How Core 2 Changed Everything Overnight
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- čas přidán 28. 07. 2024
- Overnight, the Core 2 Duo made obsolete Intel's entire range of CPUs and also dominated against the AMD Athlon 64. When I saw the reviews in 2006 I rushed out and bought a Core 2 Duo E6600 system and it was fantastic!
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Can’t believe 775 is now retro 😅
time flies man, back in 2017 some of my friends were still using core 2 quad on their daily machines. Now all of them upgraded to modern stuff as core 2 is no longer capable of running modern software smoothly.
tbf 775 lasted an unusually long time for Intel compared to their other sockets
and consider early 775 chipsets are completely incompatible with Core 2 as well
"Retro" for windows 11: which is fast as a dead dog on the highway.
@@mtunayucerdefine "modern stuff" -- a C2Q isn't exactly power efficient but is strong enough for web browsing and office tasks if you throw a basic dGPU at it
Still runs Windows 11 pretty well, provided you are on a C2Q with 8GB RAM. Still not as good as a AM2 Phenom with 16GB.
In 2007, right out of college, I built a C2D E6750 / 8800GTS 320MB machine inside a Lian Li PC65+ case. I felt like I had made it in life with that PC.
Ah the 8800 GTS 320 such a good value card!
I had the 8800 gts 512 the card died in 2012.
The moment when you could see how the weather in Crysis changed and the day/night cycled (9600gt sli here)
I cheaped out and got a 8600GT. It was terrible compared to what the 8800's could pull off.
@@Vfl666I have a 8800 GT that is still in use in my second computer. It's pretty much only used for watching CZcams nowadays.
I still flip systems based on Core 2 CPUs and it feels good to keep these components out from the dump for a little longer.
Same here… it’s a perfectly usable platform, if you manage expectations
Even for Win 10, C2D E8400 still is fast, only need 8 GB RAM, SSD, GT 1030 GDDR5 are good enough for all retro games.
For new games and faster web browsing i7-2600 or similar and newer GPU like GTX 1650 4 GB (also the fastest passively cooled card with huge heatsink existing, which I'd add a DIY fan to be even better than any OOTB fan-cooled card) or 1060 6 GB are enough for 99 % of all games and 2K gaming. I don't really see a need to waste 3 times more ressources for 4K, you won't see much of a difference either.
Well, some people tried the cheap AMD RX 6400 with a cheap 8K TV showing HL2 can run at 300 FPS @ 8k with impressive details w/o using FSAA (they got a glitched menu, but game runs fine). But for most games I think 4K makes not that difference.
@@sebastianebert4295i would say a quad is the minimum to utilize the 1030. I suppose if you use the ddr4 version I could see it working better.
@@-x21- I have the GDDR5 versions for both GT 1030 cards I have (full size and low profile).
Compared to my older HD 4550 it was a massive boost on the Core2Duo.
Never had C2Q and I think I never would get one now, as Core i5 is faster anyways.
Now my i5-3570 is faster than the GT 1030 GDDR5, which is bottlenecking for Anno 1800, SotT and other new games. But I'm fine with it for now, playing retro games 95 % of the time. I just want energy efficient setups.
My wannabe XP machine Athlon II x2 260 has an GTX 645 2 GB atm.
The GT 1030 was used in a Dell 780 MT E8400 w/ 255? W 85 % PSU. I think 60-75 W GPU may be too much for the 255 W 85 % PSU on the long run or I'd take out the USB 3.0 card. I had problems with 3x USB 3.0 HDDs in that system, the 3rd HDD didn't get enough power.
@@sebastianebert4295 go 750ti for winxp gaming its good gpu for that (own it paired with i7 3770 i retro gaming on overkill machine kindof
At that time I lived within a five minute drive of a Global Computers (later, TigerDirect) warehouse. If you knew the item number you could walk in and ask them to pull it from the back. That way you could get all kinds of crazy "mail order only" deals without the shipping and handling. They would liquidate a lot of hardware this way and so I ended up sticking with AMD in this generation because the price to performance was so good.
