It just dawned upon myself that its been almost 15 years since I first taught myself how to assemble computers back in 1999. Lest I forget, let me put it down in writing---and share it here.
It was the time when Intel and AMD were just beginning to move away from slot based processors back to the pin based ones.
My first computer which I assembled was from Costronic, a gigabyte board with a mendocino 25nm celeron 500 on a 66mhz FSB and cost me about $350. It could be overclocked by increasing the FSB to 75mhz.
Then Intel started the 18nm coppermine generation. Remember the Celeron 566 with 66mhz FSB? They were so popular because almost all could be clocked to 850 on a FSB of 100. The similar Pentium 3s were much more expensive and did not have better clocking ability.
AMD had for years been having slower clocks but better performance per clock and were using a PR rating---A K6-3 PR300 would be equivalent to an intel pentium II 300mhz. From the mid 2000s, AMD ruled the enthusiast and overclocking world with their Athlon and Duron line. Those were the days when you could buy a Duron 600mhz for under $100 and overclock it to 1000mhz, because AMD left their multipliers unlocked. Even when they started locking their multipliers, all it took was a simple pencil to unlock the bridges. The Abit KT7 Raid and Asus A7V133 were popular boards in those days.
When Intel started the Pentium IV line, AMD was still king, with a 1GHZ Thunderbird Athlon outperforming every single processor in the Intel lineup.
Sadly, most of the mass market then were oblivious to true performance but still caught up in the GHZ hype where faster was perceived to be better. From the performance standpoint, the Netburst Williamette architecture was pretty much a disaster.
With the Throughbred 13nm Athlons in 2002, AMD started a new XP naming system. The XP1700 and XP 1800 were very popular and overclocked very well. They could even be run on dual socket motherboards which were high end in those days, since CPUs had only a single core. i remember having a Soltek "golden flame" board then.
Enthusiasts only started going back to Intel around the time of the Northwood Pentium 4. An example was the Pentium 4 2.8c which could easily run at 3.5ghz. With the Athlon Barton, AMD's dominance faded and it has trailed Intel till today.
I do not remember much from the mid 2000s because I did not change any computer parts from my last Athlon XP2200 and Celeron D to my first Core 2 cpu.
Intel again became the overclocking king with the Core 2 in 2006. I bought mine in Oct 2006---a Gigabyte 965P-DS3 with a core 2 E6300@1.86GHZ which yielded a 50% overclock. The board has just celebrated its 7th birthday and is still in use with a 2nd hand Q6600 while the CPU is now in a drawer.
In 2010, I bought an i5 750 so I could play Starcraft 2 but didn't overclock it till much later. And only just this month, I bought a last generation 3570k and a couple of 2nd hand 2500ks to replace the aging systems(still on DDR2!)
Walking into Sim Lim Square yesterday, it seems that the crowds have really shrunk. The number of shops have also shrunk. gone are the days of M3, marketplace, aquest, superpet, bell, ouni infohighway, green domain, skylet etc. Only a few of the old ones from the last decade are still around, like videopro, fuwell, cybermind, laser.
I think its a matter of time when more of them close down, supplanted by shops with lower rentals/overheads like tradepac, best buy, best bargain, pc themes, mynextcom situated on the outer fringe. And, of course, Amazon/newegg
It was the time when Intel and AMD were just beginning to move away from slot based processors back to the pin based ones.
My first computer which I assembled was from Costronic, a gigabyte board with a mendocino 25nm celeron 500 on a 66mhz FSB and cost me about $350. It could be overclocked by increasing the FSB to 75mhz.
Then Intel started the 18nm coppermine generation. Remember the Celeron 566 with 66mhz FSB? They were so popular because almost all could be clocked to 850 on a FSB of 100. The similar Pentium 3s were much more expensive and did not have better clocking ability.
AMD had for years been having slower clocks but better performance per clock and were using a PR rating---A K6-3 PR300 would be equivalent to an intel pentium II 300mhz. From the mid 2000s, AMD ruled the enthusiast and overclocking world with their Athlon and Duron line. Those were the days when you could buy a Duron 600mhz for under $100 and overclock it to 1000mhz, because AMD left their multipliers unlocked. Even when they started locking their multipliers, all it took was a simple pencil to unlock the bridges. The Abit KT7 Raid and Asus A7V133 were popular boards in those days.
When Intel started the Pentium IV line, AMD was still king, with a 1GHZ Thunderbird Athlon outperforming every single processor in the Intel lineup.
Sadly, most of the mass market then were oblivious to true performance but still caught up in the GHZ hype where faster was perceived to be better. From the performance standpoint, the Netburst Williamette architecture was pretty much a disaster.
With the Throughbred 13nm Athlons in 2002, AMD started a new XP naming system. The XP1700 and XP 1800 were very popular and overclocked very well. They could even be run on dual socket motherboards which were high end in those days, since CPUs had only a single core. i remember having a Soltek "golden flame" board then.
Enthusiasts only started going back to Intel around the time of the Northwood Pentium 4. An example was the Pentium 4 2.8c which could easily run at 3.5ghz. With the Athlon Barton, AMD's dominance faded and it has trailed Intel till today.
I do not remember much from the mid 2000s because I did not change any computer parts from my last Athlon XP2200 and Celeron D to my first Core 2 cpu.
Intel again became the overclocking king with the Core 2 in 2006. I bought mine in Oct 2006---a Gigabyte 965P-DS3 with a core 2 E6300@1.86GHZ which yielded a 50% overclock. The board has just celebrated its 7th birthday and is still in use with a 2nd hand Q6600 while the CPU is now in a drawer.
In 2010, I bought an i5 750 so I could play Starcraft 2 but didn't overclock it till much later. And only just this month, I bought a last generation 3570k and a couple of 2nd hand 2500ks to replace the aging systems(still on DDR2!)
Walking into Sim Lim Square yesterday, it seems that the crowds have really shrunk. The number of shops have also shrunk. gone are the days of M3, marketplace, aquest, superpet, bell, ouni infohighway, green domain, skylet etc. Only a few of the old ones from the last decade are still around, like videopro, fuwell, cybermind, laser.
I think its a matter of time when more of them close down, supplanted by shops with lower rentals/overheads like tradepac, best buy, best bargain, pc themes, mynextcom situated on the outer fringe. And, of course, Amazon/newegg