Right now I’ve got a homebuilt system. I use it mostly for going on the net and playing games (with the odd bit work thrown in so I can justify it)
It consists of:
1.2 Ghz Athlon T-Bird (sometimes overclocked to 1.4ish)
MSI K7T Pro2a Mobo
640MB PC133 RAM
Soundblaster Live! Sound Card
GF3ti200 Video
Generic 300Watt case
60GB Ultra 100 IDE H.D
DVD player and CD Burner
1.5/768 ADSL connection on a Dlink ADSL modem (300i?)
I’ve had my 1.2Ghz Tbird for going on 2 years now (I think its been 2) I’ve been waiting for the 3Ghz barrier to get broken. Now that it has, I’ll just wait until it gets more affordable.
New system base specs will probably be:
P4 3Ghz+ (Although I most definetly have not ruled out AMD)
1GB RAM
Lotsa USB ports and maybe Firewire (although from what I understand USB2 is damn fast too, not?)
Big-Ass UIDE H.D.
If they are more affordable by then, a DVD burner. Otherwise, my CD burner will keep chugging along.
Good bang for the buck Video card. By the time I upgrade, a Raedeon 9700 will probably be at least one generation down but still be damn powerful. Maybe the new Nvidia if they make a budget line (a’la GF3ti200).
Gone are the days that I break the bank and by the absolute creme de’la creme. The difference between an absolute top-o-the-line system and 1 notch back just isn’t enough to be worth it. Hell, my 1.2Ghz Tbird and GF3ti200 (or is it 300?) and 640MB RAM plays damn near everything on high detail. I have no need to change, yet.
My favorite “games” are flight sims, which as a rule require pretty much top-o-the-line hardware to run at an acceptable frame rate. Otherwise, the old girl would probably be my main rig for a while yet.
This is more than adequate for everything I’ve been playing, including Morrowind and a few FPSes (gonna get UT2K3 soon enough), though I’ll probably upgrade to a beefier processor - eyeing the 2100+ Athlon - as soon as the next generation of processors come out to drive the price down.
And I’ll probably get a DVD-R once prices come down and once I do the research needed to see if any of the formats work in a majority (90+%) of dedicated DVD players.
I have a Pentium 1, 70 Mhz, running with 1.1 gb of space, and its running windows xp, with 64 mb of ram. What a beauty.
In the other room, though, I have a 1.5 Ghz AMD Athlon XP, with 512 MB of ram. It’s got 100 GB of hard drive space, and a GeForce 2 MX card (it blows). I have an 8x DVD, and a 24x10x40 CD-RW.
Soon I will be doubling the ram and getting a vid card that isn’t old.
I just got a new mobo/cpu/ram upgrade for my now 3 year old case/ps. I wanted the new Nforce2 chipset but those are still pretty pricey so I settled for a KT333 Northbridge. My previous (and soon to be kids) mobo/cpu was a Biostar Slot A with the amd 751? chipset and a 500MHz proc. It has served me well these past 3 years. Its been on all the time (for the most part) and with full cpu usage for most of that time with SETI and now curing cancer with the SDMB. So I went with Biostar again and got the M7VIP and a stick of Kingston 256MB at PC2700 with a Athlon XP 2100+. The board makes doing basic OverClocking pretty easy, so my FSB is running at 138 which pushes my cpu up to an actual ~1798. I have a Guillmont GeForce 2 GTS 32MB video card that was the shit when I got it ~2 years ago. Now its barely adequate. When I put together the kids computer with my old parts I’m going to get me new one. I’m looking at a GF4 Ti42000 with 64MB right now. I got a Linksys NIC and a SB Live! value and a 20gig 7200rpm Maxtor and I’m running win 2k pro. My SO has a HP something or another. 933P3 with 384 MB of PC133 and shitty built in video and sound. Early spring we are going to get her a new computer and give hers to her mom or something. The computers are networked through a Linksys Router.
** Stccrd**, you can run XP on that??? I bet that things a demon
I’ve got a homebuilt PC last year -
AMD 2000+ XP
Can’t remember the mobo - Abit something or other
1Gb RAM (I do alot of audio / video / programming and some gaming)
Lite-On 8(?)x DVD drive
Lite-On ?x?X40 CD-RW
Maxtor 80GB hd
Maxtor 20GB hd
Sound blaster Live
Abit Siluro Geforce 3 (64MB ram, TV-out)
CH Products fighterstick, pro throttle, and rudder pedals
Dell 19" monitor
Win2K Pro
I’ve also got 2 DEC Personal Workstations running Linux, a Sun Sparc 5 running solaris 2.6, and an IBM RS/6000 running AIX 5.1.
I just added an 80GB hard drive to my existing 30GB. Next year I plan on getting a processor somewhere in the 2GHz range and doubling my RAM. I’ll probably spring for another Sound Blaster card instead of using on-board sound this time, and I’d like to upgrade my monitor (it’s a 17").
it is strange, at work I am using a P4 2GHz. 512 MB RAM. from Dell… CD RW, DVD… I think on board sound and video… eww…
at home… I am using a first generation socket Athlon overclocked to 850 Mhz.
