Got REALLY lucky today.... I got a little box with something sweet.
In the top of the box, there were the usual mem sticks. Nothing fancy, 64mb and 128mb PC-100 sticks.
There were even a bunch of standard 40-wire IDE cables. Those non-ATA-66/100/133 oldschool ones.
In the bottom, there were something I never have thought I would see again.

A Shuttle HOT 555a Rev. 3,2. 😜
I had one of these some 6 months ago. Or something like that, and it fried.
Then I was lucky to get another 555a, just not the same revision. I think it was 2.XX-Something. !!?
Now I am on my third 555a board this year, and this baby turns out to be flawless.
No issues, no scratches and looks clean. Love it. So happy.

All set up, testing and everything looks so nice (by luck, I saved the Ps/2 connector from the first board)

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

kanecvr wrote:

Not really... the phemom II line is faster then the Core 2 line, especially in games.

Really it's a wash, they are both great processors to have. I'd be surprised if there is much of a difference between a Wolfdale and a Phenom II X2.

AM3+ for retro gaming I'm well aware, been mentioning it for a long time, you don't have to tell me 😀

Just passed on my old 955be to my little brother for gaming. It was a nice enough cpu but I got a good bundle with memory and an 8350. That felt much faster when I made the switch. I absolutely hate the old coolers. The default regulation is horrible. Wraith should've come much sooner.
I also got an Athlon II 260u (25w) pretty cheap. Should work well for Steam streaming and general htpc use.

Tetrium wrote:

You mean one like this one? http://www.vgamuseum.info/images/zaatharen/at … eon9600_fhq.jpg I absolutely loved these. They were […]
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ODwilly wrote:

Picked up a passive generic green 256mb Radeon 9600. No real use for it, but spare non crappy AGP cards are always welcome. + free

You mean one like this one?
http://www.vgamuseum.info/images/zaatharen/at … eon9600_fhq.jpg
I absolutely loved these. They were sometimes kinda glitchy but performance and stability was good.

Almost identical, my heatsink is black and it uses all Rubycon caps. Used a 9550 for awhile, love mid grade Radeon cards. Some minor issues but seem to just perform well overall for the $

Received a SelectaBase 770, port replicator for the Thinkpad 770 that also acts as an adapter for connecting it to the SelectaDock line of docks. Was more expensive than the dock, and also than the laptop itself. But when I received it today it turns out that it's NIB, still with the original "sealed for quality by IBM" stickers as it was when it came out of the factory 20 years ago. That was unexpected. Can't complain about the price anymore. Now if only the dock got here sooner... I'm aching to build this system.

dirkmirk wrote:

The other Phenom CPU to look out for is the Phenom X4 965BE, Quad core 3.4ghz with unlocked multipliers I believe at stock speeds it was a better gaming CPU than the X6 1090T.

My X4 965BE is actually my main system, the slightly less power hungry C3 revision.
Have thought about upgrading to FX, but AMD seems to have made a wrong turn (like Intel's P4), with the FX range being rather disappointing in comparison, so that it means a really top (and expensive) FX is required to get much improvement, with some lost to the AM3 with AM3+ BIOS motherboard.

I thought the X6 used the same cores as the Phenom II X4

I've got a FX-6300 in my main rig. Maybe I could have saved a couple bucks at the time I built it by looking for a late Phenom...likely more powerful too

@chose007 those 7900 GTX Duos are truly something special to collect as most out there are already long gone but one day once Win XP DX9 retro becomes popular people will start looking to these sort of cards so to have two of the original nvidia dual gpu cards is really the king of the hill. The only catch is that the bridge chip uses a earlier bios version than the 7950gx2 and so some boards won't boot the cards. The advantages the 7900 GTX Duo has over the 7950gx2 is far better cooling, better vrms by far, power is linked between both planes, and they can reach normal 7900 GTX clocks. EVGA sold a small number of them on newegg but the vast majority ended up in Dell/Alienware machines. There is one other version and that is the Quadro FX 4500 X2. Hope they run and do enjoy them 🤣 as there is probably no one else here to show off a such a build 😀

nforce4max wrote:

