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Athlon64 Clawhammer: The Re-built of my brother's first PC

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First post, by melbar

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This is my bother's first PC.
He has bought it from an online seller end of 2005 or begin of 2006.
It was a no-name PC, that means the seller has sold the PC as an complete assembled PC, but there was no brand or model description on the case.

Several parts have been replaced and/or disposed:
CD drive, DVD drive, 2x512Mb DDR ram, 200 Gb HDD, Midi tower case, PSU and the GPU.

The GPU was a PCIe card from ATi, which had a really good price-/performance ratio during that time of his purchase.
ATi Radeon X800 GTO 256 MB , PCIe , 12 pixel shaders, 400 MHz core clock and 490 MHz memory clock (256bit).
Sadly, i had to scrap this card after testing. The PC had already some issues with the drivers, and during testing, i've forgot to plug-in the power molex connector.

These are the actual specs, with replaced used parts from eBay:

  • Athlon 64 3700+ (clawhammer core), socket 754
  • socket 754 cooler, arctic cooling freezer 64 Pro, fan controled by FAN mate
  • MSI K8N Neo3 , Nvidia nForce4-4X chipset, 754 socket, PCIe x16, PCIe x1, three PCI slots and one AGR slot for compatible AGP cards, UltraATA 133, SATA 1.0
  • 2x 1024Mb DDR-RAM PC400 CL3 from Kingston , so a total of 2 Gb ram.
  • Pixelview Geforce 7800 GT, PCIe, 20 pixel shaders, 256Mb GDDR3 ram.
  • GPU fan: Arctic Cooling NV Silencer 5 - fan controlled together with Arctic F8 Silent fan bridge
  • PCI sound card - Creative Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS
  • SATA - Kingston 240Gb SSD
  • SATA - Seagate 2000Gb HDD
  • IDE - DVD writer optical drive
  • 3.5" card reader, CF/MD, SD/MMC, MS/MS Duo, 'XD', TF, and USB port.
  • XFX PRO 450W, ATX
  • 2x 80mm case fan's - Arctic F8 Silente Red silent - with modifed with resistors
  • 1x 80mm at fan bridge for northbridge heatsink and GPU card - Arctic F8 Silent - fan controlled together with Arctic Cooling NV Silencer 5
  • Chieftec BIG tower ATX case - black

I will add some pictures later.
Here a screenshot from the mainboard's manual.

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#1 K6-2/500, #2 Athlon1200, #3 Celeron1000A, #4 A64-3700, #5 P4HT-3200, #6 P4-2800, #7 Am486DX2-66

Reply 1 of 9, by melbar

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Operating system is: Win XP (32bit) SP2.

With my favorite case from the mid 2000's, Chieftec.

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#1 K6-2/500, #2 Athlon1200, #3 Celeron1000A, #4 A64-3700, #5 P4HT-3200, #6 P4-2800, #7 Am486DX2-66

Reply 2 of 9, by melbar

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Inside the case:

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#1 K6-2/500, #2 Athlon1200, #3 Celeron1000A, #4 A64-3700, #5 P4HT-3200, #6 P4-2800, #7 Am486DX2-66

Reply 3 of 9, by ErroneousHyphen

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nice build! would be super keen to see some benchmarks from it? (3dMark, quake2/3, Unreal) if you're keen to share 😁

Reply 4 of 9, by melbar

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Actually, i've have not installed many Games. Not Quake or Unreal shooter game.

But i've checked several GPU's of my collection with this A64 clawhammer system.
Have performed some 3Dmark benchmarks with Geforce 6 series on the awful AGR slot (nothing else than a AGP to PCI bridge....)
and the Geforce 7 series with the better 16x PCIe.

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#1 K6-2/500, #2 Athlon1200, #3 Celeron1000A, #4 A64-3700, #5 P4HT-3200, #6 P4-2800, #7 Am486DX2-66

Reply 5 of 9, by melbar

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To see how awful the AGR slot with my test card is,
here the same card (Leadtek WinFast A6600 GT AGP) installed into another system i've have checked with 3dMark 2001 SE at least.

