/wakes up after a nice long nap

eyeguy616 · Mar 26, 2007, 09:09 PM

Eh? What happened to my house?
Why does my dog not recognize me?

Who is this George Washington person? I'm a loyal subject of the king, God bless him!
Where is Nicholas Vedder... or the schoolmaster Van Bummel? I... I have a daughter?

ok, enough of the Rip van Winkle lol.
It's been so long since I've kept up with home comp advances that it's all seemingly foreign again. How many vid card generations have flown by since the ATI 9500 soft moddable card and is there anything modern that's like it used to be cost/performance wise? I'm still using one of those old things and it STILL thinks it's a 9700 (shh, don't tell it otherwise

).

I've got it in an old beatup Athlon64 3400+ blue pavilion thinger (a839n model but it does have agp slot in it). Been humming along for a couple years now but noticed it starting to bog down as of late with some games and things needing more ram now. After looking online at ram prices and shocked at how cheap they are... I have to get the 1gig sticks anyway though and saw most sets of two were about 1/5-1/4 of the price of the beatup pavilion thing (<3 Fry's, deal of the year)! Not only that but there's ddr2 now which means I'll need a new floor mat, erm uh, you know...

I did make a little addition to it though back when I got it: I transplanted an older 256meg stick into it since it had a single 512 stick. Haven't had any problems but wondering something: did a recent info gathering with sandra and saw the 512 was running at 200mhz and the 256 was at 166mhz (and 5 years older haha!). Would it be better to take out the older ram stick and send him to a nursing home? Was never too keen on the amd64 cpu things...

Before someone shouts TORY or sticks a milkbone down my throat and a hungry dog up my ass, should I try holding out for another twenty years on purchases or is there anything that might last a good while currently? What kinds of things should I start to look for now in modern hardware (god I feel old now asking that... anyone else feel nastalgic seeing these new fangled voodoo2s

)? I'll never really be making very high end choices for hardware since, well, this old blue box has sat there unmoved for two years and I'm still pretty satisfied with how much life I've gotten out of it (and it sure wasn't high end when I bought it).

Anyway, howdy again, sorry for becoming an old buzzard and asking so many questions, and thanks for all the fish.

Judas · Mar 27, 2007, 06:59 AM

imo.... considering what ATI/AMD my offer soon.... before making any big purchases or big jumps yet, i'd suggest waiting on there video card and how it either rules, or drags it's ass around.

Aside from that, AMD is also saposed to launch the K8L Native quad Core x4 series cpu's either late summer or early fall. Sure, we'll see

DDR3 is going to launch possibly within the next year ... maybe 2?

And recommend minimum of ram today is 1gb, with a suggested 2gb, anything higher basically requires an x64 complaint hardware setup AS WELL as Windows XP x64 or Vista x64.

Those ol 9700's still kick ass, don't throw em out yet

. and the 3400 is still hauling pretty good considering.

BTW, haven't seen you for awhile, welcome back

Dowaco · Mar 27, 2007, 03:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by eyeguy616

Haven't had any problems but wondering something: did a recent info gathering with sandra and saw the 512 was running at 200mhz and the 256 was at 166mhz (and 5 years older haha!). Would it be better to take out the older ram stick and send him to a nursing home? Was never too keen on the amd64 cpu things...

All your memory should be running at the slower speed regardless of what the factory specs are. So if you have a stick of 512 PC3200 (DDR400) it is rated at 200 MHz but will run only as fast as the 256 PC2700 (DDR333) or 166 MHz. I would say at this point that 768 MB @166 MHz is better than 512 @ 200 MHz. But if you are picking up a GB of new RAM then take out the slower smaller stick.

Your machine is not that bad overall. If you overclock it, you may be able to extend its life even further. The one area that could use some improvement is the video card. You can get an AGP card better than the 9700 for not so much money.

As of right now, the hottest hardware is dual core CPUs moving towards quad core. Intel Core 2 Duo, PCI-e video with directX 10 capabilities (Nvidia 8x00 series) and DDR2 memory. Best bang for buck for non-overclockers may still be AMD.

eyeguy616 · Mar 27, 2007, 11:12 PM

Since I am pretty content with the old blue ox there I think I'll hold out a while longer and see about sharpening my ax on these new things. I can probably put oblivion and things a notch lower still.

Thanks for the advice and info.

Mar 26, 2007, 09:09 PM	#1
eyeguy616 ZZzzzzzzzzzz........... Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: Texas Posts: 324 Rep Power: 0	/wakes up after a nice long nap Eh? What happened to my house? Why does my dog not recognize me? Who is this George Washington person? I'm a loyal subject of the king, God bless him! Where is Nicholas Vedder... or the schoolmaster Van Bummel? I... I have a daughter? ok, enough of the Rip van Winkle lol. It's been so long since I've kept up with home comp advances that it's all seemingly foreign again. How many vid card generations have flown by since the ATI 9500 soft moddable card and is there anything modern that's like it used to be cost/performance wise? I'm still using one of those old things and it STILL thinks it's a 9700 (shh, don't tell it otherwise ). I've got it in an old beatup Athlon64 3400+ blue pavilion thinger (a839n model but it does have agp slot in it). Been humming along for a couple years now but noticed it starting to bog down as of late with some games and things needing more ram now. After looking online at ram prices and shocked at how cheap they are... I have to get the 1gig sticks anyway though and saw most sets of two were about 1/5-1/4 of the price of the beatup pavilion thing (<3 Fry's, deal of the year)! Not only that but there's ddr2 now which means I'll need a new floor mat, erm uh, you know... I did make a little addition to it though back when I got it: I transplanted an older 256meg stick into it since it had a single 512 stick. Haven't had any problems but wondering something: did a recent info gathering with sandra and saw the 512 was running at 200mhz and the 256 was at 166mhz (and 5 years older haha!). Would it be better to take out the older ram stick and send him to a nursing home? Was never too keen on the amd64 cpu things... Before someone shouts TORY or sticks a milkbone down my throat and a hungry dog up my ass, should I try holding out for another twenty years on purchases or is there anything that might last a good while currently? What kinds of things should I start to look for now in modern hardware (god I feel old now asking that... anyone else feel nastalgic seeing these new fangled voodoo2s )? I'll never really be making very high end choices for hardware since, well, this old blue box has sat there unmoved for two years and I'm still pretty satisfied with how much life I've gotten out of it (and it sure wasn't high end when I bought it). Anyway, howdy again, sorry for becoming an old buzzard and asking so many questions, and thanks for all the fish.

Mar 27, 2007, 11:12 PM	Thread Starter #4
eyeguy616 ZZzzzzzzzzzz........... Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: Texas Posts: 324 Rep Power: 0	Since I am pretty content with the old blue ox there I think I'll hold out a while longer and see about sharpening my ax on these new things. I can probably put oblivion and things a notch lower still. Thanks for the advice and info.