Most significant upgrade you ever made ?

reaper7534!

Limp Gawd
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Feb 13, 2016
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Was thinking today that all of our upgrades are incremental, what upgrade really made you go holy $hit !! Mine was going from a Intel 486SX 25 Mhz to a AMD 486 DX4 100 Mhz. ( 1993 ) Mybenchmarkt showed this was how fast the plasma gun spewed out its rounds in Doom II. I know for a lot of the younger crowd, it wil be SSD's.

What gave you guys got ?
 
I know one of mine was moving from a TNT2 Model 64 to a GeForce3 Ti200.

I tried running Battlefield 1942 on the TNT2 and it gave me black and white checkerboxes due to lack of hardware texture & lighting yadda yadda
 
I don't go all that far back. But going from a Pentium 4 to a quad core q6600 was huge. And then of course my first SSD, for overall performance of a system I don't know if an HDD to SSD upgrade can be matched.
 
Lets see..

K6 2-400 -> Athlon 600 was a big leap
Athlon 600-> Dual athlon 1200mp was big too

Athlon 64-3200 -> Q6600 was a big leap

Cirrus logic 902x -> 3dfx was big
NEC V20 -> 486dx33
 
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386 to a 486. Windows 3.1 to windows 95. And probably going from a single core Athlon XP and moving to a dual core Conroe.

And of course adopting a ssd. Paid $200 for a 64gb ssd when they first released.
 
Biggest upgrade was a full system leap really. From a Celeron something 800mhz to an Athlon 3500+ and 6600 GT AGP. Ran D2 like butter while it was struggling on my old uh... Geforce 2 MX?
 
Adding a Video Toaster 4000 Card, 8MB more ram, and a 350MB Maxtor hard drive to my Amiga 3000 in 1993 made me go holy shit. My wallet also said holy shit since that upgrade cost $3000.

But speaking of modern PC stuff, I'd have to say going to an SSD was a holy shit this is really fast moment.
 
Forgot when I went to my first 3d card....Rendition Verite 1000 I believe, ran vquake with it.... was awesome. My friends who had Voodoo cards could only do regular quake over dial-up, no glquake.....
 
The ATI Radeon 9700Pro was a game changer for me. Coupled with the release of BF2, gaming just had never been better, or arguably since. The pinnacle of PC multiplayer gaming and graphics progress right there. :cool:

Lately though, my Titan Xp was one of the best buys I've ever made regarding PC purchases. The day I got that card was the day I no longer had to give a shit about graphics settings. No more spending the first week of a new game release dicking around optimising settings. Nope sir, just hit max, apply and play. (y)
 
Regarding processors? I've rarely ever seen an upgrade I felt was significant. With video cards I've occasionally had that "oh shit this thing is fast" type of feeling, but even that's rare. I've always pushed higher resolution displays so I normally get this "its better, but I could use more" feeling. I think the single biggest and most noticeable day to day upgrade I've ever experienced was from switching to my first SSD. That makes a PC so much more usable.
 
Going from dial-up to a cable modem followed by replacing a crappy WD spindle drive to a Corsair P128 SSD.

Another memorable upgrade was replacing the super crappy stock cooler on my 5870 AMD video card with a nice copper 2-fan Zalman.
 
tandy 1000 to P2 233mmx@266/256MB/voodoo/17" crt.<- this system brought me to [H] for the first time.

then got a K6-2 450@500/512MB/voodoo2

replaced that with a Duron 600 that did 1133 with an ATI gpu I cant remember, maybe a tnt2

then a XP 2400/2GB/GF4 to FX-4100/8GB/Radeon 7770

those are the big ones I can remember but also switching over to SSD was a massive performance boost too.
 
biggest single upgrade for me was 2 times (not recall which ended up costing the most to be honest)

E8400 EO, P5Q-E mainboard, Radeon 4870 512mb to 6870 1gb with some upgrades since day owned it (with OCZ Agility 3, a few caviar blue/black etc, was finally left with the agility 3 and cav black 640gb R5 240 1gb asus this became moms current system, which I added/replaced the OCZ for a crucial mx200 500 (snappier and much more life left, more stable might alleviate some of the blue screening) .. prior to the 6870 being swapped to current system

(in sig basically) main was 6870 to 7870 doubling the memory amount and the E8400 to Phenom II doubling up on it as well (more or less, least the way I use mine)

Now when Ryzen 2 comes this summer/fall, that is by far going to be my largest single purchase for computer wise.

not sure "biggest" direct, either was HDD to SSD, or was 6870 to 7870 (especially in regards to overclock and downclock with voltages control the 7870 was a nice upgrade)

the E8400 // Ph II 955, that is much a tough one, for the not so much needed cores, yeh the E8400, everything else, the 955 "has it"