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#1 K6-2/500, #2 Athlon1200, #3 Celeron1000A, #4 A64-3700, #5 P4HT-3200, #6 P4-2800, #7 Am486DX2-66

Reply 6 of 9, by G-X

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Reminds me alot of my own machine back in the day (3500+setup). Love the case (as you can note from my sig)! Very pristine example aswell... if you even manage to find one in the wild they are usually quite well used. Mine has been dragged to alot of lanparty's back in the day so there's a scratch here and there and ofcourse alot of mods.

Interesting to see a socket 754 system instead of the usual 939. Shame the x800 bit the dust .. suited the build very well. Also spotted the zalman NB cooler, fits the board nicely.

All in all a very nice retro setup.

Reply 7 of 9, by marxveix

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G-X wrote on 2024-10-21, 17:01:

Interesting to see a socket 754 system instead of the usual 939. Shame the x800 bit the dust .. suited the build very well. Also spotted the zalman NB cooler, fits the board nicely.

Socket 754 is better for Win9x / XP early builds, you can use Mobile sempron and Turion 64 cpus. These cpus are 24 up to 35W max if real mobile versions. I lately built one up, easy and fast. I have Radeon 9600XT at the moment and 3D Mark99 Max gets over 20 000 points. Just added pictures.

Re: Socket 754 DOS/Win9x Machine

30+ MiniGL/OpenGL Win9x files for all Rage3 cards: Re: ATi RagePro OpenGL files

Reply 8 of 9, by melbar

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Yes, you can build a Turion64 system on socket 754.

This was not my intension. For sure, i have added some different "add-ons", like the SSD, more ram, the 80mm silent fans.
But the core system shall remains the same. Yes, the athlon64 has a higher TDP, but it is not running 24/7, so it's acceptable.

sidenote:
the top clawhammer (754) is somehow similar rare compared to the high-end turion64 versions. I cannot find many...

Last edited by melbar on 2024-10-23, 04:10. Edited 1 time in total.

#1 K6-2/500, #2 Athlon1200, #3 Celeron1000A, #4 A64-3700, #5 P4HT-3200, #6 P4-2800, #7 Am486DX2-66

Reply 9 of 9, by marxveix

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melbar wrote on 2024-10-22, 18:03:
Yes, you can build a Turion64 system on socket 754. […]
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Yes, you can build a Turion64 system on socket 754.

This was not my intension. For sure, i have added some different "add-ons", like the SSD, more ram, the 80mm silent fans.
But the core system shall remains the same. Yes, the athlon64 has a higher TDP, but it is not running 24/7, so it' acceptable.

sidenote:
the top clawhammer (754) is somehow similar rare compared to the high-end turion64 versions. I cannot find many...

I can say higher clocked Turions 64 and 24/25w ones are also rare, lower clocked Mobile semprons (25w) and lower Turion64 (35w) are more available and easier collect.Mobile Semprons and Semprons have only 32bit versions with up to SSE2 and SSE3 support, if someone wants to
stick with 32bit capable system only.

I have two Clawhammer cpus, slower ones:
AMD Mobile Athlon 64 3000+ 1800Mhz (AMA3400BEX5AR ClawHammer CG) Socket 754
AMD Mobile Athlon 64 3400+ 2200Mhz (AMA3400BEX5AR ClawHammer CG) Socket 754

You have WinXP SP2 and 7800GT, so you should able to use H264/Bluray DXVA, i have here WinXP SP2 and 7600GT, this sceenshot is from my P4.
Many dont use DXVA acceleration, also some 6xxx series cards have that and ATi 1xxx cards. Most use it from ATi HD2xxx and Geforce 8xxx cards.

30+ MiniGL/OpenGL Win9x files for all Rage3 cards: Re: ATi RagePro OpenGL files

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