I still have a Dell Optiplex 755 as my main computer that previously had a Core2Duo E6700 processor, now I upgraded to a Q9650 processor and Nvidia GT1030 2Gb GDDR5 and 8Gb DDR2 video card, with these features it's great for my audio and video editing requirements and games like "Sea of Thieves: The Legend of Monkey Island" under Windows 10 environment.
Whoa, lucky you! Did you just pay at the warehouse, or did they have you send them the money in the mail/over the phone(/online?) like they usually expected for their customers?
I was way too young in 2006 when the Core 2 line launched. I got the E6600 handed down from my dad when he built an i5 based PC in 2012. I used that until I was 16 years old in 2017. It ran Windows 7 and then got upgraded to 10. I played so much Minecraft, watched CZcams videos and did all my homework on that computer. Great memories. I always wanted to upgrade to a Core 2 Quad, 8GB of ram and a GPU that would be fast enough to play some games with some of my classmates, but my motherboard didn't really support faster CPUs as it was a late Pentium 4 board. In the end I got a new PC with an i5.
I was too young as well but i remember using the family computer with Windows Vista. In 2019 i dug it out of the closet (it had long been retired) and found out it had a e2160 in it. Used it for another year until Windows 7 went eol and it couldn't run Windows 10 that well. Ended up with a sandy bridge system.
When I had the E6300, E6600, E8400, I read about C2Q and that it was only like max. 50 % faster due to slow inter-CPU communications...and also the clocks were a bit lower, most games barely used 2+ cores even, I decided to not buy one. At that time I thought about getting C2Q or maybe S771 Xeons, there already were faster i5-2400 for like 30 € only. Ofc. a Xeon would be nice to have just because, 80 W TDP instead of the 95 W C2Q and faster than avg. C2Q, not the QX9770 ofc., but even the fastest QX9770 is slower than a cheap i5-2400. So that I buried the ideas and just kept the E8400 as it is, lol.
Now having i7-2600 and i5-3570, even better.
But I still love the C2D E8400 and Athlon II x2 260, both very good basic dual core CPUs. My Athlon II system supports 6 core 140 W, I think even Phenom II, but as the said i5/7-2/3xxx are faster anyways, I just keep the old ones with 2 core CPUs.
My aim is low TDP computing, because I can play at hot summer nights and also we pay the highest energy prices in the world since decades, it's no fun, tbh.
Thankfully I got a computer of which you speak.. except it's got like 10gb ram and a gt640 running off a pcie 2.0 x16 (but wired as x8)
My Core 2 Quad Q9650 has just turned 15 years old as of this month and is still going strong inside of a dual boot XP/10 retro build.
Before Core 2, you pretty much had to buy a new computer every few years just to ensure you still had a machine that worked. A machine more than 6 years old was generally beige, ran DOS, and was either in a pokey little office running WordStar or on the curb side.
Then from mid 2006 onwards, Core 2 stabilised the market so much that, even today, you can still easily get a Core 2 based refurb machine running Windows 10 for everyday work, never mind budget gaming and retro fun, as of 2023.
Still have fond memories of the venerable Q6600 and the BSEL mod; that bumped up its turbo frequency by 25% (to 3.0GHz) by using a sliver-sized piece of electrical tape! Ran with that mod for over 6 years, until the power supply went on the fritz and I decided to upgrade the entire system.
That's interesting!
I had the C2D E8400 3 GHz, P35 chipset and the previous owner overclocked it per BIOS to 4.2 GHz, which was impressive.
Any of the E8400 can run at 4.2 GHz because of good silicon lot, which also is impressive.
I think P35/P45 chipsets were sought after for this purpose of FSB overclocking. Well, the used chipset got quite hot even at base FSB, the heatsink was quite loose to cool it good, I attached an extra 6 cm fan to it.
But at the time I got it, faster i5-2400 were cheap like 30 € and I reverter the C2D to 3 GHz for longevity.
