AMD to crap on customers, Q1 06

Onomatopoeic

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TEAnnin said:
...and the usually well-informed iGary get the details pretty compregensively garballed...

Well, it doesn't surprise me at all that I had significant chunks of Cyrix's history discombobulated.

Throughout the Cyrix era, I was only dealing with the occasional X86 PC (early Supermicro-mobo-based systems -- which were quite expensive at that time, but certainly good -- and some systems built on Intel mobos). More often than not, when I was working with computer systems, it would more likely be something from Sun or Silicon Graphics (SGI) than an X86 PC (or Macintosh). My Cyrix experience was mostly word-of-mouth and some direct experiences fiddling with demo computers, or looking at the stuff for sale at "clone" retailers when I was asked along to evaluate computers for others who were wanting a home computer.

Since you actually made a living off of selling that stuff, you should know the Cyrix marketplace well -- what worked, what didn't, etc.

By the way, I didn't even realise that Cyrix ever made 486 parts! I definitely recall around that time that AMD was making 486 microprocessors that Intel didn't -- like the 40 MHz 486DX, as well as some high-clocked 486 DX2 microprocessors (wasn't there also an AMD DX4 lineup?). As for Cyrix, I thought they started off with those ghastly (my opinion) 5X86 processors.

OK. I'm off to the loo to take a vomit break. I'll be back shortly. :lol:

 

tazwegion

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Buck said:
They're German, what would they know about CPUs?

Well I like the way the site is arranged... and have no bias against Germans, and have some relatives still living there :p

If you prefer something more in your timezone... try the CPU Shack, it's presentation isn't near as good, but it remains quite informative :p

As for you OT: Polizei hell yeah this is a hi-jacked thread! :p
 

blakerwry

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I ran my NT4 webserver on a Cyrix 486 66DX2 and had nearly a year of update as I remember faintly... No noticable difference between it and the Intel I had that ran at the same clock.
 

Groltz

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OT: Polizei said:
.............
spassbremse.gif
............
Closed_By_Hullahalla.gif
 

Santilli

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Well, it's just more planned Obselecence. Or PO if you would.

In fact, the change in chipsets, etc. is starting to make the PC side look like the mac side, except it's mac software that drives the changes, and, it's the hardware side driving MSFT to change...

s
 

tazwegion

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Tannin said:
Santilli said:
OT: Polizei said:
ROFL!!!

:mrgrn:

I repeat: huh? Where is the joke?


Well... I answered Onomatopoeic's question RE: AMD Dx4's with a link to a cpu-collection site (of german origin), then Buck made a sarcastic reply as to the origin of the site and queried their collective technical knowledge... to which OT Polizei replied with the paranoid/shifty emoticon ;)

Kinda' gets lost in the translation :lol:
 

Santilli

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OT P's icon in his sig is Sargent Schultz, a comic Stalag supervisor, German, from a comedy show, in the US, about american prisoners that ran the prison, pretty much, and, it was funny., "Stalag 13", IIRC.

The quick German bashing, followed by the quick OT P post, with the icon he used,

:bleh:

cracked me up. :mrgrn:

the sargent's favorite, and famous line was,

"I know nothing.!!" When the inmates were a bit out of hand...

s

:mrgrn:
 

tazwegion

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The funny thing about Hogan's Heros was Shultz was more aware of the goings on than Commandant Klink ROTFL :lol:

We were watching re-runs well into my mid-teens (80's) down here in the land of Oz... in fact re-runs of M.A.S.H. & 'Tour of Duty' are still showing w00t w00t! :salut:

Personally I'm glad the re-runs of the Loveboat ceased! :hurl:
 

Ted

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tazwegion said:
That was NOT uncommon with the M571, I personally owned the 3.2a revision... and while the on-board audio/video sucked :p the chipset was quite stable, even @ 83Mhz... as for the K62's not being supported by the M571, that I'm afraid is a fallacy! remember AMD remapped the K62 package to allow 6x multiplier @ 2x settings? this was done so people could benefit from the latest AMD offering without upgrading from their 66Mhz boards at the same time, my K62-350 purred @ 4.5x83 though it would run @ 6x66 also, I was just greedy for more fsb grunt ;)

I also owned the 3.2a revision. The chipset was not designed for above 66MHz use but seemed to be stable at either 75MHz or 83MHz but not both. Mine didn't like 75MHz at all no matter what type of CPU was used.

