My kids run a 775, A q9450 with 8gb ram and windows 10 and a gtx 660. its not old school, its current.

I benchmark "old school" on how many specific systems I see flood the local thrift store. I see a LOT of Pentium 4 systems, more than I care to see as you realize how much e-waste is out there. I don't see many Pentium 3 systems anymore, and Pentium 2 and older are getting extremely hard to find. Pentium-D are becoming more abundant but Core2Duo systems are never seen, as they are still "in service" because they're still worth holding onto for modern uses or worth sold ($50).

Give it 5-7 more years though. You'll see a ton of 775's flood the local thrift store and Pentium 4's will be hard to find.

We are now on our 7th Generation of Core I3/5/7 CPUs. Thats the same number of generations between the 8088 and the Pentium2. Using that same rough math a Pentum 2 is to a late Core 2 Duo is what a Core 2 Duo is to a 6th Gen i7.

That being said I agree late 775 systems are still VERY usable but they are FAR from current. The hardware has outpaced the software and actually slowed down the need for innovation. But, just because something is still usable does not make it current. I am not sure I would call it old school, but it's definately not current or even modern.

There are plenty of Core2Duo's that are going out of service though even though some people are still holding on to them. I can find Core2Duos locally for 40-60 Core2Quads and Xeons of the same era might go for around 100. I can even get some first and second generation core i5/i7s for around 100-150. Pentium 4s, Pentirum Ds, and Pentium Dual Cores you generally can't even give them away, lucky to get somewhere between 5 and 20 USD depending on other hardware is in the system.

Rhuwyn wrote:

We are now on our 7th Generation of Core I3/5/7 CPUs. Thats the same number of generations between the 8088 and the Pentium2. Using that same rough math a Pentum 2 is to a late Core 2 Duo is what a Core 2 Duo is to a 6th Gen i7.

That being said I agree late 775 systems are still VERY usable but they are FAR from current. The hardware has outpaced the software and actually slowed down the need for innovation. But, just because something is still usable does not make it current. I am not sure I would call it old school, but it's definately not current or even modern.

There are plenty of Core2Duo's that are going out of service though even though some people are still holding on to them. I can find Core2Duos locally for 40-60 Core2Quads and Xeons of the same era might go for around 100. I can even get some first and second generation core i5/i7s for around 100-150. Pentium 4s, Pentirum Ds, and Pentium Dual Cores you generally can't even give them away, lucky to get somewhere between 5 and 20 USD depending on other hardware is in the system.

Nah, E8500 can be had from China for $5. The real LGA775 gem is the pre-hardmodded 3GHz Xeon E5450 for $25 which is a Q9650 but better binned.

The real 12MB L2 C2Qs are usually a ripoff, anybody should stay away far away from them.

The legendary 2500K is now $80, but any decent mobo are getting hard to find or expensive, especially for the X58 platform if you want the dubious honor of paying an arm and a leg for a used board to OC a 6C/12T Xeon. X58 is in such demand that the Chinese are recycling the chipsets from dead mobos to manufacture "new" generic X58 mobos of questionable quality.

then do the logical thing and get a 128gb SSD boot drive

candle_86 wrote:

then do the logical thing and get a 128gb SSD boot drive

This is for me I guess. 😊

My board has six native SATA ports (Intel) that I can use for three RAID1 arrays, that I always in need of and that I will never give up. All six of them are in use with six HDDs at the moment. There is also an onboard Silicon image controller with 4 ports, which can only support HDDs (no optical drives) and also support RAID1 but this controller is not working correctly (start up BSODs, etc.- firmware update or latest drivers didn't solve the problem) so it is basically useless. I also have a two port PCIe SATA controller, but this is for my optical drives (one BD, one DVDRW).

In short, I have no usable SATA ports in my PC at the moment for a separate boot drive, SSD or otherwise. So, it's either 2x1TB SSDs for me, or the current setup. With that kind of SSD prices, actually the latter is the only option. 😊

Buy PCI/PCI-e SATA controller ?

