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What was YOUR biggest system performance jump ever?

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funnyperson1 said:
I take back my earlier declaration...you sir are the winner! I love how your hdd capacity went up by a factor of 1,000.
Click to expand...
Biggest difference for me was the number of FPS I got in Solitaire, upon completing a game the time for the cards to fly off of the screen one by one went from a few minutes to the blink of an eye.

However, that, coupled with a bubblejet printer got my through the first few years of school, so I can't complain.
 
My first computer was a 386, then a 486, then a few P1s. Then I got a K6-2 300MHz, and then replaced that with a K6-3 350MHz. From there I got a Duron 1.2GHz, then a A64 3000+ 1.8GHz (OCed to 2.43), and here I am at my current rig.
 
BEFORE
Pentium 4 2.8
1Gig ddr
ATi 64bit video card
Dell mother board

AFTER
my first custom build
Intel E6600 @3.6
2gig Crucial Ballistix DDR2 PC1000
EVGA 680i mother board
EVGA 8800GTX

the difference between the two was light and day. I never saw that big of a difference from PC to PC. Thanx Hey_its_Cole for getting me hooked.
 
Pentium II 233 with 128mb and Nvidia 16mb video (can't remember the exact model right this second) to a AMD Duron 950 with 256mb and GeForce 2 GTS 32mb. Really made a huge difference in playing and everything else.

The next jump was about the same: From the AMD 950 system to an AMD 2500+ Barton with 512 mb and ATI 9800 non-pro. It was pretty big jump for gaming.
 
my dad went from a 366mhz p2 laptop with 96mb ram to a dell e1705 (1.66ghz core duo, x1400, 1gb ram). he still didn't notice a difference.. :shrug:
 
I upgraded from a very slow cyrix to a tbird 1.4gig system :D it was the best choice i've made in the computing world, trust me :p
although i cant exactly remember the speed of the cyrix, i know it was slow and made me angry alot :p and it was a pain in the A$$

Long live the future of computing :beer: and may all your upgrades be fine :attn:
 
Before IBM Aptiva Pentium 333MHz 32mb RAM Onboard Video 6GB HDD
to
Dell 8100 Pentium 4 1.8GHz 512mb Rambus Ram w/ Geforce 4 40GB HDD (my old system looked like an antique junk compared to this)
to
Custom built Pentium 4 3.4 on Prometia 1gb Ram w/ nVidia 5900 200GB HDD
 
366mhz celeron
32mb pc66 ram
integrated ati rage graphics
6.4mb hdd
32x cdrom
all built by ultra


built my own rig
3.0 northwood @ 3.6
1gb ddr ram
80gig hdd
gainward 5900 golden sample modded to 5950u

Huge jump in everything. Also went from win98 to xp pro. I'm still running the northy rig as my main, but a c2d upgrade is coming this summer.
 
Going from a P3 500mhz, 328mb PC100, tnt2 riva 16mb to a 1.2 ghz Tbird, 512mb PC2100, and a Geforce 2 GTS 64mb.
 
David said:
My dad went from a 486DX2-66/8MB/560MB/1MB VGA system to a K6-2-350/64MB/6.4GB/8MB VGA system. Massive jump.
Click to expand...

I had a similar major jump in December, 2000:

486DX at 75 mhz with 20 MB of RAM and 1 MB Cirrus Logic 2D accelerated VGA

to

Soyo SY-5EMA+ motherboard with K6-2 450 mhz, 128 MB of Kingston ValueRAM PC133 SDRAM, Maxtor 13 GB 7,200 RPM HDD, a Trident 9680 2D PCI video card, which is so 1990s! LOL! Also a Deer 250W PSU. But shortly after, popped in a SiS 6326 8 MB video card, but probably not until early 2001.

and a SoundBlaster Audio PCI 128 model ES1373.

That was without a doubt, a major jump, I was able to enjoy Duke Nukem with the
resolution being at least 640x480, if not 800x600 and excellent MIDI!

In 1999 and before summer, 2000, the 486 system had only a 486SX at 25 mhz and 8 MB of RAM. In November, 1999, I purchased a Maxtor 13 GB 7,200 RPM HDD and sometimes used it with the 486 system, Windows 95 ended up booting roughly as fast as with a Pentium I!

In summer, 2000, probably August, I found a 486DX4 100 lying around and pushed in into my upgrade socket! But it was underclocked to 75 mhz, because the bus was 25 mhz instead of 33 mhz. Only minorly underclocked.
Games definitely were faster, but the Duke Nukem performance still sucked, still was struggling at only 320x240! Thus it was time for me to get at least a Pentium I, but I have the following story:

I actually had a Pentium 100 PC system given to me by another student, thus I bought SoundBlaster Audio PCI 128 model ES1373 sound card and got 32 MB of EDO RAM, because I took some out to put into my family's IBM Aptiva, which is a Pentium 133 mhz with 16 MB of RAM, thus it was upgraded to a healthy 48 MB of EDO RAM.

The Pentium 100 system in my room would do nothing except for repeatedly bleeping at me with only one SIMM RAM module, thus two were required! SIMM slots require RAM to be installed in pairs! The old school times.

But euphoria was short lived, a staff decided to confiscate it like I just gotten a Corvette and was caught doing 160 MPH by a state trooper!

A staff said that the student that owned it requires his parents' permission to give it to me and thus took it away from me.

I literally was crying and p***ed! :cry: :mad:

I had to hassle staff just to get my own motherboard, processor and RAM, because of the incident.

I was majorly lucky that I gotten a PC upgrade just 1 month later!

Also, I gotten a better processor and RAM, just from the incident.

