stinkydiver wrote on 2025-07-22, 23:38:

ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe - Brand new in box: $15 USD
2 sticks of Corsair DDR2 XMS2 - 2048MB, 800mhz, 5-5-5-18: $11 USD
AMD Athlon 64X2 6000+ ADX6000IAA6CZ 3,0GHZ socket AM2 CPU: $22 USD

That's nice, just be aware that the chipset is very likely affected by bumpgate and may die at any moment. At least ensure good cooling. I'd probably replace the heatsink with something of decent size with a fan because this whole heatpipe thing which couples chipset to VRM is just silly.

stinkydiver wrote on 2025-07-22, 23:38:

What kind of "build" would these parts suit and paired with what video card? A 7900 GT? Or since the the 64x2 6000+ is from 2008 would it be better to pair with a 8000 or 9000 series?

IMO GF7 is quite underpowered for such system. It is also affected by bumpgate, as well as 8,9 and early 200 series.

IMO unless your goal specifically is period correct system or you want to run something especially tricky GTX750(Ti) is the easiest overpowered choice which will be cool, reliable and more than fast enough to never become a limitation on such system.

stinkydiver wrote on 2025-07-22, 23:38:

Any recommendations on PSU requirements?

Modern PSU, unless you want to use a beefy GPU like 480/580/680/780 as low power as you can find would do. System like this should consume <200W...

stinkydiver wrote on 2025-07-22, 23:38:

I was thinking it could be cool to do a "ultimate may 2006 build" with a AMD Athlon 64 FX-62, as this would be the best PC before the C2D came along and knocked AMD off its pedastool later that year AFAIK.

AFAIK there was around 2 month period between FX-62 and C2D release, so probably not even enough to buy it back then. But yeah, building such systems is fun.

stinkydiver wrote on 2025-07-22, 23:38:

Back in the day I went from an Athlon XP to a Pentium 4 and then basiaclly got out of modern PC gaming for a good 15 years... so I missed the whole Athlon 64/C2D era

Just be aware, from practical point of view LGA775/C2D is significantly better than anything AMD all the way to ryzen. Take a look at discussions in this thread: Any love for AM2?

It is also easier to get. So if you are building system like this is is mostly for fun with hardware....

Ideally I would build a 939 system for XP gaming with AGP, but hey I don't see any 939 boards show up in my country very oftern and I just happened to grab this AM2 board because it was new and going for very cheap!

I do like to keep things period correct if possible. There is a XFX 8800 GT Alpha Dog going for around $26 USD or a ASUS EN7900GT for around $17 USD atm...

stinkydiver wrote on 2025-07-23, 01:07:

Ideally I would build a 939 system for XP gaming with AGP, but hey I don't see any 939 boards show up in my country very oftern and I just happened to grab this AM2 board because it was new and going for very cheap!

AGP is a pain. From practical point of view it does not make sense at all. Just take a look how much high end AGP cards cost...

But again... with this old stuff everything depends on what you want. I've built socketA system recently myself, with AGP obviously. Which triggered at this point half a year long hunt for decent GPUs which work and do not cost like RTX5080...

stinkydiver wrote on 2025-07-23, 01:07:

I do like to keep things period correct if possible. There is a XFX 8800 GT Alpha Dog going for around $26 USD or a ASUS EN7900GT for around $17 USD atm...

High end, hot, bumpgate affected hardware. It is either already dead or will die shortly. Especially 8800. Would not recommend unless you want specific cards regardless of functionality for some reason.

The issue with that time period is that all the GPUs are defective. You can mess with them if you want to, but if you have PCI-e anyway IMO it makes a lot of sense to just skip that period and go newer...