With regard to the fallacy! remark.. I was referring to the later K62's that in spec were to be run on a 100MHz FSB, or in the case of the K62-380 (95 MHz). Since the M571 didn't have official support beyond 66MHz those CPU's were not listed as supported but could indeed be run out of spec thanks to using a combination of the 6x multi and the 83MHz fsb or some variation to get near the original running spec of the CPU.

tazwegion said:
BTW if you're looking for any support with that mainboard down the track Ted, EYO forums have quite a collection of M571 enthusiasts :lol: and they even maintain a dedicated web page @ M571.com :aok:

I'm aware of EYO forums support for M571, in fact a few of the early posts are mine. In those days I had a bit more enthusiasm for getting to the nuts and bolts of things. ;) Besides running a K62-380 on the motherboard I did have a play with a K62-500 on the M571 for a short period of time before deciding it was wasted and fitting it to something a bit more modern.

It was fun though being one of the first to ever max out one of those motherboards. PC Chips certainly didn't expect the M571 to run those sort of speeds when they designed it. A remarkable little board for its time.



tazwegion said:
Hmmm... with adequate cooling my MII 366 & GA-586TX2 combo is still AFAIK running smoothly for my niece, least I haven't had any complaints concerning it during the last 2 years :mrgrn:

I can't for the life of me imagine why you would persist with that dog of a CPU for so long when better CPU's are practically being given away these days. Give your niece something better 'UNCLE' she deserves it ;)


tazwegion said:
I'm really happy with my nForce2 Ultra 400, but I hear the first generation chipset was certainly NOT the one to own :roll:

I have two of the Epox 8RDA6+Pro boards which use the Ultra 400 Gigabit MCP. The last and best of the nForce two chipsets IMO.

I've also owned the ABIT NF7-S V2 and a couple of Soltek Nforce boards and never had a problem that couldn't be solved with any of them.

The Epox boards have been boringly 100% rock solid which suits me just fine as I'm getting so tired of buying buggy motherboards that take months if ever to get running the way they should have when they left the factory.
 

tazwegion

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--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by tazwegion:
Hmmm... with adequate cooling my MII 366 & GA-586TX2 combo is still AFAIK running smoothly for my niece, least I haven't had any complaints concerning it during the last 2 years
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Ted said:
I can't for the life of me imagine why you would persist with that dog of a CPU for so long when better CPU's are practically being given away these days. Give your niece something better 'UNCLE' she deserves it

ROTFL 2 years ago (when I constructed that PC) I was heavily into the Distributed Computing scene y'know F@H & SETI etc. all available components went into those crunchers... and @ the time I couldn't bare to part with any of my K62's or CeleronA's, hence that MII & GA-5AA combo was born, additionally as I was paying for everything... I tried to keep it under $100.00 ;)

I upgrade relatives PC's all the time as their 'needs' increase/change & the technology becomes cheaper, thus the last upgrade was from K62 -> PIII :aok: sadly the K62 is lagging too far behind and is only able to crunch SETI WU's these days... so my WU crunchers were upgraded to Athlons, with the remaining spare components ending up in the kids Retro gaming system ;)

The major problem is the emotional attachment I have for my K62's :roll: but my wife just calls it 'hording' :cursin:
 

tazwegion

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Oops... I actually meant GA-586TX2 :roll:

BTW it's hard NOT to salivate when looking at the new A64 offerings, this upgrade just keeps getting worse! :lol:
 

Ted

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Tannin said:
Hi Ted. Something was wrong with your M-II or the installation of it. It was probably the (quite uncommon) 75MHz version, as the (much more common) 66MHz bus one was practically bulletproof.

It was the 66MHz version and installation was fine. Anyone that fitted and sold an M571 with a 75MHz version "M-II" wants reaming with a nail studded basball bat IMO. ;) The chipset only had official 66MHz support and to use the 75 or 83 MHz FSB put the PCI bus out of spec. On 83MHz it was running at 42MHz if memory serves.

Overclocking is fine if its the buyers choice to do so but systems should *not* be made and sold running out of spec. Its asking for trouble.

Tannin said:
We sold just over 100 M571 boards and didn't have trouble with a single one of them. (Nope, not one RMA. Amazing for a PC-Chips board!

