Author Topic: Your main computer/gaming computer? (Read 2113 times)

Michael Helgeson · « **on:** July 14, 2006, 01:32:27 PM »

Basically,what type do you use for your most major work,or gaming,or both. I have 5 computers in my home,2 are Dells,that my significant others kids use,1 she uses that I built,and 1 my kids use that I built,and last but best my main computer just for me.

Most of the computers in the home are Pentium 3 based,except one of the Dells which is a Celeron D system,just a plain jane desktop,that the kids use. It lacks a agp port and what not,and for actual 3d gaming,my sons Pentium 3 with SB PCI 512 audio and Geforce 4 TI 4400 actually beats it soundly.

My computer is a Athlon 64 socket 754 2800+ based computer.
Im using a Biostar NForce 4 based motherboard with pci express.
Graphics card is a Geforce 6800NU with 256 megs of ram,its the nvidia reference card type,and it overclocks pretty high. Im using 2 soundcards,never use the on board audio. My 2 sound cards are :
1. Soundblaster Live 24-bit.
2.I/O magic Aureal's Vortex 2 (I use it for the gameport/midi)
Sony 48x cd-drive.
Nec 12 x cd-burner. This was one of the highest rated of its type,matched the Plextor 12x model,and supported more modes,still burns everything I trow at it cd wise.
Samsung 8x DVD drive. Only used to read dvd games and dvd-rs.
Logsy 480watt psu.
Seagate 80gig SATA hd.
1 gig pc 3200 ddr ram.

I have all the useless airports taped off so only the major ones are used for air flow.

Game wise I use this alot for emulation,and newer games,like Outrun 2006,Call of Duty 2,Chronicles of Riddick Butcher Bay,Prey,Doom 3,ect ect...
I also use it to convert video files often,when I want it done faster then what one of the Pentium 3 comps can do.

So anyway,what are you using for your main computer,and for what,and if possible,provide pics,inside and out.

grendelrt · « **Reply #1 on:** July 14, 2006, 04:22:54 PM »

My main computer:

Athlon64 X2 4400+ @ 2.4GHZ
2GB GSkill DDr500
2x eVGA 7800GTX 512 in SLI
X-FI Fatality
NEC 3520 DVDRW DL 16X
Seasonic S12 600W
Antec P180
Seagate 300GB SATA2
WD 80GB SATA
21 Inch Gateway 16:9 LCD

Pic before wire cleanup, no SLI bridge installed yet

My MAME Machine:
AthlonXP 3000+
1GB DDR400
WD 80GB SATA
Soundstorm 5.1 DD Live
Radeon 9800 Pro
NEC 3520 DVDRW 16X DL
46 Inch Samsung DLP
Hotrod Joystick

1 Laptop and like 6 other parts computers hehe.

FM-77 · « **Reply #2 on:** July 15, 2006, 02:09:39 AM »

This thread remains unreadable until you replace your img tags to url tags, sorry but I can't read it when I have to scroll the page all the time.

Michael Helgeson · « **Reply #3 on:** July 15, 2006, 04:55:11 AM »

Quote from: "Seldane"

This thread remains unreadable until you replace your img tags to url tags, sorry but I can't read it when I have to scroll the page all the time.

yup,sorry for that,I chose for imageshack to resize it but that didnt really help,so I did it myself. really I didnt have a problem myself,but I was looking at it @ 1600x1200 res.

FM-77 · « **Reply #4 on:** July 15, 2006, 05:21:26 AM »

This is my computer. I have another one but that's just an old Mac.

I built this one myself back in 2003. The specs:

CPU: AMD Athlon XP 2600+ (@~2,11GHz)
RAM: 512MB DDR-SDRAM (PC2700) (@~280MHz)
GFX: NVIDIA Geforce 4 MX 440, 64MB RAM (550MHz RAM, 350 MHz CPU)
HDD: Samsung 200GB, IDE-133, 7200RPM, 8MB Cache
SND: C-Media CMI8738 5.1 (integrated) <-- This card SUCKS!!

Motherboard: Chaintech 7VJL Apogee, integrated NIC (VIA RhineIII), integrated soundcard, USB2, AGP4X, etc.

