VOGONS


First post, by Artex

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It's been awhile friends but..

I present to you my latest build... "Hammer Time!" (aka - the Intel Eater)

For this build, I finally managed to find a boxed (and in great shape!) Asus SK8V motherboard. As luck would have it, this the board came with an FX-53 processor, Stock CPU Cooler, I/O Shield and pretty much all the motherboard goodies still sealed in their respective baggies - all for $35! Hard to pass up, and I've wanted to pit this build against my previous speed demon - the Intel P4 3.2Ghz EE - from a while back.

I think you'll see that this build is ballz-fast - even edging out the P4 "Emergency Edition" in most cases, probably due to the 1MB of blisteringly fast L2 cache & integrated memory controller. I originally threw in my Sapphire HD3850 AGP card in an effort to max this build out, but I found that I actually got better scores using the 7900GT-core of the Gainward Bliss 7800GS+ (that I also used in my previous P4EE build). So it's almost as if that HD3850 card was simply too 'new' for the Socket 940 setup and the drivers simply weren't optimized for this type of setup. Once I threw in the Bliss, the scores looked much better and closer to what I would expect given the results while testing on the Intel platform.

On with the show!!

The goods...
Black NZXT Source 210
OCZ 700W Power Supply
Asus SK8V Socket 940 Motherboard w/VIA Apollo K8T800 Chipset, using 1003.008 BIOS
AMD Athlon 64 FX-53 2.4Ghz "SledgeHammer"
Stock CPU Cooling
Silicon Image SiI 3112 SATARaid Controller
Western Digital Velociraptor 150GB SATA Hard Drive (WDC WD15 00HLFS-01G6U0)
Western Digital 750GB SATA Hard Drive (WDC WD75 00AAKS-00RBA0)
SATA DVD-RW
Gainward Bliss 7800GS+ Golden Sample Special Edition 512MB AGP (G71 Core) (24 pixel pipelines/8 vertex shaders vs 20/7 of late models)
2 x 1GB Corsair PC3200 Registered ECC Dual DDR Memory (CM72SD1024RLP-3200)
Windows XP SP3

Motherboard and CPU
Using the most popular socket 940 board of the time for the AMD FX-53 - the mighty K8T800 Apollo-based Asus SK8V.

Storage
The Velociraptor for speed, the 750GB for storage. 😀
How did I install Windows? USB boot support of course! 😀

Memory
Given the registered RAM requirement of the Socket 940 platform, I opted for two sticks of Corsair Registered & ECC memory

Sound Card
For now, I'm using the onboard audio but I did pick up a few Aureal SQ2500's so I may throw one in.

Video Card
Ahh.. the video card. This one holds a special spot in my collection. I could've really maxed out this build by throwing in an HD3850 (released later) but then I wouldn't get to fire up my beloved Gainward Bliss 7800GS+ freak of nature. Not sure how many of you know about this card, but it was released in 2006 and was not readily available in the US. Back in the day, I was looking to extend the life of my aging AGP system which was using a BFG 6800GT + Arctic Cooling NV Silencer 5 + Gainward 6800 Ultra flashed BIOS. I heard some rumblings about this card in EU, and I found a single store that was selling it - Overclockers UK. I purchased it July 12th 2006, and paid 234 British Pounds (NOT Including Shipping to the US)!

Now, there's more to this card than meets the eye. One would think it's based on the NVIDIA 7800 (G70) core given it's name. This card, however, is actually running the 7900GT core (G71) but over the AGP bus instead of PCIe. So this card has the full 24 pixel pipelines and 8 vertex shaders enabled. Adding to the confusion, Gainward released at least three variants of the 7800GS. Supposedly there are only 1500 of these "GS+" editions out there - no idea if that's true or not.

Gainward 7685-BLISS 7800GS 256MB TV-DVI AGP
Gainward GeForce BLISS 7800GS
Chip: 7800GT
Memory capacity: 256MB 1,6ns DDR
Clockspeed Core: 375MHZ
Clockspeed Mem: 1200MHZ
Pipes: 20
Gainwards barcode: 471846200-7685

Gainward 7739-BLISS 7800GS Silent 512MB
Gainward GeForce BLISS 7800GS AGP 512MB
Chip: 7800GT
Memory capacity: 512MB 1,4ns GDDR3
Clockspeed Core: 425MHZ
Clockspeed Mem: 1200MHZ
Pipes: 20
Gainwards barcode: 47846200-7739

Gainward 7876-BLISS 7800GS Silent 512MB GS+ 😎 😎 😎
Gainward GeForce BLISS 7800GS GoldenSample AGP 512MB
Chip: 7900GT
Core: 450MHZ
Mem: 1250MHZ
Pipes: 24
Gainwards barcode: 471846200-7876

How about some hardware pr0n?!?! 😊

Case
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The Guts
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Gainward FTW!
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Screen shots:

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Benchmarks (all done using defaults & Forceware 93.71 WHQL Drivers)

AQUAMARK 3
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3DMARK 99
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3DMARK 01 SE
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3DMARK 03
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3DMARK 05
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3DMARK 06
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HD Tach
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Atto
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Last edited by Artex on 2016-06-19, 01:03. Edited 1 time in total.

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Reply 1 of 26, by Darkman

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the question is , will it run Crysis 😜

great build , those FX chips are surprisingly hard to find (at least for a decent price), games like FEAR or Oblivion are going to run well on it.

Reply 2 of 26, by petro89

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Looks great!