If anything dies, it's the caps in PSU or mainboard caps 1st.
@@sebastianebert4295 The C2Q also had considerably more headroom than 3Ghz...but I had made the mistake of buying a new Dell XPS 420...which on paper looked good. However, with its locked BIOS and BTX case, there was no way to get a decent OC out of that machine other than the BSEL mod, which tricked the BIOS into seeing FSB 1333MHz instead of the stock 1066 MHz. Other upgrades that mattered most: Windows Vista 32 Bit to Windows 8.1 64 Bit, which realized RAM beyond 3.6GB (I ran with 16GB DDR2); an SSD for the Boot drive; and a decent GPU (e.g. GTX 1050) at that time.
Plenty of people who had built their PC's using ATX standards could OC the Q6600 up to 3.8GHz, with proper cooling. Some were able to exceed 4GHz, with advanced cooling techniques.
My machine lasted 11 years as my daily driver...the exact quoted lifespan of the DELL 450W (nominally rated) PSU.
I dumped mine for a self-built PC based on the ASUS P9X79 Pro + E5-1680V2 + 32GB DDR3 1600...which I could easily OC to 4.5GHz on air. This paired well with the GTX 1080Ti. All were used parts and I built it in 2019, including new PSU and Case for under $700.
The Q6600 always struck me as the odd one. Yes, the first consumer quad core, but a bit to early to be relevant for most people. For gamers a dual core was cheaper and usually higher clocked, thus faster. For non gamers, any Core 2 was a major step up and there was simply no need for a quad. And even with the secend gen of Core 2 chips there were faster and cheaper quads.
By the time quad cores became pretty much mandatory, the Q6600 was already too slow.
And yes, I had an E8400 as well. Ran it on 3.6 GHz for years until I replaced it. I still have it around, so I played a bit with it to see how well it goes, and 4.2 GHz as well. Nowadays I'm running a X5460 in my media system, so the platform still lives on.
I have heard the E2160/E2180, which were low end dual core chips, were very popular with BSEL mods to get it to run at around 3.2GHz if I remember correctly.
Q6600 was rather cheap and highly overclockable. I had one at 3600 Mhz 24/7. This is 50% overclocking from the stock 2400 Mhz! Without any mods, mind you, just a good motherboard and cpu cooler. (Why do you need mods to overclock something that can he done so easily just using normal mb bios?). All in all it is my favorite CPU of all time, served me years, before I moved on to i5-2500k.
Also I don't remember q6600 having any "turbo frequency" though I might be wrong. If it did I turned it off right away. Back then I loved my CPU's always working at 100% of their potential.
I really miss this time tbh, so much more optimism and excitement for what was around the corner.
I couldn't wait to get a modern computer or one of the 7th gen consoles around 2008 or so. The stuff coming out looked just amazing compared to anything from 2000-2005.
I was really lucky that my Dad was into computers when I was growing up. Around 2006 I was probably 12 and rocking a single core Sempron, probably on socket 939. No idea what GPU I had but I remember when Wrath of the Lich King launched in 2008 that my PC couldn't handle it well. I asked my dad and that baller got me a 9800 GTX+! We popped it in and I saw barely any performance increase, and that's how I learned about bottlenecking! 🤣Ended up waiting a bit and got a Phenom II x4 955 when it launched, what a legendary upgrade. Love you Dad 🥲
The longevity of the core2 series is awesome. I still use a core2duo with an ssd and 8gb ram and it runs windows 11 just fine can even play some games. My friend still uses a core2 quad with a 750ti and 16GB ram and he has no issues with it either it runs the programs and games he wants to play just fine. Nowhere near obsolete
This is literally me just 2~3 years ago, but using a GTX 970 and Xeon mod and oc to almost 4GHz.
Only upgraded because one of the games I was playing updated and needed to use a newer instructions set.
Absolutely, I also run an E8400 w/ 8 GB RAM and SSD for many many years, even got it 2nd hand only, when i5-2400 already was out, but it was fast with Win 10.
