WinXP runs OK on a Celeron 300a

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EyeMWing

Banned
Jun 13, 2003
15,670
1
0
Originally posted by: Eug
Originally posted by: EyeMWing
Oh, and used P3 machines cheap? $200 each for 10 Optiplex GX1's != cheap.
Click to expand...
You can get a PIII 600 with CD-RW, 20 GB drive, and 128 MB RAM around here for about $175. And that's not even a true "used" machine. It's a refurb with 90 day warranty.

I'd much rather tell someone to get one of those than get an old PII 350 with 6 GB hard drive and no CD-RW for $100.
Click to expand...

That's exactly what we got. Unfortunately, one of the 10 decided to die outright on the 91st day. "FVCK" I exclaimed, as the machine stopped POSTing after the GHOSTing. My theory is that that machine was dropped. Closer inspection foudn physical damage, the CDROM didn't work, the harddrive gave out during imaging and the mobo had a hairline crack in it.

Except ours were sans-CDRW. CDROM only.
 
M

MAME

Banned
Sep 19, 2003
9,281
1
0
Originally posted by: EyeMWing
Originally posted by: Eug
Originally posted by: EyeMWing
Oh, and used P3 machines cheap? $200 each for 10 Optiplex GX1's != cheap.
Click to expand...
You can get a PIII 600 with CD-RW, 20 GB drive, and 128 MB RAM around here for about $175. And that's not even a true "used" machine. It's a refurb with 90 day warranty.

I'd much rather tell someone to get one of those than get an old PII 350 with 6 GB hard drive and no CD-RW for $100.
Click to expand...

That's exactly what we got. Unfortunately, one of the 10 decided to die outright on the 91st day. "FVCK" I exclaimed, as the machine stopped POSTing after the GHOSTing. My theory is that that machine was dropped. Closer inspection foudn physical damage, the CDROM didn't work, the harddrive gave out during imaging and the mobo had a hairline crack in it.

Except ours were sans-CDRW. CDROM only.
Click to expand...

No one looked under the hood to see if it was all ok before the 90 days?
 
Eug

Eug

Lifer
Mar 11, 2000
24,174
1,815
126
Originally posted by: EyeMWing
Originally posted by: Eug
Originally posted by: EyeMWing
Oh, and used P3 machines cheap? $200 each for 10 Optiplex GX1's != cheap.
Click to expand...
You can get a PIII 600 with CD-RW, 20 GB drive, and 128 MB RAM around here for about $175. And that's not even a true "used" machine. It's a refurb with 90 day warranty.

I'd much rather tell someone to get one of those than get an old PII 350 with 6 GB hard drive and no CD-RW for $100.
Click to expand...
That's exactly what we got. Unfortunately, one of the 10 decided to die outright on the 91st day. "FVCK" I exclaimed, as the machine stopped POSTing after the GHOSTing. My theory is that that machine was dropped. Closer inspection foudn physical damage, the CDROM didn't work, the harddrive gave out during imaging and the mobo had a hairline crack in it.

Except ours were sans-CDRW. CDROM only.
Click to expand...
Well, that's just bad luck. Anyways, I guess we have different thresholds for cheap. $200 for a warrantied computer with 20 GB hard drive, 128 MB RAM, and PIII 600 is pretty nice in my book. (Then again, I spent more on my laptop than you did for all 10 computers. :p) And if you have to get a CD-RW separately, you can find a 16X around here new for about $30.

ie. You can get a complete system with keyboard, mouse, CRT monitor, PIII, 20 GB drive, and 256 MB RAM for about $300 for a refurb. with warranty. That's pretty reasonable even for someone short on cash. (I'm assuming here that the person's old computer died, but s/he still has a licence for the OS so I'm not factoring in the cost of the OS.)

Go to something less, and you only save $100 at most, for something much less functional even in the short term.
 
I

igowerf

Diamond Member
Jun 27, 2000
7,697
1
76
Originally posted by: Wag
This one surprised me.

My normal PC (Athlon 2500+) went foobar, so I'm temporarily using one I had in the garage- Abit BH6, Celeron 300a (o/c 463), 3DFX Banshee, 8gb harddrive (33?), 2x DVD, 320MB ram(put some more in there I had).

Now it took about 4+ hrs to install XP, longer than that to d/l the service packs and everything. I didn't plan on using XP with it, but I lost the floppy for the ethernet card and I knew XP had drivers.

