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Best PC the year 2000 could provide.

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Reply 60 of 101, by firage

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appiah4 wrote:

Tualatin in 2000 is not a mistake, the Celeron 900A, which is a Tualatin, was released in 2000. Granted, Pentium III as indicated would come later but the sheet is basically a rough guide for me. If you move Tualatin to 2001 then there is no year where a Williamette build makes sense 😉

I'm pretty sure that 2000 date for the Tualatin Celeron is a mistake on Wikipedia, because I can't find references to a Celeron of that speed until the next year.

I'd also add Voodoo5 on the year 2000 line. There was still stuff like Deus Ex and Diablo II coming out with good Glide support, so it remained a somewhat relevant secondary API.

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Reply 61 of 101, by appiah4

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Well, if we could ascertain the release date of the 900A for good, I'd be happy. The only photo of a 900A I can find online is this, and it has a manufacture date of 30th week 2001 on it.

Celeron900sl68v.jpg

As for Voodoo 4 and 5 - I believe they were actually released in 1999. I just used Voodoo 3 for that year because it's a much more prevalent card, but I will make that a 3/4/5 instead. Voodoo 5 in 2000 was largely bygones IMO, it was actually bygones as soon as it released to be honest, thanks to the GeForce 256.

Reply 62 of 101, by firage

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No, the Voodoo5 came out (late to the party) in the middle of 2000 and the Voodoo4 in Q4.

Here's a Celeron 800MHz review from just after New Year's 2001: https://www.anandtech.com/show/694

My big-red-switch 486

Reply 63 of 101, by appiah4

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Touche, fixed the table on both accounts.

Reply 64 of 101, by BeginnerGuy

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appiah4 wrote:

Well, if we could ascertain the release date of the 900A for good, I'd be happy. The only photo of a 900A I can find online is this, and it has a manufacture date of 30th week 2001 on it.

As for Voodoo 4 and 5 - I believe they were actually released in 1999. I just used Voodoo 3 for that year because it's a much more prevalent card, but I will make that a 3/4/5 instead. Voodoo 5 in 2000 was largely bygones IMO, it was actually bygones as soon as it released to be honest, thanks to the GeForce 256.

I have a bit of a hobby / addiction to solving riddles like this. Google groups is almost always accurate.

If we go to google groups and search before:2001/6/31 Celeron 900A, we get no hits (minus an ATX case called the 900A circa late 1998). Adjust the search for before:2001/7/31 and the Celeron 900A is mentioned. That puts this CPU at July of 2001. Perfectly consistent with your manufacture date of week 30 (~late july). That doesn't necessarily mean it was on shelves by july, just the first mentions of this chip to the public and manufactured starting July 2001. Also, the release date of the Celeron 1000 in 2002 puts the gap between the two chips at nearly 2 years according to wikipedia, that can't be true.

I've never seen google groups proven wrong to date and I'm 100% sure it's 7/2001, but I could be wrong, to err is human.. 😎

edit: scratched the update, that was a pentium 3 engineering sample not celeron.

Sup. I like computers. Are you a computer?

Reply 65 of 101, by SpectriaForce

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I find that a November or December year 2000 system doesn't really represent a 'year 2000 best pc'. If I think about the year 2000, then I think of January 1st 2000 or perhaps July / August 2000 when I was on holiday. My memory of the year 2000 is certainly not November or December when the Pentium 4 was just announced (it probably wasn't even available until January 2001, depends on your location..).

Reply 66 of 101, by dexvx

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appiah4 wrote:

Actually the 8500 came after the GF3 late in 2001 and traded blows with the Ti4200 which came the next year. The 8500 was way faster than the GF3 Ti500.

Geforce 4 Ti4200/GF3 Ti500/Radeon 8500 traded blows with each other. Everybody bought the Ti4200 because it was cheap.

Here's an initial Radeon 8500 vs Ti500 review at R8500 launch. I would say the Ti500 is overall faster.
http://techreport.com/review/3203/radeon-8500 … force3-ti-500/6

Here's a Ti4200 review, 5 months after R8500 launch. The R8500 can now trade blows with the Ti500 but isn't definitively faster. Ti4200 has an edge on both.
http://techreport.com/review/3538/nvidia-geforce4-ti-4200/3

Regardless, I included both the Radeon 8500 and GF3 Ti500 because of debates such as this. I think giving potential builders both options is good.

appiah4 wrote:

Tualatin in 2000 is not a mistake, the Celeron 900A, which is a Tualatin, was released in 2000. Granted, Pentium III as indicated would come later but the sheet is basically a rough guide for me. If you move Tualatin to 2001 then there is no year where a Williamette build makes sense 😉

That wiki entry is so suspect... It doesn't even make sense from a time perspective. From that chart:

Celeron 900A (Tualatin) release = March 2000
Celeron 900 (Coppermine) release = July 2001
Celeron 1000A (Tualatin) release = Jan 2002

Which is why a lot of people skipped Willamette in favor of either Athlon XP or Tualatin. Many server vendors promoted dual Tualatin 1.4-S over dual Foster Xeon's, much to the chagrin of Intel.

