Unfortunate that the crown jewel of Prescott is worth so much money but if all you want is a Netburst chip that clocks very high, die shrunk Cedar Mill P4's are still worth less than dirt and higher end Pentium D's aren't really feeling the burn either. Also any recycled Socket 940 Opteron or Core Solo should probably smoke the Emergency Edition if you want to get a bit 2006 flame war about this matter.

unirule wrote on 2026-10-28, 01:20:

Unfortunate that the crown jewel of Prescott is worth so much money but if all you want is a Netburst chip that clocks very high, die shrunk Cedar Mill P4's are still worth less than dirt and higher end Pentium D's aren't really feeling the burn either. Also any recycled Socket 940 Opteron or Core Solo should probably smoke the Emergency Edition if you want to get a bit 2006 flame war about this matter.

Or .. people can just go buy a Xeon 5080 which is ..well an Extreme Edition CPU clocked at 3.733 Ghz and aside from being locked is identical to the 965 EE.

Might need a little modding to get it running in a 775 board however but its far from difficult.

Trashbytes wrote on 2026-10-28, 01:52:

Or .. people can just go buy a Xeon 5080 which is ..well an Extreme Edition CPU clocked at 3.733 Ghz and aside from being locked is identical to the 965 EE.

Might need a little modding to get it running in a 775 board however but its far from difficult.

It's been a moment since I thought about the classic LGA 775 tape mod, a little bit of bios modding, attacking the CPU socket with a craft knife, etc. Those setups had remarkable longevity, the quad core ones still being discussed into the mid to late 2010s, but that probably said more about how stagnant the status quo of CPUs was prior to Zen 1 releasing than anything else.

Back on topic - I am now genuinely considering modding my recently acquired LGA 775 Lanparty board (ICFX3200) to run what sounds like cheap, peak netburst for shits even though I got it with a perfectly good conroe chip that would probably beat the end result of that while running faster and cooler. Basically, you're giving me ideas.

The part to focus on now is the real Sound Blaster X-Fi cards. IMO those are the last sound cards to matter. As they supported EAX5 under XP. After that sound was just sound. Audiophiles will complain about op-amps, etc. But we were just playing back digital streams with everyone done in software. No unique hardware features were used. I do see high prices already so if you don't have what you want you might have missed the boat already. But I see them going higher still.

Well then! My XP rocket currently has an Audigy 2 with the black bay unit. Last month I managed to buy a (deeeeep breath) Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Champion Series. The absolute PCI-E top model with max memory, also with the bay unit. In its original box. And for a not-too-stupid price, because on Ebay these are already surpassing Voodoo² prices (Champion that is; the plebs versions of the card are cheap). So my goal is to put the X-Fi into the XP rocket, where I can use it with a Razer Tiamat V1 headphone (true surround with 10 speakers crammed into a headphone). And the Audigy 2 will live a boring life in a music studio PC so it's not doomed to rest in the parts bin...which already contains 2 Audigy's.

I do not have a remote; the PCI-E Champion Series did not have one.

Point in case:

https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/178443746685

Asking prices of course don't have to be selling prices and unopened-with-box is the high end. But the market has discovered the X-Fi Champion Series. This makes my catch from last month extra well bought.

Nicolas 2000 wrote on 43 minutes ago:

Point in case:

https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/178443746685

Asking prices of course don't have to be selling prices and unopened-with-box is the high end. But the market has discovered the X-Fi Champion Series. This makes my catch from last month extra well bought.

Aside from the absurd USD price the postage to Australia is equally absurd ..232 AUD ....WTH man.

Indeed. It's not like it's a particularly awkward object to ship, being a small box...