First post, by Hezus
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Imagine it's Christmas all the way back in 1999. Maybe you're cowering under your bed, waiting for the planes to fall from the sky due to the Y2K bug.. or maybe you're hoping for presents under the tree.
What hardware would you be hoping for? What would your dream PC be when the cut-off point is 25th of December 1999? If we're going the Intel-route, maybe if you were a very early adopter you could have gotten an i820 board. Most likely you'll be falling back on the tried and true BX440. In October the Piii Coppermine was released, which was a great upgrade path. Or maybe you've taken a chance on the new Athlon processor from AMD?
I've put my 1999 Christmas PC together as follows:
I'm using my golden ATX case from my Pentium II build. It's an ELLE branded 'New Millenium Compuer System'. Can't get more 1999 than that.
I'm also grabbing this Jetway J-7BXAN. It's a late version of the 440BX chipset and supports 133 FSB, which is great for the CPU I'll be using.
Here's what makes the PC tick: a Slot 1 Pentium III Coppermine CPU with 733 mhz. The fastest available from the range released in October of 1999.
512 mb of SD-RAM (133):
And released in late December 1999, just in time for Christmas: The GeForce 256 DDR! This is the Asus branded v6800 with a whopping 32 mb.
I'm reusing the other hardware and peripherals from my Pentium II build. Time for some testing! The GeForce 256 DDR really blows the Voodoo 3 out of the water. Getting a score of 7392 on 3DMARK99. I'm getting 120 FPS in Quake 2, where the Voodoo 3 3000 (166mhz) was getting 79 (1024x768*16). Playing games in 32bit OpenGL is also a treat for the eyes compared to 16 bit Glide. Quake 2 does 86 FPS in 1024x768*32. The card is also a great overclocker. Boosting from 120mhz to 135 mhz and increasing the memory to 340 mhz increases the FPS counter to 117 (1024x768*32).
I'm off to play the just released Unreal Tournament! It's going to be a great holiday season 😀
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