Reply 67 of 101, by fsmith2003

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Just thought I would throw out what I have came up with for the specific "fastest" Intel CPU for each year of 1990-2000 for the spreadsheet.

1990 - 486 DX-33
1991 - 486 DX-50
1992 - 486 DX2-66
1993 - Pentium 66
1994 - Pentium 100
1995 - Pentium 133
1996 - Pentium 200
1997 - Pentium II 300
1998 - Pentium II 450
1999 - Pentium III 800
2000 - Pentium 4 1.5

Reply 68 of 101, by Ozzuneoj

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fsmith2003 wrote:
Just thought I would throw out what I have came up with for the specific "fastest" Intel CPU for each year of 1990-2000 for the […]
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Just thought I would throw out what I have came up with for the specific "fastest" Intel CPU for each year of 1990-2000 for the spreadsheet.

1990 - 486 DX-33
1991 - 486 DX-50
1992 - 486 DX2-66
1993 - Pentium 66
1994 - Pentium 100
1995 - Pentium 133
1996 - Pentium 200
1997 - Pentium II 300
1998 - Pentium II 450
1999 - Pentium III 800
2000 - Pentium 4 1.5

Beware the nostalgia ahead...

Ah... 1999. We had one computer in 1998, and it was my brother's, which had been through several rebuilds at that point (it was a custom Pentium 200MMX, 96MB EDO, Scream'n 3D Verite 1000). We all wanted to use it for various things and it was hard to get time to do so. I started 8th grade in 1999 and my Mom thought it'd be good for me to get more hands on time with computers, so in spring of 1999 we bought a Gateway G6-400 mid tower. I remember that the Pentium III 450 (and maybe the 500?) had just been released around that time, so the Pentium II 400Mhz we chose was a really high end chip at the time (hard to call it a chip since it looked like a video game cartridge). The system had a 440BX board (no AGP slot), 64MB of SDRAM, integrated 8MB Velocity 128 (Riva 128), integrated Ensoniq\Creative "Audio PCI" of some sort, LS-120, 6.4GB Quantum hard drive, 15" CRT... it was a beast at the time, and it was like $1700 if I remember correctly (we were dirt poor so it was huge deal to make this kind of investment). I still have it, and it still works great with all the original parts. I learned a LOT using this computer. I just wish I hadn't thrown away some of the random internal bits from it over the years, like the metal bracket\cage that was used to mount a hard drive. If I ever find another similar system I'm going to steal the parts for my old one... 🤣

/nostalgia

Last edited by Ozzuneoj on 2017-11-15, 04:29. Edited 1 time in total.

Now for some blitting from the back buffer.

Reply 69 of 101, by BitWrangler

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Though you can have arguments about whether the 450 and 800 were the fastest AVAILABLE Intel CPUs in their respective years, because of Intel announcing them to get jump on AMD and yields being apparently very poor, they were consequently stratospheric pricing, and regular system builders couldn't get their hands on them for months. Though "at any price" there was the option of buying the $5000 or so top of the line Compaq or Dell, taking the CPU and throwing the rest out.

Edit: I know you come across those CPUs now, making them appear not rare, but the PII 450 was basically the "mid-high" part after the PIII came out the year following, and got available for reasonable money then, and ditto the PIII-800 when the PIII-1Ghz came out the year following.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 70 of 101, by fsmith2003

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BitWrangler wrote:

Though you can have arguments about whether the 450 and 800 were the fastest AVAILABLE Intel CPUs in their respective years, because of Intel announcing them to get jump on AMD and yields being apparently very poor, they were consequently stratospheric pricing, and regular system builders couldn't get their hands on them for months. Though "at any price" there was the option of buying the $5000 or so top of the line Compaq or Dell, taking the CPU and throwing the rest out.

Edit: I know you come across those CPUs now, making them appear not rare, but the PII 450 was basically the "mid-high" part after the PIII came out the year following, and got available for reasonable money then, and ditto the PIII-800 when the PIII-1Ghz came out the year following.

I guess the glory of it being 20+ years later and the prices being affordable is that you can now build these machines you could only dream about when the components were brand new and insanely expensive. That is basically what I have done with several year specific builds already and am hoping to do with this year 2000 build. I have finished 1996-1999 and have most of the components for 1990-95. Now I am diving into the 2000's.

Reply 71 of 101, by kanecvr

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After trying some period correct year 2000 hardware - socket 423 1.5GHz willamette and a 1300Mhz athlon (don't have a 1266Mhz version) with a geforce 2 Titanium I came to the conclusion that the best PC for year 2000 games is a 2002-2003 PC. Wile all games I tried are perfectly playable at 1024x768, (some even at 1280x1024), others don't run to my liking at 1600x1200. Dungeon Keeper 2 needs a faster CPU for 1600x1200 - the slowest chip that will provide good framerate ingame at that resolution is a P4 @ 1700 / Athlon XP 1700+ - and even these show FPS drops when there's lots of stuff happening. The GF2 Ti is adequate for the game (I have a 64MB version), but for perfect smoothness a GF3 Ti or Radeon 8500 is preferred - and DK2 came out before 2000. I had a similar experience in Giants: Citizen Kabuto, and don't get me started on Earth 2150, witch only runs smooth on a P4 2600 or a 2500+ / FX 5900XT / Radeon 9700.

