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About LinkBacksThe move to SSD. Switching from a CRT to an LCD and gaining half my desk back runs it a close 2nd though!
The move to SSD. Switching from a CRT to an LCD and gaining half my desk back runs it a close 2nd though!
My 8800 GT video card. Great card for its day.
Farther back, the Turtle Beach Pinnacle sound card. It was the best sounding card around at the time, and you could install RAM to allow it to store audio samples that were used for MIDI playback.
Right now I'm enjoying my 2600X and RX 5700 XT, both recent upgrades this year. That video card may be overkill for a 2600X but I got an open box one for $300. I had budgeted that amount for an RX 5600 XT or an RTX 2060 KO, so I leaped at the opportunity to get a better card.
I would have to say ATI Radeon 8500 64MB graphics card. That was the first card I purchased with my own money. Alas, I do not have it, as it had an unfortunate accident
My very first hard drive. 32MB (yes MB!) 5.25" full height drive. It was a beast, probably weighed 25 pounds (11KG) It totally changed things. No more floppy swapping. Had to do some trickery with the programs because they were all written to be on multiple floppies, but it was a game changer!
Probably my original Athlon. Had a $2k budget to build a system so bought a 500mhz Athlon with a custom cooling solution tested to run at 750mhz. For a month or two had about the fastest consumer CPU available.
Swapping out my old graphics card for an OpenGL supporting card. GLQuake was such a visual treat.
Diamond Voodoo II 12MB would be the oldest memorable one. Got it used as a teen when these were going out of favor (I was lagging behind a couple hardware generations because I couldn't afford anything newer). Playing the Need For Speed series in glide was amazing
Main one would definitely be the Core 2 Duo E4300 1.8GHz (SL9TB) that I bought as a placeholder CPU till I could afford something better, coming from a socket 478 P4 Northwood 2.66GHz (SL6DX). Felt like I skipped a full decade ahead in terms of speed.
Twice the cores, way faster per-core despite almost a full GHz less, and to top it all off, it turned out that this cheap little 1.8GHz C2D overclocked to (at first) 3GHz stable with almost no effort (just raising the FSB from 200/800 to 333/1066MHz) and later on even further than that with another FSB bump and some extra VCore (which wasn't needed for 3GHz flat, believe it or not).
Best 99eur I've ever spent on a new CPU. Actually best platform I've ever had, Socket 775 with the P35 Chipset. Everything just worked, was fun to tinker with and not locked down yet. None of that "can't OC at all if you don't have a K-series CPU" nonsense that came later...
More recent: First SSD (Crucial M4 in 2012 I think) and my first 1440p monitor. Looking at a noticeably higher resolution on an IPS panel after 10 or so years of (usually crappy washed-out TN) 1080p monitors was quite the shock
I needed a monitor (thanks to Monster & Menace),
so I swapped my Vega 64 LC for a 27" Viewsonic XG2703-GS.
It's OK, I have a 1080ti KiNGPiN, I miss the Vega 64 LC as it was liquid smooth,
but as I play FPS, I needed the FPS.
Monster & Menace are my cats; I only have Monster now, Menace went missing last Easter, I miss him more than the Vega 64 LC. Monster misses him even more, it was his twin brother https://emojipedia.org/crying-cat/
can you tell me more about it?
I remember when I upgraded to a Pentium II 350 back in '98, which included two 12MB Voodoo 2 cards. Running them in SLI on a 17-inch Sony Trinitron monitor, at 1024x768, is something that still brings a smile to my face.
Mine has to be a Pentium II 400 CPU which later turned out to be a fake which the reseller upgraded to a 450 as way of an apology. Cost mega-bucks at the time.
Next has to be my SCSI CD writer, think it was all of 2x speed and cost a fortune back in the days.
Lastly, couldn’t afford a proper Voodoo so ended up with a Banshee card, anybody remember them?
AMD 5x86-133 @ 160MHz such a beast it was
The Slot Celeron 266 @ 450 Mhz when the fastest CPU was the 350MHz PentiumIII, it had no L2 Cache so I swapped it to a Celeron 300A also at 450 but later when I realized the memory did the trick it ran at 496 in the beautiful ABIT BH6
ABIT AN7 <3
Abit BP6 with DUAL Celeron 300 both were running around 400 Mhz, that was jaw dropping for rendering
All the Durons and Thunderbirds and the 2500+ @ 3200+
Recently the ASUS 1080Ti Poseidon what is running on water usually constanlty 2050Mhz but when i have some issue (like pump died) it just uses the fans
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