Here is my story of all the computers I owned:
1. My first computer was my dad's hand me down 486-sx 33MHz, 4mb ram, 245mb hdd, 512kb VGA 256 color accelerator. It was his first computer and cost $2000. I found it was way too slow for the internet. The modem was just 1200 baud! It took 5-10 minutes to load a webpage! I had to keep using my moms 90MHz pentium computer.
2. Dad saw how slow it was and took the 486 back to use for backup files in his office and bought me a brand new Pentium mmx166MHz, 24mb ram, 3.2gb hdd, 2mb UXGA onboard video, 33.6k modem. It was a Packard "hell" that used proparity parts that made it hard to upgrade. I used that computer for internet and 2-d gaming. I also had a nintendo and SNES before that. I later overclocked this to 233MHz by raising the multi to 3.5x(before the days Intel locked them) but it was still slow. I tried to run 3-d games like quake3 and it gave an error. So I got a 4mb 3-d pci accelerator, still gave an error. That card was also worse than my onboard 2mb, terrible 2-d quality, especially above 800x600 resolution! So I looked around for an affordable 3-d card.
I bought an s3 "Savage" 32mb pci but it wasn't compatable with my motherboard, returned it. I had the option of a 3dfx voodoo3 2000 or tnt 16mb pci. After doing research, I realized the tnt was superior(32 bit color, faster, more features, futureproof) so I got one from a friend for $60, those retailed for $80. The top dog was a tnt2u, I believe and I didn't have AGP nor the money for it. Now I ran across another problem. Not enough ram! I needed 64mb per system requirements for quake3. I did meet the cpu requirements though.
I looked around and realized it used proparity ram! Oh that was a problem! Their website wanted like $200 for a 32mb stick, no way was I gonna pay that! I bought 2x 32mb sticks for $69.95 each stick after rebate(of course I tried them first before using the mail in rebate) and lucky me, the ram worked without a glitch! I saved the 16mb and 8mb stick just in case. Now quake3 finally worked! But I was getting only 10fps average at 640x480 low details!
I posted on forums asking for help, one guy suggested I overclock my video card. It was a crap overclocker and besides my fps didn't go up even 0.1! Another guy suggested I "tweak" the game by turning everything off. I used the command consol to disable sound, shadows, gibs, etc and set load bias to blur everything. After all was done, my fps went up a whopping 50% to 15fps average! My min fps were like 2fps in heavy action with alot of bots!
I could not afford to upgrade any more so I had to deal with it for months while waiting for prices to drop more. It was no fun playing quake3, hard to aim and frag when the gameplay was extremely choppy. After waiting and saving up, I was ready to upgrade. I did lots of research and my first option was to get a faster cpu for my motherboard. But 233MHz was the fastest supported! There was a special "speedstep" slocket where I could run 400MHz AMD k6-2 but the slocket cost like $150 and it may still not work and even if it did, I had too many other bottlenecks and didn't think my fps would have been where I wanted it 100% smooth.
So it was a lost cause, I had to build a new computer and ditch my Packard "hell" I researched around which CPU was a good option. I knew about the popularity of the 300a celeron, those had a 50% chance of hitting 450MHz and were touted in computer magazines and on websites! At a fraction the price of a 450MHz pII and 95% the performance, it was a winner among overclockers. I also read about the 333 at 500MHz and 366 at 550MHz that came afterwards. They weren't as popular since it was much harder to achieve those overclocks. I had to decide what motherboard to buy and the BX chipset was a clear winner. I grabbed a nonoverclocking cheap brand for $50 new at a computer show. The top dog, the Abit be6-2(Asus soon came out with one similar to the Abit) cost near $200.
I paired that $50 mobo with a 366 at 550MHz celeron costing $90 used which was a great price. I chose that over the 300a since it cost only a few $ more and 550MHz beats 450MHz. Actually I had to look around and buy one already pre-tested to 550MHz since if I bought it new, I would have only 25% chance of hitting that. 450MHz PII's were $150, 450MHz k6-2 was $100 but got owned by the 300a at 450MHz, 450MHz PIII's were $200, 500MHz were $300.(Intel's top was a 600b p3) On the AMD side, their Athlon was the clear winner(AMD had the performance crown since the Athlon and kept it till Intel came out with "conroe" core duo) but I could not afford $350 for their 500MHz Athlon, $500 for 550MHz, $750 for 600MHz, $1300 for 650MHz. My celeron was the best bang for the buck and those Athlons weren't known to overclock more than 5% to 10%.
