Remember when AMD was on top??

[ColinLTT]

 

Do you remember way, way back, when AMD and Intel were trading punches in the CPU battle? We thought it would be neat to go back, waaay back, and build the sort of machine I would have built back in the day - so we did!
 

 

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Check out the Wayback Machine: https://archive.org/web/

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

Oh my lord I actually have a working SyncMaster 740N laying around. Would you like another one? /s Get that surround goodness with two 5:4 displays.

[HanZie82]

I mean theres only 1 brand that can sport having the first dual core CPU or even the first 64bit one.

When a Athlon 2600 with an ATI 2600 was still awesome.

 

 

[PairedPrototype]

I remember those OCZ sticks! Not quite the same ones, but I still have an OCZ stick Just this one left I think now.

[DildorTheDecent]

37 minutes ago, PairedPrototype said:

Just this one left I think now.

The rest are dead aren't they?

[Results45]

I find this interesting........

 

Nvidia back in 2005 ~ GT 6800XT

AMD back in 2007 ~ Radeon HD 3000 Series

 

Nvidia in 2020 ~ RTX 3000 Series

AMD in 2020 ~ RX 6800XT

[TubbyGold]

Brings back good memories. Had the same setup many years ago.

 

Now i feel like digging out my old PC, to see what i had installed when work had me giving up on my tech hobby.

 

 

[Roso]

AMD was faster then Intel even before Athlon.

AMDs i486DX4-120MHz was TOP in it's time,

AMDs k6-233 also was better then what Intel had to offer at that time,

same was true for K6-3-450

[Jazziam]

When you fired up FEAR it reminded me of my friends brother who built a PC around this time (2004/2005) and it was also a AMD Athlon 64 Duel Core. I also remember he had this weird Gigabyte Dual Processor SLI Card (6600GT) - https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/gigabyte-6600-gt-3d1.b1079.

 

Seeing FEAR and Doom 3 running super smooth on that setup was absolutely mind blowing....

[SolarNova]

8 hours ago, ColinLTT said:

 

Do you remember way, way back, when AMD and Intel were trading punches in the CPU battle? We thought it would be neat to go back, waaay back, and build the sort of machine I would have built back in the day - so we did!
 

 

~SNIP~

 

You missed out what sound system people used back then. You would have had to have had a soundcard, and a set of speakers. Most certainly would have been a Creative Soundblaster or some kind, and likely a Logitech speaker set. (I still use a Z5500 system, they came out in 2005)

 

That monitor though, any1 building a system like that back then would have at least a moderately good CRT still, aint nobody back then buying a POS '1st' generation LCD Monitor if they were that into computers.

 

GPU was a good example of how much of a rippoff modern prices are, thanks for that.

 

That CPU though, damn expensive for those 'new tech dual cores'. I honestly cant remember what i was running back then, i know a few years later (2007) i was running a QX6850 with 2x GTX 8800.

 

I half expected you guys to find a BTX case, just to be really different vs today :P

 

Fun fact, those peripherals were near identical to what i had, in fact i had them for a VERY long time, up until about a year ago I was still using a G15 v2 keyboard, the wire eventually failed otherwise i'd still be using it. I may end up repairing it one day as im not to impressed with the software on my current EVGA Z10 (software is total utter garbage)

 

For mouse i had a G5, used it till i wore out the pads, then got a 1st gen MadCatz RAT7 MMO, used that till i wore those pads out and the wire failed. Now im using a MSI Clutch Gm70, which i had to get replaced once, then on the 'new' one had to replace the main switches after a few months as they started double clicking (again).

Honestly not impressed with my current peripherals..feels like a waste to replace them so quickly though >.<

 

[TheCoverUp]

um....these vid titles are giving out mixed messages...!

Edit: now I get it.

[Luscious]

My three favorite FPS games from that period - Far Cry, HL2 and Doom 3 - many fun hours and good memories. I actually got the CD version of Far Cry that allowed you to turn on God Mode, something that you couldn't do on the Steam copy of the game. Playing sniper from the sky was a laugh, but the way they did all that tropical scenery really was awesome for the time. Far Cry 2 and later just didn't have the same mystique the original managed to do.

 

I remember reading about the 6800 Ultra on Toms Hardware when they released it. That card at the time was what the 3090 is today - a halo product oozing with performance. SLI may be on the way out but it wasn't that long ago where 4-way 980Ti's would scale performance linearly across the board. Sadly those days are gone although I still have my quad-SLI rig running thanks to Windows 7 and a SLI friendly driver set.

[TheCoverUp]

I don't know what I hate more...my pc or that this 15 year old pc is better than my pc.

[Letgomyleghoe.]

1 minute ago, TheCoverUp said:

I don't know what I hate more...my pc or that this 15 year old pc is better than my pc.

Seems like were both in the same spot.

[Sarra]

I had a system very similar to this one, except I had two 6600GT's, and I only had 512MB of DDR.

 

That 512MB of DDR was special.

 

It ran at more than double it's rated speed, with almost stock timings. The memory bandwidth was nuts on it... I could run it 1:1 with the HT Bus.