*Smooth = minimum FPS = 35, avarage = 50, no good frame-time, no dropped frames.

Reply 72 of 101, by appiah4

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1600x1200 gaming was unheard of in 2000, the fillrate of cards on the market would be hopeless against that many pixels per frame at the framerates you are looking for so that is no wonder. 1280x1024 was a luxury, I could barely run some things at 1280x960. 1024x768 was the norm.

Reply 73 of 101, by Captain NA

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Get a Silicon Graphics 540 and throw a cuple of Quantum3D 8264 cards in it or a maybe a Mercury Brick 😀
Note, the 540 SGI only support 3D accelerators, It's not possible to install a Geforce 2 Ultra or Voodoo5 5500 for example, since it will only use the onboard Cobalt chipset as primary adapter (have tried it) The 3rd party display adapters that where available, only provided another VGA output for multi monitor.
Now ther's no huge reasons to use a 540 SGI if you dont like the cobalt graphics. Thats the core selling point. But no DirectX support 😒

But hey, all games not supporting OpenGL or Glide is not worth playing 😜

Just fooling around.

Reply 74 of 101, by amadeus777999

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fsmith2003 wrote:
Just thought I would throw out what I have came up with for the specific "fastest" Intel CPU for each year of 1990-2000 for the […]
Show full quote

Just thought I would throw out what I have came up with for the specific "fastest" Intel CPU for each year of 1990-2000 for the spreadsheet.

1990 - 486 DX-33
1991 - 486 DX-50
1992 - 486 DX2-66
1993 - Pentium 66
1994 - Pentium 100
1995 - Pentium 133
1996 - Pentium 200
1997 - Pentium II 300
1998 - Pentium II 450
1999 - Pentium III 800
2000 - Pentium 4 1.5

I remember seeing the Pentium100 in a magazine during this time and it was something !very! special. Even moreso impressive was that it was shown on a cpu card sporting a dual configuration.

Reply 75 of 101, by Gatewayuser200

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Here's a high end gaming PC build from November of 2000.

https://web.archive.org/web/20001110065900/ht … e/high_game_pc/

Pulled from the archived website.
1.2GHz Athlon(Thunderbird) OR a Pentium 3 1GHz
ASUS A7V OR CUSL2-C for Intel
256MB PC133
30GB Seagate Barracuda (7200RPM 2mb cache)
ELSA GLADIAC Ultra (GF2 Ultra Variant)
Sound Blaster Live! Platinum

Seems about right. I'd go with this, but you could creep every so slightly faster by finding hardware reviews and release dates for stuff that was right before the end of 2000.

Edit: Another interesting link
https://web.archive.org/web/20030306012002/ht … 760_ddr/8.shtml

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Reply 76 of 101, by BitWrangler

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Gatewayuser200 wrote:

Yah, there was a chaintech 760/761 board out for sure before end of 2000 also, can't be sure about the Epox board, that was known for hitting an FSB of 200, so DDR400 speed, it really was unequalled until NF2, KT266 was bugged, KT266A wasn't but only went as fast as the middling 760 boards, KT333 just added a multi divider and didn't go any faster, wouldn't run synchronous stably, KT400 was improved.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 77 of 101, by slivercr

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Gatewayuser200 wrote:
Here's a high end gaming PC build from November of 2000. https://web.archive.org/web/20001110065900/ht … e/high_game_pc/ Pulle […]
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Here's a high end gaming PC build from November of 2000.

https://web.archive.org/web/20001110065900/ht … e/high_game_pc/

Pulled from the archived website.
1.2GHz Athlon(Thunderbird) OR a Pentium 3 1GHz
ASUS A7V OR CUSL2-C for Intel
256MB PC133
30GB Seagate Barracuda (7200RPM 2mb cache)
ELSA GLADIAC Ultra (GF2 Ultra Variant)
Sound Blaster Live! Platinum

Seems about right. I'd go with this, but you could creep every so slightly faster by finding hardware reviews and release dates for stuff that was right before the end of 2000.

Edit: Another interesting link
https://web.archive.org/web/20030306012002/ht … 760_ddr/8.shtml

+1 for the sharkyextreme reference, miss that place! Also firingsquad and virtualhideout 😜

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Reply 78 of 101, by BitWrangler

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I am currently missing RebelsHaven quite a lot for all the AMD64 tuning stuffs.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 79 of 101, by dexvx

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Willamette was certainly available in the year 2000. I recall a Christmas 2000 LAN party where someone brought an HP system with a 1.4GHz. Upon searching the webs, it looked like in late 2000 Willamette was only available to OEM customers. At the time, it was maybe slightly faster than a 1GHz Pentium III, and certainly slower than an Athlon-C 1200. However, with software updates, the Willamette is now heads and shoulders above either.

Here's a Dimension 8100 review from Dec 2000.

http://www.zdnet.com/product/dell-dimension-8100/

Anandtech review from late Nov 2000.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/661