Only new games and Web Browsing gets a bit slow, but for old games it's very fast.
I only upgraded because I got a very cheap 2nd GT 1030 GDDR5 bundled with i7-2600, 16 GB RAM, HDD and SSD for 90 € complete in a Dell 790 SFF. My 1st SFF PC.
I wanted a 2nd GT 1030 GDDR5 only. So this one was basically for like 20 bucks or so only and my entry into low profile world. Sadly it has USB 2.0 only.
Later I bought a Dell 7010 DT (also low profile) because of internal USB 3.0 with i5-3570, 16 GB RAM, HDD for 60 €, used the low profile GPU from the other one.
I think NVMe SSD doesn't make such a difference to SATA 3 than SSD made to HDD. Some secs bootup time only. So no need for a newer PC here.
Only newer GPU from time to time.
When the AMD RX 6400 (a tad bit slower than GTX 1650 I think) would be available for like 70 € I'd buy it, but not for 150 €, lol. I mean the GTX 1650 with same speed already exist since some years and my GT 1030 GDDR5 isn't thaaat slow, a tad bit slower than the GTX 750 I think, but 30 W TDP.
Just got an AC outage, very rare, but I have a laptop while writing here ;) Never used an UPS, tho somewhere I have an old one, which just needs fresh batteries and could save games, have like 30-120 mins time to shutdown or wait for AC coming up shortly after. I remember we tested it decades ago and it beeped very loud when AC was gone.
I need a bike dynamo and/or solar cell attached to the UPS. My PC needs like 20-30 watts only with retro games, I even use MSI Afterburner to limit FPS to 60 or even 30 with some games to save much power and heat. TV 40 watts on top. Should be easy to even drive it by your own muscle power for at least 2 hours.
I went from a P4 HT furnace with a big chunk of copper to an E6300. What a difference!
Same here! Went from a Dell P4 2.4 Ghz system and then decided DIY and built myself an E6300 system. I've gone through 5 system upgrades since then but the jump to the Core 2 Duo was a huge leap!
I also went from a hot, noisy P4 to a cool, quiet Core 2 Duo. What a difference! 😄
Good times Phil, 775 was definitely the high point of overclocking. Remember getting 100% overclocks on E2140, not to mention the AMD core unlocks. Crazy fun time. Nowadays I just run my CPUs at stock, literally no difference.
Yes these days it's boring 😞
Absolutely. Even the i7-7700k is a bad joke. You need to delid and solder it to run at normal temps like 20 °C lower than OOTB and 500 MHz higher freq. is a joke compared to non k CPUs and all C2D and earlier CPUs. Dunno about Athlon II overclocks, at least those have low idle clocks, being more efficient than C2D even, but came out later.
100 % of all C2D E8400 3.0 GHz CPUs can run at 4.2 GHz using a higher FSB with P35/P45 chipsets at least, 1/3 overclock for free due to good silicon lot.
There's a term: "Free lunch is over". 2003+ were a turning point for sure. Not much single core performance increase since then.
This makes the C2D and Athlon II x2 some of the best I'd call it "old world" CPUs.
The E8400 made in 2008 is one of the early ones before the curve for single core IPC goes totally flat.
And staying at like 3 GHz seems to be a rule as phil said in one of his earlier videos, because games made for consoles also run at 2-3 GHz CPUs mostly.
Only the GPUs make a true difference nowadays.
You can play nearly any AAA game at 1080p 60+ FPS using a dated i7-2600. Maybe not Star CItizen or X-Plane 10/11/12, P3Dv3/4, FS 2020. But Cyberpunk 2077, RDR2 are no problem with 10-15 years old CPUs, not C2D in this case, but i7-2600 or similar.
www.gotw.ca/images/CPU.png
www.gotw.ca/publications/concurrency-ddj.htm
Single core / clock speed performance got stuck and any manufacturers went for multi core and power saving tech mostly.
I mean i9-13000k, Xeon Platinum have a bit higher IPC for 1 core apps/games, but not much. Those only shine for multi core apps/games.
