Gotta give some props to my 9 year old AMD system...

S

shanker

Weaksauce
Joined
Jun 8, 2004
Messages
78
my 9 year old amd system finally gave up the ghost (the MB became progressively unstable and finally quit)

It was an Athlon XP 3200, Asus A7N8X-E Delux, and 2gb of ram...

it ran like a beast for 9 years.....the Enermax 465w PSU was the same one in it the WHOLE time too......



Just givin' my old (now dismantled) machine props....as it took it like a champ.....
 
the video card that was in it (since may after XFX warrantied my old card) was a XFX HD 4650 600M 1GB DDR2 DUAL DVI TV....the system ran games surprisingly well...
 
Too bad it finally died. My skt 754 system with an Asus K8V mobo and 3200+ Venice cpu is still going strong along with my other skt 754 systems. All of them are running ATI video cards (one has an X1550 soon to be replaced, an X1650 Pro and a couple of X800XL's). I've also got a 95w Phenom II 945 system and just got a Phenom II 1090T system but the old skt 754 systems were the most fun for overclocking I've ever had.
 
we still have a couple of those at my office. I started overclocking them for kicks since they were just sitting in storage. much to our surprize, they beat our newer dells (GX280 - GX6620) in some bencharks. Pentium 4s really suck.
 
I gave an old A7N8X deluxe system to a school 2-3 years back, where as far as I know it's still in use, running Ubuntu Linux.

And I have 2 465 Watt Enermax PSUs. They're both blue, with a little knob to adjust the fan speed on the back. I haven't been using them regularly for 2-3 years, but they still worked when I took the systems they were powering out of service. I think one was purchased in the late 90s and the other in the early 2ks.

It's likely your A7N8X just had some caps from the "capacitor plague". I had an NF7-S, which came out shortly after the A7N8X. It failed, I replaced one bulging capacitor, and it was good as new. Oh, and I also lost an A7N8X to the slip of a screwdriver, while dinking with the processor heatsink... oops. Other than bad caps I think that's the only motherboard I've ever had fail on me.
 
this one got to the point where it wouldnt make it past post....I would imagine corrupted BIOS somehow...a few years ago the on-board LAN ports quit working...so I knew it had some issues
 
I hope to get a few more years out my system, my 04 Enermax 535w has bad caps and doesn't always start on the first push. I killed the onboard Marvell lan (see sig), but the good old realtek is still going strong..
 
I have an ancient P4 Northwood my son uses for a gaming with a AGP HD2600 card.
It is getting pretty unreliable but I think it is the old IDE hard drives I have been using in it. Got though 3 of them in the past couple years. He is getting a major upgrade at Christmas. Athlon II x2 3Ghz system.

But seriously I'm thinking of recycling the old P4 and using it for a virtual MiniMoog synth machine hooked to a MIDI keyboard.
Had a similar setup put together just to play around with. Hit a coolness factor of x10 with anyone that played with it. Have a spare 400w main amp and some 12" PA speakers. Gonna set all this up in the basement for a fun jam session. Will put on a blond wig and a shiny cape and do an imitation of Rick Wakeman. Should be funny! :D

OH, for you guys that don't know what a MiniMoog was; here is a free software synth version. You can get a USB to MIDI interface cable for like $5.00 now. A most cheap keyboards (Casio, etc) support MIDI.
IF you are a fan of the old fashion polyphonic sound; this was the machine that it started it in the early 70s. Playing around with it you will recognize a lot of the signature synth sounds you hear in the music of that era.
http://home.no/gunnare/downloads.htm
 
My boys (8 and 14) both use socket 754 3200+ Athlon systems with ATI 4850 video cards. Both systems are over 8 years old and still play almost any game they throw at them (WOW, Oblivion, Batman AA, etc.).
 
Hail to the good era of AMD processors.

I have a few 754 processors/mobos on the side in which I'm hanging onto.