@chose007 those 7900 GTX Duos are truly something special to collect as most out there are already long gone but one day once Win XP DX9 retro becomes popular people will start looking to these sort of cards so to have two of the original nvidia dual gpu cards is really the king of the hill. The only catch is that the bridge chip uses a earlier bios version than the 7950gx2 and so some boards won't boot the cards. The advantages the 7900 GTX Duo has over the 7950gx2 is far better cooling, better vrms by far, power is linked between both planes, and they can reach normal 7900 GTX clocks. EVGA sold a small number of them on newegg but the vast majority ended up in Dell/Alienware machines. There is one other version and that is the Quadro FX 4500 X2. Hope they run and do enjoy them 🤣 as there is probably no one else here to show off a such a build 😀

So, I take it 7900GTX Duo is just a different name for the 7900GX2? I remember when they came out and I don't remember ever seeing them called that.

I had a 7950GX2 and wasn't too pleased. Coming from a 7900GTX (eVGA step-up program) it was actually a performance downgrade in many situations where SLI didn't work properly. As soon as the 8800GTX was released, I bought one of those and sold the GX2. Crazy to think that the 7900GTX, 7900GX2, 7950GX2 and 8800GTX all came out in 2006... within 9 months of each other actually. That was a very expensive and unstable time for me... 😵

melbar wrote:

chose007 wrote:

MSI 3Dfx V3 onboard, looks kaput but will see

Nice board !!! Have a MSI board with similar layout, but ATI instead of 3dfx onboard, and S370 instead of slot 1.

I have the same board. It even looks very similar - in bad condition 🙁 . Haven't found the time to test it even though I have if for almost two years 😐

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

Just bought a single JBL 4410 studio monitor. Yes, single speaker. It would make a great center channel for my JBL 120Ti mains. […]
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Just bought a single JBL 4410 studio monitor. Yes, single speaker. It would make a great center channel for my JBL 120Ti mains. Yes, there are slight difference, like the 4410's use JBL 035Ti tweeters while the 120Ti's use JBL 044Ti tweeters, but they should sound similar enough. I would originally go for JBL 4412 instead, since its frequency response curve is more similar to that of 120Ti's, but it seems 4412 wouldn't make a good center speaker, because it has asymmetrical off-axis response curve.

For games, I would connect the speakers to my Yamaha RX-V663 AV receiver. For music, however, I'd connect it to my Sansui-AU-7900, which is a stereo amplifier. But how would you connect L-C-R (Left-Center-Right) speaker to a stereo amplifier, then? Using Hafler Circuit, like a Dynaco QD-2 I've just bought on ebay. The QD-2 hasn't arrived yet though.

So, without further ado...

It's interesting to note that it really, really appears to me that the woofer has been re-foamed. During the process, the dust-cap in the center of the woofer is cut out, and the voice coil is shimmed during the process of gluing the new surround in. Then the shims are removed and the dust-cap is either replaced or adhered back in place. It looks like that is what has been done. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean that you'd need to have the speakers response re-analyzed as it won't match the original woofers compliance, perfectly.

Carlos S. M. wrote:

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Tetrium wrote:

And perhaps because a Bulldozer wasn't a viable upgrade for a non-AM3+ rig, it's basically the fastest that will work in AM3 (or at least afaic).

That's a good point!

AM3+ CPUs weren't meant to be used on AM3 socekts, but it didn't prevent some manufactuers like ASUS, AsRock and ECS made some of thier AM3 mobos compatible with AM3+ CPUs

Also AM3+ CPUs wasn't supossed to fit on the AM3 socket due to the extra pin in AM3+

This reeks like Asrock....

stamasd wrote:

Received a SelectaBase 770, port replicator for the Thinkpad 770 that also acts as an adapter for connecting it to the SelectaDock line of docks. Was more expensive than the dock, and also than the laptop itself. But when I received it today it turns out that it's NIB, still with the original "sealed for quality by IBM" stickers as it was when it came out of the factory 20 years ago. That was unexpected. Can't complain about the price anymore. Now if only the dock got here sooner... I'm aching to build this system.

