If you're upgrading, don't do what I did.

[fleck]

OK, so about two years ago, I wanted to get something better than my Athlon 2200+ system with a GeforceMX400 video card. There were a couple of games that I had interest in so I just had to upgrade.

First I found myself a deal on an Athlon 64 3200+ bundled with motherboard and support for my old RAM. At that time the dual-core systems weren't exactly a 'need' for running most of the games that were coming out, so I settled for something much better than what I had, which was also capable of much much more.

Then eventually I found a deal on the Geforce 8600GT so I went for it. For a while I settled for less than native resolution and lower settings in games such as COD4, but as I played I realized more and more I was doing badly because at certain crucial points my FPS was going too low to respond to quickly enough.

So once again I had to upgrade, and not for any NEW games but for my current addiction which is STILL COD4 after over a year of playing.

First, I chanced it on my CPU being OK and the graphics card being the major culprit, and I bought a 9800GT. Now, after realizing that I'd only gained a handful of FPS in performance and no performance with the settings all the way up, I started to blame my old single-core Athlon 64.

Since money is so thin these days, I returned the 9800GT and started looking for deals on the next best system to run games on. I just got paid yesterday, and today I went shopping for that new system. Now, I could only afford a CPU, motherboard and RAM combo, so no 9800GT for another couple of weeks.

After reading a lot of reviews on processors, I decided to go back to Intel for the first time in over 8 years and got myself a Core 2 Duo E7400 @ 2.8GHz. It only cost $120 and produces gaming performance above and beyond a $90 AMD processor. I scored a crappy $50 MSI motherboard that sucks for overclocking, and 2GB of awesome PC6400 memory by Corsair for another $50. The whole thing was $235 after tax and I was gonna spend an extra $100 on something similar but with a quad-core AMD Phenom II. Why didn't I spend the extra $100 on the Phenom II in the end? All of the current games that are out only use two cores. Why have two more? I'm pleased with the overall system performance, so I'd be throwing away $100.

Now that I have this new system with the 8600GT in it, it once again has only delivered a small margin of performance gain, and now where the CPU is making up for the processing of the AI engines and the other players on the server, the GPU is failing at rendering busy scenes with lots of smoke and explosions quickly enough to provide a gain in those scenarios. I know where those $100 I saved are going, and this time I'll be getting the maximum performance of both.

So yeah, don't do what I did. Don't do it the broke dude's way. Go all out.

 

[LearjetMinako]

I plan to. Once a PC system no longer meets my needs, I just go all out and replace everything. My first was 486 66mhz with 40mb of ram. Second system was a PIII 733mhz with 384mb ram and Nvidia Geforce 256bit 32mb. My current system is a P-D 3.2Ghz, 2Gb Ram, 2TB 3xHDD (Raid 1 & Stand alone), 512mb Nvidia 8800GT, Creative Labs X-Fi, 2x tv tuners, Logitech 5.1 surround sound. My next system will be with a Intel I7 CPU and beyond. Powered & Cooled by Zalman tech system cases and coolers. With the lastest Nvida dual-core GPU. But this won't be until around after 2010 or later. My current system does me fine and runs everything I need it to.

 

[Will]

A 486 with 40mb RAM? That was rockin', baby. My first computer was a P75 with 8mb RAM--and I still have it. It has XP on it and can surf the web just fine, but I don't have a wireless card for it so I retired it a year ago and bought a Mac Mini as the village bike computer.

 

[fleck]

I got you both beat with a 486SX 25MHz with 4MB of RAM and a 170MB HD. (Not counting our Commodore 64 from 1989)

The SX model of the 486s had no FPU (Floating Point Unit, something CPUs need for 3D games, like Doom II LOL), it was the DX models that had FPU like the Pentiums did. We paid a bunch of money for a 66MHz Pentium 'clone' that basically forced it's way into the system as an upgrade, and it would freeze up all the time. We paid like $180 for a 4MB RAM upgrade back then, and my dad bought a 1GB hard drive for nearly $500 one day. That system made it all the way to the release of Windows 95 (which somehow stopped the Pentium clone processor from freezing up) and even saw a copy of Windows NT 4.0 (1996) for a short time before being downgraded and eventually replaced. Since then I've built a 133MHz K6, a 233MHz K6-2, a Celeron 366 at 550MHz, an Athlon 900, an Athlon 2000+, and the rest you know (minus all the little upgrades to those or the systems for other people along the way).

 

[red85]

I got you all beat. Tandy 1800 286 laptop with 2 megs of RAM. It could play hangman better than anything you ever saw.

 

[Psychopete]

I got you all beat. Tandy 1800 286 laptop with 2 megs of RAM. It could play hangman better than anything you ever saw.

You sure that thing had 2MB of ram?

My first was a Tandy 1000 80x88 that ran DOS 3.X(?). This is where I started programming; Basic A. My Dad soldered in more RAM at some point, but don't remember how much. Favorite game was one of the King's Quests, but I don't remember which one, I want to say III.

Anyone ever get into MAD magazines? They had a VERY long piece of code in a magainze in the early 90's. If you had the patience to type in all of the cordinates for the pixles, you'd have a drawing of Alfred! In Basic! I still have the magazine even... Also still have books on using the features of the Tandy 1000 in Basic and an unopened box of DOS 3.? lying around somewhere. I think I might even still have a 486 board and ram somewhere.. Too bad I don't have a copy of DOS 6.22 anymore (NOT! ).

Pete

 

[rboyer]

When I was 10 years old I got a TRS-80 Model 4 for Christmas. The thing had a 4 MHz processor, 64KB of ram (upgradeable to 128 I believe!). I had the option of data storage via cassette tape and eventually acquired a 5 1/4 inch floppy drive for it. I moved on from that thing to a Color Computer 2 which my cassette storage drive was also compatible with. My first internet-capable machine was an 8088 with a 2400 baud modem which allowed me to browse the web by using Lynx.

 

[Nhaz]

Hah I owned and used a Ti-99 4a. it had a tape drive and i had a defender cartridge

I believe it used a early 64,000 series processor and had a Whopping 8k of ram! Upgradable to 20 with a huge add on box!