Recently re-built two 939 single core processors with HP mobs in Compaq cases for my stepdad and running great!:D
 
I actually have been an AMD fan for about 15 years...now I'm jumping ship to an i7 based system...and I'm kinda sad about it
 
shanker said:
I actually have been an AMD fan for about 15 years...now I'm jumping ship to an i7 based system...and I'm kinda sad about it
Click to expand...

Well you have to make the correct decision of how your hard earned money is spent = totally understandable that you're sad but right now Intel has the fastest processors albeit it comes at a price while being more energy efficient.;)
 
I have an NF7S v2.0

Notorious for a single bulging capacitor that regulates AGP slot voltage. The cap costs about 50 cents and takes a few minutes to replace. IIRC it's the biggest cap around the AGP slot.
 
i used to be a AMD fan during the old FX cpus. They destroyed P4s then core 2 duo came out in 2007 it was all over. 5 years later AMD is still not up to par with intel.
 
I don't use this machine much at all anymore, but I've got either an AMD 2500+, or 2600+ still hooked up and ready to go on an EPoX mobo, (which I actually happen to love) running a nVidia GeForce 6600GT video card. I also had a 3200+, as well as a 1700+ but have since sold the 3200+ and given the 1700+ to a friend. All great running machines for their time.

I, too, am now running an i7 which I also happen to love. I also built a Phenom II x3 machine after my Intel because I was bored and wanted to see what the difference might be between the two... To be honest, for everyday use surfing the net, playing games etc... You really can't tell a difference... Except for the cost. Intel = ~$1,400+ dollars, AMD = ~$550.
 
SonicTron said:
I have an NF7S v2.0

Notorious for a single bulging capacitor that regulates AGP slot voltage. The cap costs about 50 cents and takes a few minutes to replace. IIRC it's the biggest cap around the AGP slot.
Click to expand...

Very common on AGP boards all of that era. I had a small money making business on the side repairing MBs and selling them. I would say 85% of the time, replacing the "dead" caps would fix the board. I used a higher grade Panasonic FS series cap as replacements.
Sometimes the damaged caps killed regulators which in turn would burn the board up, but most of the time replacing the caps made it a good board.
As clock speeds started to go higher the older type electrolytic caps were not reliable enough so the industry switched to a higher grade "solid" cap. This is still an electrolytic cap but it has a better overall design. Low end board still use the old type "can" electrolytic cap.
 
My old 2400+ mobile barton is still ticking along with a 900mhz overclock @ 1.76V with a gig of ram and my old trusty fx5700le still @ 430mhz, probably the most long lived and reliable system I've had to date :eek: built it fall 2004 and still sees some use. <3 my old Barton. it truly is a "workhorse" lol

Best part is I didn't get the peak performance numbers out of it till AFTER I retired it as my main rig XD

ole barton running as a multimonitor rig back when I had the bug many moons ago (2006):
7monitors.jpg



august of last year when I got the best performance out of it ever:
newrecord156893dmarks82.jpg
 
qb4ever said:
Best part is I didn't get the peak performance numbers out of it till AFTER I retired it as my main rig XD
Click to expand...

I never really push 'em till I don't really need them...retirement can be the most fun period of a system's life IMO.

I salute your trooper OP. This thread inspired me to seek uipgrades for my retro setup...fun stuff.
 
I'm gathering all my old stuff to make a FS thread here....so if ya'll are needing any high end socket 462 coolers, a really nice AGP card...or stuff out of the old gal...look for a thread in the classifieds soon
 
I still have a slot a system that works.

Probably get's used a couple times a week. Have had to replace the psu though.
 
teletran8 said:
lol can a P4 beat that in Super Pi 1m?
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Ha probably not. I found that Bartons were faster than the early northwood P4's and then the S754 and S939 were faster still. The only problem with the bartons was keeping them cool, they were little fireballs.
 