CDRW: Samsung 48X16X48X
DVDRW: AOpen Dual-Layer 16XDVD-R/+R, 4XDVD-RW/+RW, 48XCD-R, 32XCD-RW, 4XDVD-DL, UDMA66.

That's about it. Lots of uninteresting stuff there, huh?

Might take a picture on the inside later.

Michael Helgeson · « **Reply #5 on:** July 15, 2006, 10:27:57 AM »

No,actually this is perfect,thats what I was hoping to see,diff varity of computers,and diff uses for all of us. Anyone else?

SignOfZeta · « **Reply #6 on:** July 15, 2006, 01:11:24 PM »

I don't play any games on my computer aside from emulation. I basically really hate modern day computer games. No color, no class, etc.

The machine I do all my work on, as well as emulation, is a Mac Mini G4. I think we probably all know what those look like, but here is a picture anyway.

nodtveidt · « **Reply #7 on:** July 15, 2006, 06:34:25 PM »

I have no pics of my setup (do you REALLY want to see my messy desk? Didn't think so!!) but meh...it's an AMD Athlon XP 2000+ based system I built myself. I don't remember the motherboard...some generic AMD-ready mobo from a couple of years ago or so. It has 256MB of main RAM, a geforce FX 5500 video card (AGP 8x I believe, 128MB of RAM), some crappy onboard audio (I almost bought one of those value Audigy's the other day but didn't for some reason), a 160GB HDD, and a pretty normal PCI NIC (the onboard NIC was fried in a power surge). I picked up a 16x DVD burner when I was in Florida (an HP dvd840 w/LightScribe), which replaced the old HP CD Writer Plus 9100 (yes, I prefer HP drives). My monitor is some cheap KDS thing we bought al Walmart a couple of years back. No printer, instead there's a printer attached to another computer on the network; I just use that whenever I need to print something (this happens once a year or so). I have a nifty little mini Logitech wheel mouse and a run-of-the-mill Windows keyboard. For gaming, I have a Nyko AIRFLO controller as well as a Playstation-to-USB adapter that I plug my PS2 controllers into (the adapter came with a steering wheel that we bought to play Hydro Thunder with...turns out it's better as an adapter on my PC than what it was intended to be used for). Oh yeah...and there's no internal floppy drive...I have a little Samsung external floppy drive. Of course, the icing on the cake are my nice powerful Altec Lansing PC speakers.

I have a burned CD collection that would make most people cry (it's that huge), and somewhere kicking around my house, I still have a couple of 5 1/4" floppy disks!

:oops:

But like SignOfZeta, I play virtually no modern day computer games, as they're mostly boring, stale rehashes with no personality. The good thing is that if I don't like the games, I can just write my own...so I do!

akamichi · « **Reply #8 on:** July 16, 2006, 04:51:25 AM »

My main computer is pretty old. Built it sometime in 2001, but it's still going strong. I have an Athlon 1.4GHz CPU with an Abit MB. Got the CPU maybe a month or so before AMD started the XP and performance numbers (1800+, etc).

CPU: AMD 1.4GHz
MB: Abit
Video: GeForce 6800GT (pretty much useless for this PC)
RAM: 2GB RAM DDR333 (running at 266)... yes, my MB is that old.
HD: 1x40GB (OS)
4x250GB (930GB) in some funky multiple RAID config(1+1). Was just messing around with the various RAID levels and never bothered to make a "proper" config.
SND: SB Live 5.1 (The first of the Live 5.1 cards)
Network: 1Gb Realtek based card
CD/DVD: Plextor 16x DVD writer + Generic DVD-ROM (speed unknown)

It pretty much does all that I need. It runs all the emulators and my own stuff at full speed. It's mostly a development box, so most of the stuff I write is targetted to low end machines like mine.

FM-77 · « **Reply #9 on:** July 16, 2006, 05:20:20 AM »

Almost 1TB!

What are you using your computer for?