AGP is a pain you say? I agree with you re cost.. I've been looking to pick up a 9700 or 9800 pro for awhile and these are hard to come by for a resonable price. I'd love to build a socket A system paired with a 9700 or 8500, it would be far more to my preference than an AM2 PCIe build. I'll probably just end up putting these parts aside for a rainy day build with my son when he gets older 😀

But in saying that, cheap good condition pc parts are hard to pass up for collections sake

A few other options going for cheap in my hood

9600GT
https://www.gigabyte.com/Graphics-Card/GV-NX9 … 512HP-rev-20#ov

Radeon HD 3870 GPU
https://www.gigabyte.com/Graphics-Card/GV-RX387512HP

Unless you want GeForce FX/Radeon 9xxx or even GeForce 4 Ti, you don't need AGP. That being said, there are some PCIe GeForce FX cards too and Radeon X600 is basically Radeon 9600 for PCIe.

stinkydiver wrote on 2025-07-23, 03:23:

AGP is a pain you say? I agree with you re cost.. I've been looking to pick up a 9700 or 9800 pro for awhile and these are hard […]
Show full quote

AGP is a pain you say? I agree with you re cost.. I've been looking to pick up a 9700 or 9800 pro for awhile and these are hard to come by for a resonable price. I'd love to build a socket A system paired with a 9700 or 8500, it would be far more to my preference than an AM2 PCIe build. I'll probably just end up putting these parts aside for a rainy day build with my son when he gets older 😀

But in saying that, cheap good condition pc parts are hard to pass up for collections sake

A few other options going for cheap in my hood

9600GT
https://www.gigabyte.com/Graphics-Card/GV-NX9 … 512HP-rev-20#ov

Radeon HD 3870 GPU
https://www.gigabyte.com/Graphics-Card/GV-RX387512HP

Yeah, AM2 is probably at a point where it may start to become expensive shortly. So worth getting the parts for cheap while they are available. I have some parts laying around myself, including 6400+ athlon X2 on which i had to practice replacing pins, but so far i've had no incentive to build it into actual system. I have LGA775/E8600/GTX66o build for practical purposes... AM2 just can not compete with that and feels pointless. For now.

As much as AGP is a pain it is also fun. For me anything pci-e just feels like modern hardware, i can stick random new-ish card into it and it'll work. I ended up with 7600GT in my socketA build: High-end Socket462/A build. but given i've acquired quite a few cards during this time, including 9800pro, i may just build another one with another card - while building that system i collected enough parts for at least a few of them...

Have a look at Re: Any love for AM2? , it shows exactly what kind of performance you can expect out of AMD Athlon 64X2 6000+ ADX6000IAA6CZ.

The clear winner of AM2 is AMD Athlon 64X2 6400+ (windsor). You can easily get that by increasing the base clock a little bit to get 3.2Ghz. You shouldn't have to increase cpu voltage. Note that by default, your RAM will run as DDR2 750, not 800 even if you select DDR2 800 in BIOS. See the AM2 topic for details.

DDR2 800 at 5-5-5-18 is not that great, there are cheap modules which can do 4-4-4-12 at 800 such as ADATA Vitesta 1066. Those timings are possible with 4x 2GB sticks and 2V. Grab them while they are cheap.

As GPU you can choose:
1.) historical GeForce 2xx which offers the best compatibility,
2.) GeForce 480 which does slightly better but has major issues with Need For Speed Hot Pursuit 2 with AMD CPU. The game is practically unplayable.
3.) Newer GPU such as GeForce 660 or 750 is also possible with the same limitations as GeForce 480. GeForce 2xx and 4xx run hot and need a good semi-modern mesh case or they will die.

You may pair it with a very powerful GPU such as GeForce 780 but see benefits only in CPU light games such as Fifa titles. It will not help with Crysis or GTA4. I would not recommend GeForce 9600 GT. I tested GeForce 9800 GT, it is not bad, but GeForce 2xx does better.

Noctua U12S should cool it with ease. I will be using Scythe Ninja 5 on my AM2+.

Athlon 64X2 6400+ (windsor) covers Windows XP era very well, but Windows Vista era has mediocre coverage as some very demanding games such as Crysis or GTA 4 were released. In Windows Vista era you will need to make compromise on details. Lowering resolution will not help as games tend to be CPU bound.

I think it's a great time to get stocked on the historical AM2(+) CPUs as people consider them worthless.

AMD cannot compete with Intel E8600 as that CPU is two generations ahead in process size and has a large L2 cache. AMD only caught up with Phenom II with that.