I consider anything Pentium III or newer neither oldschool nor vintage, because most of them can run an O/S modern enough to handle most modern tasks without much issue.

If anything, they are "Ghettocore Workstations" - they're old, beat to crap (worse than the 486/386 hardware I was messing with 15 years ago), but more capable than said systems I started tinkering with 15 year sago.

The gap of difference in PC generations has gotten smaller and smaller from the PII onward. I have a Pentium 4 and a Pentium D 3.40GHz box, as well as 2 Core 2 laptops, and I find I really don't have THAT much of a difference amongst them except a handful of things. Most of the casual 2-D Stuff that's popular now via Steam can be played on those systems. My old PIII could even run Five Nights at Freddy's without an issue. Unless you're playing one of those big gamer titles I have no interest in that requires a monster-sized video card and gobs of memory, the reason to consider such stuff vintage becomes almost non-existant. I don't consider them vintage, just old, but I keep using these old pieces because they do the job and do it well, so no point in me upgrading (though that N.O.S. InWin desktop case is calling for me to throw some kind of base-level i7 in it just to sit amongst my other beige boxes as a sleeper).

And even then, even the later "Vintage" stuff is not as far off as people make it out to be either. I also have a 486 DX2-66 and and early Pentium, After getting a bit more into things here again recently, I'm shocked they are still as usable as they are.

A good P-100 or better (like I have) can have U1SB 2.0 installed, a faster graphics card, and the memory topped off, and Windows XP put on it and it can be tolerable to do most tasks most people do today.

A 486 still can Browse the internet, send e-mail, download files, write a document, write a spreadsheet, burn CDR's, play mp3 files, play AVI files, and so on, it's just how much work you're willing to go through and why you are willing to go through that work. I got YouTube Working in Windows 95 at one point under the last version of Firefox or IE that'd run on 95 for example - the audio streamed PERFECTLY, the video...not so much.

The reason the Pentium and 486 are considered vintage in my mind though while the others are not is because of HOW they have that functionality. Back when those were new - everything was son a separate add-in card (for the most part), and all that new functionality is obtained by attaching parts never intended to be installed in such a system via hardware hacks and obscure programs and other varioust trickery (multi-gigabyte hard disks, CD burners, topping the RAM out as far as sit will go, and putting the fastest version of said processor in there possible).

Palladium wrote:

Nah, E8500 can be had from China for $5. The real LGA775 gem is the pre-hardmodded 3GHz Xeon E5450 for $25 which is a Q9650 but […]
Show full quote

Rhuwyn wrote:

We are now on our 7th Generation of Core I3/5/7 CPUs. Thats the same number of generations between the 8088 and the Pentium2. Using that same rough math a Pentum 2 is to a late Core 2 Duo is what a Core 2 Duo is to a 6th Gen i7.

That being said I agree late 775 systems are still VERY usable but they are FAR from current. The hardware has outpaced the software and actually slowed down the need for innovation. But, just because something is still usable does not make it current. I am not sure I would call it old school, but it's definately not current or even modern.

There are plenty of Core2Duo's that are going out of service though even though some people are still holding on to them. I can find Core2Duos locally for 40-60 Core2Quads and Xeons of the same era might go for around 100. I can even get some first and second generation core i5/i7s for around 100-150. Pentium 4s, Pentirum Ds, and Pentium Dual Cores you generally can't even give them away, lucky to get somewhere between 5 and 20 USD depending on other hardware is in the system.

Nah, E8500 can be had from China for $5. The real LGA775 gem is the pre-hardmodded 3GHz Xeon E5450 for $25 which is a Q9650 but better binned.

The real 12MB L2 C2Qs are usually a ripoff, anybody should stay away far away from them.