And that's why I think the original Crysis Maximum Edition is a special retro test until nowadays. I didn't like remastered versions with less quality and often even more ressource needs. Maybe Crysis 1 remastered can use 2+ cores, dunno, but the graphics are somewhat worse or not much of a difference from comparison images.
Similar to Star Wars Battlefront 1+2 remastered, not really needed. Maybe Mafia 1 remastered is a game with really a different graphics (but some more bugs), but that's rare. Or Anno 1404 History Edition which purged the crash bug and gives good MP better than Hamachi at least.
@@sebastianebert4295 There is about double the single thread performance between today's chips and the early Sandy/Iy COre i, a lot of that is through forcing higher clocks, but some growth is there.
@@HappyBeezerStudios yeah effective speed about +50 %, avg. score +100 % with all boosts. I mean not enough for me to say it must be a new PC after 10 years. Only for PCIe x4 vs. x3. I wait 5 more years ;) and I mean used PCs are fast enough since like 15 years or so to play most games fluid.
@@sebastianebert4295 the ones where both my core 2 and my i5 struggle are big sims. but there it is expected.
Now that was a real pleasant surprise seeing you do a Vista build. Great to see. E8400 was definitely the beast bargain in the socket 775 as it was a terrific overclocker.
Yeah any E8400 can run at 4.2 GHz w/o any issues. Not sure if more, tho. But that's good for a locked CPU.
Vista w/o Aero Peak should be quite okay-ish. And with 4 or 8 GB RAM for cheap nowadays...
Actually, the first OS that I installed in my Core 2 Duo was Windows Vista Ultimate 64bit, SP1. If you wanted 64 bit Windows you had a choice between 64bit XP Pro and Vista 64 bit. With 4 GB of RAM, a dual core CPU with 64 bit support, performance was plenty for Vista. Later, I upgraded to Windows 7 Ultimate, and then I installed Windows 10. To be honest though, the best Windows OS for the platform is 7. And it is the one that I kept the longest.
Yeah Win 7 Pro x86 is very fast, x64 is slower.
But for EAX gaming XP makes sense.
@@vtheofilis I think WinXP 64bit is underrated, and really was held back by the lack of driver support due to the Vista arrival. I tend to agree on Win 7... it is probably the best OS Microsoft built.
@@erikmerchant567 Well, tbh, Windows 10 are OK.
If you use a legitimate copy of the OS and your programs, and have a tidy registry ( I use Bulk Crap Uninstaller - BCU for short - for non game store - for example Steam, GOG - programs, you are fine. I used to do a complete format once a year, now, I am going for... 3 years in a single install I believe ).
NT based Windows may have brpken DOS compatibility, but they are acceptable if you don't delve into warez, and keep your registry fit. Paired with an SSD and enough RAM.
E6600 is very nostalgic to me, my first gaming PC was adding parts and pieces to a Dell Optiplex 745 which had a E6600. It saw hours and hours of Minecraft and GT 220 that my uncle gave me did as well. It was a great system. Its why I grabbed a 775 Board System a few years back. No Graphics Card but it had 16 GB DDR2 , Q9400 which I later added a HD 4890 and upgraded to a Q9650
I remember vividly the Core2 launch. I went with a lower end e6300 and even that was a HUGE leap ahead
I bought it new and only recently retired the system as it began intermittently wouldn't boot. It was still a fairly capable daily use CPU for browsing and basic PC tasks
I ran a Q9650 up until just a few years ago. Thing constantly surprised me how well it kept up when paired with better hardware. 8GB DDR3 and a GTX 1660OC was my final configuration and I was playing Ark all the time
Yea Quad-core was sufficient for a long time.
Q9550 with a GTX 970 until 2020 here, family's workhorse. Still thinking what I can repurpose it for.
@@sengyew83Turn it onto a media PC. Or for LAN gaming when a friend comes over.
@@HappyBeezerStudios 👍 yup considered turning it into a HTPC where 1080p performance is still rock solid. A little worried on its 4K streaming performance though, unless I can offload the load onto a newer GPU?