Michael Helgeson · « **Reply #10 on:** July 16, 2006, 06:30:48 AM »

Quote from: "nodtveidt"

Of course, the icing on the cake are my nice powerful Altec Lansing PC speakers. I

Oh yea for sure,Altec Lansing Kicks ass, Every Pc speaker set in my house is made by them. The bass on the subs are very deep and treble is very clear. I perfer them over everyone else,even the Creative THX certified speakers.

Michael Helgeson · « **Reply #11 on:** July 16, 2006, 06:33:18 AM »

Quote from: "akamichi"

My main computer is pretty old. Built it sometime in 2001, but it's still going strong. I have an Athlon 1.4GHz CPU with an Abit MB. Got the CPU maybe a month or so before AMD started the XP and performance numbers (1800+, etc).

CPU: AMD 1.4GHz
MB: Abit
Video: GeForce 6800GT (pretty much useless for this PC)
RAM: 2GB RAM DDR333 (running at 266)... yes, my MB is that old.
HD: 1x40GB (OS)
4x250GB (930GB) in some funky multiple RAID config(1+1). Was just messing around with the various RAID levels and never bothered to make a "proper" config.
SND: SB Live 5.1 (The first of the Live 5.1 cards)
Network: 1Gb Realtek based card
CD/DVD: Plextor 16x DVD writer + Generic DVD-ROM (speed unknown)

It pretty much does all that I need. It runs all the emulators and my own stuff at full speed. It's mostly a development box, so most of the stuff I write is targetted to low end machines like mine.

Relish in the days of the Athlon Thunderbird 1.4ghz. It will still run todays games with your graphics card your using. You may have to run at lower res,medium details,ect...but still,those cpus still work well even now. You can always oc it too since your using higher speed ddr ram:)

akamichi · « **Reply #12 on:** July 17, 2006, 03:42:50 AM »

Quote from: "Seldane"

Almost 1TB! What are you using your computer for?

Is it really that surprising? You can get 4x250GB HDs for less than $300 now. That might sound expensive, but in terms of price per GB,it's cheap ($0.30/GB). My box pretty much acts as everything. Development box, file server (mp3s, videos, etc), and backups. I have images/backups of my old laptop HDs, old computer HDs, legit backups of CDs, LDs, and DVDs. I actually don't have much stuff stored right now basically because I've been busy with other things. In general, I try to backup everything I have just in case.

Quote from: "Michael Helgeson"

Relish in the days of the Athlon Thunderbird 1.4ghz. It will still run todays games with your graphics card your using. You may have to run at lower res,medium details,ect...but still,those cpus still work well even now. You can always oc it too since your using higher speed ddr ram:)

Yup, the good ol' Thunderbird is going strong. I don't play PC games much anymore, so there's no real reason to replace it right now. The last game I played a lot was NWN. That runs well on my computer with the mid to high details. The only reason I have a 6800GT is because my GeForce 2 died.

torgo · « **Reply #13 on:** July 17, 2006, 06:48:57 AM »

I have:

Opteron 175 w/Zalman beast of a cooler (OC'd to 2.53Ghz)
2-1GB OCZ PC4000 Gold RAM Modules
ASUS A8R32-MVPDeluxe
ENERMAX Liberty ELT620AWT 620W RT
2x Powercolor RADEON X1900XT 512MB
Creative X-Fi Gamer w/Logitech 5.1 speakers
2x WD Raptor 36GB/10k RPM in RAID0
Logitech MX518 Mouse
Sony DVD-ROM
Sony DVD-RW etc.
Viewsonic 21-inch P815 CRT Monitor
Lian Li PC60 Case
Matrix Orbital MX422 VFD Screen
Lian Li 12-in-1 Card reader

sunteam_paul · « **Reply #14 on:** July 17, 2006, 07:12:14 AM »

AMD Athlon 64 Processor 4000+, MMX, 3DNow, ~2.4GHz
2Gb RAM
2 x Nvidia GeForce 7900 GT 256Mb (SLI)
Sound Blaster Audigy 4
Plextor DVDR/RW

Can't be much more technical than that tbh but it runs Half Life 2 on full settings at 2048x1536 with no slowdown so I'm happy enough with that.

Also have an Emulation-only PC running Mame and other stuff.