If you have 1 Mb cache - good for you. Some even came with whopping 2 meg. But majority of late S7 boards usually still came with 512Kb.

appiah4 wrote on 2022-11-15, 11:19:

Sphere478 wrote on 2022-11-15, 11:00:

I can confirm the existence of the k6-3 333 I have one

Is it a mobile K6-2? I have a K6-2/366 and mine is a mobile CPU.

It is a non plus. I don’t think I updated my cpu collection with it yet. Eventually I will. (In sig) I’m not in front of it atm

MrMateczko wrote on 2022-11-13, 19:26:

Thank you all for your feedback, I'll have fun with whatever hardware I receive. I wasn't even thinking about a possibility of receiving two Baby AT PCs this year for free so I am somewhat happy. 😀
I actually met a person locally who is into retro stuff too, and is happy to grab some of my stuff that I won't be using, I really do not like to have extra hardware laying around 😀
He was living in UK some time ago and it makes me somewhat jealous about hearing his retro hardware adventures he had there, including retro consoles and alike, good stuff.

The grass always seems greener on the other side. I'm jealous of a lot of retro stuff that pops up in PL/HU from systems that were kept in use longer than in western Europe.

I already took many years of my life doing overkill Win98SE stuff, and I am ready to take it to the next level, I have all the hardware already, now to actually make something unique with it, I have plans 😁

As for the Celeron 333MHz/AMD K6-2 450MHz - how would they compare with same RAM and S3 Virge GX (or similar/better GPU)? I'll be doing tests myself as well.

Depends on your OS and what you're testing in. Probably a bit faster than the SIS6326. Ideally, run at low video settings if you want to have clearest difference in CPU.

Also bought at a reasonable price an ESS1688 ISA sound card, I think it's a good choice from what I've read. Would be interesting to test the OPL emulation between it and the CMI8330 that it integrated in the PCChips motherboard.

That CMI8330 is probably the best single ISA sound chip out there (yes, despite big "PCI" letters it's an ISA chip - got to love PC Chips relabeling...). It has a 1:1 OPL3 clone built in, so no emulation - indistinguishable from a real Yamaha chip. It also supports SB16 and has bug-free MPU-401 MIDI. Cheaply made PC Chips implementation is the only real downside.

ESS1688 is a solid trouble-free SBPro2 clone with bug-freem MPU401 and ESFM, not an exact OPL3 clone, but generally considered one of the best re-implementations. No SB16 either.
[q]My family's first PC was in circa 1999-2000 with a Celeron 533MHz Socket 370 with 192MB RAM that was upgraded from unknown stock amount, and a S3 Savage4 GPU (upgraded later to I think GeForce 2 MX or something alike). It had a yellow motherboard with a VIA chipset...and that's all the information I have on it, I still do not know what was the model of the motherboard and what was the sound card. I remember DOS games running well so maybe it was ISA, dunno. Of course Win98SE, only a few childhood pics remain 😀[/quote]
"Yellow and VIA chipset" could be a lot of things. That was the colour of Abit, Asus, DFI and FIC - but I'm going out on a limb here and guessing it would probably have been a low-end board. Maybe a Chaintech CT-6AJM2? Or a Jetway J-933AN? Or one of the PCPartner/VTech AP133AS3 boards?

rasz_pl wrote on 2022-11-15, 03:57:

K6-3 333MHz was never a retail product, or even an official product according to AMD ("AMD-K6®-III Processor Data Sheet 21918B/0 […]
Show full quote

the3dfxdude wrote on 2022-11-15, 01:03:

rasz_pl wrote on 2022-11-14, 22:18:

So it was a clearance of a product that was never officially sold in retail.

No, frys is a retail store. Wholesellers doesn't mean clearance either. But in the case of frys, they eventually pushed out k6 when it wasn't worth keeping around,

K6-3 333MHz was never a retail product, or even an official product according to AMD ("AMD-K6®-III Processor Data Sheet 21918B/0—October 1999"). https://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/K6-III/AMD-K6- … III-333AFR.html https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/is-there … -333mhz.403210/ https://forum.pcmech.com/threads/overclocking … -possible.4182/ https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/what-is- … 4/#post-9427764 multiple sources pointing out Fry's as the only place this CPU was ever sold at, and at least 5 posters all claim to have bought one either alone or in a combo deal with ss7 motherboard.