I didn't have a problem with mine either when I got rid of that rotten M-II 300

Tannin said:
Probably the only good board they ever made.)

Only one I ever owned myself so I'll reseve judgment.

Tannin said:
I don't have a record of what CPUs we put on them, but it's a fair bet that 80 or 90 of the 100+ were MII-300s.

Damn shame ;)

Tannin said:
There might have been a handful of 75MHz bus 300s, and right at the end we had some of the 333s.
Incredible!!! Were you familiar with the specs of the board and the resultant overclocked PCI bus?


Tannin said:
I doubt we'd have wasted a K6-2 on one of those boards

Any K62 you could or should have used, ie those meant to run with a 66MHz FSB like the rare K62-333 or the 66MHz version of the K62-350 were in short supply anyway. The older K6 CPU's were not worth bothering with at that time, so it would have left you with the choice of fitting and running a later version meant for super socket 7 ie 100MHz FSB motherboards.

Tannin said:
(for the K6-2 we used FIC VA-503+ if we could get it, or any of several similar boards from other makers

For the later K62's with 100MHz FSB the FIC board was a good choice but hard to find in Aus. A lot of people bought the Epox MVP3G2 or G5. I think I've got that model right from memory. The models varied by the amount of onboard cache they had. I had for a short time the one with larger onboard cache.

Tannin said:
- people willing to pay the extra for a K6-2 were also the sort of people willing to shell out for a stand-alone video card).

That's a broad generalisation to make. You've got to remember the days of the Voodoo 2 add on card. It really wasn't necessary in the days of the M571 to buy a seperate and expensive "stand-alone video card" in preference to using onboard video in addition to the Voodoo 2. That combination worked fine for all but the top shelf games.

Tannin said:
And doubtless there would have been some M571s used with older CPUs - a Pentium MMX 166 or a Winchip 200, for example - to replace a board that had failed.

No doubt. I had a bit of a play with a Pentium 233 on that board at one stage just to make some comparisons with the AMD CPU's. Its such a shame that a lot of users were under the impression that the P 233 was about the limit the board supported. :(

Tannin said:
There was a later revision of the M571 board that reverted to the usual PC-Chips crap, and it was a very different story.

Yes I'm aware of the one you're referring to. It was a completely different board and was crap.

Tannin said:
That's interesting what you were able to do with a 571 at 83MHz. Hell, I never trusted them over 66!

They were a great little motherboard for those that liked tweaking. Didn't you previously say you fitted some with 75MHz versions of the M-II 300 ? ;)

Tannin said:
Now for the $64 question: what, exactly, was wrong with your VIA chipset boards? It never fails to amaze me how many people say that VIA chipsets are crap, and how rare actual, documented problems are. Me, I'd trust a VIA chipset a long long way before I'd trust an Nforce 1 or Nforce II (and a shorter but still measurable way before I'd trust an Intel or SiS chipset).

Considering how much I've written so far in one hit it would be easier and less time consuming to ask you whats right with them? I'll then (when I have time) post some links to some of the 1000's of documented complaints of various VIA chipsets to be found on the net. If by "documented problems" you mean VIA actually acknowledging problems then I'll agree with you there. VIA certainly didn't like admitting that their chipsets had problems so you wont find many official releases detailing problems.


Tannin said:
The Nforce IIIs and Nforce IVs we have had these last few months, on the other hand, have (touch wood!) been completely flawless. So far, so good .... but after the random weirdnesses of the Nforce IIs and Nforce Is, which both seemed to go OK to begin with, I'm not convinced just yet.

I'll admit the nForce 1 was a buggy chipset (which I avoided) The early nForce 2 had 'some' documented problems. The later revisions were excellent and ceratinly more stable than what came before. For me nForce 2 has been amongst the best motherboards I've owned. I'm just getting to old, too impatient, and too busy to sort out bugs and I've had very little of those with nForce 2.
 

Mercutio

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Ted said:
I'll admit the nForce 1 was a buggy chipset (which I avoided) The early nForce 2 had 'some' documented problems. The later revisions were excellent and ceratinly more stable than what came before. For me nForce 2 has been amongst the best motherboards I've owned. I'm just getting to old, too impatient, and too busy to sort out bugs and I've had very little of those with nForce 2.