384 MB of RAM
ATI Raedon 8500
Soundblaster Audigy
60 GB HD.
Something isn’t right there… I think it is almost time for an upgrade at home… but I have been saving for a laptop…
I will wait a little longer to upgrade the home comp.
but when I do I will most likely stay with amd, and go with an XP 2600… new Motherboad and DDR RAM
the best thing i did was upgrade from a Soundblaster live to an audigy… the sound on the audigy is incredible…
Right now I have a laptop pc, 800 mhz pentium 3, I upgraded its memory to 256 megabytes, and it runs Windows Me
But I plan to upgrade when I have more money to one of the new macs with OSx, my friend has one, and its pretty powerful because of “Darwin” so you can use it for Unix, and its not as hard to use as setting up Linux on my laptop. (laptop drivers are a pain anyway for linux).
I hate the new Mac ads though. (Lots of them ID10T errors on the pc)
1.2 Mhz Athlon in ASUS mobo with 768 meg ram.
Western Digital 60 gig HDD
Nvidia 4 Ti-4600
SoundBlaster live 5.1
nameless CD-WR and DVD
Alatel USB DSL modem
I just upped the memory and replaced Win98 with Win2K. Win2K is having some problems with the USB modem losing power, so I’m writing this from the SuSE Linux 7.3 partition. I’m getting a score of 8154 in 3D Mark 2001SE in the default settings, so it’s good enough for UT2003.
Preamble: ** Ethilrist **, Morrowind rocks! I’m a big Elder Scrolls fan. Just had to say that.
Now then, shall we talk geekspeek? Been building pc’s for the last 10 years now…my current config consists of 2 PC’s and a laptop networked together with a Linksys EtherFast Wireless AP + Cable/DSL Router w/4-Port Switch:
PC1: My baby
– Gigabyte GA-7DXR MB (has a VIA chipset too…strike against it.)
– AMD t-bird 1.33 OC’d to 1.4
– 640MB pc2100 ddr ram
– Antec Plus 1080AMG SOHO tower w/430 P.S. and five…
yep count 'em, 5 fans. (worth every penny: http://www.antec-inc.com/en_plus1080amg.html)
– GF3 ti500
– 120 GB 7200 HD.
– Hercules Game Theatre sound ‘console’…
(total sweetness and light)
– Plextor PlexWriter 40/12/40A CDRW
– Altec Lansing 5.1 surround spkrs.
(sweetnesser and Lighter smirk)
PC2: Kids machine
– Abit BH6 MB
– AMD Celeron 300a OC’d to 450 (still a great chip)
– 256 MB ram
– Generic Case w/ 300W P.S. and 3 fans
– GF2 Ultra
– Soundblaster Live!
– SonLab satellite spkrs w/subwoofer
– 80 GB HD
– 52X CD
Laptop Our roaming, I wanna sit on the couch and work machine
– Toshiba Satellite 3000 PIII 850
– 512 MB Ram
– Matshita UJDA710 DVD/CDRW
– Infra-red
Oops…forgot the upgrade portion of the OP.
It’s a new board for sure. Definitely the ASUS A7N8X : supreme board…I bow down and worship it’s greatness! http://usa.asus.com/mb/socketa/a7n8x/overview.htm
The following are my specs, but they’re just not enough! I need more horsepower!
AMD Athlon XP 1800 w/ Abit KR7A Mobo
1 GB DDR
GeForce3 Ti200
DVD-ROM, CD-RW
two 7200RPM 120GB hard drives
one 7200RPM 80GB hard drive
one 5400RPM 40GB hard drive
(grand total 360GB if you’re counting)
And what do I want? Well, I’ve been looking at the Tyan motherboards that support dual Athlon MP chips. They make a $200 mobo that will support up to the (current fastest MP) Athlon MP 2400 and beyond. Imagine two of those suckers… 4GHz of raw power! That’ll make my video encoding go mighty fast.
Specs:
Athlon XP 2000 w/ MSI KT3 Utra
512MB DDR RAM
MSI GeForce 4 Ti4200
BenQ CD-R 40x12x48
Toshiba DVD 4x (gutted from old system)
20 & 80 GB 7200 RPM Maxtor hard drives
Upgrades (wish list):
Soundblaster Audigy2 Platinum (currently using on-board sound)
Antec Lansing 641 speakers
Sony DVD -RW/-R +RW/+R drive
Better venting in my cabinet so I can overclock
A P3-450 with a 256 MB of RAM and a 64MB GeForce2.
When I considered that I could get a PS2 for $199 or spend easily twice that upgrading my PC, I decided to get out of the PC gaming business. Yes, there will be some cool games I’ll miss out on, but the technology curve for PC gaming is just too much for me.
I can’t see myself upgrading anytime soon. I could afford it, but right now my computer runs everything I want it to run pretty well. I think having the extra memory is making it last longer. I’ll think about upgrading in a year or so.
Adding an XBox to the house has upgraded my video game capabilities for far less money than a PC upgrade, and the stuff you get for PC that isn’t on consoles, like EQ and Hearts of Iron and SimCity and Civ3, doesn’t require a monster machine.
My main machine is a dual Pentium III 450 MHz with 512 MB RAM and a GeForce2 GTS 32 MB. That machine have been running fine for several years and can still handle most things I throw at it, so I don’t really NEED to upgrade, but I plan to buy a new computer new year with…
…dual Athlon MP (maybe I’ll go for the recently released 2 GHz processors), at least 1 GB RAM, and a 15000 RPM SCSI drive. That should last a couple of years, I hope.
