First post, by Almoststew1990
- Rank
- Oldbie
Hi everyone,
I like hot, loud and unreliable old systems as much as the next person* but sometimes I just want to enjoy my retro games on something a bit more modern... I present you the Intel D525MW SOC motherboard!
*when standing next to a nerd reading VOGONS
It's a passively cooled Intel Atom based motherboard. A few quick stats:
Intel Atom D525 (2C4T 1.8GHz) Soldered CPU
Intel GMA 3150 Graphics
Realtek HD Audio blah blah blah
2GB Laptop DDR3 800MHz RAM
Mini PCI-E
PCI expansions slot
I purchased this for £15 from ebay from someone who had hundreds of them. I've always been interested in little passive set-ups like this; pushing the boundaries at the bottom end rather than the top end. At somepoint I'm going to try to grab an AM1 setup.
Anyway it dates from 2010 or so, so not retro in the slightest. But with a reasonable sounding CPU (for an Atom) I hoped it could become an early XP gaming PC, especially as drivers are all available for XP. I mounted it in my case I use for my non-main PCs, looked a bit lost in there!
Long story short, it was a bit rubbish.
GTA:VC would lag horribly if I looked into the distance
GTA:SA was unplayable
Ford Racing 3 was playable but, let's be honest, who wants to play Ford Racing 3
Max Payne 1 was just about playable
Max Payne 2 was just about unplayable
Half-Life 2 a train wreck
3DMark 2001SE score of 3410.
Long live MS Office 2000!
(Testing at 1280*1024)
I tried to upgrade it with a PCI ATI 9250. This cost £5.
GTA:VC was playable
GTA:SA was still unplayable
Ford Racing 3 was thankfully now completely unplayable for some reason
Max Payne 1 and 2 were improved
3DMark 2001SE score of 4141
So was it even an improvement?
ehhh... yeah maybe? I assume some games are CPU bound. This biggest improvement was games with long viewing distances (VC and HL2) which I am assuming is something to do with having built in VRAM.
I was hoping this board would quite a bit more powerful than this. In fact, my 2.4GHz P4 / MX440 / 1GB set-up is significantly faster in Vice City! Would I recommend you make a set up like this? Balls no! You could get a much better system for £20! In fact I have just done so!
I've now got Windows 7 running on it with an SSD and 4GB RAM, and it actually great for general usage. No problems with Spotify, Chrome, Steam all online. With a high end (quiet) PSU this could be a nice lite usage HTPC (you know, what it was probably designed for!)
The moral of the story is always buy retro 😎