I believe the GPU I got were all "around" the same price ( love the Canadian and US economies ... not .. )
CPU same, motherboard within ~$30, ram ~40-50 but doubling up (1 - 2gb to 4gb to 8gb to maybe just maybe 32gb and an 8 or larger Vram GPU if prices are right)

.... 7870 likely largest single "so far"

next Ryzen 2 something or other from this MASSIVE and same from GPU should be a very large blast of performance (all while reduce temps / power maybe just tad more ...... I hope ... lol)
 
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biggest single upgrade for me was 2 times (not recall which ended up costing the most to be honest)

E8400 EO, P5Q-E mainboard, Radeon 4870 512mb to 6870 1gb with some upgrades since day owned it (with OCZ Agility 3, a few caviar blue/black etc, was finally left with the agility 3 and cav black 640gb R5 240 1gb asus this became moms current system, which I added/replaced the OCZ for a crucial mx200 500 (snappier and much more life left, more stable might alleviate some of the blue screening) .. prior to the 6870 being swapped to current system

(in sig basically) main was 6870 to 7870 doubling the memory amount and the E8400 to Phenom II doubling up on it as well (more or less, least the way I use mine)

Now when Ryzen 2 comes this summer/fall, that is by far going to be my largest single purchase for computer wise.

not sure "biggest" direct, either was HDD to SSD, or was 6870 to 7870 (especially in regards to overclock and downclock with voltages control the 7870 was a nice upgrade)

the E8400 // Ph II 955, that is much a tough one, for the not so much needed cores, yeh the E8400, everything else, the 955 "has it"

I believe the GPU I got were all "around" the same price ( love the Canadian and US economies ... not .. )
CPU same, motherboard within ~$30, ram ~40-50 but doubling up (1 - 2gb to 4gb to 8gb to maybe just maybe 32gb and an 8 or larger Vram GPU if prices are right)

.... 7870 likely largest single "so far"

next Ryzen 2 something or other from this MASSIVE and same from GPU should be a very large blast of performance (all while reduce temps / power maybe just tad more ...... I hope ... lol)

It sucks but the only real upgrades I think I made that I could feel were things like going from a 486 DX2 66MHz to a 6x86 PR200+ and later a dual Pentium Pro 180MHz overclocked to 200MHz. A single Athlon 64 3500+ to a dual Opteron 254 setup was huge as well. I also went from a single Core 2 Q6600 to a dual processor QX9775 system. After the QX9775, most of the upgrades have felt like they were damn near lateral moves. My Core i7 920@ 4.0GHz to a Core i7 980X was pretty solid but after that, nothing has felt like an upgrade.
 
A single Athlon 64 3500+ to a dual Opteron 254 setup was huge as well.
1700+ to a Oppy 165 duallie @ 2.9GHz was a decent jump.. that lasted for years. Same with 1mb or 2mb S3 virge (lol) > TNT2 > X800XT. That X800XT smashed source engine out even lost coast at 1080p 60fps many years later, love that card.
P233 to a duron 650 @950 was also a decent jump.

In recent times the biggest jumps in apparent performance for me have been the move to SSD (OCZ V3), running 2x the recommended amount of ram (16Gb) instead of 4-8gb like most and a decent 1440p screen after years of crappy TN panels (what a step back from CRT they were).
 
1700+ to a Oppy 165 duallie @ 2.9GHz was a decent jump.. that lasted for years. Same with 1mb or 2mb S3 virge (lol) > TNT2 > X800XT. That X800XT smashed source engine out even lost coast at 1080p 60fps many years later, love that card.
P233 to a duron 650 @950 was also a decent jump.

In recent times the biggest jumps in apparent performance for me have been the move to SSD (OCZ V3), running 2x the recommended amount of ram (16Gb) instead of 4-8gb like most and a decent 1440p screen after years of crappy TN panels (what a step back from CRT they were).

My longest lived setups:

Pentium Pro 180MHz@200MHz
Opteron 254 x2
Core 2 Extreme Edition QX9775 x2
Core i7 980X
Core i7 3930K
Core i7 5960X

The last one is certainly the longest lived as that was my gaming rig for 4.5 years.
 
After college going from a PowerPC Powerbook G4 to a custom Q6600/8800GT system that was all the rage in 2008.

First Windows based machine and it changed my life.

After that is was the Intel X-25M 80GB.
 
After college going from a PowerPC G4 Macbook Pro to a custom Q6600/8800GT system that was all the rage in 2008.

First Windows based machine and it changed my life.

After that is was the Intel X-25M 80GB.

That was my first SSD.
 
I remember downloading the Quake 1 demo (took all day on 14.4 dial up) and it wouldn't run on my 486 without a co-processor, so when I got my Pentium 133, that was a day I'll never forget!
 