*Ryzen 9 3900xt, 5700xt, Win10
*Ryzen 7 2700x, Gtx1080, Win10
*FX 9590, Vega64, Win10
*Phenom IIx6 1100T, R9 380, Win7
*QX9770, r9 270x, Win7
*FX60, hd5850, Win7
*XP2400+, ti4600, Win2k
*PPro 200 1mb, banshee, w98
*AMD 5x86, CL , DOS

Reply 4 of 26, by Artex

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gdjacobs wrote:

One quick question: is your OCZ supply manufactured previous to Dec 2007?

Yes, I believe I purchased it in 2006. OCZ GameXstream 700W.

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Reply 5 of 26, by gdjacobs

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Please check if it's the revision made by Topower. If so, it's junk! The FSP version is much better, although it does have conspicuously high ripple.

All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder

Reply 6 of 26, by Artex

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gdjacobs wrote:

Please check if it's the revision made by Topower. If so, it's junk! The FSP version is much better, although it does have conspicuously high ripple.

Are you sure? "The GameXstream series is the milestone where OCZ leaves behind Topower as the OEM for their power supply line, and starts using FSP."

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Reply 7 of 26, by gdjacobs

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There you go. I must have been thinking of the ModXStream or something. Nonetheless, they did start using the FSP Epsilon for some of their models. While being an upgrade, ripple suppression is really quite loose.

I love the build overall, though. The AMD64 architecture and Athlon64 platforms were sign posts in the evolution of the PC, the same as the 386 and the P5 were the great advancements of their day.

All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder

Reply 8 of 26, by Artex

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Thanks! And I agree - although I think many people were pretty ticked when they switched to the 939 socket so quickly. Socket 940 was an expensive setup to begin with.

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Reply 9 of 26, by sgt76

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Artex wrote:

Thanks! And I agree - although I think many people were pretty ticked when they switched to the 939 socket so quickly. Socket 940 was an expensive setup to begin with.

Or swtiching to am2 so fast after that! I was one of those people. 😒

Congrats on another really nice milestone build. I have the poor man's version: sckt 754, asus k8n, radeon x800xt, 2 gb ocz, 2x80gb raid 0 and a clawhammer 3200+clocked @ 2.5ghz. Cant believe how fast time flies...

Reply 11 of 26, by nforce4max

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Got to like the "Digimon" inspired box art 🤣 and you are probably right on the card being that rare. I thought that up to two thousand of them had been made but wouldn't be surprised at all if it were more rare. I would expect that only a few hundred at most still exist if even that much given how quickly dump hardware from that period onward.

On a far away planet reading your posts in the year 10,191.

Reply 12 of 26, by Dreamer_of_the_past

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Not bad. Although, I personally would have skipped the socket 940 altogether and opt for socket 939 instead. Oh man, that case...It should be nick named "The Sifter" as the dust is going to love it. That's the reason I hate modern crap cases. I want my 1mm steel computer cases back too.

Reply 13 of 26, by Artex

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Dreamer_of_the_past wrote:

Not bad. Although, I personally would have skipped the socket 940 altogether and opt for socket 939 instead. Oh man, that case...It should be nick named "The Sifter" as the dust is going to love it. That's the reason I hate modern crap cases. I want my 1mm steel computer cases back too.

I have two more builds in the works, one of them is socket 939-based using an Asus A8N SLI board so that should be a treat. I'm thinking of throwing in my Athlon X2 4800+ but we'll see. I was always an Intel buyer until about 2006 when I switched to the K8N Neo2 Platinum + AMD X2 4400+. The main reason for this build was that I wanted to see how it would do against the Intel P4-3.4Ghz EE behemoth and because I never had the funds for this kind of setup back in the day.

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Reply 14 of 26, by tincup

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Yes on the A8N SLI build idea... A few years ago I made a X2 4400+/2x 7800GT XP game box to loan to my brother. I have it back now and plan to do a little benchmarking when I get a chance - it would be fun to compare notes with your X2/4800+ version. What GPU(s) are you contemplating?

Reply 15 of 26, by Artex

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tincup wrote:

Yes on the A8N SLI build idea... A few years ago I made a X2 4400+/2x 7800GT XP game box to loan to my brother. I have it back now and plan to do a little benchmarking when I get a chance - it would be fun to compare notes with your X2/4800+ version. What GPU(s) are you contemplating?

I'm going to throw in the HD3850.

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Reply 16 of 26, by Oldskoolmaniac

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Pretty sweet build thats when AMD really shined those things where beast back then.

Motherboard Reviews The Motherboard Thread
Plastic parts looking nasty and yellow try this Deyellowing Plastic

Reply 17 of 26, by Artex

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Oldskoolmaniac wrote:

Pretty sweet build thats when AMD really shined those things where beast back then.

Thanks!

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Reply 18 of 26, by mastergamma12

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Hey another SK8V user!!!! 😁

I had to replace my SK8V's bios after I fried it years ago.

Still need to replace this Quadro FX 3000.

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The Tuala-Bus (My 9x/Dos Rig) (Pentium III-S 1.4ghz, AWE64G+Audigy 2 ZS, Voodoo5 5500, Chieftec Dragon Rambus)

The Final Lan Party (My Windows Xp/7 rig) (Core i7 980x, GTX 480,DFI Lanparty UT X58-T3eH8,)
Re: Post your 'current' PC

Reply 19 of 26, by shamino

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Given the rarity and unique performance level of that Gainward card (fastest AGP NVidia card ever made), I suggest being very cautious with keeping it cool. NVidia GPUs of that time period unfortunately don't have a good reliability record.

Love the system, I wish I had some of that hardware.