My fps in quake3 went from 10(before tweaks) to 45!(without tweaks) That 550MHz celeron was so fast! I paired it with 128mb ram, used my tnt pci(couldn't afford a geforce) and 8.4GB HDD. I soon upgraded to a better motherboard with more features and performance options. My fps shot up to 55! I played at 800x600x16 low details and still got near 50fps! The min never went below 20! I later got the Abit bf6 motherboard and played around with 1MHz fsb increments. Too bad that 550MHz celeron could not OC any more, even 103fsb locked up in windows! Then that celeron became unstable at 550MHz, games would crash. I had to throttle down to 95fsb. I decided to try my luck with a PPGA 300a(the 366 was also PPGA) I got the 300a for like $50 on ebay. That thing did 522MHz! It edged my 550MHz celeron due to the extra fsb! I did back down to 504MHz for 24/7 operation.
Unfortunately highly tweaked overclocking motherboards aren't very reliable and it developed problems. I RMA for another Abit bf6, that one soon had problems too and I ebayed it "as-is" at a loss and bought an older bh6 that proved problem free. I did upgrade to a tnt2 vanta 8mb agp that performed similar to my tnt pci but I could turn the texture details up thanks to agp texturing. Quake3 looked nicer and I got 45fps at 800x600 medium details(upgrade from low details) people on the forums would make fun at how outdated my card was and brag how fast their geforce2gts were! So I looked around and got a geforce2mx 32mb for $80(again, a great deal) the top dog was the gf2u 64mb but people considered my card a decent midrange card and I got 45fps at 1600x1200 medium details! I did buy the gf2u 64mb for $420 just to test it out(it got returned) and my fps didn't go up much as I was badly cpu bottlenecked at 504MHz, others were running p3's and Athlons at 600MHz to 1GHz. I was told I needed a faster cpu. I did try a PIII 600e at 800eb and a 750e at 900MHz, but performance was barely better than my 504MHz celeron on the Abit bf6 mobo. I was told I did something wrong or my motherboard was malfunctioning. Well I gave up and enjoyed gaming on my bh6 mobo, it was still plenty fast. I didn't upgrade for a very long time afterwards.
I skipped the p4 as it was slower than the p3, what a joke! I went AMD for the first time and got a 950MHz "thunderbird" with 256k ondie cache(it owned the first Athlons with slow offdie cache) which overclocked to 1GHz(133x7.5) the multis were unlocked, wow! I later learned about the "pencil trick" but my particular chip's bridges were intact to begin with. The cpu was a crap overclocker but I didn't care as it was almost 3 times faster than my 504MHz celeron! I got well over 100fps in quake3 at 800x600!
My next upgrade after staying with my geforce2mx for a while was a geforce3 ti500 for $80, which I soon resold for a $99 geforce4 ti4200 64mb. The performance increases weren't spectatular as I was cpu limited with such a fast card. They had athlon xp tbreds overclocking to 2.5GHz. I settled for a Palomino xp1600 overclocked to 1575MHz which increased gaming performance by 50% over my old 1GHz tbird. I never got to unlock that Pally, couldn't find any rear window defogger as a substance. I was unhappy at the lower fsb. So I upgraded to an xp2000 tbred(top dog was xp3200 bartons) that tbred oced to 2GHz on stock cooling, 2.4GHz with an slk-800. I was now outperforming alot of people's computers, especially those Intel fanboys and their crappy p4's at over 3GHz. Even on my ti4200, I got better performance than people using radeon 9500s and 9700s bottlenecked by much slower p4's and stock athlonxp's. I did not need to spend $200 on a faster video card, every game ran silky smooth and I didn't care for antialising.
