man times have changed...what hardware were u running six years ago?

[dan4patriots]

i had a sony vaio with a 1.86 Ghz single core pentium m 1gb ram and an nvidia card with a 100gb hdd

 

[secretanchitman]

pentium 4 2.4ghz (northwood) overclocked to 2.9ghz
asus p4p800 (865PE chipset)
thermalright xp-90c heatsink
2x2GB (4GB) g.skill ddr-500 (originally was 2x256MB geil DDR-500)
seagate 160GB 7200rpm hd
leadtek 6600GT 128GB AGP (originally was an oem geforce3 64MB)
dell 2407WFP 24" lcd (originally was a 17" envision lcd with vga only!)
windows xp pro sp3
lian-li pc-75 case in silver

it was a really nice system. getting too outdated/sluggish so i upgraded every so often.

been through 3 systems in that year and still on the 3rd one (intel core 2 quad q9450 2.66ghz @ 3.4ghz, asus p5q deluxe, 4GB DDR2-1000, geforce gtx 260 896MB, windows 7 ultimate sp1 x64).

 

[Paperlantern]

I still upgrade my rig and my wife's rig. I don't go bleeding edge though nor do I overclock them. I just want stable, quiet rigs that I can throw a few hundred worth of hardware at every 3-4 years to keep them current. My wife's rig is due for an upgrade soon. I'm running a quad core Intel i7 with 8GB of RAM, a SSD, and a decent video card.

This is something I would just like to have. Nothing serious, just a solid machine. I however, am using basically the system the OP posted as his machine from 6 years ago, lol. I am using a 3.0GHz Pentium D right now as my current workstation. 3GB of RAM. THe only saving grace is the RAID 0 SSD array I have of two sammy 64GB drives. Windows 7 says the drive score maxes out at 7.9, so it still screams right along and does what I need it to do for the most part. Why I haven't justified upgrading yet.

i just bought 16gb of ram for $60...in ~2000 my brother paid $1/mb!!!!

Yeah but in 2000, 128MB of RAM was "sufficient" and only the hardcore people were getting 256MB and 512MB in their machines at the time. At that time (2001 maybe?) I was using a PIII 350 with 128MB of RAM I think and I bought that used from the year before.

But I know what you mean, per MB now its PENNIES on what it used to be.

I always think about how cool it would be to go back in time 5 or even 10 years and show your past self what you have in the future. You'd blow your own mind.

Yeah its 10 times faster with 4 cores so effectively 40 times faster than the one you're using now with 64 times as much memory and disk drives without motors.

Your past self would shit himself.

 

[jlee]

I have no idea.

 

[Sust]

I was still in school running my brand new Asrock Dual PCIE/AGP s939 athlon x2 4200+ with a whopping 2GB RAM and 300gb raptor and neutered by my nvidia 7300 agp video card b/c I was worried about failing out if I started gaming. I think I was still running XP SP3 at that time

I also at that time had my rockin(what I thought at the time) tablet PC with some flavor of pentium M and 1.2GB RAM. It worked well for what I wanted it to do in terms of doodling on class notes and read stuff while doodling on them as well. I wonder if the ipad would allow doodling on pdf texts nowadays?

Both have been honorably decommissioned after long years of service, but considering resurrection of the athlon x2 for htpc duties if I can cobble together the proper supporting video card

 

[chowderhead]

I am still typing away on my Dell 8600!

 

[nageov3t]

I couldn't tell you what my computer was 6 years ago.. I think the only components I'm still using are the case (which I've had forever and keep meaning to swap out, but it's such a hassle for so limited benefit) and my 19" monitor (which is no longer my primary monitor and I still use it as my secondary to surf the web on)

I think my latest video card incident is the last straw before I replace my case, though. the only way I could fit my new video card into this case was by removing two hard drives and just kinda jerry-rigging them up somewhere else in the case.

 

[vi edit]

In May of 2006 I bought a Dell XPS with a core 2 duo 1.6 or something with 2 gig of RAM for $420. Still use that daily as my office PC and Media Center/DVR.

That wasn't quite 6 years ago, but close. Got my $420 out of it. Oh, and my monitor is a Dell Ultrasharp 20" widescreen that I got waaaaay back in 2004 or so.



It's likely going to get swapped out for a 27" iMac depending on what happens with the Ivy Bridge updates later this spring.

 

[Leros]

In May of 2006 I bought a Dell XPS with a core 2 duo 1.6 or something with 2 gig of RAM for $420. Still use that daily as my office PC and Media Center/DVR.

That wasn't quite 6 years ago, but close. Got my $420 out of it.