Nov 26, 2000
>Soyo SY-5EMA+ mb AMD K6-3 333mhz ATX case...for $99
Nov 27, 2000
>That AMD K6-3 333mhz is for real. I got one from Fry's with an FIC mobo for $79
Nov 27, 2000
>I purchased both of them at Frys in Portland, OR several months ago. One was included in a combo deal w/a FIC PA2013 mb/cpu for $79.- I bought the other cpu only for $29
Nov 28, 2000
>Fry's sells them for $29

🤣. You've discovered Fry's black friday sales. It's not unusual to have deals 50% off the marked store price. Yes it was possible to pick up a motherboard or a cpu 50% off for around $30-$40, and together about $80. I don't believe I shopped at Fry's on that black friday. The best way to have known the deals would have been to got their weekly newspaper ad. It is possible there were deals here and there. But black friday would have been the most talked about, since that is a day everyone would have had off.

rasz_pl wrote on 2022-11-15, 03:57:

"buying a couple k6-3 333mhz for around $60" Did you mean two for $60 total?

No.

rasz_pl wrote on 2022-11-15, 03:57:

And are you from Oregon/California by any chance? That would be a perfect match 😀

Again no. Frys had many locations all over the West and South US. I had two 15 minutes from me, and well as two other wholesellers. These were retail stores! You could consider Frys a retail parts supplier, that pretty much dominated once they opened up, and many smaller ones closed. Frys sold "BOX" which was a box with AMD's logo, a fan+heatsink with AMD's logo, a paper "warranty info", and a sticker. Their "OEM" listings was just the CPU. They sold both types of packaging for all speed grades. Why a poor marketing spiel from AMD that makes the 333mhz non-legit I wont understand. No one in their right mind would pay the launch day's BOX price, when you could wait a few weeks for the next new announcement, and the store to respond with new prices according to demand. The mhz wars changed the landscape very quickly. So to add, buying the bare CPU plus your own, better cooler, usually meant saving around $10-$20 over buying BOX. People knew this, which is why the "OEM" style packaging actually is what sold, and places that sold OEM like Fry's were popular places. That doesn't make it "non-existent" or "unofficial". "OEM" was just a style of packaging that usually was available in stores too.

My purchases of the k6-2/3 were not singular events in those days. I remember doing two full builds of the 333mhz distinctly at very different times. There could have been more where I just ran down and bought just a CPU to plop into peoples existing socket 7 machines because it was so easy. I don't think I bought any after the Athlon dropped in price and the Duron came out.

rasz_pl wrote on 2022-11-15, 03:57:

All suggests it was either made specifically for Fry's or for some OEM and Fry's got their hand on leftovers from weird source, like that Huge number of K6-2E+/570ACZ CPUs for sale on eBay some time ago all in neat trays siting somewhere in a warehouse for 20 years. Cant really argue its a normal price for a normal product when even manufacturer doesnt acknowledge its existence and it was only available at one point in time in late November 2000 at one retailer at a fire sale. Real freak occurrence 😀

Frys probably bought them straight from AMD under OEM-like terms. Other stores could have done this too? What's the big deal with this anyway?

The k6-2+ drop there was not bought by a retail stores to sell... why? Because there were better options by then. AMD made those chips for laptop producers, which is a different market. It doesn't matter they reused the socket. I mean, they reused the socket much longer than Intel wanted, so why not? Whoever bought those must have been done after a cancelled project, given how many there are.

It would have been a buzz what they let go for next to nothing on black friday, but that is not indicative of a singular event. I believe k6-3s were in store for around two years. The end of 2000 into 2001 they started selling out of k6-3s speeds starting with the fastest ones. The 333mhz was there the longest -- probably 1999 into 2001. They had k6-2's for longer. I remember at the end, saying why bother when the k6-3 is better and the price was the same? I ended up throwing out k6-2s for the same reason after taking people's old machines in the subsequent years.

Interesting to see all this discussion about the K6-III architecture and how there is real-life proof that it really had quite a short shelf life once Slot A/Socket A came to the market.