The incident triggered my pressuring people to help me get a better PC, I couldn't stand my 486 system anymore, because almost everyone else had a better PC than I did!

On I believe, April 25, 2001, I gotten a Voodoo 3 3000 AGP video card, because I couldn't stand the SiS 6326, I would get squares and missing graphics in some of my Nintendo 64 games, I was emulating a Nintendo 64 on my PC. Also, I wanted to try out UltraHLE.

But, on June 28, 2001, gotten another major PC upgrade, which was the following:

Soyo SY-K7VTA-B motherboard with an Athlon T-bird 900 mhz processor.

I still used the same RAM, HDD and PSU. I popped in the Voodoo 3 3000 AGP video card, too.

I tested Project64 1.0 or 1.1 to confirm the speed increase and Goldeneye 007 definitely was faster than before, but still far from perfect!

But, I discovered that it was lock up crashing all of the time when idle!
I would always come back to see it petrified! :eek:

It usually would lock up when at the screen saver and never wake up! :eek: :cry:

It also hard locked when just reading the AVG documentation, when AVG was a new kid on the block. :cry: :mad:

Thus I prepared to send the motherboard and processor back!

Then I decided to try again, because the motherboard just seemed innocent, it would be fine then it freezes!

It hard locked again, thus I disassembled again and drooled on the motherboard. LOL. Because I was preparing to send the motherboard and processor back!

But on July 8, 2001, when at my family's house, I hopped on to the internet, even with only a Pentium 133 and a 28.8 K modem and went to the Soyo web site. I literally found the cause and a solution:

Soyo literally found out and thus admitted that the BIOS is buggy, it wasn't managing the auto Vcore properly, the Vcore was too high, at 1.82V, according to the motherboard sensor. It actually appears that overvolting a non-OC'ed processor actually causes it to crash!

It told me to change the CPU Vcore Select option to -0.025V.
When I did, it never crashed again!

Thus I definitely didn't completely give up and reassembled it. After I did, even when I was running it for more than 1 hour, it still was going! I had Goldeneye 007 sitting in one place on a level and I still heard the music playing even after the 1 hour mark! Horray, no more crashes!

Thus, the tables have turned, my PC was better than all of the other PCs that I knew of where I was at the time!

In 2001 and 2002, my PC was the king daddy of gaming PCs at where I lived.

That motherboard and processor is still going strong, despite I drooled on the motherboard! LOL!

The Soyo SY-K7VTA-B motherboard is a tough thing.
 
Last edited:
My biggest jump. PII 400Mhz to a AMD2400+.

Specs of the 400Mhz:
Slot1 PII
256megs of RAM
CR ROM
onboard video
monitor/keyboard (didn't have a mouse that fit it.)
oh and Inever inserted it in a case, wasn't worth it.

The 2400+ was modern for it's time. I even had a mouse and HD for it. :santa:

Just to note. The 400 was a spare system I had, that replaced my deceased 900Mhz T-brid. And I did not have a HD that fit it. Every hard drive I had would not detect on it. Dang ECS board. So it was run via a Linux live CD. It was my rig for a couple of months like that.
 
I started with a laptop with 1.9ghz, 256mb ram 40gb hdd and crappy onboard video to a 3.6ghz prescott, 1gb of uber fast ram, a raptor, and an x700 pro. that was a huge difference (well not really for the video ;)). Hopefully i'll be getting new core 2 set up.
 
On second thought, my biggest system performance jump was actually from a Packard Bell 386SX-16 to a custom 486DX2-66 in 1996. The 386SX was no faster then a similarly clocked 286, but the 486 was WAY faster plus it had internal cache, an internal math chip, faster motherboard RAM, and the clock speed was more then quadrupled over the lousy Packard Hell. Damn I really liked that system back in the day, especially that chip! The RAM more then tripled from 5 MB to 16 MB, and the hard drive capacity increased more then 20 times, going from a puny 40 MB to a 850 MB that could easily hold all of my DOS software. I was really stoked that summer!
 
I went from a 286 to a PII 266mhz with a Voodoo II 3d accelerator card and a sound blaster audio card. I still have the system, it's dead at the moment though. I havent sat down to figure out why yet.

It was great, the 286 had an external 2400bps modem and the PII had an internal 14.4bps modem. Man do i miss the old BBS's.
 
Biggest (and only) system jump I had was from a

intel celeron 950mhz
256mb sdram (scavenged from another computer)
6gig hard disk
GeForece FX5200 64bit (dont remember which brand)
Windows XP Home Edition

to
 
The computers I have used have progressed as follows....

486 Compaq... Don't really remember much about it.
->
233PII AT/ATX PCChipps Mobo w/64MB mem 6Gb HDD
-->
Tbird 1.4GHz, 256MB mem, 20GB HDD, GeForce2MX400
--->
upgrade to GeForce4 Ti4400 *that was a great day*
---->
*current PC sans 9800Pro*
---->
upgrade to 9800Pro (another great day, and a great gift, probably the most shocked i have ever been on a christmas morn')
----> My Future Rig.
C2D 6400
2GB Mem
8800GTS
150GB Raptor (XP/ Kubuntu Dual boot *if i can get the Jmicron thing to work*)
 
i'm not sure what i'd say is my biggest.

tandy 1000 to tandy sensation to pentium 120mhz to pentium II 400mhz to pentium 4 1.8ghz to athlon64 4000+ to pentium d 805 to xeon 3050...

I think the most memorable for me was the p4 1.8ghz to a64 4000+...mainly because my p4 1.8 system cost me ~$500 when i was a freshman in college and the a64 system cost me $2k+ as a senior
 
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