2003's Dream Rig

[Barfnargle]

After going through what seemed like a never ending pile of dead computers at work, I got to a few batches of machines with working components. Upon looking up reviews of the parts, all of them seemed to be very high-end components from the 2003 - early 2004 era. The idea quickly came about of throwing together a retro rig and doing some benchmarks, stress tests, and overclocks of the parts to see how much performance you could have 10 years ago.

The Components:

AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (939 Revision)

ASUS A8V-MX Socket 939 mATX Motherboard

Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro Atlantis Edition 256MB DDR2 (AGP)

OCZ 512MB PC2700 DDR Rev3.2 (DDR 333MHz)

[Lite-On IDE DVD Drive, Toshiba 120GB 2.5" SATA HDD, 92mm fan (3500rpm... -_-), Apevia 420W PSU, Apevia X-Infinity]

*Stay tuned for updates*

http://imgur.com/a/dLUxt#0 < Album so far...

[Barfnargle]

XP 32-bit Results:

3DMark01 SE:

1024x768, 32-bit color, no AA, Frame Buffer: Doubled, Texture Format: Compressed, Z-Buffer Depth: 24 bit, D3D Pure Hardware T&L

- 16558 3D marks

1024x768, 32-bit color, 6x AA, Frame Buffer: Triple, Texture Format: Compressed, Z-Buffer Depth: 24 bit, D3D Pure Hardware T&L

- 11085 3D marks

1280x1024, 32-bit color, no AA, Frame Buffer: Doubled, Texture Format: Compressed, Z-Buffer Depth: 24 bit, D3D Pure Hardware T&L

- 14518 3D marks

1280x1024, 32-bit color, 6x AA, Frame Buffer: Triple, Texture Format: Compressed, Z-Buffer Depth: 24 bit, D3D Pure Hardware T&L

- 8261 3D marks

3DMark03 Free Version:

1024x768, Pixel Processing: None, Texture Filtering: Optimal, Max Anisotropy: 4, Vertex Shaders: Optimal, Repeat Tests: Off, Fixed Framerate: Off

- 6981 3DMarks

NovaBench:

RAM: 60pts, CPU: 111pts, GPU: 14pts, Hardware Tests: 4pts (Drive Write Speed was 6 MB/s... hahaha!)

- Overall Score: 189pts

AquaMark 3:

1024x768x32, no AA, AF: 4x, Details: Very High

- AquaMark3 TRISCORE: 45,687 (GFX: 6,288, CPU: 8,354) (45.69fps avg.)

[Barfnargle]

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[dOug]

I'll subscribe just for fun!

[mvitkun]

post some photos?

[Agons]

Photos! before and after you dust them off haha!

[Barfnargle]

post some photos?

Just posted the first teaser :p

[mrenusso]

Haha, that's awesome ! Bench the cr@p out of this, just to see how it compares to present hardware. should be fun !

[Barfnargle]

*Update 1*: XP 32-bit fully up and running now, currently running 3DMark01 SE at 1024x768 at High settings, no AA or AF yet; I'll do that next, as well as at 1280x1024.

Also on another note, the blue 80mm fan I removed because it was annoying me too much (with noise and how frickin' bright it was). I regret that so much now. A 92mm -3500RPM- fan is in there currently, and I can't change the speed, so I'm gonna have a jet engine at my side for the next several hours. Thank god for noise canceling earbuds, haha!

*Update 2*: Got done with 3DMark01 SE, 3DMark03, and NovaBench. I'll move onto a couple of games tomorrow, then XP 64-bit.

[Barfnargle]

Well this project ended a bit short unfortunately. The 9800 Pro Atlantis took it's final breath and has gone to GPU heaven. The rest of the system is functioning perfectly fine, and I'll hopefully continue this on when I get another 9700/9800/X-series. I squeezed in one last benchmark since last night, AquaMark3, and it had a pretty outstanding score :D