Retro AMD

I'd like some input about what you guys would consider as to be retro as far as PC hardware goes.

Got only s939 DFI LanParty (woot my fav board ever) and M4A785G for sAM2+. Both are good boards, never seen chilled temps and may keep it that way even though I always get that stupid itch.

So I do have an Opteron 170 http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/K8/AMD-Dual-Core Opteron 170 - OSA170DAA6CD (OSA170CDBOX).html
Dual core Denmark. No idea how it'll clock up, it's never been posted up yet.

Or AM2+ I have a 6000+ and 6400+ and 3400+ and 3500+ ect... or should I find a Phenom I Agena and call that retro enough. I'd like to stay cheap as heck on the Cpu if needing to buy one.

Going to stuff this into a TJ07 case. A couple of Samsung SSDs so it can be snappy.

8GB GEIL DDR2-800 and I'm not sure what DDR1 I have. G Skill I thinks....

Going to likely use my liquid cooled GTX 480 BUT do have 8800 Ultras at my brother house. Need advice there. Those Ultras are Ultra HOT and Ultra OLD! Maybe stick with the 480 huh?

My case is not really retro, but that's what I have and I like it, but how can I make it look retro? I've never done decals or anything like that. Used to play CSS and HL2 a lot. UT and so on. What would be a cool scheme? Deep Metallic Blue paint I was thinking, but I'm open to suggestions. There's tons of case surface area to work with!!!

Dunno if I, myself, would call 939 retro....But I'm still running a 939 Opty 180 as my power powerful, main, PC....lol

For myself, I use a PowerMac G5 for video and audio work, which I call retro. But Mac's go retro quickly.

PC's seem to get a lot more life out of them, I would call my backup PC, the AMD Thunderbird, retro. My Socket 7 K6 300MHz Vintage, and my 286-486 computers museum pieces!

Ha! My cousin brought home an old computer somebody threw away that still works, it's a socket 7 and I told him it belonged in a museum.

He also picked up a 939 that I really want to try to get working. I never got to play around with stuff back then.

Other than that I have an AM2 6000+ that I've tweaked a little, not much. I don't have much of a board. I accidentally destroyed a Sempy 145 I replaced it with, and if I had known back then I would have kept that thing and I'd have some fun with it now on my AM3 board.

I find it fun to go back and mess with old tech, not just stopping at PC tech, but anything old interests me.

First computer my family ever had was a 386, an HP Vectra QS/16, ran DOS 3.3. I suppose that's why I enjoy the old PC tech so much.

Anywho, I like to see my PC as "old school", since I can still run newer hardware in it (like the GTX 660 OC I just upgraded to), even if it is semi-pointless with how outdated and slow the CPU is compared to it! It still plays the games I throw at it, even am able to run Wolfenstein TNO, but only plays well at 1080P, which forced me to buy a new 21.5" LCD so I'm not hogging the TV (the 55" flatscreen is more fun though!)

Celeron_Phreak said:

I find it fun to go back and mess with old tech, not just stopping at PC tech, but anything old interests me.

First computer my family ever had was a 386, an HP Vectra QS/16, ran DOS 3.3. I suppose that's why I enjoy the old PC tech so much.

Anywho, I like to see my PC as "old school", since I can still run newer hardware in it (like the GTX 660 OC I just upgraded to), even if it is semi-pointless with how outdated and slow the CPU is compared to it! It still plays the games I throw at it, even am able to run Wolfenstein TNO, but only plays well at 1080P, which forced me to buy a new 21.5" LCD so I'm not hogging the TV (the 55" flatscreen is more fun though!)

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Man I was eyeballin 1080P LED TVs for a monitor. I have a 23" that cost maybe 150 bucks locally. For 100$ more, I can get a cheapy LED 40". Have been contemplating that for some time now. http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=8754596&CatId=5989 I don't like the 8ms response, but this is just an example for cheapy 1080P large monitors.

I had $20 of bestbuy rewards, so I put that towards the ASUS I have in my sig, which dropped the price of it to about $112 with tax. I haven't had much problems with the response time of 5ms, although I would love something faster. Not sure if I have any idea what to expect from anything faster than 5ms. The last time I shopped for LCDs, before this, 5ms was the fastest available.

The TV I have isn't an LED, but I don't have any complaints. Gaming on the big screen is fun!

Went with LED for the power savings and also for the heat. My 47" was just a heat pump. nice in the winter, not so nice in the summer. We don't have central air so the window units fought with the darn thing.