As for my family's first PC, forgot to mention that it had an Award BIOS...though that is probably not helping much, it must have been some cheap one for sure. It was stable enough for Windows XP that was once installed on it (and immediately was infected with the Sasser worm, those were the days 😁 )

What is the real difference between being Sound Blaster Pro 2.0 and Sound Blaster 16 compatible when it comes to sound effects and OPL3 (ignoring MIDI stuff)? I can't find much info apart from SB16 having the (useless?) CSP chip.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2022-11-15, 11:35:

If you have 1 Mb cache - good for you. Some even came with whopping 2 meg. But majority of late S7 boards usually still came with 512Kb.

I just checked and actually what I have is a FIC PA-2013 with 2MB L2 cache..

Nice! 2mb is rare. I have two freeways with 2mb it’s pretty neat, not sure if it really helps though.

Too bad coast sticks didn’t stay a thing. We could all be upgrading easier with a coast stick project

Certainly doesn't help with FSB overlocking, because FIC PA-2013 with 1 Mb has better binned chips.

rasz_pl wrote on 2022-11-14, 22:18:

you can check prices yourself https://akiba-pc.watch.impress.co.jp/hotline/backnum.html […]
Show full quote

the3dfxdude wrote on 2022-11-14, 20:40:

Those prices are ridiculous. I remember Athlons starting around $150-$200, and they are obviously faster.

you can check prices yourself https://akiba-pc.watch.impress.co.jp/hotline/backnum.html

Official announcement June 23 1999, official shipping date August 17, 1999. A week after announcement reservations started at Akihabara https://akiba-pc.watch.impress.co.jp/hotline/ … 0703/p_cpu.html
https://akiba-pc.watch.impress.co.jp/hotline/ … 0703/price.html
"AMD Athlon 500-600MHz (bulk) price display. The product is scheduled to arrive in mid-July, and reservations are being accepted. However, there is no specific arrival schedule for compatible motherboards yet."
"the K7 revised "Athlon" has been given a price and reservations have also started. The estimated price is 44,800 yen for 500MHz, 69,800 yen for 550MHz, and 89,800 yen for 600MHz."
Those were Pentium 3 450-550MHz prices.

A week before official AMD shipping date retail Athlons arrive in Japan https://akiba-pc.watch.impress.co.jp/hotline/990813.html
"AMD's latest CPU "Athlon" will be sold in Akihabara without waiting for the official release date on the 17th is started. All products on the market are imported products, and 3 models of 500MHz/550MHz/600MHz are on sale. The sale of compatible motherboards has also started, and it is possible to obtain it alone, including Athlon"
https://akiba-pc.watch.impress.co.jp/hotline/ … 0813/p_cpu.html
~$380-800 depending on speed.
https://akiba-pc.watch.impress.co.jp/hotline/ … 13/newitem.html

For reference in US 4 days later on August 17 Alienware was merely teasing pictures of Athlon system 😀 https://www.shacknews.com/article/1019/wheres-my-athlon According to Anand "OEMs will start advertising Athlon based systems starting August 16, 1999" https://www.anandtech.com/show/355/24

the3dfxdude wrote on 2022-11-14, 20:40:

Why is Japan a reference here? They seem like they were behind in the market.

Other way around. Taiwan was always first to get new hardware (obviously, thats where motherboards were being designed and manufactured), Japan couple days later, rest of the world up to weeks delay.

the3dfxdude wrote on 2022-11-14, 20:40:

Yes, these are frys prices or other wholesellers.

So it was a clearance of a product that was never officially sold in retail.

I don't know about japan's pricing back in the day, but in eastern europe (well, at least in my country) all intel parts commanded a heavy premium. At the tail end of 1999, right before the holidays, my dad agreed to finally help me upgrade my aging 586-133GP to something more useable. I had some money saved over from an after school job, and he put up the rest - but the total wasn't much at all. Back then a computer was a luxury not a necessity and they were very expensive in contrast to what people in my country were earning. In most east european countries food was cheap, rent was cheap, fuel and utilities were cheap, so you got by great with the small paychecks people had back then. But stuff from the west like electronics and some clothes were very expensive.