My first overclocker was a nf7s with a 1700+. I took it to 2.4 often. Then only a short while later it died completely no post. I then got the Epox board everyone was using at the time to OC. It overclocked just as well but it wasn't as stable.

Just earlier this month I upgraded from the same p/s I used back then an antec true power 430. And whats even more sad is I am using the same OS windows xp as i did back then.
 
My 18 year old Amiga 1200 is still ticking, lol. Sturdy lil bugger. ;P

Other than that I'm not really using any notably old computers atm. I used a Pentium 100 as a firewall for a while, but it went to the recycling center last year.
 
Kickus_assius said:
Ha probably not. I found that Bartons were faster than the early northwood P4's and then the S754 and S939 were faster still. The only problem with the bartons was keeping them cool, they were little fireballs.
Click to expand...

Used to bench back in the day against my buds 3.0c northwood running @ 3.7ghz on water and still pull ahead of him in most things :p would probably take around a 4ghz P4 or equivalent to be truly faster
 
Athlon 64 3200+ still running. It's been up 24/7 for YEARS (reboot occasionally due to power outages, etc.). Trusty old server :)
 
Build a new bulldozer system. At least it'll be the same speed you are used to. ;)
 
Harsh. I replaced it with an i7 875k in a mini-OTC case. Got the system out ou the classifieds here
 
I have Athlon XP 2500 and Athlon 64 X2 6000 on my desk both old in fact but still working well.(with Vista and 7 installed)
 
I'm still running a 754 system built in 2004, originally with an asus k8v mobo and 3000+ cpu. Later I bought a DFI lanparty board, got a 4000+ mobile chip, better PSU, ATI HD 4670 vid card agp. Which is faster than my wife's dual core laptop.
 
You can push the Newark on up a good bit. I built a system for my brother with that cpu and we have it at 2.8 ghz without breaking a sweat. They'll go to 3 ghz from what I have heard and seen.
 
I fired up my old NF7-S system not too long ago. Just laid the board down on an anti-static bag and ran it like that. Athlon XP-M 2400+, 2 GB Corsair XMS PC3200 and a X800XT/PE video card. At first it kept crashing but after replacing some bulging caps, it ran like a champ at 2.5 Ghz.I played a couple rounds of TF2 on it with max settings and it actually did OK. I ran that board with CPU/GPU water cooling from when I bought it new up to about 2.5 years ago. The radiator ran so long on that setup that corrosion ate through it and made a pin hole. That was a great rig.
 
AntiSocialMunky said:
For those that still have an original Athlon, can you super pi and compare against bulldozer? :D
Click to expand...

Point me to a download link and I'll bench my old Slot A / 800 beast. (I've not been an active computer tweaker in some time, so I have no idea what the latest rev of Super Pi happens to be.)

I've just recently begun assembling the piles of cases, CPUs, Mobos, etc. - that have spontaneously accumulated through the years - into 'e-mail for Granny' systems.
Other Pleistocene age computers available for benching include:
P3-733, 2.0 Barton, Mobile Barton @ ~2.3, and a positively anemic 1.7 P4 Celeron (The cache-less space heater!)

The Mobile Barton system has been in semi-continual use for ages as a game host, seed box, music player, etc.
 
i still have a brand new in the box nf7-s v2.0 was piece mealing it together as very limited funds permitted. ended up finding a better deal on a 754 board with a 3200+ was actually using it till about 2 months ago when i got a kick ass summer job and upgraded to top the line everything.

going from a 2.2 single core to a 3.3 hex core from a gig of ram to 16 from a 6200gt agp to a 580 gtx lightning extreme 3 gb model. just wow wow wow.

anyone want a still in the box new nf7-s v2.0 cheap ?
 
My Duron builds are still running most of them!
I had quite a few Athlon XP processors at the time, then Athlon 64 system gave up so I sold the cpu. Folks still pay ok for an older x2 4200 paid for the mobo on the new budget build.
 
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