Reply 60 of 96, by kanecvr
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- Oldbie
wrote:A VIA SS7 + WinChip with a PowerVR PCX1 and a Rush and a bad WSS should be interesting. Even better with unpatched Windows ME on top. That way, you get all API (that are popular) support, CPU features (MMX+3DNow) support, and it's all bad hardware!
Via super seven boards kick ass. Not all, but most - especially rarer ATX versions. There's quite a few crappy boards out there - quite a few more then for any other chipset. Good boards are Lucky Star P5MVP3, Aopen AX59PRO, Epox EP-MVP3G5, FIC PA-2013 (rev B0 upwards), FIC VA-503+ and the DFI K6XV3+. Out of all MVP3 boards I've tested these are hassle free. I have a couple of ALi boards but apart from the Asus P5A it's hard to recommend anything. The only advantage Ali boards have over VIA counterparts is memory performance - but somehow they take a big CPU and cache subsystem performance hit. Agp on these is a joke and installing ALi AGP cause more trouble.
wrote:-
- most Athlon 64 x2 builds
This needs clarification. If you're talking about AM3 athlon X2 CPUs, then yes they suck. If you're talking about socket 939 and early AM2 CPUs used whey came out, you are dead wrong. I had a 939 A64 X2 3800+ rig back in the day and it was a BEAST. I was running vista comfortably on the thing and enjoying smooth OS operation w/o the need to reinstall / refresh every couple of months (like I had to do with XP) on that machine - and it played everything I threw at it. Later I upgraded to an AM2 4800+ with DDR2 and it ran everything I played on it perfectly - in fact that machine paired with a 7950GT was so fast I was running games at 1600x1200 and higher... Until 2007 hit and stuff like STALKER and Crysis came out... dayum...
My last high AMD CPU was a X2 6400+ then I switched to an intel Q6600... I remember I was running a two 8800GTX cards and I still could not get games like Stalker, Crysis and Lost Planet to run w/o huge frame-skipping and lag on the X2. FPS was all over the place - from 10 to 80 making it very tiresome to play. I was a die-hard AMD fan (still am - I'm getting ZEN when it launches even if my 3770k is still very competitive) but I had four boxed Q6600 CPUs on had I got from a relative working in germany. I went out and loaned a MSI P35 board from a friend and build a system around it. DAMN!!! I was blown away at how fast the thing was. At 2.4GHz those twin Conroe dies put out much better minimum frames per second then the 6400+ and at that very moment I new I had my next build - and my first intel PC witch I didn't hate (there was a socket 478 2GHz Celeron debacle back in 2002? but I won't get into that). Needless to say I sold my X2 6400+ (wish I kept it but I wasn't into collecting hw back then) + mainboard and payed my friend for the MSI P35 Neo2 and bought an Antec Truepower Quattro 800W PSU to round up the build. It was my second high end build after the X2 4800+ / 7950GT.
Point is - the X2 lasted a couple of years and performed great wen it was new. It felt faster then my sister's Pentium D 820, especially in games - and it didn't have as many issues as that machine had (it killed two PSUs and one mainboard - thankfully all under warranty).