I remember browsing douze of pamphlets, magazines and catalogues, then making calls to PC shops all over the country trying to find a good deal on PC parts. See, I wanted a 400MHz pentium II and an 8MB direct 3d and openGL capable video card... but I only had half the money I needed for that. The cheapest i440ZX (LX was out of the question, it needed to support FSB100) board I could find was an AT form factor ZIDA, the ZX98-AT, and that alone was 200$. A 400MHz pentium II was out of the question, and the Celeron 300A was priced around 320-350$ - twice what it sold for in 2000 in Japan. For a video card I wanted an AGP Riva 128 and I also needed some SD-RAM, as the ZX98 did not have any SIMM slots to put the leftover memory from my 486. At least I could save money on the case by keeping the AT form factor. ATX cases and PSUs were quite expensive here in 99. The Abit BH6 by the way sold for over 350$ here - I remember it well, because I used to drool over them.

So in the end I went with what I could afford - a 400MHz AMD K6-2 with no L2 cache, 32MB of SDRAM, a 4.3GB Samsung IDE drive and a Lucky Star VIA MVP4 mainboard. All these cost about 380$, and for about a year I did not regret the purchase. The 400Mhz K6-2 ran everything I wanted to play (dungeon keeper 2, quake 1 and 2, homeworld 1, tiberian sun, mdk, soul reaver 1, unreal tournament, unreal, age of empires 1 and 2) and it ran most quite well. Even the on board trident blade 3d was doing OK in most games.

I did however start regretting my choice in spring 2001 when I pun in 2-3 demo CDs and games started running poorly - but that had little to do with the CPU. The on board trident could not keep up with these newer games, and frankly neither did my voodoo 2 - and the MVP4 did NOT come with an AGP slot. By that time the Riva TNT2 M64 was quite affordable even here, but only the AGP versions. For some reason nobody stocked the PCI versions and if I wanted to order one, it would take at least 2 weeks to arrive and it would cost 50% more then the AGP version....

Like others have pointed out, socket A came out in 2000, and if I'd have only waited another year, I could have bought a 600-700Mhz duron for the same money....

MrMateczko wrote on 2022-11-15, 19:04:

[...]

As for my family's first PC, forgot to mention that it had an Award BIOS...though that is probably not helping much, it must have been some cheap one for sure. It was stable enough for Windows XP that was once installed on it (and immediately was infected with the Sasser worm, those were the days 😁 )

What is the real difference between being Sound Blaster Pro 2.0 and Sound Blaster 16 compatible when it comes to sound effects and OPL3 (ignoring MIDI stuff)? I can't find much info apart from SB16 having the (useless?) CSP chip.

OPL3:
Nothing, particularly as Creative themselves used four different solutions in their SB16 cards (discrete YMF262 OPL3, discrete YMF289 OPL3-L, original OPL3 integrated into CT1747 chip, (badly) re-implemented OPL3 with CQM module integrated into various later chips).

The CM-8330 will sound the same as SBPro2 and early SB16 when it comes to FM stuff (apart from any difference in analog circuit/filter quality & characteristics).
The ESS1688 card will sound a little bit different, but still 'good', better than later SB16 cards with CQM.

DA sound effects:
SBPro2 supported 8b 22kHz stereo audio, where SB16 supported 16b 44kHz stereo audio. Sounds like a big difference, and when fully utilized it was - but actual use of full capabilities was rare, both due to cost for two versions and at least as importantly additional storage space required by the bigger samples.

Note that a lot of games that did have 16b 44kHz sound also supported WSS, which most SBPro2 clones (but not SBPro2 itself or indeed the ESS clones) supported. ESS chips have a proprietary 'Audiodrive' 16b format, but it's not widely supported.

22kHz vs 44kHz sound effects difference sound (ha!) like a minor tradeback for me for having good DOS compatibility from a reasonably priced ISA card.

The K6-2 450MHz arrived and it's working fine, alongside the S7AX motherboard, the BIOS settings are being saved thankfully on it. Will spend some quality time testing, comparing, enjoying both platforms, though that will continue in a System Specs thread 😀

rmay635703 wrote on 2022-11-15, 04:52:

The thing to understand was “early” K6-2’s were almost always purchased as apart of a bundle. In a bundle circa 1998 the price difference between a k6-2 barebones and a Celeron could be over $100, let alone as a “not barebones” system.

