has escaped me. I've stumbled upon some instructional videos on the web, but thought those were isolated nutcases. I've been pissed watching office PCs, which I wasn't allowed to take, being mistreated, and pirated discs and tapes being destroyed. That was back them when I was young.

Well, I can't think what good a Prescot would do. It's the last platform that win98 works on, but it doesn't work well on it. But the CPU is small enough to sit in my storage. I even have two original HSFs of them, but those could be re-used, and the CPU itself doesn't occupy any space.

j7n wrote:

I've been pissed watching office PCs, which I wasn't allowed to take, being mistreated

That reminds me: some companies would get mighty antsy about sensitive documents on old computers getting out into the public. Of course we all know that removing the hard drive would completely solve the problem, but then upper management doesn't always care what the IT department has to say.

I knew some people at work who were doing this. They said they had a whole semi-truck full of PCs 🙁

The funny thing is, at the organizations my dad has worked at, usually their old PCs get auctioned off, after having their hard drives wiped. I once got a whole crapload of decent quality Dell CRT monitors and other stuff this way. 😁

I have to qualify my previous post about Pentium 4 machines still being available by saying that LATE Pentium 4 stuff is still reasonably easy to come by in trash piles or in junk shops. The Willamette machines are starting to become really difficult, and Northwoods are slowing to a trickle. I haven't found a Willamette in almost as long as my last Pentium III system.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Nforce boards isn't something you find in OEM machines, it was very specific to gamers and overclockers.

Totally wrong. Of course OEMs used NForce chipsets with A64. Had such a machine with an Asus board for many years and it was rock solid, except for the lack of OC of course.

That was an exception likely. Firstly the bulk of OEM machines had a P4, regardless of AMD being faster in games. Secondly nforce boards were premium products and in OEM machines they go for the cheap option. I stand by my statement and in comparison to finding P4 stuff second hand, AMD stuff is very rare. Especially all the good boards like Abit, Asus, Gigabyte because only a few gamers had such boards.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

I think the northwood P4 stuff could be of interest. But carlostex makes a good point, nobody wants a Prescot CPU 😀

Northwoods were a lesser "evil", my brother had one. But tell you the truth i never liked any of the Pentium 4's. Even on Benchmarks heavily optimized for Pentium 4 the Athlon 64 still could stand a point.

I totally agree with you as far as availability. Pentium 4 such be much more easy to find, and actually more cheap. But part of it is because it was never a very good platform. It's funny to see locally how many Pentium 4 stuff is for sale, very cheap and still no one wants it.

OEM's went mainly for Intel stuff because of years of Intel bribes not to buy AMD, starting from the first Athlon days. This is not about fanboyism. It's just how it was. It was settled in court a couple of years ago. I actually think that what Intel paid was bargain.

Do the AMD chipsets have any better support for SB PCI legacy emulation? I can't recall reading if anyone has looked into it.

I tried installing a Soundblaster PCI 128 in an Nforce 3-based Athlon 64 box a while back to see if it would work in MSDOS. It didn't. 🤣 Win9x support on that system was rather poor anyhow.

But yeah, talk about a useless piece of crap; it runs XP and Windows 2000 slowly, it has issues with DOS and Win98, and I can't get the sound for it to work under Linux. I don't even want to know how it would handle Windows 7.

Something I noticed when looking at all the mainboards on eBay. There are a TON of Socket 775 / Core 2 Duo boards available. But something else, these boards are very pretty!

I mean the colours, the layout, the heatpipes, it's really fascinating to see how these boards have evolved.

^^^ Especially those Gigabyte 775 boards. The contrast of the Blue PCB & the copper pipes was nice. More appealing than ASUS and their golden brown.

I thought Soltek had the right idea with making boards look pretty. Pity everything on them was substandard.

Forevermore wrote:

^^^ Especially those Gigabyte 775 boards. The contrast of the Blue PCB & the copper pipes was nice. More appealing than ASUS and their golden brown.

