0101000000110101 wrote:

We live in an unfortunate time for Pentium iii enthusiasts, such as myself. Though, I personally love the Pentium ii and 1 more. I typically fall back to the Pentium iii for software support reasons. The time is unfortunate, because Pentium iii based machine's prices are sky high right now, even more so than the older and quite frankly more scarce Pentium ii generation (in comparison).

Is it??I still own a lot PIII stuff, from Dual 500 Mhz to some Tualatin machines... Ooohhh eBay I'm coming... 🤣

I'm more for the Athlon XP machines 😊

But nice machine indeed.

0101000000110101 wrote:

This, is the Dell Optiplex GX150, and it is one of the most flawlessly clean and well kept PC I have ever received used. While the outside appears to be a little banged up, the insides, just have a bloody look! It's practically new in there! The funny thing is, I didn't even clean this out to my best abilities, I guess I didn't need to.

0101000000110101 wrote:

I open it up, and sure enough, Pentium iii based. Well, if you could see through the infestation of dust and cockroaches. egehggegkleh 🙁
It was a mess in there, and was hard to tell if the system even worked.

??

Very nice, I too have a Dell Optiplex GX150 desktop. It's currently my 98SE/2k desktop setup. the main reason I bought it was because I have a matching black Dell setup (keyboard, mouse, monitor, and speakers) and wanted a black P3 system to match it so this was the best choice. 😊

I once had a GX260 with the same case design, unfortunately it suffered from case damage over the years of owning it and it's now just a motherboard that I use for testing hardware; there's also a Dimension 4300S which is basically a consumer-oriented GX240 Small Desktop and is my secondary 9x machine.

0101000000110101 wrote:

So yeah, it's a fantastic system, but due to PC software limitations, 384MB is a bottleneck, only if software was optimized to insanity...

Anyways, here are some goodies boys, I present to you, this beast running GTA SA with graphics enhancement mods and UHD/HD car mods. It does seem to completely max out the sub-par amount of memory and trust me, I would give this PC 512MB of RAM in an instant if I could.

You can replace the 128MB stick with a 256MB stick to get 512MB of RAM, I can definitely confirm this works because the one I have is set up like that. not sure if 512MB DIMMs will work, I know it does on other Dell systems from the similar era but I'm not sure about the GX150.

0101000000110101 wrote:

And so I happily brought my first Pentium iii desktop PC I have ever owned, home, for WAY less than Ebay sellers sell them for, I mean really, freggin' $300 for SSE1 instructions? Heck no I'd rather get a Pentium ii PC and stick with MMX.

It's a shame most eBay sellers think old hardware is worth tons of money these days because it really shuts out those who aren't willing to pay premium for refurbished systems. in fact I dare say the one I bought was the cheapest out of all the eBay listings at the time, even though I *sort of* overspent due to shipping (the item itself was $59.99 and the shipping was an extra $33.28 so in total it was $93.27).

Socket 370 is the third most common retro pc I often find after P4s and Socket A..

Should have offered 10$, could have gotten lucky.

Anyway for 15$ its a grate deal. And with that 1.2ghz your be able to do quite alot but dont be surprised if you start craving the rar power if a 1.4ghz piii-s

Someone was confused about how it was clean.

As I said the system APPEARED dirty beyond cleaning, but surprisingly a lot of air compressor use and a little bit of windex made this thing way more clean than 90% of my systems, which says a lot becauze I keep my systems spotless.

And no, I have tried two 256MB sticks in each slot, and RAM slot 1 does not like anything above 128MB. I do not have any plans of upgrading the CPU of this machine, I have a thing for lower frequency CPUs.

Pentium iii PCs are the most popular choice, as the used to be the cheapest, but, today are the most readily avalible still. As for other reasons why people choose them, beats me.

For me P4 is where WinXP really starts.
P3 is all about Win9x/2k gaming, and you have the making for one hell of a fast 9x/2k Gaming rig.
What you using for audio in it?

P3 for me is aso all about 98/2k/Warp4.

chinny22 wrote:

For me P4 is where WinXP really starts.
P3 is all about Win9x/2k gaming, and you have the making for one hell of a fast 9x/2k Gaming rig.
What you using for audio in it?

The GX150 was an early XP machine so to me it's sort-of interesting to see how XP runs on its' "designed" hardware considering SP3 was considered bloatware compared to earlier Service Packs 😜 , there are also some early P4 systems that do wonders for 9x gaming thanks to driver support sticking around long enough.

These systems have onboard Intel AC97 audio and I assume he's using that since there's no sound card in the inside picture. Mine has a Sound Blaster Live! PCI sound card.

Those are good boards, they seem very well made and reliable.
You have the more desirable version also - most GX150s are Coppermine-only but yours is the later version which supports Tualatins.
Just so you know, the GX150 uses a standard ATX power supply. There's confusion about that with Dells sometimes.

0101000000110101 wrote:

I have tried two 256MB sticks in each slot, and RAM slot 1 does not like anything above 128MB. I do not have any plans of upgrading the CPU of this machine, I have a thing for lower frequency CPUs.

I don't know why it's not working, but the GX150 definitely supports 512MB. I think I've even used a single (16-chip) 512MB module in one, but I've definitely used pairs of 256MB in them. I had one running long term that way.
It should work with the same RAM that works in other i815 boards, the only special issue I can think of is that Dell BIOSes actively refuse to boot with unbuffered ECC modules ("normal" boards just ignore the ECC and run with them).