I did go thru several ti4200s getting a better and better overclocking one. I settled on a ti4800se oced slightly past stock ti4600 speeds. I carried over that video card to my athlon64(spent $200 on that cpu, $120 on the mobo but it was considered high end) it was a 3000+ model but I didn't care as I overclocked it to 2.25GHz and it performed 90% of much more expensive cpus. I saw a huge boost in performance all around, even in games on that geforce4 card. People had moved onto radeon 9800pros and 9800xt's but I didn't need faster. I did grab a cheap 9500np softmodded and oced to 9700pro when people were on x800xt's.
I also upgraded my a64 to s939 and oced to 2.4GHz with 2x512mb ram. I enjoyed this setup for a while before the motherboard malfunctioned. I went back to my backup computer, the old faithful 1GHz tbird. I did not feel like buying another a64 motherboard, not when Intel released their core duos that owned the a64s big time! I also had taken a break from gaming and concentrated on my business and earning money and saving up for a house downpayment. I didn't want to spend $1500 on a core duo system, a house is more important and im still saving for one and waiting for house prices to keep dropping from their bubble highs. Also in this slow economy, one should put off instant gratification and save their money! Your job might not exist tomorrow! Your business might slow to a crawl!
I did buy a HP core duo system for really cheap on the net. It's an E6400 2.13 GHz, 2gb ram, 80gb hdd(who needs bigger) dvd rom(don't care if it's not a burner, I respect copyrights) and a 64mb Nvidia quadro(which im removing and upgrading with a midrange dx10 radeon hd2600xt 256mb 128 bit 700/1400 clocks) I will keep this for a few months before I upgrade again. I am buying a huge LCD TV/monitor so this cut in my budget for a $600 core duo. Also I need to learn more about core duo/quad plus I hear i7 is comming out in a month and Deneb in 3 months, this will mean lower prices and faster core duo for me. Ill just give that HP I got "too cheap" to my mom as a free gift to upgrade her crap 1.1GHz celeron thats so slow at everything. What I have on my Newegg wishlist will be updated with better!
Anyway that's my story. Please share yours, make it long like I did
1. My first computer was my dad's hand me down 486-sx 33MHz, 4mb ram, 245mb hdd, 512kb VGA 256 color accelerator. It was his first computer and cost $2000. I found it was way too slow for the internet. The modem was just 1200 baud! It took 5-10 minutes to load a webpage! I had to keep using my moms 90MHz pentium computer.
2. Dad saw how slow it was and took the 486 back to use for backup files in his office and bought me a brand new Pentium mmx166MHz, 24mb ram, 3.2gb hdd, 2mb UXGA onboard video, 33.6k modem. It was a Packard "hell" that used proparity parts that made it hard to upgrade. I used that computer for internet and 2-d gaming. I also had a nintendo and SNES before that. I later overclocked this to 233MHz by raising the multi to 3.5x(before the days Intel locked them) but it was still slow. I tried to run 3-d games like quake3 and it gave an error. So I got a 4mb 3-d pci accelerator, still gave an error. That card was also worse than my onboard 2mb, terrible 2-d quality, especially above 800x600 resolution! So I looked around for an affordable 3-d card.
I bought an s3 "Savage" 32mb pci but it wasn't compatable with my motherboard, returned it. I had the option of a 3dfx voodoo3 2000 or tnt 16mb pci. After doing research, I realized the tnt was superior(32 bit color, faster, more features, futureproof) so I got one from a friend for $60, those retailed for $80. The top dog was a tnt2u, I believe and I didn't have AGP nor the money for it. Now I ran across another problem. Not enough ram! I needed 64mb per system requirements for quake3. I did meet the cpu requirements though.
I looked around and realized it used proparity ram! Oh that was a problem! Their website wanted like $200 for a 32mb stick, no way was I gonna pay that! I bought 2x 32mb sticks for $69.95 each stick after rebate(of course I tried them first before using the mail in rebate) and lucky me, the ram worked without a glitch! I saved the 16mb and 8mb stick just in case. Now quake3 finally worked! But I was getting only 10fps average at 640x480 low details!