Fairly zippy even on the Banshee. Now I wouldn't play a FPS on it, but it's more than adequate for everyday use.

Now I understand why the computer industry needs gaming so badly- to drive hardware upgrades.
Click to expand...

Overclock it to 450.
 
A

Abhi

Diamond Member
Sep 13, 2003
4,548
0
76
Originally posted by: igowerf
Originally posted by: Wag
This one surprised me.

My normal PC (Athlon 2500+) went foobar, so I'm temporarily using one I had in the garage- Abit BH6, Celeron 300a (o/c 463), 3DFX Banshee, 8gb harddrive (33?), 2x DVD, 320MB ram(put some more in there I had).

Now it took about 4+ hrs to install XP, longer than that to d/l the service packs and everything. I didn't plan on using XP with it, but I lost the floppy for the ethernet card and I knew XP had drivers.

Fairly zippy even on the Banshee. Now I wouldn't play a FPS on it, but it's more than adequate for everyday use.

Now I understand why the computer industry needs gaming so badly- to drive hardware upgrades.
Click to expand...

Overclock it to 450.
Click to expand...

Its already at 463.....
 
Snapster

Snapster

Diamond Member
Oct 14, 2001
3,916
0
0
Originally posted by: EyeMWing
Originally posted by: Snapster
Originally posted by: EyeMWing
/me slaps you across the face with his WinXP P2-233
Click to expand...

I went one lower. P1-200MMX, 128MB Ram, 16MB graphics card. :p
Click to expand...

Don't make me walk across the room and start a WinXP install on a Cyrix MII 166GP (I have two, actually. One is Cyrix branded, one is IBM branded) with a 1mb VGA board and 64mb of RAM.
Click to expand...

I do have a P1-75Mhz chip in a box somewhere. Good old days of just heatsink cooling, now 'that' would be fun. And hell no, I'm not installing it. :)
 
T

thomsbrain

Lifer
Dec 4, 2001
18,148
1
0
the overclocked 300A was a great little (er, big) processor. mine did like 480-something with the stock heatsink rubber-banded on (i broke the clip trying to put a peltier on it). sweet memories. :)

next best was the celeron 566. they all did 850, which was the same percentage jump as the 300a's could get. i had mine up to a full 1GHz once, using a peltier. more memories. ;)
 
peonyu

peonyu

Platinum Member
Mar 12, 2003
2,038
23
81
I think Windows 2000 is better for slower computers with 256 mb ram and less, I have a P2-350 with 256 mb on 2000 and it runs great, the most ram it uses is 80 mb after booting...XP which i had on it before used 150mb at boot and ran like shiat.
 
E

EyeMWing

Banned
Jun 13, 2003
15,670
1
0
Originally posted by: MAME
Originally posted by: EyeMWing
Originally posted by: Eug
Originally posted by: EyeMWing
Oh, and used P3 machines cheap? $200 each for 10 Optiplex GX1's != cheap.
Click to expand...
You can get a PIII 600 with CD-RW, 20 GB drive, and 128 MB RAM around here for about $175. And that's not even a true "used" machine. It's a refurb with 90 day warranty.

I'd much rather tell someone to get one of those than get an old PII 350 with 6 GB hard drive and no CD-RW for $100.
Click to expand...

That's exactly what we got. Unfortunately, one of the 10 decided to die outright on the 91st day. "FVCK" I exclaimed, as the machine stopped POSTing after the GHOSTing. My theory is that that machine was dropped. Closer inspection foudn physical damage, the CDROM didn't work, the harddrive gave out during imaging and the mobo had a hairline crack in it.

Except ours were sans-CDRW. CDROM only.
Click to expand...

No one looked under the hood to see if it was all ok before the 90 days?
Click to expand...

Of course not, they arrived 88 days before the beginning of the school year, the first 2 days I was not able to devote any time to them (Because the school seems to think that after 12 years in the system, we don't know the rules yet and have to spend two days going over them during what should be our free hour)

So, day 91 I plug it all in and fire them up, toss in the Ghost image and BOOM. That one dies. We now have a $200 15" trinitron, keyboard and ball mouse.
 
D

dc

Diamond Member
Nov 26, 1999
9,998
2
0
heh, my celeron300a did 504 at 1.7v instead of the default 2v
 
AgaBoogaBoo

AgaBoogaBoo

Lifer
Feb 16, 2003
26,108
5
81
Haven't read responses, but the main reason most people can't work with a 300a on XP is because they begin to install so much junk it gets bogged down.
 
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