It's likely going to get swapped out for a 27" iMac depending on what happens with the Ivy Bridge updates later this spring.

About 3 years ago I built my friend a computer for $1400 that was a core 2 duo 3.0GHz w/ 4GB of ram. About 6 months later, I built myself nearly the exact same computer for $1000. I just bought my dad an equivalent computer for $350.

 

[Fenixgoon]

This is something I would just like to have. Nothing serious, just a solid machine. I however, am using basically the system the OP posted as his machine from 6 years ago, lol. I am using a 3.0GHz Pentium D right now as my current workstation. 3GB of RAM. THe only saving grace is the RAID 0 SSD array I have of two sammy 64GB drives. Windows 7 says the drive score maxes out at 7.9, so it still screams right along and does what I need it to do for the most part. Why I haven't justified upgrading yet.



Yeah but in 2000, 128MB of RAM was "sufficient" and only the hardcore people were getting 256MB and 512MB in their machines at the time. At that time (2001 maybe?) I was using a PIII 350 with 128MB of RAM I think and I bought that used from the year before.

But I know what you mean, per MB now its PENNIES on what it used to be.

I always think about how cool it would be to go back in time 5 or even 10 years and show your past self what you have in the future. You'd blow your own mind.

Yeah its 10 times faster with 4 cores so effectively 40 times faster than the one you're using now with 64 times as much memory and disk drives without motors.

Your past self would shit himself.

exactly

 

[Bateluer]

P4 2.4C, 1GB of RAM, and a 6800GT video card. Did an incremental upgrade to a P4 3.4E, but wasn't satisfied.

 

[Vic Vega]

I built this machine in early 2006 so approx six years ago. I started running the Vista 64 July Beta I grabbed off of MSDN a few months later and that was the end of Windows XP for home use at my house. The July Beta was so good I didn't bother with the RCs, didn't have to. I went to the GA version when it was released.

Antec Titan 550 | AMD Opteron 185 @ 3.0 GHz | Asus A8N32 SLI deluxe | 4 x 1GB Patriot DDR 3200 | ATi Radeon X1950 Pro | WD Raptor 74GB | Samsumg 225BW 22" LCD | Zalman 9700 NT.

I'm still using the WD Raptor as my OS drive in my current machine. What an awesome piece of hardware.

 

[vbuggy]

Selection from 2006:

Selection from 2012:

I seem to be going the other way.

 

[stargazr]

Pentium 4 Williamette 1.8 Ghz
Asus P4PE
256 GB RAM
BFG GeForce FX5200
Antec PSU
Lian-Li PC-6X
Dell Trinitron 16"

I still use this system in my garage. Just replaced the PSU. Later in '06 switched to a Thinkpad T60 Core Duo as my main computer.

 

[qliveur]

P4 3.06 GHz Northwood
1GB
6800GT

 

[Sephire]

Still need to replace some of my family's P4s and Core2Duo I assembled for them to Sandybridge.

If only they pay me this time :'(

 

[Arcadio]

P4 3.2 GHZ
1GB Ram
320GB Barracuda


I'll never get tired of spending money on a fast desktop computer, even if I don't need all that power.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

Six years ago for me was 2 PC generations ago and my fifth generation build -- I was running an Athlon X2 4800+, 2 GB RAM, 200 GB hard drive, Audigy 2ZS, and 6800 GT graphics card. My sixth generation build didn't happen until 2008 and my seventh generation build (and current machine) happened last September.

 

[CZroe]

You thought wrong I've replaced everything in my Mac Pro except for the power supply and the motherboard, I don't know where people get these stupid ideas from Macs are as upgradable as any computer.

Umm... from the NEWS. Last year I replaced a 1TB Hitachi HDD in an aluminum iMac with another 1TB Hitachi HDD. The original broken one had an Apple firmware and logo on the sticker, the replacement was a retail drive. It required suction cups and special tools but I transferred the thermal sensor and it worked great, but a quick glance online showed that the newer iMacs released earlier that same month now had thermal sensors integrated into the HDDs that required Apple firmware to communicate with and refused to boot without it.

No more off-the-shelf HDDs. Yes, work-arounds were discovered and people did put SSDs inside but Apple did try their best. I have no problem with proprietary SSDs in the MacBook Air and integrated HDD thermal sensors as long as they don't lock-out non-Apple parts like they do. They sued the makers of MBA SSD upgrades and the HDDs should work fine without the sensor (is used to manage/control acoustics).

