Compaq Athlon 1.33 specs out amazingly well

[2Late4U]

After a few rounds with the finacial advisor, I finally convinced her that a new puter wasnt the end of the world, and so I proceeded to throw a few designs together and was ready to place my order when she sees a Compaq at BestBuy with all the things I'd been talking about "one sale"

Trying to seem open minded, I went down to take a look at it.  It was an open box sale (it had never been sold but had been taken out of the box to be augmented for a buyer who backed out), and was $100 and had a $50 gift card with purchase bringing the actual price to $1100.00

AMD 1.33  266bus 256DDR 60gig HD  CDRW  DVD  Soundblaster 128, Gforce 2 64meg, 4 USB  3 Firewire

The price intrigued me, because it was hauntingly close to the cost of my home built and included the USB and Firewire ports I needed, and would require minimal effort to bring up to spec as opposed to spending a day or two playing around with my home built.  All I would do was swap out my high end video and sound card from my old system, and she gets that, and Ive got a hot system, PROVIDING that the compaq was not neutered with some pathetic design choice.

After making sure I could return it if it was a DOG, and after taking a looksie inside I decided to take it home and see how it panned out.  So far nothing but good things to report!  The case is a beauty, and opens with the flick of one latch, opening the side up for what has to be the best designed case Ive ever seen in a compaq (not that it takes much to exceed those stupid (slide the guts out the back of the whole case) design they had just a few years ago, but its easy to get to everything, has great venhilation and is just a very nice suprise.

I decided to bench it before swapping out my video card, and I almost had a heart attack at how slow it was.  2100 3Dmark score was only about 700 higher than my Athlon 600     I almost took it back immediatly, but decided to try it after swapping out the included Gforce 64meg MX card for my Radeon 64DDR, what a difference!  Im not sure what a Gforce 64meg MX card is, but it must be the low crappy end of Nvidia cards or had needed a MAJOR driver update, because the 3Dmark score jumped to over 3700 just by replacing the video card.  

Ive now benched it out, speced out the entire machine, and can say that its just as fast as my buddies homebuild 1.3 Athlon and thats a huge suprise to me.  I guess that $100 price difference must be a backbreaker for Compaq, because I just cant understand crippling such a fast system with a video card that just couldnt keep up.

[SKurj]

2Late..  ok ok i avoid any name brand PC's like the plague.. for one reason, come up grade time there is usually something in the way..

How is that new system?  could u replace any of the components with anything u wished?

SKurj

[funkedup]

This system would get you well into the 5000 range on 3D Mark 2001.  Take that box back.  

 

[ 09-06-2001: Message edited by: funkedup ]

[2Late4U]

Originally posted by SKurj:
ok ok i avoid any name brand PC's like the plague.. for one reason, come up grade time there is usually something in the way..

How is that new system?  could u replace any of the components with anything u wished?

SKurj

I usually dont like "boxed" systems either, but in this case its not half bad.  The Motherboard with clock up to 2 gHz, its got 5 pci slots and there are no "integrated" parts" or any "only run on Compaq" parts.  It basically upgrades much like any system, the only real downside is that you cant overclock on these mobos...but I never bother anyway.

Its not the absolute cheapest I could have gotten, but its far from being terribly overpriced.  Funkeds system lacked things like my firewire, extra usb, and of course shipping and/or assembly (which from my experience is quite expensive) and typically the cost of shipping and assembly is inversly proportional to the cost of the parts.  

What really pleased me was the excellent case design, its as good as you can get without a tray flip out design.

[capt. apathy]

ok dumb question time.
what is fire wire?

[2Late4U]

Originally posted by capt. apathy:
ok dumb question time.
what is fire wire?

Its a spec for high speed data transmision, typically used to transmit video from a digital camcorder or other device to a computer.  Newer uses include external drivers (HD/CD/DVD etc).  Think of it as USB on steriods  

[Swager]

Funked!  Nice system!  Are you buying?  I bought components for about $1075.

Just make sure ya get a good heatsink/Fan with that sucker!

[Staga]

TB1400 with Thermaltake Volcano 6Cu heatsink/fan (=quite cheap)47Celsius/116 Fahrenheit with UD-Agent running.

[funkedup]

Swager I bought one pretty similar to that a couple of months ago.  I got the same case with a 340W PS from techstore.com for $55.  Otherwise it was pretty similar.

FYI that mobo does have 4 x USB.  It's got 2 extra ports built into an expansion port cover, all ya do is plug it in and screw it in.

Shipping on that system would be about $40.  They assemble the Case/Mobo/CPU/RAM/FDD/Cooling as part of the deal.  With the fan/heatsink they use I get 120 deg. F. maximum after hours of AH or OFP.

If you spec it with the same video card 2Late4U got it comes out to about $830 plus shipping.  I'm not dissing him for buying that system but we shouldn't get the idea that prebuilt boxes from retail chains are at all price competitive.

[ 09-08-2001: Message edited by: funkedup ]

[lord dolf vader]

sold them for 3 years take it back or you will regret it .  im not kidding could list a hundred reasons. compaq is a bad bad company 30 % of what we got in was defective in some way or another . they are assembled in houston mostly. i worked for their assembly plant. take it back or you will regret it .

[2Late4U]

Originally posted by funkedup:
.

If you spec it with the same video card 2Late4U got it comes out to about $830 plus shipping.  I'm not dissing him for buying that system but we shouldn't get the idea that prebuilt boxes from retail chains are at all price competitive.

[ 09-08-2001: Message edited by: funkedup ]

Oh heck no, Id never stand on that one  


My point is it wasnt a "bad" deal, and I am happy with the preformance.  Im always willing to pay a $ or 2 in order to get it now, get it local and not have to funk with it.    

[Jochen]

I am running my TB 1400 at 1610 now, water cooling keeps temperature below 48 celcius degrees (it is Asus MB so it has those extra +8 celcius degrees) all the time. Graphics card is old Geforce 256 SDR.

First 3DMark run with processor at 1400 gave result of 1940.

After overclocking processor to 1610 MHz the result was 1947.

After I overcloked the Geforce the result was 2380.

Pitifully low still but the important thing was that processor speed does not mean that much. Graphics gard is far more important.

But there is limit of course. With same display adapter and Celeron 378 3DMark score was 930...

I'm off to buy new graphics card!