I don't mind the warmth of our 55" LCD, it's still a fraction of the heat we were getting from the 32" sony trinitron CRT we had before! lol, that was a space heater and a TV combo unit!

I hate DFI 939 boards. Almost all have cold bug not much below 0*C. On one blew up vrm without any special reason. One wasn't used for 2 months and when I wanted to bench it, I found out it's dead just from sitting in the box for 2 months. Last 2 had issues with memory compatibility regardless of used BIOS ( I was checking couple of betas for Samsung, Winbond etc ).
If you make it work good then DFI made one of the best 939 board series but I just wasted too much time without any good results and have only bad memories. For some reason 754 boards were working fine and I still have one in good condition.
So I have about 20 untested 939 chips and can't find good board to make any reasonable results. I also had 2x ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe. Both in some mysterious way died.

8800 Ultra will be the same as GTX480. Both run hot but as far as are stable I wouldn't worry about it ... unless you want to put it with lot of other stuff into some smaller case.

One of my working retro AMD setups is Athlon 800MHz Slot A and almost new AOpen mobo ( used only for couple of benchmarks ). It's almost not overclocking but I got it for about $15 so was still worth it.

I hate DFI 939 boards. Almost all have cold bug not much below 0*C

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It's not the board with the cold bug, it's the processors. From s754 - AM2, that including s939 processors are all cold bugged. However I did find a s754 cpu that liked the cold weather a bit. Still looking for a s939 cpu that likes cold yet....

3100+ Paris core liked LN2, hit 3200mhz 356 bus frequency. http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=2606835
http://hwbot.org/submission/2333973...ency_sempron_64_3100_(s754_paris)_3208.47_mhz

So I have about 20 untested 939 chips and can't find good board to make any reasonable results.

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Chilled water. Find one that keeps on clocking, try a Peltier under the waterblock to test how it acts around 0 deg. If the cpu stays running, then you move to Dice and hope you can controll cpu temps at or around 0 or perhaps just under if that particular processor likes it.

But by all means, find a board. s939 is a cpu CBB thingy, not the boards.

ShrimpBrime said:

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It's not the board with the cold bug, it's the processors. From s754 - AM2, that including s939 processors are all cold bugged. However I did find a s754 cpu that liked the cold weather a bit. Still looking for a s939 cpu that likes cold yet....

3100+ Paris core liked LN2, hit 3200mhz 356 bus frequency. http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=2606835
http://hwbot.org/submission/2333973...ency_sempron_64_3100_(s754_paris)_3208.47_mhz
Chilled water. Find one that keeps on clocking, try a Peltier under the waterblock to test how it acts around 0 deg. If the cpu stays running, then you move to Dice and hope you can controll cpu temps at or around 0 or perhaps just under if that particular processor likes it.

But by all means, find a board. s939 is a cpu CBB thingy, not the boards.

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939 DFI boards had cold bugs. You could cheat them by about 15*C but nothing else. I was benching the same CPUs on ASUS board but there were some other limits. When I put them on DFI then I couldn't run on cold or all was freezing or didn't want to boot at all. I had to keep temps not lower than -10*C.
I know there were cold bugs on CPUs but benching them on some DFI was pain. I had only one DFI which could boot at -40*C and I killed it.

http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=2171261
this one was on ASUS board which was hitting FSB wall, the same CPU on DFI couldn't make 3GHz+ even though max FSB was higher but on lower CPU ratio

Nice. A cold bug to me is anything that doesnt like a full ln2 pot. But the DFI board I have isnt getting frozen any time soon. Gonna keep this one in good running condition.

Celeron_Phreak said:

Dunno if I, myself, would call 939 retro....But I'm still running a 939 Opty 180 as my power powerful, main, PC....lol

For myself, I use a PowerMac G5 for video and audio work, which I call retro. But Mac's go retro quickly.

PC's seem to get a lot more life out of them, I would call my backup PC, the AMD Thunderbird, retro. My Socket 7 K6 300MHz Vintage, and my 286-486 computers museum pieces!

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PC's get a lot more life out of them? Your G5 could be over 10 years old since they were introduced in 2003. I call that a pretty good usable lifespan. G5's are still potent machines. I have a few myself including a watercooled beast.

939 and AM2 is retro? Does that mean I am a hipster for using them still?

I could see 462 or Socket 7 being called retro but 939/940/AM2 is still in use by a ton of people/businesses.

