Well, I have no picutres of my case on hand; it's not all that good to look at anyway; I hardly spent any money on it, (some $20US, I believe) since I only cared that it had the places to put what I had to put in. I tossed the stock power supply anyway, and I don't care for those silly LED lights; they're a sickness, you see.
At any rate, the real important things that go into it:
- Motherboard: Soyo CK8 Dragon plus - nForce 3 150 chipset, socket 754, 3 DIMM slots, 1x AGP 8x, 6x PCI. The motherboard isn't all that good, but it was the only decently-priced Athlon64 board when I built the machine, about two years ago. Still cost me some $140US. And it's horrible for overclocking.
- Processor: AMD Athlon64 2800+ - Clawhammer 130nm core, 512KB L2 cache, stock speed of 1800MHz, HyperTransport speed of 1600MHz. I bought it with the intent to overclock it. Sadly, with the motherboard, the best I can handle well is an overclock to 2000MHz. It's perfectly stable there, though.
- RAM: 1024MB (1GB) PC3200 SDRAM. Since my computer's socket 754, no dual-channel support, though it is a pair of DIMMs. They're timed at 3-3-3-7, and overclocked with the processor to an effective 444MHz.
- Video Card: ATi Radeon X800XT, AGP w/256MB video RAM. I've not overclocked this part, though I actually may at a later point; I got it inexpensively, and it's been quite good, though I've had some regrets about the lack of SM 3.0 support.
- Sound Card: (empty) I had been using an Audigy 2 ZS, though in reality, it was "borrowed." However, I had to give it back. Currently using integrated until I can figure out a way to justify the purchase an X-Fi Xtreme music, or for that matter, a newer pair of speakers wher the card would actually make a difference.
- Hard Drive: Hitachi Deskstar, PATA-133 7200RPM, 90GB. It was the best deal I could find. Along with WD and Seagate, Hitachi is one of the three brands I'd actually trust; I stay away from Maxtor, given some of the spotty performance I've experienced with those drives, though none have actually outright failed me.
- Optical Drives: 52x32x52-speed CD-RW, 16x speed DVD-ROM. Little much to say; they're black, like the case itself. I have no reason to burn DVDs, since I do my file transfers via my 2GB USB stick anyway.
- Operating System: Two of them, actually, and both require explanation:
- First Boot: Windows Milenium Edition. Yes, I can hear you go "ugh." However, it is the only Win 4.x OS I had on hand that could do hot-swappable USB; 98SE, at least for me, doesn't. And over the years, I've grown used to the instability; I get significantly higher framerates here, even though a number of things don't run. I also use this to play DOS games without ANY form of emulation.
- Second Boot: Windows XP professional, x64 edition. Yes, a strange counter to ME. Unfortunately, it's a trial, and it won't quite last until the release of Vista. Yes, if you were wondering, I'm used to PC problems. I never call tech support.
[QUOTE=Dj Yoshi]Because we all know that Linux has such a corner on the gaming computer market. ATi is a small company--much smaller than nVidia, and has been around for a lot less time. The hardcore market (cards like the x1800 etc) as you should know is a very small percentage of their overall sales. To say that they don't win any awards for linux xupport to gamers is pretty silly. Not to mention that, but their Catalyst drivers are amazingly awesome (mainly because of people who migrated from the other side, yes, I know). And my earlier comment was neither drug related nor congenital. I'm just doubting that you have a valid reason for telling Jep that he shouldn't have bought an ATi product, period.[/QUOTE]
Actually, you're correct on the account about Linux and gaming, (note that ATi does seem to expect that you'd get open source drivers to run in Linux, and doesn't recommend using their own) but wrong on the age account when it comes to ATi; nVidia, actually, is technically the "new kid on the block," having not existed until 1993. ATi's been around since 1985. Likewise, they are close to the same size; ATi has 2,500 employees, to around 3,000 for nVidia. (
About nVidia and
About ATi)
I was about to mention that, until I saw this post of yours. Indeed, also keep in mind the "effective" DDR speeds; 600MHz of GDDR3 actually runs at 1200MHz, and MOST of the time, people simply refer to their "effective" speeds, since you can best compare them to SDR memory, even though such is no longer around.