Hi everyone,

actually, I thought my "9-in-1" collection was finally complete, but as any fellow enthusiast knows: the definition of "finished" is usually just a temporary state of mind. The urge to close one last gap in my retro-building journey was ultimately stronger than my self-discipline - so here is the first expansion and my very first pure AMD build in this project.

Athlon XP Palomino meets 2026

ASUS A7V333 Rev. 2.00
AMD Athlon XP 2100+ (AX2100DMT3C)
NVIDIA Quadro4 980 XGL
2x 256 MB Infineon DDR-RAM PC2100
80 GB Western Digital WD800
BeQuiet! Straight Power 10 700 Watt
Windows XP Professional RTM

Everything is housed in an Aerocool Quantum Mesh v3, this time featuring controllable RGB fans.

This build represents the performance peak of early 2002 and captures a specific moment in time right before a major turning point, after which the balance of power shifted and ATI and Intel dominated the market for the following year and a half.

The heart of this build is one of the most mature Socket A boards of its era. A standout feature is the "CPU Overheat Protection", which finally allowed reading the processor's internal thermal diode instead of relying on a sluggish socket sensor. Back in the day, earlier solutions were often so inaccurate and slow that the CPU would be grilled before the system could even react. It sounds unthinkable today, but for the Thunderbird and early Athlon XP chips, this was a serious issue: unlike their Intel counterparts, these CPUs had no internal thermal failsafes and were entirely dependent on the motherboard's capabilities.

The Palomino-based Athlon XP marked the third evolution of the K7 architecture and was the absolute spearhead of gaming at the time. Despite its nominal clock of 1.73 GHz, it easily traded blows with Intel’s 2.2 GHz class, often delivering even more performance than its own PR rating suggested. However, due to the 180nm process and high power density, the processor hit its thermal limits quickly; the 2100+ already has a TDP of 72 watts. This makes the Palomino a classic transition processor - crucial for the Athlon XP's debut, but technically at its limit before it could even truly take off.

To realize an absolute high-end setup from early 2002, the graphics card required a bit of creativity, as I wasn't willing to shell out hundreds of dollars for an NVIDIA GeForce 4 Ti 4600 - much to the chagrin of the "gold diggers" out there. Instead, I opted for a technically identical alternative from the workstation segment: the NVIDIA Quadro4 980 XGL.

This card is a later NV28 revision - basically a CAD-optimized Ti 4800, which is identical to a Ti 4600 but with AGP 8x support. Since the board only supports AGP 4x anyway, the gaming performance difference is exactly zero. In early 2002, there simply was nothing faster for gamers, even if the masses flocked to the Ti 4200 due to its unbeatable price-to-performance ratio and the fact that the top-tier models often saw their lead vanish into a CPU bottleneck anyway.

In case anyone is wondering why I’m using such a beefy PSU for this build: it’s all about the massive current demand on the 5V rail and the resulting crossload issues found in old, group-regulated ATX power supplies. To keep things stable, I’m using a modern DC-DC unit that provides sufficient amperage on the relevant rails without the voltages drifting apart under lopsided loads.

The system hits over 10,500 points in "3D Mark 2001 SE" in its pure stock configuration. It represents the gold standard that other high-end systems of the era had to be measured against. The PC runs rock-solid, stays relatively cool thanks to the excellent airflow, and delivers more than enough performance for any game from that period.

The entire project - from assembly to testing - is documented in the linked video (in German): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2PWBCL4b3Q