I posted on forums asking for help, one guy suggested I overclock my video card. It was a crap overclocker and besides my fps didn't go up even 0.1! Another guy suggested I "tweak" the game by turning everything off. I used the command consol to disable sound, shadows, gibs, etc and set load bias to blur everything. After all was done, my fps went up a whopping 50% to 15fps average! My min fps were like 2fps in heavy action with alot of bots!
I could not afford to upgrade any more so I had to deal with it for months while waiting for prices to drop more. It was no fun playing quake3, hard to aim and frag when the gameplay was extremely choppy. After waiting and saving up, I was ready to upgrade. I did lots of research and my first option was to get a faster cpu for my motherboard. But 233MHz was the fastest supported! There was a special "speedstep" slocket where I could run 400MHz AMD k6-2 but the slocket cost like $150 and it may still not work and even if it did, I had too many other bottlenecks and didn't think my fps would have been where I wanted it 100% smooth.
So it was a lost cause, I had to build a new computer and ditch my Packard "hell" I researched around which CPU was a good option. I knew about the popularity of the 300a celeron, those had a 50% chance of hitting 450MHz and were touted in computer magazines and on websites! At a fraction the price of a 450MHz pII and 95% the performance, it was a winner among overclockers. I also read about the 333 at 500MHz and 366 at 550MHz that came afterwards. They weren't as popular since it was much harder to achieve those overclocks. I had to decide what motherboard to buy and the BX chipset was a clear winner. I grabbed a nonoverclocking cheap brand for $50 new at a computer show. The top dog, the Abit be6-2(Asus soon came out with one similar to the Abit) cost near $200.
I paired that $50 mobo with a 366 at 550MHz celeron costing $90 used which was a great price. I chose that over the 300a since it cost only a few $ more and 550MHz beats 450MHz. Actually I had to look around and buy one already pre-tested to 550MHz since if I bought it new, I would have only 25% chance of hitting that. 450MHz PII's were $150, 450MHz k6-2 was $100 but got owned by the 300a at 450MHz, 450MHz PIII's were $200, 500MHz were $300.(Intel's top was a 600b p3) On the AMD side, their Athlon was the clear winner(AMD had the performance crown since the Athlon and kept it till Intel came out with "conroe" core duo) but I could not afford $350 for their 500MHz Athlon, $500 for 550MHz, $750 for 600MHz, $1300 for 650MHz. My celeron was the best bang for the buck and those Athlons weren't known to overclock more than 5% to 10%.
My fps in quake3 went from 10(before tweaks) to 45!(without tweaks) That 550MHz celeron was so fast! I paired it with 128mb ram, used my tnt pci(couldn't afford a geforce) and 8.4GB HDD. I soon upgraded to a better motherboard with more features and performance options. My fps shot up to 55! I played at 800x600x16 low details and still got near 50fps! The min never went below 20! I later got the Abit bf6 motherboard and played around with 1MHz fsb increments. Too bad that 550MHz celeron could not OC any more, even 103fsb locked up in windows! Then that celeron became unstable at 550MHz, games would crash. I had to throttle down to 95fsb. I decided to try my luck with a PPGA 300a(the 366 was also PPGA) I got the 300a for like $50 on ebay. That thing did 522MHz! It edged my 550MHz celeron due to the extra fsb! I did back down to 504MHz for 24/7 operation.
Unfortunately highly tweaked overclocking motherboards aren't very reliable and it developed problems. I RMA for another Abit bf6, that one soon had problems too and I ebayed it "as-is" at a loss and bought an older bh6 that proved problem free. I did upgrade to a tnt2 vanta 8mb agp that performed similar to my tnt pci but I could turn the texture details up thanks to agp texturing. Quake3 looked nicer and I got 45fps at 800x600 medium details(upgrade from low details) people on the forums would make fun at how outdated my card was and brag how fast their geforce2gts were! So I looked around and got a geforce2mx 32mb for $80(again, a great deal) the top dog was the gf2u 64mb but people considered my card a decent midrange card and I got 45fps at 1600x1200 medium details! I did buy the gf2u 64mb for $420 just to test it out(it got returned) and my fps didn't go up much as I was badly cpu bottlenecked at 504MHz, others were running p3's and Athlons at 600MHz to 1GHz. I was told I needed a faster cpu. I did try a PIII 600e at 800eb and a 750e at 900MHz, but performance was barely better than my 504MHz celeron on the Abit bf6 mobo. I was told I did something wrong or my motherboard was malfunctioning. Well I gave up and enjoyed gaming on my bh6 mobo, it was still plenty fast. I didn't upgrade for a very long time afterwards.
