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The upgrades for my @TheRetroManCave NetVista Pentium 4 slowly starting to come together. Best thing about this PC is it's too old to be useful but too new to be of much interest to the retro gaming crowd so parts are cheap! The motherboard has some interesting limitations too...
For a start, it only has a 400MHz bus speed and so only supports Willamette (180nm) and earlier Northwood (130nm) P4s. But not the HT! This rare beast is one of the fastest CPUs compatible with this motherboard - the 3GHz is impossible to get hold of. This 2.8GHz part was £6!
I'm going from a 1.6GHz CPU with 256K of L2 cache to a 2.8GHz CPU with 512K. Not a bad upgrade at all for £6...
The Intel 845 chipset on this motherboard actually supports up to 2GB of PC2100 DDR RAM. But that was a bit too exotic for IBM's tastes, so they fitted it with 3x PC133 slots instead. 1.5GB of PC133 it is then, around £40 to max it out. Up from 256MB - that's quite a bump!
"But why don't you just buy a better P4 motherboard instead of throwing so much time, effort, and money at this complete and utter potato" I hear you cry.
Well, I like potatoes.
Well, I like potatoes.
ASUS GeForce FX5700. The FX series of cards were much maligned, and with good reason (I actually had the FX5200 back in the day, it was the best I could afford!)
The 5700 came along later in the series' lifecycle and actually wasn't too bad, especially for Windows 98. £30.
The 5700 came along later in the series' lifecycle and actually wasn't too bad, especially for Windows 98. £30.
Incidentally, this 256MB FX5700 is replacing a 16MB Nvidia Vanta. No contest really.
The one part that hasn't arrived yet is the SoundBlaster Live! I bought for this system. It's the original CT4670 model without 5.1 surround sound. £10 delivered. I'm hoping that by posting this thread I'll summon the Royal Mail gods and it will appear from out of nowhere...