Early K6-2 were priced at full Pentium 2 level as I already showed multiple times. Later Intel always tried keeping Celeron a smidgen cheaper. Can you dig up one example of those great 1998 deals? an ad from pc mag or something? 2000 was indeed time of barebone bottom of the barrel K6-2 dreg systems (cough pcchips) and bundles sold for next to nothing, but that was after Duron and Coppermine entered the market and everyone was trying to offload old stock of obviously obsolete components.

rmay635703 wrote on 2022-11-15, 04:52:

Still good for a very very cheap system ($40 all in some cases circa 2000) 256mb pc133 cl3 low density was only about $12 a Module briefly in that era which made a cheap system even better.

ram was insanely expensive in 2000, it was just after 1999 Taiwan earthquake https://www.eetimes.com/dram-prices-rise-shar … taiwan-quake-2/
256MB SDRAM was $200-300, not $12. Whats up with those weird rose-tinted glasses price memories people have? 😮 😀
Anecdote. Sales guy from my company realized ram was going to dry up same week earthquake news hit and paper "sold" (to himself) all the stock we had in storage. Regional distributor, probably >10 dimm trays stocked at all times, and 30 day deferred payments. He bought a fully loaded Renault Megane Coupe a ~month later, a hot car at the time just on the heels of European Rally Championship win.

the3dfxdude wrote on 2022-11-15, 16:47:

🤣. You've discovered Fry's black friday sales.

haha. November 25. Yes, makes sense 😀 We dont have those in EU. $29 cpu SKU specifically commissioned from AMD for singular insane sales event makes sense.

the3dfxdude wrote on 2022-11-15, 16:47:

These were retail stores! You could consider Frys a retail parts supplier, that pretty much dominated once they opened up, and many smaller ones closed.

Despite not connecting the date to black friday I do know what Frys was 😀 I think MicroCenter is the closest today.

the3dfxdude wrote on 2022-11-15, 16:47:

Frys sold "BOX" which was a box with AMD's logo, a fan+heatsink with AMD's logo, a paper "warranty info", and a sticker. Their "OEM" listings was just the CPU.

the thing with this specific k6-3/333 cpu is AMD never officially admitted to releasing it to OEM market. So even distributors selling OEM components never got it in stock. So far all internet leads point at Frys as the only place it ever popped up at one specific date at the end of 2000.

the3dfxdude wrote on 2022-11-15, 16:47:

Why a poor marketing spiel from AMD that makes the 333mhz non-legit I wont understand.

nobody does, but according to AMD this CPU never existed.

the3dfxdude wrote on 2022-11-15, 16:47:

That doesn't make it "non-existent" or "unofficial".

no, AMD not acknowledging its existence and no other place on earth ever stocking it does.

the3dfxdude wrote on 2022-11-15, 16:47:

Frys probably bought them straight from AMD under OEM-like terms. Other stores could have done this too? What's the big deal with this anyway?

Not a big deal, other than this is unusually low speed cheap variant of "high end" K6-3 model nobody ever sold outside of Frys, thus it doesnt make sense to claim K6-3 was cheap because of this one cpu sold by this one particular retailer during one huge sale.

the3dfxdude wrote on 2022-11-15, 16:47:

It would have been a buzz what they let go for next to nothing on black friday, but that is not indicative of a singular event.

Can you find any other entity ever selling this particular CPU? My google fu failed me outside of those forum links I posted earlier.

the3dfxdude wrote on 2022-11-15, 16:47:

The 333mhz was there the longest -- probably 1999 into 2001.

K6-2 333 yes definitely, k6-3 nope.

Socket3 wrote on 2022-11-15, 21:33:

I don't know about japan's pricing back in the day, but in eastern europe (well, at least in my country) all intel parts commanded a heavy premium

can you reveal the country? Maybe it was all black market in your neck of the woods. In Poland outside the company I was working for there were 4-5 other big distributors all importing directly from manufacturers. We also had a big domestic ram manufacturer, Wilk Electronic https://www.goodram.com/en/, selling at competitive prices with added bonus of lifetime warranty.

