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The Post Your Old/Retro Builds Thread

Format _C: said:
From my fuzzy memory I went from a Dell Pentium 90 -> HP Vectra Pentium 133 -> AMD K6/2 266 (I think) -> AMD Athlon 1GHZ (I bought the 1GHZ chip for bragging rights in high school LoL) -> Intel E5200 -> Intel i7 2600 - > Intel 4790K -> Ryzen 3700X and then on the same MB to a Ryzen 5900X and then I downgraded to an i7-8700 as my life sucks and I now live at an Extended Care Facility (AKA Nursing Home) a Dell Latitude 5511 with the i7-10850H is now my main PC for now :( damn my life sucks :(
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My oldest system was based around an Intel 486/DX2 66MHz with 8MB RAM and 530MB hard drive... Was a Packard Bell Axcel 251CD+ I think. Was complete garbage. For every day that outdated POS worked it was broken or unbootable for five, no exaggeration. Next system was a Compaq Deskpro tower with a 100MHz Pentium. Bought a 2x8MB kit from the shop it was bought at to upgrade it from 16MB to 32MB. Installed the RAM, powered it, and then there was magic smoke and no POST. The tech must've been drunk or something because he gave me 70ns parity SIMMs and not 60ns EDO. Since they didn't have another I was introduced to Cyrix CPUs in one of that shop's in-house brand PCs. Since Quake was on the menu, I couldn't upgrade off of that piece of shit fast enough. Finally ended up with a 200MHz Pentium MMX, but I ended up having to sell it to help the household out a couple years after getting the build settled. It wasn't until 3 and a half years later in the beginning of 2003 that I snagged a used 900MHz Thunderbird Athlon and an MSI K7T Turbo2 used at a local shop.

I could regurgitate that list, but let's just say I skipped Intel until Core 2 in 2008. The various Athlons, Athlon XPs, and Athlon 64s were fast enough. Until they weren't. Then it was 3 different platforms of Intel (775, 1155, then 2011v3). It wasn't until Ryzen that I've been rocking AMD again since the end of 2022.

It's good to be back on AMD. (y)
 
I traded off a Gigabyte 965p motherboard and an ATi Rage 128 Pro 32MB for an ASUS Striker Extreme today. We cross-ship in 3 days. He also had a Chaintech nForce 2 400 board but I'm hesitant to get anything Chaintech. I went with the safe bet :p
 
Mr. Bluntman said:
I traded off a Gigabyte 965p motherboard and an ATi Rage 128 Pro 32MB for an ASUS Striker Extreme today. We cross-ship in 3 days. He also had a Chaintech nForce 2 400 board but I'm hesitant to get anything Chaintech. I went with the safe bet :p
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Be warned: I have a Striker Extreme; the CPU cooler compatibility is shit due to that board cooler setup.
 
Mr. Bluntman said:
Noted. I planned on using a stock heatsink for now, at least, so hopefully that should fit without issue.
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Stock heatsink will be fine. Anything that goes straight up from the socket before going out will work. The bottom of the heatpipes in U-towers (Noctua U12, TRUE, maybe Hyper 212) don't fit.

Mine has the dumb Asus barrel shaped monstrosity designed for the board that didn't work very well (I got a complete setup for free by accident). The classic Zalman barrels do fit, I think.
 
Mr. Bluntman said:
I traded off a Gigabyte 965p motherboard and an ATi Rage 128 Pro 32MB for an ASUS Striker Extreme today. We cross-ship in 3 days. He also had a Chaintech nForce 2 400 board but I'm hesitant to get anything Chaintech. I went with the safe bet :p
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What are you planning to run on that sweet board?
 
Hey, I need some input from you guys who are more familiar with this old stuff.

I'm interested in getting into pentium 4 era, since I came across a cheap working board on eBay with no bids. It's an Asus p4s-x and apparently it uses a sis 645 chipset... Which is single channel. For the retro purity, is single channel okay? Did it really matter in this era? Could I keep overclocking my single channel until it doesn't matter? I want to experience this era as it truly is, and give the hardware it's best shot.
 
Haswellbeast said:
Hey, I need some input from you guys who are more familiar with this old stuff.

I'm interested in getting into pentium 4 era, since I came across a cheap working board on eBay with no bids. It's an Asus p4s-x and apparently it uses a sis 645 chipset... Which is single channel. For the retro purity, is single channel okay? Did it really matter in this era? Could I keep overclocking my single channel until it doesn't matter? I want to experience this era as it truly is, and give the hardware it's best shot.
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Nah it didn't matter much, but to be fair, any SIS chip was fucking shit. That one in particular didn't even support DDR400, and that's the reason there was no bids on that board. Even a VIA chip would of been better for FSB OC'ing.