@@sengyew83 I guess so, depends on the codec obviously.
They really were good, especially with the BSEL mods for FSB OC !. I have an E8400 about to go into an HP SFF :)
Very good even for modern use.
got that one (e8400) too in a late XP build (I hate Vista!😅)
It is almost as fast as my athlon Ii x2 255 from 2010, but the athlon II has of course the higher mem speed
I remember being blown away by the reviews of the Core 2 when it first came out. Nothing came close! As much as I wanted to get an E6600, I held out for a bit until the Core 2 Quad Q6600 launched (about a year later if I recall). The overclocking headroom on even the first generation Core 2s was really inpressive too!
CPUs which impressed me the most were:
Any 486 from SX to Am5x86 for quantum leaps with every version. Comanche here we come. We did it, let's get home!
Pentium III for efficiency. Pentium III-M/S even better.
Apple/IBM/Motorola aka AIM PowerPC G4 for efficiency, maybe even better than P III, but sadly no x86, no Windows (my Sonnett G4 800 MHz upgrade CPU even has 1 MB L3 cache, last one was 1800 MHz G4 I think).
AMD XP (the "better than P4 one").
Core2Duo S775 and Xeon S771 (easily moddable for S775) for efficiency. C2D ULV laptop even better.
Core i5/7 2xxx for efficiency. i5/7-xxxM/U even better.
AMD APUs.
CPUs which were unefficient:
Pentium 4, at least S478 Prescott 3200 MHz.
AMD FX.
AIM PowerPC G5 (that's why Apple switched to Intel Core Duo/2 Duo in 2005).
@@sebastianebert4295 All the inefficient ones are basically the architectures that traded IPC for clock speed. Don't forget POWER6 for that GHz race lineup
@@HappyBeezerStudios what about Apple PowerPC G5? Was it that bad? Or was PowerPC just in a crysis to make them use Intel Core instead? I mean 1.8-2.7 GHz is less than with Pentium 4 and G4 had like 700-1800 MHz (a bit more efficient than Pentium III, some with 1 MB L3 cache).
I know it can't compete with x86_64 CPUs, having endless OS, apps and games.
Apple also is very restrictive and different all the time. It's just interesting. I got some cheap G4, a mate once bought a G5 dual I think. Now I wonder which oldest OS I can install to see Lemmings, Prince of Persia and Comanche 1 CD in a higher resolution than on DOS. Mac OS 6-8 would be good I think. Officially 9.x minimum, but I read 8.2 also should run. Have to check winworldpc or different to gather CDs, burn or maybe use DriveDroid, if the G4 can boot from emulated USB-CD/DVD. It can boot off normal USB, but it's complicated to choose the start files from the Open Firmware, similar to EFI.
probably not a huge reason, but the newer Core 2s have some extra extensions like SSE4.1 that can allow them to run newer software. Not relevant for someone looking to build a retro system, but the 45nm C2Qs can still be viable for some lighter modern computing.
That is correct. I was surprised that a 775 based system is still capable of running modern photography software. I use DxO Photolab and it works fine (requires at least SSE4.1 to be working). With capable modern GPU, it also nicely accelerates AI noise reduction (& OpenCL). So I kept one LGA775 based machine (C2Q Q9550@3,4Ghz, 8GB of RAM and AMD HD7750 GPU with SSD) with Windows 10 OS.
I got the E6300 almost immediately after launch. 2 years later i got the Q6600. Then in 2012 got my Sandy Bridge i3, I7 Skylake in 2017, and now I9 Raptor Lake in 2023. To say that the Core 2 Duo made me a loyal customer is an understatement. But i guess when Intel does try to compete, they compete.
Very fond memories of my Core 2 system. My second DIY pc, and first one that could be considered high end. E6600 and the 8800GTX Superclocked. It was a monster gaming pc at the time. I sort of recreated it recently with similar hardware. Going to make my ultimate XP rig soon with a q6600 as well.