Socket3 wrote on 2022-11-15, 21:33:

ZIDA, the ZX98-AT, and that alone was 200$.

indeed crazy price

Socket3 wrote on 2022-11-15, 21:33:

and the Celeron 300A was priced around 320-350$ - twice what it sold for in 2000 in Japan.

thats not twice, Celeron 300A was $57 from March 1999 all the way to February 2000. Thats 5-6 times over, WTF is in order 😀 Slowest Celeron was always below $100 in Poland from first 300, thru 300A all the way to last Coppermine ones, same for slowest Durons.

Socket3 wrote on 2022-11-15, 21:33:

The Abit BH6 by the way sold for over 350$ here - I remember it well, because I used to drool over them.

Abit BX6 $130 in Poland September 1999, and it was one of the most expensive boards on the market. I think only Asus P2B/P3B were slightly more expensive.

https://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/K6-III/AMD-K6- … III-333AFR.html has a comment from someone from 2008 that claims he contacted AMD and said that this CPU "was OEM mainly to Gateway".

rasz_pl wrote on 2022-11-15, 23:38:

Early K6-2 were priced at full Pentium 2 level as I already showed multiple times. […]
Show full quote

rmay635703 wrote on 2022-11-15, 04:52:

The thing to understand was “early” K6-2’s were almost always purchased as apart of a bundle. In a bundle circa 1998 the price difference between a k6-2 barebones and a Celeron could be over $100, let alone as a “not barebones” system.

Early K6-2 were priced at full Pentium 2 level as I already showed multiple times.

rmay635703 wrote on 2022-11-15, 04:52:

Still good for a very very cheap system ($40 all in some cases circa 2000) 256mb pc133 cl3 low density was only about $12 a Module briefly in that era which made a cheap system even better.

ram was insanely expensive in 2000, it was just after 1999 Taiwan earthquake https://www.eetimes.com/dram-prices-rise-shar … taiwan-quake-2/
256MB SDRAM was $200-300, not $12. Whats up with those weird rose-tinted glasses price memories people have? 😮 😀

Bull , bad example below but I won’t waste more time looking for receipts.

here is an example from pricewatch which royally sucks to get data from archive, good lord what a $h/ty interface

Yes RAM was expensive in the 90’s but not in the early 2k, I remember ram prices spiking up after 2003

And yes I had this argument with people back in the day telling me 256mb modules were hundreds of dollars while I kept buying batches of low density modules via 1 day specials on pricewatch, (usually for $9.99 with high shipping that came down if you bought 6 at a time).
I was warned that the “dodgy foreign sellers “ might steal my credit card or send inop ram but I never had an issue.

Looking back I was stupid and should have bought as many as I could afford and ebayed them to people like you.

The Pentium II in a beige box was MASSIVELY more expensive than a beigh box AT case K6-2

The k6-2 “rapidly “ came down in price, I always remembered them being about $50 more than a similar Cyrix.

Too bad I tossed my Computer Shoppers
Through about 2003 there was still a massive price gap between Computer Shopper/pricewatch and other sources like eBay, name brands, and even larger “catalog” stores

I used to build/upgrade/ sell PCs 1996-2002
I kept alarms and scripts for the best deals
Intel systems never came close to AMD or Cyrix in the beige box wholesale market.
Even Celerons were “premium “ because of the increased case and motherboard costs.

Yes on paper AMD was priced like Intel but in reality through Computer Shopper and pricewatch Intel systems never got the massive price breaks and we’re always priced above.

rmay635703 wrote on 2022-11-16, 00:32:

Bull , bad example below but I won’t waste more time looking for receipts. here is an example from pricewatch which royally suck […]
Show full quote

rasz_pl wrote on 2022-11-15, 23:38:

ram was insanely expensive in 2000, it was just after 1999 Taiwan earthquake https://www.eetimes.com/dram-prices-rise-shar … taiwan-quake-2/
256MB SDRAM was $200-300, not $12. Whats up with those weird rose-tinted glasses price memories people have? 😮 😀

Bull , bad example below but I won’t waste more time looking for receipts.
here is an example from pricewatch which royally sucks to get data from archive, good lord what a $h/ty interface
8951B168-BD3C-466A-AD00-9B9D6003BEAC.png

we went from 2000 to end of 2001, two years makes hell of a difference

rmay635703 wrote on 2022-11-16, 00:32:

1 day specials on pricewatch

touche

rmay635703 wrote on 2022-11-16, 00:32:

Yes on paper AMD was priced like Intel but in reality through Computer Shopper and pricewatch Intel systems never got the massive price breaks and we’re always priced above.