I skipped the p4 as it was slower than the p3, what a joke! I went AMD for the first time and got a 950MHz "thunderbird" with 256k ondie cache(it owned the first Athlons with slow offdie cache) which overclocked to 1GHz(133x7.5) the multis were unlocked, wow! I later learned about the "pencil trick" but my particular chip's bridges were intact to begin with. The cpu was a crap overclocker but I didn't care as it was almost 3 times faster than my 504MHz celeron! I got well over 100fps in quake3 at 800x600!
My next upgrade after staying with my geforce2mx for a while was a geforce3 ti500 for $80, which I soon resold for a $99 geforce4 ti4200 64mb. The performance increases weren't spectatular as I was cpu limited with such a fast card. They had athlon xp tbreds overclocking to 2.5GHz. I settled for a Palomino xp1600 overclocked to 1575MHz which increased gaming performance by 50% over my old 1GHz tbird. I never got to unlock that Pally, couldn't find any rear window defogger as a substance. I was unhappy at the lower fsb. So I upgraded to an xp2000 tbred(top dog was xp3200 bartons) that tbred oced to 2GHz on stock cooling, 2.4GHz with an slk-800. I was now outperforming alot of people's computers, especially those Intel fanboys and their crappy p4's at over 3GHz. Even on my ti4200, I got better performance than people using radeon 9500s and 9700s bottlenecked by much slower p4's and stock athlonxp's. I did not need to spend $200 on a faster video card, every game ran silky smooth and I didn't care for antialising.
I did go thru several ti4200s getting a better and better overclocking one. I settled on a ti4800se oced slightly past stock ti4600 speeds. I carried over that video card to my athlon64(spent $200 on that cpu, $120 on the mobo but it was considered high end) it was a 3000+ model but I didn't care as I overclocked it to 2.25GHz and it performed 90% of much more expensive cpus. I saw a huge boost in performance all around, even in games on that geforce4 card. People had moved onto radeon 9800pros and 9800xt's but I didn't need faster. I did grab a cheap 9500np softmodded and oced to 9700pro when people were on x800xt's.
I also upgraded my a64 to s939 and oced to 2.4GHz with 2x512mb ram. I enjoyed this setup for a while before the motherboard malfunctioned. I went back to my backup computer, the old faithful 1GHz tbird. I did not feel like buying another a64 motherboard, not when Intel released their core duos that owned the a64s big time! I also had taken a break from gaming and concentrated on my business and earning money and saving up for a house downpayment. I didn't want to spend $1500 on a core duo system, a house is more important and im still saving for one and waiting for house prices to keep dropping from their bubble highs. Also in this slow economy, one should put off instant gratification and save their money! Your job might not exist tomorrow! Your business might slow to a crawl!
I did buy a HP core duo system for really cheap on the net. It's an E6400 2.13 GHz, 2gb ram, 80gb hdd(who needs bigger) dvd rom(don't care if it's not a burner, I respect copyrights) and a 64mb Nvidia quadro(which im removing and upgrading with a midrange dx10 radeon hd2600xt 256mb 128 bit 700/1400 clocks) I will keep this for a few months before I upgrade again. I am buying a huge LCD TV/monitor so this cut in my budget for a $600 core duo. Also I need to learn more about core duo/quad plus I hear i7 is comming out in a month and Deneb in 3 months, this will mean lower prices and faster core duo for me. Ill just give that HP I got "too cheap" to my mom as a free gift to upgrade her crap 1.1GHz celeron thats so slow at everything. What I have on my Newegg wishlist will be updated with better!
Anyway that's my story. Please share yours, make it long like I did
Friend had an Amiga 500 with Video Toaster stuff.
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