I believe we've had this discussion before, but I know of no reason not to choose a working and stable Via solution over a buggy and weird nVidia one. Via stuff works. Year in and year out I purchase and build around four dozen Via-based systems. I put the parts together (any collection of parts) and turn the machines on, and they just do what they're supposed to for the life of the machine. I've never had a problem, ever, that I could attribute to a Via chipset.
When I compare that to what I've seen with nvidia-based motherboards, there's just no question which is the better hardware. The nvidia boards are picky about RAM. They have weird sound problems. They don't seem to work with 400MHz-bus CPUs (based on a sample set of 8 retail XP3200s that I later found to work just fine with SiS748 and KT600 chipsets), IDE drivers that border on human rights abuse.
There used to be at least an excuse for nvidia hardware, which was Soundstorm. Now that I can mate a Dolby Digital Live encoding PCI card with actual good hardware, there's not even that.
 

tazwegion

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Mercutio said:
I believe we've had this discussion before, but I know of no reason not to choose a working and stable Via solution over a buggy and weird nVidia one. Via stuff works.

Hmmm... you're as biased towards nVidia as you are Cyrix :roll: I'll admit VIA was king of the hill for SS7 IMHO, with all benchtests I've personally run it flogged the equivalent ALi V chipset nicely ;)

As for nForce1 chipsets, never owned one... and from what I hear I never will, nForce3 had issues too from what I recall reading around the place... but the nForce2 Ultra 400 IS a great chipset & I couldn't be happier with it's stability & performance on my NF7-s V 2.0, hence I'm of the opinion that all the nForce3 bugs should've been ironed out of their next A64 chipset, namely the Nforce4 ;)

However... having said that I am leaning towards VIA's K8T800 chipset for my s939 upgrade, probably so I can keep using my beloved R9600XT graphics card :roll: have you had any experience (good/bad) with that particular chipset Merc?
 

Mercutio

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I have strong and well defined opinions. nvidia, Cyrix, Sony, , HP/Compaq Computers, Lexmark, Abit, AOL and WD are at the top of the list of things I will take every opportunity to shit all over.

I'm quite fond of the K8T800. They just work. Albatron boards - apparently all Albatron boards, going by their user forum - have problems with the Radeon 9600. I like Albatron's K8T00 board for its upgraded Via Envy sound but it's worth mentioning that it wouldn't like your graphics card.

If you ever tried mating an XP3200 with an A7N8X-E-Deluxe or 8RDAIPRO, you would never call the nforce2 Ultra chipset a "great chipset" again.
 

tazwegion

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Hmmmm... thanks for your brutal honesty ;)

Abit - Yes, they had issues with their capacitors a while back...

Sony, HP/Compaq Computers, AOL and WD - You'll get no argument out of me there :p

As for the nForce2 Ultra's - I run my XP2500+ @ 3200 spec (400Mhz fsb) with no issues, however... I did lash out on some nice Corsair XMS3200 RAM modules ;)

The whole R9600 and K8T800 issue... could that be with just the Albatrons in general or all mainboards of that flavour of VIA chipset?

Hmmmm... I don't ever recall owning an Asus platform :eekers:
 

Mercutio

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It's just Albatron. Their Intel boards have those same issues. 9600s work fine with the Gigabyte K8T800-based board.

More widely, I can say I object to motherboards made for the "lights in cases" crowd - DFI, Soyo, Asus, MSI, Chaintech... Abit is the worst of the bunch. They get all the press and in my experience tend to be truly poor products, but are what Fanboy idiots continue to buy. Marketing to that sort really raises my hackles; the result of spending that money to buy press for their products is almost certainly poor engineering. At least, that's been my experience with DFI, Soyo, Asus and Abit boards made in the last three to five years.

Continuing my diatribe against nvidia and the nforce2... If I have a CPU that is made to operate at 400MHz at its STOCK frequency, and I have brand name RAM that is made to run at 400MHz at its STOCK frequency, and I put those in an nforce2 ultra board - which is made to operate at a STOCK frequency of 400MHz, and they don't work, I don't care WHAT whacky overclocking you can do - the product isn't working as advertised. It's broken.