The legendary 2500K is now $80, but any decent mobo are getting hard to find or expensive, especially for the X58 platform if you want the dubious honor of paying an arm and a leg for a used board to OC a 6C/12T Xeon. X58 is in such demand that the Chinese are recycling the chipsets from dead mobos to manufacture "new" generic X58 mobos of questionable quality.

I was referrering to entire systems not just the CPUs actually.

Most of them are just now considered junk by consumers. They are the stuff thrown around trash bins and recycle centres, being sold for few bucks at thrift shops and nobody wants them. They will be oldschool, but you have to let 20-30 years fly around.

But in my opinion they are good even today, I still use Pentium 4 Extreme as my secondary Linux build for movies projection and my dad is still using Celeron D 352 with the same copy of Windows XP since 2004 for gaming like Call of Duty, Painkiller, GTA:SA etc.

Interesting to still be seeing opinions on what is and what is not retro, vintage, or still current as if they were facts while forgetting that they were opinions in the first place that said core 2 is at the end of its useful life and not very many people want to use the same toaster for ten years at a time which is good for the rest of us.

To me, those systems are too new to be retro, vintage or old-school, but not by a lot. They're "obsolete modern", basically, but obsolescence kinda depends on how high-spec they were when new. I'd be inclined to consider a Dell Optiplex GX280 to be mostly junk now without a pile of upgrades, for example, while a dual-socket Opteron workstation with 8GB of RAM and dual 7800GTs from the same approximate timeframe would still be entirely serviceable. It might chug a little running Windows 10, and I'd want more RAM, but in Linux, BSD or Win7 it'd be fine for anything but new games or high-end stuff. Put an SSD in it, and most users wouldn't even notice it's a decade-old box at first.

Something of that age kinda teeters on the edge of not being modern anymore, I suppose is the best way to put it. A first-gen Athlon64 that still has AGP would be the extreme new edge of retro, though, so it's a close call.

I don't think anything from after about 2000 really qualifies as vintage yet, but it's getting close. Old-school, as a term, is a little too loose and informal for me to nail down.

Palladium wrote:

The legendary 2500K is now $80, but any decent mobo are getting hard to find or expensive, especially for the X58 platform if you want the dubious honor of paying an arm and a leg for a used board to OC a 6C/12T Xeon. X58 is in such demand that the Chinese are recycling the chipsets from dead mobos to manufacture "new" generic X58 mobos of questionable quality.

all of the 1155 CPUs that have 4 cores and HT (i7s and some Xeons) seems to be holding value a lot better, because they are probably still upgrade options for most 1155 PC owners,
the X58 boards... now that's pretty interesting, I had to check, those boards look like your random G41/h61 board but actually have a full x58 in there, also they only have 2 memory slots for a triple channel platform! they indeed look terrible, and from what I noticed can't overclock, but it still is interesting, that this is an option now.

but yes, motherboards become the big problem, the 771 Xeon might be easy and cheap, but you can run into trouble finding a good p45 board with DDR3 support, which would be the ideal...

creepingnet wrote:

A good P-100 or better (like I have) can have U1SB 2.0 installed, a faster graphics card, and the memory topped off, and Windows XP put on it and it can be tolerable to do most tasks most people do today.
.

what do you mean by that, most tasks most people do, wouldn't that be like using facebook and playing videos? even my p4 3GHz feels inadequate for that.
p100 would be considered to slow for XP even in 2001.

jade_angel wrote:

I don't think anything from after about 2000 really qualifies as vintage yet, but it's getting close. Old-school, as a term, is a little too loose and informal for me to nail down.

it's interesting how this goes, 2000 was 17 years ago, I remember in the late 90s I was playing with some "fascinating vintage computers" from the 80s and they were not this old!
but yes, things simply didn't evolve as fast...

Instinctively, I'd class LGA775 P4 (and particularly motherboards that can't take anything better *cough* 915 chipset) as retro, and LGA774 Core 2 Duo as "the old guard" - a term a computer mag once used to describe 386DX-40 in the 486 era.