 

I had one of those RAM sticks still, the second died many years ago. I'm pretty shocked the second stick didn't die as well. And yeah, it was some of the very first GEIL RAM that they ever made. From what I can tell, they were improperly binned, so they could run stupid insane speeds, but only if you ordered it within a 2-3 week period.

[Rarity]

wanted that zalman cooler back then so bad , lol , but ended getting the thermalright xp120..

 

[the99er]

I remember this time.  This was what I upgraded to after my computer was stolen. And then switched to intel after that.

[RejZoR]

A bit disappointing they didn't fit in Radeon X1800 or something...

[SPARTAN VI]

This was a nice stroll down memory lane. I'm guessing Linus and I both graduated HS around 2004-2005, got jobs and started to take computer hardware much much more seriously. I still have my original Athlon 64 3200+ (looks like I sold the 3700+), CNPS7000, EVGA 7800 GT (and later 7950 GT OC, RIP BFG), original 1GB OCZ Platinum DDR400 (wow, many chrome), but no dice on the original ABIT A8N-SLI (RIP ABIT). This was all an upgrade from my high school Pentium 4 3.0E (Prescott) + Radeon 9800 Pro build I got as a grad present. 

 

[derr12]

Ahem, the real money was in an opteron 165 and dfi lanparty motherboard.  For shame linus!

[ahuckphin]

When I watched a teaser for this video from the YouTube community, I thought wayback machine was finding drivers with the wayback machine. Was not expecting this. Great video nonetheless. 

[Beerzerker]

OCZ made good RAM too - Some of what they made did really well.
It is true alot of it was lesser (Crap) sticks but like the rest they also had some sticks that were as good as anything else. Have a few sets of OCZ DDR here that does as well as anything I've got from other makes. If you know what to look for with DDR you can spot them with ease.

The heatsinks shown (He was banging on stuff with) are also good, have at least one set with those heatsinks (PC4400 sticks) and they run cool, esp with active cooling on them once volted up.
I even have a set that's rated for 3.2v's stock (Unbinned Winbond BH-5 sticks) that can handle up to and even over 4.0v's with active cooling on them, can run insanely tight timings too no prob.

 

And I'm sorry, the A8N32 SLI Deluxe was the top board of the Asus lineup at the time and I've got one that can run whatever I set in it really well. It's like anything else, you set it up right, do the tweaks properly and it will just GO.
The CPU cooler he used is another thing I've got and I even have the all copper version of it instead of the aluminum version he used. Both are good coolers but the all copper cooler of course is the better of the two.

 

14 hours ago, derr12 said:

Ahem, the real money was in an opteron 165 and dfi lanparty motherboard.  For shame linus!

Now THIS was the money and performance - You coudn't do better than this combo for the money and yes, I have all that too including a pair of SLI-DR's and even an Expert variant of a DFI, not to mention a hard to find CFX-3200 board.
In fact I own the WR for several bench results with a 165 outright including highest CPU speed achieved, validated with CPU-Z.
Bones`s CPU Frequency score: 3514.75 mhz with a Opteron 165
Bones`s SuperPi - 32M score: 21min 54sec 141ms with a Opteron 165
Bones`s wPrime - 1024m score: 12min 10sec 765ms with a Opteron 165

As luck would have it I no longer have the chip, as of just yesterday it has a new owner but still runs as well as it ever did.

[RasmusDC]

were AMD really on top... 

 

i do know that the Netburst achitecture on Intels side was a bust, so AMD got on top, because INTEL was FIRM on keeping focus on a broken technology... but some of us found a different solution, because the laptop cpu´s the 1.6ghz M based on the older platform was fast ...

 

so you could buy a board, and a SOCKET converter, and a 1.6ghz @ 2.7 it would trash EVERYTHING intel and amd had on the marked, cheaper, colder. especially in SuperPi et reckoned

 

the 478 socket converter was a great tool.

 

https://www.anandtech.com/show/1650/12

 

[Beerzerker]

They were on top across at least two sockets back in the day.
Socket A and 754 had them there with Socket A being faster and running cooler with less issues at the time. Around the time chips were exceeding 1.0GHz Intel had problems with their Pentium chips burning up, AMD didn't and Intel had to fix things or else.  

Socket 754 was the very first 64 bit capable CPU on the market for consumer PC use and Intel for awhile had nothing 64 bit capable.

 

I remember seeing all the listings of who had what on Newegg and Tigerdirect, seemed to take forever for Intel to finally release a 64 bit capable chip. Up until then it was crank the speed up higher and higher, no wonder some of the earlier 775 and most (If not all) 478 chips are virtual heaters.
Even at the start of Socket 939 AMD was doing well but Intel finally caught them and went on ahead. We know from that point on when things changed again.

[Guest]

I bought my first 939 setup at TigerDirect. FX-55 Asus A8N32 SLI. Had a pair of 7600gt's in SLI. Backed by an Ageia Physx card.

 

Pretty neat Linus went back before his time to enjoy some vintage hardware. I dig that.