 

[HAL9000]

Umm... from the NEWS. Last year I replaced a 1TB Hitachi HDD in an aluminum iMac with another 1TB Hitachi HDD. The original broken one had an Apple firmware and logo on the sticker, the replacement was a retail drive. It required suction cups and special tools but I transferred the thermal sensor and it worked great, but a quick glance online showed that the newer iMacs released earlier that same month now had thermal sensors integrated into the HDDs that required Apple firmware to communicate with and refused to boot without it.

No more off-the-shelf HDDs. Yes, work-arounds were discovered and people did put SSDs inside but Apple did try their best. I have no problem with proprietary SSDs in the MacBook Air and integrated HDD thermal sensors as long as they don't lock-out non-Apple parts like they do. They sued the makers of MBA SSD upgrades and the HDDs should work fine without the sensor (is used to manage/control acoustics).

Well I'll agree that suing bit is stupid, but personally as yet I haven't had a problem upgrading a Mac, my Mac Pro has more non apple parts in it than apple parts now...

 

[CurseTheSky]

Athlon X2 4200+
ASUS A8N-SLI Premium
1GB DDR 400
6800 GT
Audigy 2 ZS
Aspire X-Navigator and 500W PSU D:

I think I still have everything except for the case and PSU. It was a great computer overall, and still fast enough for basic tasks even today.

 

[bobdole369]

In 2005, I was still rocking an Athlon XP 2000+ a variety of drives, including the 30GB IBM deskstar (deathstar) that was all the rage in 2002, If I recall it was a 5500 (maybe a 5600) series Nvidia VGA card too. Loved that rig, I played MANY hours of DAOC and even everquest on that thing. It started with the 2001 tax rebate - where I bought my first real 3d card (prior I was using a Matrox Millenium G400 something or other, the dualhead card that I thought was SO awesome!). It was teh Geforce 3. Searching my gmail for Newegg invoices, I find I bought a Samsung 19" CRT Man I loved that monitor, Trinitron tube "flat" front, beautiful monitor, but only excellent on 1024x768/85hz - the VGA cable I suspect was to blame.

Now, 13" early 2011 MBP (work PC, take it home, allowed to use for non-work) as nearly all computing tasks. Going for the 15" late 2011 MBP later this year. Also have a q6600 on a Gigabyte board running Xen, plus openfiler (4-320GB drives, 3-500GB drives) for media storage/tvrips/movierips, and pyTivo, and FreePBX distro, and a windows and Mint desktops via RDC/VNC when I need off-PC processing. My other formerly primary PC is a C2D (I think e7600) 4GB DDR3, raptor 300GB (the 10k rpm model), a couple 160GB's, and a 250GTS. I used to run the q6600 in this machine till I proved that running Xen could get me to combine 3 physicals into 1 physical acceptably. This reduces my cooling bill in summer .

So a hodgepodge of stuff still, and I still have a windows desktop, but that is probably changing. The MBP I unexpectedly got from work has shown me what is possible and I really am liking using non-windows stuff and to virtualize the stuff that can't run on macOS or Linux.


Wife had a P4 - 2.0ghz (s478) 1GB RAM if I recall and a similar 5000 series nvidia card. My Athlonxp and her P4 ran about neck and neck as far as DAOC and encoding and whatnot. She's now on a 2009 Mac Mini, and a 13" early 2011 MBP, iPad, iPhone - completely off of Windows.

 

[mmntech]

I almost forgot about my venerable 12'' iBook G4 1.33ghz (circa 2005) I had at the time. Man that thing and I saw some tough times together. Got me through university. It's spending its retirement as a file server.

 

[CraigRT]

AMD Opteron 170 @ 2.0GHz
2GB RAM
250GB SATA I hard drive
Nvidia 7800GT

Sounds identical to what I had actually.
I miss my Opty 170, was a great CPU in its time.

 

[Vic Vega]

This is something I would just like to have. Nothing serious, just a solid machine.

When I built my current rig back in 2010 I had basically the same goal. I wanted a sleek, non-busy case which was extremely quiet - the P183 fits that perfectly. I needed a CPU which could play games and run my work VMs but was inexpensive, the AMD fits there perfectly. I did end up overclocking it, but it wasn't intended when I was picking parts. I overclocked it on a whim when I first assembled the system. Magically it jumped right up to 4GHz with just a multiplier change and nothing else. I left it that way, it's basically never run at stock speeds. It's still quiet and stays cool. Overall I couldn't be happier. I'll easily have this desktop until 2015.

My days of tinkering with PCs are all but gone. I just like to set it and forget it. I have done basically no tinkering with this box since I've had it, it just sits and runs, does what I need it to and doesn't complain.