My experience with nVidia video cards is similar to that with Cyrix processors - they tend to overheat and/or draw more power than most PCs seem to be able to handle. I will admit that I haven't ever dealt with anything newer than an FX5200 (thankfully, at this point none of my regular customers have anything nvidia in any of their desktops), but for years I found that I could fix random instability in PCs by pulling the WAY-too-hot-even-when-just-doing-2D Riva128/TNT2/Geforce2/Geforce4MX out of an AGP slot. Maybe that's the fault of nvidia's whorish desire to let anyone with a $1.50 and some DRAM make a board, but in my opinion there is/was a very serious problem with that hardware.
Tannin will at this point sputter about how nvidia's drivers are nice and well behaved. Maybe they are. It doesn't matter when they are mated to hardware that is fundamentally flawed. Having nice drivers for nvidia hardware is a lot like having silk undies for the incontinent.
 

Tannin

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Merc, our RMA figures for video cards are very low. Like really low. I'd have to do a lot of trawling through the paperwork to put an exact number on it, but let me put it this way: every item that comes into the shop gets a coded stamp that tells us who we bought it from, on what date, and how long the warranty is. From this stamp, we can track down the invoice number and RMA the product if we need to. If we don't have the stamp (let's say the customer has removed it himself for some stupid reason), there is nothing we can do to get RMA service on it as we can't trace the part. No stamp, no warranty.

For parts that are really, really cheap (e.g., $6 speakers, network cables, 10/100 NICs) we don't bother stamping them, as it's not worth sending them off for warranty replacement anyway. Nor do we do it with moderately cheap parts that almost never fail inside the warranty period (e.g., Logitech mice, Panasonic floppy drives) as the time wasted stamping stuff that isn't going to fail anyway is just that: wasted time. Finally, we don't do it with stuff that is particularly difficult to stamp (notably cases, where you would have to buggerise about opening, unscrewing, stamping, and re-sealing). The cases we use only have a PSU fail once in a blue moon anyway. So when does fail, we just throw it away and don't worry about it.

Anyway, a few months ago, Kristi and I discussed stamping video cards. Was it even worth opening each box to put a warranty label on the card? I said "no", she said "yes", but neither of us held our view very strongly. In the end, we decided to keep on stamping them, mainly because (as Kristi pointed out) it's a job you can do in low-priority time, such as when you are stuck on the phone listening to some yammerhead waffle on endlessly.

The point is, we only just barely even bother to put warranty stickers on our video cards these days (except the high-end ones, of course - they are too expensive to take chances with). The return rate is so low that it's a line-ball decision as to whether it's worth 30 seconds a card to give ourselves warranty cover.

We use Leadtek cards almost exclusively. Sometimes Albatron, but the Leadteks are clearly better. Most of them are fanless. All of them - yes, 100.000%, are Nvidia-based.

We see all sorts come into the workshop, of course: all brands, all chipsets. But we haven't sold a non-Nvidia card new since .... hmmmm .... well, let me list the last non-Nvidia cards I can remember: Voodoo III, IV and V; 8MB S3 AGP 2X; Matrox G450 32MB; and some appallingly bad ATI-based 8MB AGP cards that leave a bad taste in our mouths to this day. Those were all a long time ago. No, wait: a supplier sent us one for nothing a while back: buy ten motherboards, get a video card free, or some such. I thought about using it, then took it to my competitor a few doors down the road and swapped him for a CD burner.

Now I personally wouldn't touch an ATI video card with a 10 foot pole. Practically every time we see one, it's trouble. I hate the bloody things. I do, however, have enough brains to realise that other people have had good success with them, and respect that. Hell, I could probably learn how to make the bastards work myself, if I had any reason to do so. But why should I? Nvidia cards are utterly fuss-free, reasonably priced, and (at least so far as our Leadteks go) utterly reliable.

Rule 1: never change things that work for you. Or is that Rule 3?
 

tazwegion

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Mercutio said:
Continuing my diatribe against nvidia and the nforce2... If I have a CPU that is made to operate at 400MHz at its STOCK frequency, and I have brand name RAM that is made to run at 400MHz at its STOCK frequency, and I put those in an nforce2 ultra board - which is made to operate at a STOCK frequency of 400MHz, and they don't work, I don't care WHAT whacky overclocking you can do - the product isn't working as advertised. It's broken.
I wouldn't call running a 2500+ @ 3200+ spec 'wacky overclocking'... regardless my point remains the same, if I can run the board @ 400Mhz fsb with a 333Mhz processor... I can't see why you can't do it with a 400Mhz fsb unit :eekers:

DFI, ASUS, ABIT, MSI all great overclocker platform manufacturers... what have you got against the 'lights in cases'[/b] crowd, essentially PC modders? people personalize their houses, cars & T-shirts :p why not PC's?

