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They (the company) were cheap. I was less chagrined by the antiquity than by the bare minimum of RAM they gave me. Constant freezing while Explorer and apps paged to disk. You typed a sentence than had to wait a few seconds for Windows to catch up. No fun.

Reminds me that I also bought my 15" PowerBook 1.5Ghz when I was there. I had to pay the postman in cash on delivery. That was the only way you could do mail order in Germany unless you had an account with the company in question.
Ah, ok. Yea, it's the RAM that makes the most difference.
 
That was huge amount of RAM back then? I remember my first upgrade was 256 to 384 when I just learned what is a memory stick.
2GB or 128MB? Because 2GB yes, but I'd be doubtful about 128MB because (at least on the Mac side) base config iBooks were shipping with 128-256MB of RAM and base config PowerBooks were shipping with 256-512MB. So that would put 128MB as the lower end of the base config options.

I was wrong, however, my X40 has 1GB and not 2GB and came with 256MB or 512MB as stock, putting it at right about the same point as a PowerBook G4 of the same time period. I fear we may have encountered a misunderstanding however, as I wasn't commenting on the memory (although you'd think that a company would outfit their employees with a computer with enough RAM to get the job done, which 128MB is quite clearly not enough judging by the story) and instead was commenting on the fact that the company gave their workers ThinkPad 600 series laptops, which was 6 years old in 2004. A 6 year old computer may be perfectly usable now for work like what is described, a 6 year old laptop back in 2004 would potentially be problematic given how quickly technology was progressing at the time.
 
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Reminds me that I also bought my 15" PowerBook 1.5Ghz when I was there. I had to pay the postman in cash on delivery. That was the only way you could do mail order in Germany unless you had an account with the company in question.

I remember ordering a Dell Celeron desktop for my grandparents around that time, and they didn't trust giving Dell their credit card details online so they paid the same way! Crazy to think about today.
 
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Intel ain't havin' that. The Chinese are pushing the envelope somewhat tho - 2x socket 2011 but a chipset not officially dual-capable :)


while a lot of those single socket boards use not officially compatible with LGA2011 chipsets like H61 etc

I do believe all the dual socket boards use C602 chipsets (the dual CPU/Server version of X79), its just for whatever reason CPU-Z sometimes still ID's those chipsets as X79 even tho their technically not

you see this on official dual socket and workstation machines too (like the MP6,1 for example)
 
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I do believe all the dual socket boards use C602 chipsets (the dual CPU/Server version of X79), its just for whatever reason CPU-Z sometimes still ID's those chipsets as X79 even tho their technically not
You're right of course, the blog entry even states that *facepalm*
 
The performance is only slightly above my i7 2600 (4C 8T) in Cinebench R20, and I'm well aware of limitations and AMD "cores". Never claimed it was a great CPU.

Also, I wasn't asking if it was good or not. I just like oddball CPU's. Like my rare IBM G4 400MHz.

Also, @sanfrancisofont1984 you're using the Verge to make a point. The most pathetic tech organization that has ever existed. You know when I explain something to someone? When they ask me to. I don't just assume they're completely ignorant because they want an imperfect CPU.

I've been writing cluster computer code since the 80's.
 
Also, @sanfrancisofont1984 you're using the Verge to make a point. The most pathetic tech organization that has ever existed. You know when I explain something to someone? When they ask me to. I don't just assume they're completely ignorant because they want an imperfect CPU.

I've been writing cluster computer code since the 80's.

Oh man. Could you explain the issues with verge? I wasn’t linking that as an explanation anyway just found it amusing that it became a lawsuit.
 
Could you explain the issues with verge?

They're completely incompetent, and they constantly show it. They also made an infamously bad PC build guide, then played the race card when everyone called them out for a fundamental lack of basic knowledge. Simply because the guy was black. They're wilfully ignorant, and complete snowflakes. Two of the worst things you can be.
 
I really want to get an AMD Opteron 6276 from the Bulldozer days. 16 cores, 16MB L2, 16MB L3. Would be fun just to mess around with, but not so good for gaming with a slow single core speed of 2.3GHz.

Modern games actually aren't as depended on that. The "pcmaster race" group of people will argue, but it's true. Most games made in the last 5-10 years run better with more cores vs higher clock speed.
Which is why the cMP's are able to do it so well with a modern GPU. My old Mac Pro 3,1 at 2.8Ghz had no problem with modern AAA games under Windows 10 for example.
Higher clockspeeds help a little but if the game is developed well it's not really a noticeable difference.
 
I really want to get an AMD Opteron 6276 from the Bulldozer days. 16 cores, 16MB L2, 16MB L3. Would be fun just to mess around with, but not so good for gaming with a slow single core speed of 2.3GHz.


I liked the video & thought this would be an interesting Oddball build too.
 
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Modern games actually aren't as depended on that. The "pcmaster race" group of people will argue, but it's true. Most games made in the last 5-10 years run better with more cores vs higher clock speed.
Which is why the cMP's are able to do it so well with a modern GPU. My old Mac Pro 3,1 at 2.8Ghz had no problem with modern AAA games under Windows 10 for example.
Higher clockspeeds help a little but if the game is developed well it's not really a noticeable difference.
You can clearly see in that video that most of the games he tried performed quite bad. This is directly due to the low 2.3GHz base speed. And if you look at the Afterburner stats, most of the cores are rarely ever touched.

It really all comes down to the games you play, but the point I make above holds true on virtually every 2018+ game I have.

In my experiences the best games at using all your cores are typically third person. Like Tomb Raider and Just Cause games.
 
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You can clearly see in that video that most of the games he tried performed quite bad. This is directly due to the low 2.3GHz base speed. And if you look at the Afterburner stats, most of the cores are rarely ever touched.

It really all comes down to the games you play, but the point I make above holds true on virtually every 2018+ game I have.

In my experiences the best games at using all your cores are typically third person. Like Tomb Raider and Just Cause games.
I didn't watch the video linked.

But those are the only kind of games I play so that makes sense.
 
Since we are talking about “off the shelf” software like games I wonder what level of performance is considered good for an old computer? Sure a $50 build is cheaper than a $500 build but since I could only use one computer at a time is opting for $50 falls into the “one dollar burger trap”. Numbers are arbitrary but you get the idea.
edit: just food for thought. I personally don’t enjoy using old IBM PC compatibles.
 
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