CRT --> IPS LED
Athlon XP --> Core2 Quad Q6600 OC to 3.4Ghz
HDD --> SSD
60Hz --> 144Hz (like 3 months ago, felt like a generational video card upgrade!)

I don't really count a simple hardware upgrade, say video card, or adding ram. It's the new tech that gets me, especially when I go years without it, not knowing what I'm missing! (worst offender was high-refresh monitor)
 
Apple II -> Amiga 500

Everything after was just incremental.
 
Going from a 3.5 mb dsl connection to a 500/500 fiber connection

Switching from a HD to a SSD was the biggest usuable hardware change i have ever made
 
Intel onboard video to a voodoo3.
Voodoo3 to geforce256.
Radeon R290 to a 980ti.

CPU from a p4 3ghz to a 3770k.

internet from 100meg comcast to gigabit fiber.
 
Really old stuff
1. PC Speaker to Adlib clone and then to Opti 930 based sound card with onboard wavetable.
2. ISA trident 1MB VGA to 2MB VLB video card. The blitting speed went through the roof.
3. 386sx-25 to 486 DX2-66
 
Adding the first 3dfx Voodoo card (mine was an Orchid Righteous 3D) was jaw dropping. Quake went from looking like a brown pile of trash to something I'd never witnessed before.

After that, going from a 56K modem (which was really only connecting at like 1/2 that speed) to a DSL connection was just as amazing. At parties I'd use Napster to download songs in real time based upon requests. Playing Rocket Area and Unreal Tournament online went from barely playable to "it's like we're in the same room."

After those two things I don't really know of anything comparable. I suppose the first time I tried PC gaming on a TV was also pretty amazing, but still not the same.
 
The ATI Radeon 9700Pro was a game changer for me. Coupled with the release of BF2, gaming just had never been better, or arguably since. The pinnacle of PC multiplayer gaming and graphics progress right there. :cool:

me too. begged dad for that card. i think it was $350 for bleeding edge power lol. that and moh allied assault. mind blown.
 
My biggest upgrade was back in ~2002 when I switched to using 15K SCSI drives in my main computer. This was before the SSD era, but the upgrade had a similar effect. I used a 73GB 15K drive as a boot drive and had 3 36GB 15K drives in Raid:0 as a games drive all running from an Adaptec 29160. The drives had very low seek times and were great when it came to not bogging down due to being accessed multiple times simultaneously the way most normal 7200rpm drives would. Games of the day like BF1942 would load lightning fast and it did wonders when it came to eliminating stuttering from on-the-fly file access in games like World of Warcraft. When I eventually did upgrade to an SSD (80gb Intel x25-m G2 in ~2008), it didn't actually feel like as big of an upgrade coming from the 15K SCSI drives as it did when I upgraded to the SCSI drives. Those SCSI drives were beasts, and they were loud too.
 
My memory ain't what it used it be (ha it was never great to begin with), but if I recall correctly, the biggest jumps I have personally seen in my life when upgrading were:

1.) ATI Rage (forget which specific model but I think it only had 16MB of vRAM) to GeForce 2 Pro 64MB vRAM (next card after that was 9500 Pro, another big jump to me)
2.) Very first SSD (Samsung 850 Pro). My dad had been rollin' with SCSI but I was stuck with 7200rpm IDE and then SATA drives until V-NAND came out.
3.) Opteron 165, my first dual-core CPU, which was an amazingly ridiculous overclocker out the gate with the fucking stock cooler it came with. Before that I was running a Palomino 1900+ and then a Barton 3200+. Thunderbird 1400 MHz before the Palomino also felt like a huge upgrade over P3 500 MHz (which itself felt decently above the 233 MHz K5 and 350 MHz K6 our family was using, at least it did to me at the time, though I guess with a lot of CPU upgrades it's often upgrading the whole platform that makes the difference, not just the CPU itself).
4.) 56K dial-up to cable modem.

I feel like there might have been other big jumps I experienced, but like I said my memory ain't so great. I'll edit my post later if I remember any others.

My current system is my longest-running system so far. It's gonna be 5 years old this Fall. Some of my homeys are still rollin' with Sandy Bridge, Z68 and Z77 systems. They got their eyes on Zen 2 for potential upgrade.
 
Quite a lot were hugely significant.
Voodoo
Voodoo2
2xVoodoo2
first GeForce
8800GT
Broadband
Core2 duo
2500K
SSD <-possibly the biggest
980ti
1080ti

I probably missed a few.
 
I guess my biggest upgrade and scariest thing was adding a soundcard to my Packard bell. Yes, I had that as a first pc., Came with no sound. Picked up a reveal 16 bit sound card that had a ide interface for CD ROMs.....it was the tits.
 
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