If you really want to do 478 proud, and OC the snot out of it, get you a 865PE or 875P Intel chipset.
 
CAD4466HK said:
Nah it didn't matter much, but to be fair, any SIS chip was fucking shit. That one in particular didn't even support DDR400, and that's the reason there was no bids on that board. Even a VIA chip would of been better for FSB OC'ing.

If you really want to do 478 proud, and OC the snot out of it, get you a 865PE or 875P Intel chipset.
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Don't mind me saying this, but it seems like you have some pretty personal beef with SiS 😂
 
Yeah SIS chipsets are terrible, they were only made for one reason...to be cheap. Their performance is way below all the other chipsets, and since they have the memory controller in them you loose tons of performance. Any other chipset will be miles better.
 
Personally, top line of that era is a Barton core Athlon XP+ with a massive FSB OC on an nForce 2 board with an AGP lock and dual channel DDR400.

If you want to experience that era someday with an AGP Voodoo card, look for a true KT333 chipset board and enjoy as well.
 
III_Slyflyer_III said:
If you want to experience that era someday with an AGP Voodoo card, look for a true KT333 chipset board and enjoy as well.
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Eh, for 3dfx Voodoo Banshee or Voodoo3 AGP cards I'd say either an i440BX for Slot 1 systems or a VIA MVP4 for Super Socket 7 is the best fit. For a Voodoo5 AGP I think the best pairing is with a KT133/KT133A and 1-1.4GHz Athlon Thunderbird. Plus many KT133A boards have an ISA slot so you can pop in a Sound Blaster AWE card for the best DOS compatibility and support making the build even more versatile. You can't say that about boards with an Intel i915/i915-E or any later VIA chipsets.

It's more period correct to boot for those that care about that as I do.
 
Mr. Bluntman said:
Eh, for 3dfx Voodoo Banshee or Voodoo3 AGP cards I'd say either an i440BX for Slot 1 systems or a VIA MVP4 for Super Socket 7 is the best fit. For a Voodoo5 AGP I think the best pairing is with a KT133/KT133A and 1-1.4GHz Athlon Thunderbird. Plus many KT133A boards have an ISA slot so you can pop in a Sound Blaster AWE card for the best DOS compatibility and support making the build even more versatile. You can't say that about boards with an Intel i915/i915-E or any later VIA chipsets.

It's more period correct to boot for those that care about that as I do.
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I do agree for period correct, I have an ABit KT133A board myself that I run my Voodoo 3 3000 in... however, a KT333 with DDR and a Barton Core is perfect for a Voodoo 5 5500. It's pretty much the best you can get to run that card and ensure absolutely no CPU/Ram bottlenecks. I run my Voodoo 5 5500 on an Asus A7V333 with an XP2800+ and 1GB DDR 333 on Windows 98SE and it works flawlessly. The Voodoo 5 is 100% the limit in every game, and I love that.
 
I thought it was diminishing returns to the point of it not being worth running something faster than a 1.4GHz Thunderbird or Tualatin with a Voodoo5 5500 AGP?
 
CAD4466HK said:
Nah it didn't matter much, but to be fair, any SIS chip was fucking shit. That one in particular didn't even support DDR400, and that's the reason there was no bids on that board. Even a VIA chip would of been better for FSB OC'ing.

If you really want to do 478 proud, and OC the snot out of it, get you a 865PE or 875P Intel chipset.
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Well, I won the board for $5 free shipping. Now I need a cpu and ram... and an agp/pci gpu... How do I shop for 478 pentium 4s? (I might just ask chatgpt lol)
 
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Haswellbeast said:
How do I shop for 478 pentium 4s? (I might just ask chatgpt lol)
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It's pretty easy on fleabay. Just searched "Pentium 4 478" and tons of listings came up with Intel sSpec codes. Refine with the clockspeed in GHz (like "3.2"). You can use the Wikipedia P4 Page to match the codes to the CPU to check which architecture it is. Or, in reverse, find the sSpec of a model you really want (there were a lot of steppings for each model, this is the least fun option).

Here: 2 minutes and a Prescott 3.2E (1M/800FSB) SL7PN for under $11 shipped.
 
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Haswellbeast said:
Well, I won the board for $5 free shipping. Now I need a cpu and ram... and an agp/pci gpu... How do I shop for 478 pentium 4s? (I might just ask chatgpt lol)
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I have about 15 of them, not many real good ones, but enough to get you started. PM me.