Adragontattoo said:

939 and AM2 is retro? Does that mean I am a hipster for using them still?

I could see 462 or Socket 7 being called retro but 939/940/AM2 is still in use by a ton of people/businesses.

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Running AM2 or 939 isn't retro? Most games are asking for quad cores and bigger now, I don't think there are any AM2 or 939 quads out there....

ShrimpBrime said:

Running AM2 or 939 isn't retro? Most games are asking for quad cores and bigger now, I don't think there are any AM2 or 939 quads out there....

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Yeah, I definitely think socket 939 is retro now, first came out in 2004. AM2 is probably retro now too, being pre-tri core and pre-quad core, and came out in 2006.

Quad cores didn't come out until socket AM2+ on the AMD side. So, yeah, 939 and AM2 were just dual cores and single cores.

ShrimpBrime said:

Running AM2 or 939 isn't retro? Most games are asking for quad cores and bigger now, I don't think there are any AM2 or 939 quads out there....

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http://www.cpu-world.com/Sockets/Socket AM2.html

Socket AM2 is a socket for high-performance and budget desktop microprocessors. The socket was officially introduced on May 23, 2006. On that day AMD released new Athlon 64 X2 5000+ and Athlon 64 FX FX-62 microprocessors, and announced complete lineup of Athlon 64, Athlon 64 X2 and Sempron processors for socket AM2. These were not the first socket AM2 processors, though. The first socket AM2 microprocessors were Energy efficient Athlon 64, Athlon 64 X2 and Semprons - they were introduced a week earlier, on May 16, 2006.
The socket AM2 works with single, dual, triple and quad-core desktop processors with frequencies up to 3.2 GHz. The socket supports dual-channel DDR2 SDRAM memory controller and one 1000 MHz HyperTransport link. The Socket AM2 is not the latest socket for desktop AMD microprocessors. The latest socket for desktop AMD CPUs, Socket AM2+, supports faster HyperTransport link, up to 2.6 GHz, and offers separate power planes for the CPU core and integrated memory controller. The socket AM2+ is compatible with socket AM2, that is socket AM2+ processors can be used in socket AM2, and vice versa.

A fun retro setup to me would be an NF7-S and a mobile Barton

Even a high clocked P3 setup would fun to tool around with

Adragontattoo said:

http://www.cpu-world.com/Sockets/Socket AM2.html

Socket AM2 is a socket for high-performance and budget desktop microprocessors. The socket was officially introduced on May 23, 2006. On that day AMD released new Athlon 64 X2 5000+ and Athlon 64 FX FX-62 microprocessors, and announced complete lineup of Athlon 64, Athlon 64 X2 and Sempron processors for socket AM2. These were not the first socket AM2 processors, though. The first socket AM2 microprocessors were Energy efficient Athlon 64, Athlon 64 X2 and Semprons - they were introduced a week earlier, on May 16, 2006.
The socket AM2 works with single, dual, triple and quad-core desktop processors with frequencies up to 3.2 GHz. The socket supports dual-channel DDR2 SDRAM memory controller and one 1000 MHz HyperTransport link. The Socket AM2 is not the latest socket for desktop AMD microprocessors. The latest socket for desktop AMD CPUs, Socket AM2+, supports faster HyperTransport link, up to 2.6 GHz, and offers separate power planes for the CPU core and integrated memory controller. The socket AM2+ is compatible with socket AM2, that is socket AM2+ processors can be used in socket AM2, and vice versa.

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Ah yes, the 65nm stuff on AM2+. So old the agena core is in comparison to todays standards. At least so I'd think.

OK lemme put it like this. I imagine running a dual core probably socket 939 or AM2 not AM2+ quad core or tri core. I have played with FX-62. For it's time, perhaps it was performance, but core 2 quads just killed it and AMD tried to respond with dual socket FX-74 for example.

Would this be retro? --> socket C32 1207 LGA by AMD right? FX-74 quad core machine.

this cpu http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/K8/AMD-Athlon 64 FX-74 - ADAFX74GAA6DI (ADAFX74DIBOX).html

No I don't have this C32 1207. I wish!!

You know what. I blew up an old AsRock dual sata II AMD board(I think that was the name of it). It had a riser card for AM2 processors as well. So it was upgrade-able from s939 to AM2 with the riser and I killed that board with a volt mod water cooling and it killed my FX-55 at the same time. A sad day