Ok, it was time for me to upgrade my PC at home. The last one crashed twice: HDD and power supply. It was also definitely too old (AMD 1700+ with a Voodoo2!!). You know, Doom3 is waiting for me :-)

So, after some analysis, I decided myself for the below described configuration. I hope I was not too bad, considering the optimum “price-power” solution. And, for sure, the fact that I like to play video games. Who is laughing? Not a joke, I really like, and for years. I got a Philips video-game first, then a Commodore 64. Then, the first PCs, following the launches of the Doom and Quake versions. Remember?

Configuration

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3500+ (2.2GHz, Socket 939)

Graphic card: Gygabyte ATi Radeon X800 Pro (256 MB, 12 pipelines, GPU: 475 MHz, RAM: 450 MHz)

Sound card: SoundBlaster Audigy2 ZS

Memory: 1 GB PC3200 (400 MHz)

Motherboard: ASUS A8V Deluxe K8T800Pro

Storage: Maxtor 250 GB Serial-ATA (7200rpm, 16 MB cache)

Power supply: Tagan TG480-U01 (480W, ATX12V 2.0)

Case: CoolerMaster 710-GX2 Server-Tower

Before

After

Rome – Total War Demo

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Doom3 Demo

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Installing this f***g Serial-ATA drive was really damned boring under WinXP, which is not supporting this directly. You need to install special drivers during the install of WinXP. To do that, you need a … floppy drive!! I had to cannibalize a very old PC. Who is still using a floppy drive? Pfuuuu. This process was crazy :-(

I will publish some tests of my new machine in the coming days.