The good ones are the ones with the 800MHz FSB called "C" P4's. These are Northwoods and have HT and so they show up as dual cores, they also have 512KB L2. They had 2.4 C (rare) 2.6, 2.8, 3.0, 3.2. They also had a Prescott "E" versions that ran hot as balls and had 1MB of L2. They also had them in 775 socket, Cedar Mill too. There were also some EE versions that had 2MB of L2.

The 533Mhz FSB "B" versions are ok and have 512KB L2 with no HT. 2.4-2.8
The 400MHz FSB "A" versions are the worse and only have 256KB L2 but some have 512KB. 1.8-2.4

Stay away from the Celerons of that era unless you just want to OC'em, they only have 128KB L2, but go all the way up to 2.8. Extremely terrible performance.
Celeron D's were repurposed 533MHz P4's with 256KB L2 and a Prescott core.

Stay away from the Willamette P4's also, they made some for 478 1.8 and 2.0 but the rest were on socket 423 that most boards used RAMBUS instead of DDR.

​

 
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CAD4466HK said:
I have about 15 of them, not many real good ones, but enough to get you started. PM me.

The good ones are the ones with the 800MHz FSB called "C" P4's. These are Northwoods and have HT and so they show up as dual cores, they also have 512KB L2. They had 2.4 C (rare) 2.6, 2.8, 3.0, 3.2. They also had a Prescott "E" versions that ran hot as balls and had 1MB of L2. They also had them in 775 socket, Cedar Mill too. There were also some EE versions that had 2MB of L2.

The 533Mhz FSB "B" versions are ok and have 512KB L2 with no HT. 2.4-2.8
The 400MHz FSB "A" versions are the worse and only have 256KB L2. 1.8-2.4

Stay away from the Celerons of that era unless you just want to OC'em, they only have 128KB L2, but go all the way up to 2.8. Extremely terrible performance.
Celeron D's were repurposed 533MHz P4's with 256KB L2 and a Prescott core.

Stay away from the Willamette P4's also, they made some for 478 1.8 and 2.0 but the rest were on socket 423 that most boards used RAMBUS instead of DDR.

​

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I don't think my board supports Prescott, and I also hear Prescott has lower ipc. I honestly just want the best one without overpaying for a collector's item. Thanks for the rundown though!
 
Haswellbeast said:
I don't think my board supports Prescott, and I also hear Prescott has lower ipc. I honestly just want the best one without overpaying for a collector's item. Thanks for the rundown though!
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Yeah your board only supports up to the Northwood 533Mhz FSB "B" P4's.
2.8GHz "B" 533MHz is the best you can run officially.
 
CAD4466HK said:
Yeah your board only supports up to the Northwood 533Mhz FSB "B" P4's.
2.8GHz "B" 533MHz is the best you can run officially.
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I found a cheap 3.0 prescott HT, sounds fun but I sadly can't run it. I found a 2.8c HT, but its 800 mhz fsb.. damn. How much am I playing my luck trying to run an 800 mhz fsb cpu in this cheapo board? Probably too much. Maybe I'll make an offer on a 3.06 HT 533 fsb chip... that the dude has listed for $45! (It makes sense though, only northwood HT with a 533 fsb.) Otherwise, I'll settle for a cheap non-HT 2.66ghz.

I lowballed the guy $25 for his 3.06
 
Haswellbeast said:
I found a cheap 3.0 prescott HT, sounds fun but I sadly can't run it. I found a 2.8c HT, but its 800 mhz fsb.. damn. How much am I playing my luck trying to run an 800 mhz fsb cpu in this cheapo board? Probably too much. Maybe I'll make an offer on a 3.06 HT 533 fsb chip... that the dude has listed for $45! (It makes sense though, only northwood HT with a 533 fsb.) Otherwise, I'll settle for a cheap non-HT 2.66ghz.

I lowballed the guy $25 for his 3.06
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I have a 2.6 B...
I have no Idea if the 800 would work in that board, but I would say no to paying that much for a non EE P4
 
I think its final, I found for $10 (I'm going to try and offer down a bit, but $10 is as much as every other P4 on ebay that isn't a golden chip) a 2.66 SL6S3, it is not HT, but it is a C revision with a 533 mhz FSB. Man, does the SiS board suck balls though, so many limitations! I guess that is how it is cheap... Well, I was warned, thanks guys!

The low end experience ala early 2000s lol
 
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Haswellbeast said:
I think its final, I found for $10 (I'm going to try and offer down a bit, but $10 is as much as every other P4 on ebay that isn't a golden chip) a 2.66 SL6S3, it is not HT, but it is a C revision with a 533 mhz FSB. Man, does the SiS board suck balls though, so many limitations! I guess that is how it is cheap... Well, I was warned, thanks guys!