Aand... the dock was just delivered.

Time to get funky.

Tetrium wrote:

dirkmirk wrote:

6 cores vs 4 think that's the only difference, as suggested most games back then only used 2 cores so the extra MHz on the X4-965 vs X6-1090T (3.4ghz vs 3.2ghz) was more beneficial, I'm not aware of any games that would favour the 1090T, still I like the 1090T seems one of those ridiculous top of the line over engineered chips trying to impose brute horsepower to achieve performance, not the most elegant buts its definitely a worthwhile chip to collect.

For some reason I actually chose a 1090T for my parents computer over an I3 system from a local pc shop for more or less the same money, that computer wont be finding its way to the scrapheap that's for sure.

I think it would matter more if someone were to game a bit, have a couple browsers open, have music play in the background, have some other programs open in the background, then it might matter 😁

I'll bet money there's quite a bit of performance gap between a phenom X4 and a X6 in modern games like Fallout 4, GTA V and alike due to the fact that they are designed to run on AMD Jaguar 8 core CPUs. I wouldn't be surprised if the X6 performs at least 15-20% better then the X4 in these. I'll test this out as soon as I get a decent AM3+ board.

Another Phenom II X6 1090T owner here. Mine is overclocked to 4.07GHz and paired with 16GB of DDR3-1740. It's not my main computer, but the performance is fine enough that it easily could be. 😀

As far as single-threaded performance goes, it's slightly faster (5% tops) than my Q6700 @ 4GHz. It just leaves that C2Q in the dust in multi-threaded stuff.

My only concern (and this applies to the 65nm Core2 as well) is the lack of true SSE4 support. Yes, the PhII has SSE4A, but are there any programs out there that actually use 4A? All of the SSE4-optimized apps/games I've seen only use Intel SSE4 (45nm Core 2 and newer). On the AMD side, you'd have to "upgrade" to an FX chip.

I have a hunch that HEVC decoding/encoding takes advantage of SSE4. I have a 4K, 60fps, 10-bit HEVC video file that I use to measure a CPU's software-only HEVC decode performance. The 1090T @ 4GHz simply cannot do it. All six cores get completely slammed. It handles 4k/60 H.264 wonderfully, but HEVC kills it. My Core i7-4930K plays that HEVC file just fine, and with very low CPU usage (~25%).

I was Window shopping on eBay and found this...

I was like.... I'll by that!

Edit
I don't have anything else for it.
But I'll slowly get the parts. I will be a big step up from the 604 setup. I'll never have any problems running even 20 game servers with this setup! Wile still having power for me!

I dont know why, but i never liked the skulltrails

luckybob wrote:

I dont know why, but i never liked the skulltrails

Yeah it's a odd board. It's dual cpu but noting server related.
I would rather have a Z7S WS, but hay it was a good price.

Jade Falcon wrote:

luckybob wrote:

I dont know why, but i never liked the skulltrails

Yeah it's a odd board. It's dual cpu but noting server related.
I would rather have a Z7S WS, but hay it was a good price.

Remember you'll probably need a fan on the ram sticks or at least a very good airflow case. FB-DIMMS get -hot-.

Got these 3 for the super high price of 1 Euro. The LGA775 ones were kept super well and had bent cpu socket pins. Managed to fix the pins on the left one, however the one on the right is gonna go to a recycling place as one of the pins just snapped off while I was trying to unbend it. Will test the other 2 later. Hopefully, despite missing even the chipset heatsinks, one of them works as I have been eager to do a DX10 build for a while now.

kixs wrote:

melbar wrote:

chose007 wrote:

MSI 3Dfx V3 onboard, looks kaput but will see

Nice board !!! Have a MSI board with similar layout, but ATI instead of 3dfx onboard, and S370 instead of slot 1.

I have the same board. It even looks very similar - in bad condition 🙁 . Haven't found the time to test it even though I have if for almost two years 😐

Just try this new one. Looks work for basic post. But BIOS is incorect not working (must use from second board) and of course caps death or missing. Need repair and search another bios.