Some would even consider PC modding & detailing as 'modern art' you don't subscribe to this belief?

Lastly... I've an old RIVA TnT2pro (32Mb AGP) it's been running flawlessly since I've had it, BTW it was second-hand when I obtained it... if that's not testament to nVidia's reliability as a chipset/Vcard I don't know what is ;)
 

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taz said:
I wouldn't call running a 2500+ @ 3200+ spec "wacky overclocking"

I would.

taz said:
I've an old TNT2pro (that's been running for ages)

Yeah. They do that. TNTs just keep on keeping on.

Especially the passively coled ones. If something goes wrong with them (or with most video cards, for that matter), it's practically always the fan. Chipset fans on motherboards suck too. What is it with component manufacturers? Is it cheaper to use a fan than it is to spend 20c extra on a decent sized heatsink?
 

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Why is that whacky overclocking? same Barton core & cache size... essentially the same CPU just rated @ a lower spec r/t AMD's QA/benchmarking programme for it's processors ;)

My definition of whacky OC'ing is... upping Vcore's, RAM & AGP voltage, droop mod's etc. not to mention water cooling & peltiers... if I can't do it on air cooling, then it's not worth (personally) doing ;)

Oh strangely enough that TnT2pro used to be yours Tannin, though it looks a little different these days (the poxy chipset cooler fan died) ;)

tnt2pro3it.png


BTW thanks Merc' it was actually the Gigabyte (K8T800) mainboard I had been looking at...
 

Tannin

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I remember those cards, Taz. They were on special to clear them out back around the time the Gforce was taking off at the high end, and were priced a fair bit below what they should have been, given their performance relative to the other stuff around at the time. They weren't exactly cheap ($200? $250?) but that was a hell of a lot of card for the money back then. Nice to know it's served you well.

BTW, if you pointed a gun at my head and said "build me a computer. Use any parts you want. Oh, and if this system fails, I'm going to shoot you" then I'd quite possibly select a TNT M64 as the video card - but only if it was passively cooled. Or else maybe a Gforce 4MX. Matrox G200 or 400 or 450 would be a possibility too. I can only remember ever seeing one of those fail, but then they were never all that common either.
 

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Tannin said:
I remember those cards, Taz. They were on special to clear them out back around the time the Gforce was taking off at the high end, and were priced a fair bit below what they should have been, given their performance relative to the other stuff around at the time. They weren't exactly cheap ($200? $250?) but that was a hell of a lot of card for the money back then. Nice to know it's served you well.

Actually... it was 'preloved' and only set me back a fraction of it's original RRP :aok: though now my gaming tastes require a card with T&L support... so I'll hunt around for a GeForce2 or similar I guess :mrgrn:

Does this upgrade bug ever subside? I'm already pricing A64's & s939 mainboards after having only built a Skt. A within the last 14mths. who knows what's next SATA2 or SCSI :roll:
 

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TEAnnin said:
...Chipset fans on motherboards suck too. What is it with component manufacturers? Is it cheaper to use a fan than it is to spend 20c extra on a decent sized heatsink?

What's wrong with you??? Tannin, fans fail after 2 or 3 years because you're supposed to take a sledgehammer and smash yer outdated computer after 2 or 3 years and buy another one.
 

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I GAVE my previous computer. First one in years I haven't smashed, I'm improving.

Buck,

I prefer those with a yellow fiber glass handle. Wood handles always end-up breaking.
 

Buck

Storage? I am Storage!
Joined
Feb 22, 2002
Messages
4,514
Location
Blurry.
Website
www.hlmcompany.com
CougTek said:
I prefer those with a yellow fiber glass handle. Wood handles always end-up breaking.

Smart thinking Coug, I don't want any lawsuits from a faulty hammer handle. Plus, I'm not in the mood to RMA a hammer. Although, I think once the customer sees the 10 pound sledge hammer hanging on my wall, they'll change their mind about any RMA.

PS: Now that I've switched to hammers, what do I do with all those baseball bats?
 
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