Those all sound like clearance prices for obsolete components. Its very likely Intel at the time never had to face a problem of trying to liquidate stock of older uncompetitive parts thru shady resellers. They had Dell for that 😀

rasz_pl wrote on 2022-11-16, 01:37:

we went from 2000 to end of 2001, two years makes hell of a difference […]
Show full quote

rmay635703 wrote on 2022-11-16, 00:32:

Bull , bad example below but I won’t waste more time looking for receipts. here is an example from pricewatch which royally suck […]
Show full quote

rasz_pl wrote on 2022-11-15, 23:38:

ram was insanely expensive in 2000, it was just after 1999 Taiwan earthquake https://www.eetimes.com/dram-prices-rise-shar … taiwan-quake-2/
256MB SDRAM was $200-300, not $12. Whats up with those weird rose-tinted glasses price memories people have? 😮 😀

Bull , bad example below but I won’t waste more time looking for receipts.
here is an example from pricewatch which royally sucks to get data from archive, good lord what a $h/ty interface
8951B168-BD3C-466A-AD00-9B9D6003BEAC.png

we went from 2000 to end of 2001, two years makes hell of a difference

rmay635703 wrote on 2022-11-16, 00:32:

1 day specials on pricewatch

touche

rmay635703 wrote on 2022-11-16, 00:32:

Yes on paper AMD was priced like Intel but in reality through Computer Shopper and pricewatch Intel systems never got the massive price breaks and we’re always priced above.

Those all sound like clearance prices for obsolete components. Its very likely Intel at the time never had to face a problem of trying to liquidate stock of older uncompetitive parts thru shady resellers. They had Dell for that 😀

I could not find a page crawled that made sense in 2000.

Prices were quite chaotic 2000/2001, bad price one week, cheap the next
Prices were slowly going up by the end of 2001, but I had close to 2 years of cheap prices and I mistakenly figured it would continue.

Quite shocking in 2003 when ram went up a lot.

Very big mistake on my part since lack of ram made it harder to clear out my old equipment.

Sphere478 wrote on 2022-11-13, 18:16:

100mhz fsb pentiums are fun. I have a correction, technically the fastest socket 7 pentium was the 300mhz tillamook. […]
Show full quote

100mhz fsb pentiums are fun. I have a correction, technically the fastest socket 7 pentium was the 300mhz tillamook.

But it gets even crazier from there. I actually own (soon) a chinese golden fake 366

(Which I expect to be a 266 or 300 with a lying label.)

Anyway, you can run many ppga tillamooks at 100x4 pretty easily. Some have even gotten them into the 500s

Little off topic, but interesting.

K6-2 wasn’t that bad. Just like cyrix wasn’t either. Winchip though. That’s the celeron of socket 7 🤣

Winchip ..heh I have both the WinChip1 and Winchip2 now so I'm about to find out how "Celeron" they really are 🤣

Socket 7 celerons hehe. Facts. Handy though that they are the highest clocked 3.3v chips. Good for socket 5 upgrades. (Or so it would seem…… evil laugh)

I’d like to see a winchip 2 266 vs a pod mmx 200.

Pod prob still faster 🤣

Sphere478 wrote on 2022-11-16, 02:42:

Socket 7 celerons hehe. Facts. Handy though that they are the highest clocked 3.3v chips. Good for socket 5 upgrades. (Or so it would seem…… evil laugh)

I’d like to see a winchip 2 266 vs a pod mmx 200.

Pod prob still faster 🤣

So what you are telling me is that they should make for a nice DOS gaming CPU !

Possibly, they do have some weird multis.

But the lowest multi of any socket 5/7/ss7 I believe is the 1x of some cyrix chips.