The low end experience ala early 2000s lol
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That chip is compatible, and I have you know that I had some fun back in those days. I had a 3.0C that was a great OC'er and I still have my 3.2E.
The real fun was with 754 and 939 though. ;)
 
Mr. Bluntman said:
I thought it was diminishing returns to the point of it not being worth running something faster than a 1.4GHz Thunderbird or Tualatin with a Voodoo5 5500 AGP?
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Diminishing returns, sure, but if you already have the parts or snag a good dirt cheap deal on used parts, its worth it. Mostly just alot of fun to push it as far as it can go while gaming on it.

I originally ran my voodoo 5 5500 on my KT133A board, when I put it on the KT333, late generation glide games felt a bit better. I'd attribute that to the jump from SDR to DDR and being 1:1 with a Barton core Athlon CPU. The CPU speed itself probably didn't do much, but the overall config made it feel smoother overall.
 
III_Slyflyer_III said:
Diminishing returns, sure, but if you already have the parts or snag a good dirt cheap deal on used parts, its worth it. Mostly just alot of fun to push it as far as it can go while gaming on it.

I originally ran my voodoo 5 5500 on my KT133A board, when I put it on the KT333, late generation glide games felt a bit better. I'd attribute that to the jump from SDR to DDR and being 1:1 with a Barton core Athlon CPU. The CPU speed itself probably didn't do much, but the overall config made it feel smoother overall.
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I miss ma Bartons! Had a 2500+ and a 3000+.
That 2500+ served me well at 3200+ speeds spending hours and hours in BF2.
The 3000+ got it's core crushed when I came home drunk and decided I was going to replace the HSF and I put it on backwards smh, good times.
 
I have a 2800+ going in an A7N8X-E Deluxe (it's not my beloved but stolen ABit NF7-S, but it's good enough for now) coming next week in a trade for a spare GTX 295 dual PCB I don't use.

IMG_20250705_233821279.jpg

Going to recreate my summer 2004 AXP build that got stolen in a break-in that fall, but with the components I wanted to get instead of what I settled for. Thankfully I already have a GeForce 6800 GT AGP, because fuck buying one at current eBay prices...

My original build had a 2600+ Barton and an ASUS GeForce FX 5900 128MB with 2x256MB of DDR-333. Going to double up on the RAM to 2x512MB of DDR-400 as well as doing 2 250GB SATA drives in RAID0 instead of a single 120GB PATA drive, too.
 
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CAD4466HK said:
That 2500+ served me well at 3200+ speeds spending hours and hours in BF2.
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In the above mentioned Deebo'd NF7-S I also had a 2500+ in there that did 2.2GHz at 400MHz FSB all day every day on stock cooling as long as you used something as good as AS Ceramique 2 or Noctua NT-H1... If you used the Radio Shack silicone stuff or generic grey or white crap it'd BSOD. lol
 
Mr. Bluntman said:
I have a 2800+ going in an A7N8X-E Deluxe (it's not my beloved and lost ABit NF7-S, but it's good enough for now) coming next week in a trade for a spare GTX 295 dual PCB I don't use.

View attachment 739935

Going to recreate my summer 2004 AXP build that got stolen in a break-in that fall, but with the components I wanted to get instead of what I settled for. Thankfully I already have a GeForce 6800 GT AGP, because fuck buying one at current eBay prices...

My original build had a 2600+ Barton and an ASUS GeForce FX 5900 128MB with 2x256MB of DDR-333. Going to double up on the RAM to 2x512MB of DDR-400 as well as doing 2 250GB SATA drives in RAID0 instead of a single 120GB PATA drive, too.
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I have a couple of XP's left.

20250706_005058.jpg
 
Mr. Bluntman said:
In the above mentioned Deebo'd NF7-S I also had a 2500+ in there that did 2.2GHz at 400MHz FSB all day every day on stock cooling as long as you used something as good as AS Ceramique 2 or Noctua NT-H1... If you used the Radio Shack silicone stuff or generic grey or white crap it'd BSOD. lol
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I think used Arctic Alumina Ceramic on that little bastard and everything else lol.
 
Got this in the mail yesterday in trade for an ATi Rage 128 Pro 32MB AGP and a Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3R with a Core 2 Quad Q6600:

IMG_20250708_105443715_AE.jpg

I think this is going to either be paired with a pair of 7900 GTX 512s or 9800 GTs. Not sure yet. But yeah, not a bad trade if you ask me. Came with a QX6700 too. Too bad all the QX6800s on eBay are in China and cost $$$...
 
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