Core 2 systems get sold as cheap internet systems.

Maybe PCI-E any version is not retro, as barring some awful early examples, you could still stick a current graphics card in them.

PS. My old P4 640 crate runs Windows 10, all it needed was a change of graphics card

SPBHM wrote:

creepingnet wrote:

A good P-100 or better (like I have) can have U1SB 2.0 installed, a faster graphics card, and the memory topped off, and Windows XP put on it and it can be tolerable to do most tasks most people do today.
.

what do you mean by that, most tasks most people do, wouldn't that be like using facebook and playing videos? even my p4 3GHz feels inadequate for that.
p100 would be considered to slow for XP even in 2001.

Sheesh, forgot about Facebook. Admittedly, maybe I'm out of touch. I was thinking more just basic internet stuff (e-mail, browsing simple sites, whatnot) a 30+ would be using (not sure much about Facebook anymore because I hate that site with a passion, it's slow, clunky, exposes too much information about you even with good privacy settings set.....). I'm also going first hand with one of my highly tweaked setups and not your average run-of-the-mill early Pentium as it would have been in 95 (ie PCI SVGA card and 16MB VS 3D Card and 64+MB of RAM).

Speaking of Facebook, I was scrolling through it with an Athlon XP 2800 a few days ago. It was running Firefox 48 on WinXP with 2GB of RAM. Oh man...the auto-playing videos and progressively loaded pages just slowed that machine to a crawl. A P4 2.4 did not fare any better. The leap AMD made going from K7 to K8 was absolutely bonkers. I think the increase in performance is more apparent today than it was when A64 was first introduced. An Athlon 64 4000+ running Chrome on W7 feels several times faster than that poor XP-2800, yet it's only clocked 317MHz higher.

As for LGA 775,

775 with Netbust: old school
775 with Core 2: Usable for most tasks.
775 tweaked to perfection (overclocked quad-core @ 4+GHz with SSE 4.1 support, 8-16GB of RAM, DX12 graphics card, and an SSD): you probably wouldn't even know you were using an 8 year old platform! 😊

RAM makes all the difference in the world, too. My motto is "if there's no downside to having more, and I can afford it, max the buzzard out!"

I haven't maxed out my modern machines, but that's because they max out at 32-64GB, and that's expensive, so it runs afoul of the second caveat 😜

agent_x007 wrote:

Buy PCI/PCI-e SATA controller ?

As I mentioned above I already have one, but it's occupied by my optical drives (not SATA3, I need to find one with certain optical support).

I tried three different SATA3 cards before that (one generic, one Syba, one Asus) but they are all problematic one way or another. My idea was moving one set of RAID to a card from onboard controller, but finally I gave up and bought a cheaper card with a documented optical drive support and moved the opticals instead. You wouldn't believe how many of those PCIe SATA controllers are missing support for optical drives. .

I have no other available slots (one PCI serial/parallel I/O, one PCIe Fİrewire 800 I/O, one PCIe USB3.0 I/O occupies all the available slots) and certainly I don't want to add another SATA controller into the system.

A Core 2 Quad can handle Fallout 4 fine with decent video card 😳
Also a huge Number of modern Games.

I don't know a single title who will not run.
maybe not at ultra high but playable.

I do see lots of people mentioning CPU as a reason for any particular rig being retro or not, but to me it's more about the memory.

I mentioned it before, but as a daily rig for someone who actually prefers to do more then just a single thing on his PC, the 16GB maximum amount an AM3 motherboard can actually support is already a limiting factor.

Take into account that when s7 was new, most people had like 4MB or 8MB RAM? But 64MB works just fine on these boards and these will do 128MB most of the time (uncached but still).

I don't see myself or many people I know use a PC which is Core-something and 4GB RAM. It's possible, but it's not really realistic and for many people will end up being kinda frustrating even.

Older systems that can still run new games don't make that rig not-retro imo. In the end a rig is more than just a CPU 😜