Aging computers

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I've kept my children happy with their old computers for several years, with some graphic card upgrades every now and then. But after reading this article in Tom's Hardware site I decided it was the moment to give a try to the new Dual core Intel processors.

I've to admit that I've been a happy AMD customer since the 386-40Mhz. Most of the time AMD delivered good performance cheaper than Intel. The exception to this rule had been several laptops non based on AMD processors (G4, PIII & Pentium-M) and one eventual Celeron so I could make some use of an ASUS Pundit box.

So, I got ready for the challenge and decided I was going to buy a new motherboard, new memory and an 2.6Ghz 805D processor. I wanted to buy a 1GB 667Mhz DDR2 RAM to have room for some overclocking but unfortunately it was not available at the shop. I wanted a motherboard with a basic 3D card (Asrock775-TWIN-HDTV) but unfortunately was not available so I bought another mobo that had at least an AGP slot so I could use one of graphics cards I had around. I wanted an IDE hard drive, but they are now using SATA disks mostly, I had to wait for that too. I was not luckier with the processor as they start selling the 820D (2.8Ghz) so I'm not sure when I'll have all the gear to build my test system. I can't wait!

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