Socket 775 is a bit funny. In one end you can run Pentium 4 on them, which people would start consider retro, in the other end you can run Core 2 Quad 45mm CPUs which hold up even today. My main system is a "super" 775 with Core 2 Quad X9650 overclocked to 4ghz, 8GB of RAM and 2x Radeon HD 7950 in crossfire. That system runs Crysis 3 on very high! I bought my Asus motherboard in 2008 (Asus P5Q Pro) and I never expected it to last this long.

platforms from 5 years ago have very, very long legs.

I Bought a cheap system in 2009 with a AM2 X2/5000+(2.6ghz) and only just replaced the cpu with a Phenom X4 965 Black Edition/3.4ghz for what $60? My theory was that I was better off staying with the old platform/DDR2 instead of buying say a new system around a Core i3 as I would have to buy a new board/RAM on top, this way I could spend the difference on a graphics card...... I havent even played bioshock or Crysis....... At least this way I can run everything on max settings and NOT have a comprimised gaming experience for DIRT CHEAP.

P.S: One benefit of being out of the looop with modern games and hardware is you only have to spend a fraction to runs these games well if your prepared to wait a few years or in my case, just in no rush.

vetz wrote:

Forevermore wrote:

^^^ Especially those Gigabyte 775 boards. The contrast of the Blue PCB & the copper pipes was nice. More appealing than ASUS and their golden brown.

Socket 775 is a bit funny. In one end you can run Pentium 4 on them, which people would start consider retro, in the other end you can run Core 2 Quad 45mm CPUs which hold up even today. My main system is a "super" 775 with Core 2 Quad X9650 overclocked to 4ghz, 8GB of RAM and 2x Radeon HD 7950 in crossfire. That system runs Crysis 3 on very high! I bought my Asus motherboard in 2008 (Asus P5Q Pro) and I never expected it to last this long.

I suppose one day it all will be retro. But I tend to consider 478 P4 to be the "start" of retro. 775 P4's are like 754/939 AMDs IMO. Not quite there yet.

It is amazing how systems so old can still hold their own. The K8 has shown its age moreso than the Core2 in terms of power, but still quite useable. My central rig is still a Phenom 925 with 2 5750s Crossfired & it kicks butt.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Something I noticed when looking at all the mainboards on eBay. There are a TON of Socket 775 / Core 2 Duo boards available. But something else, these boards are very pretty!

I mean the colours, the layout, the heatpipes, it's really fascinating to see how these boards have evolved.

I used to think SOYO's Dragon line of motherboards were some of the most colorful boards in their day. The boards would be one color, the PCI slots would be another, the AGP slot a third color, the RAM slots would be another color and the hard/floppy connectors would be yet another color.

Just a few examples

Aren't they beautiful?

Edit: Damn, Tom's Hardware Guide doesn't allow hotlinking of images.

Beautiful 😀

Allows you to build the whole computer based on a colour look. Like a red AMD box or blue Intel...

It seems that 2011 was the whole 'gold scrap" hey-day. It's actually been slowing down alot over the past years. People have caught on just how much of a scam it was, gold plate is useless; most of the "gold" on vintage hardware [and newer hardware] is not gold but mere gold plate. Many of the old "gold scrap" people have realized they can get more selling the components intact and in working order than they ever could by "scrapping" it. 😀

Unfortunately there are still "gold scrap" sellers around who never got the memo or just flat out don't care and continue to destroy and resell to gullible idiots who still think that "there's gold in them thar hills!" or to people who are new to scrapping. 😒

Today I had to watch a neighbour smash his Pentium 4 "Office Space style" and then driving it to the recykeling station.
I asked if I could have it but he insisted on smashing it since it was useless. (but in working condition I think)

It was a late socket-478 Asus board with a radeon 9800 pro and a really nice case.
Im not sure I will be able to sleep tonight.