6:50 Much love and best wishes from Poland, mate!!! :)
First core2 system was Q6600 in a 680i board had some great times with that setup but did eventually toast the mem controller on the board. Last year started putting together similar system but with a E8600 and 790i board, as you stated in the video this era of parts is at great price for doing retro builds just old enough for most people to not chose for budget builds but just young enough to still be in good supply.
Got A E6420 when that first released when I built my first PC. Night and day compared to the 3.06GHz P4.
Clocked the C2D to 3.20Ghz on stock voltage and stock cooler, ran it for years like that with no issues. God tier CPUs.
Computing in the 00s... I miss the internet and games from this era.
I went from Pentimu 4 , 1.6 GHz to Core i5 2nd G, and was blown away by the performance, I always wanted Core 2 CPUs but never managed to get one.
that must have felt like coming from a high end Core 2 Quad to a 13th gen i7 😂
@@Lilbroda Yeah, I remember the first time opened a very populated folder and the WinXP flashlight didn't show up 🤯
That's a huuuge difference. Even from my old P4 3200 or AMD XP 2800+, if skipping C2D, going straight forward to i5-2xxx.
But in the last 10 years there's nearly no speed difference with mainstream CPUs, which is good for us retro gamers ofc. Only need a new GPU or limit FPS like I did in Anno 1800, while using 30 FPS is enough for me in this game, even a C2D E8400 can play this game.
I had a E6300 (later swapped to a Wolfdale E8400) overclocked to 3.2 with a Zalman cooler. EVGA 680i SLI board, 2GB of 800MHZ DDR2, EVGA 8800 GTS 640 and Audigy 2ZS Platinum. It had 2x 120GB drives in a RAID 0 for WinXP and another 2X 250GB RAID 0 for Vista. And a single 500GB for my files drive. Built it when I was in high school, right before graduation. I was one of the few who could play Crysis at my college. Those were the days… Still have almost all of it.
My PC hobbiest days started with an AM2 Sempron system, but really went semi-serious when I took over my dad's old Q6600 system. From my uni's electronics dump I had the opportunity to get loads of 775 boards and cpus from retired computers, which made the start of my CPU collection also. Have had mountains of Core 2 cpus, especially the E6600, E6850 and E8400 were everywhere
Yeah E6300, E6600, E8400 were used in millions of office PCs. Very reliable CPUs. C2D S775, Xeon S771 are some of the best platforms, after Pentium III and PowerPC G4 ofc.
Athlon II x2-x6 + Phenom II Socket AM2 also are good, but came out later.
i5-2400/i7-2600/i5-3570 are very reliable, also quite good and seen in millions of office PCs. That's my nowadays sweetspot.
I don't buy new PCs, only new GPUs and SSD.
I do remember moving from Athlon to Core2 on my next upgrade build back in the day. It was clear Intel took back the lead with core2 back then.
Core 2 was the bomb, my brother had a E6320 and I ended up with G0 stepping Q6600 eventually. Amazing upgrade from socket 939.
Hey Phil! In 2006 I've upgraded from an Athlon XP 1700+ to a Core2 Duo E6400, which I kept at 2.6 GHz for quite some time...yeah, imagine the performance boost :))
What an upgrade 😄 You would have been amazed by the performance.
Yes I went from a 2500+ Barton to an E4300!
In my case it was Celeron D 2.4GHz > Pentium Dual Core E2160@3GHz. Performance increase was very pleasant :)
775 CPUs have been one of my favorite platforms because it always overclock well, I usually OC the bus to the next step, eg 800->1066. 1066->1333, 1333->1600 etc, just increase core voltage and they all work with the increased bus and clock, I even got my record on these with over 50% increased core speed. They are beast! I actually pretty recently built a 775 experiment computer on a open mount board so that I can play with all the CPUs and stuff I have for it. still like to play overclocker on this platform lol
Thank you for this very nice upload. I loved hearing the pizza newbs story and memories like that live forever.
2006 was a good year and I do miss it. At that time I was still using a Pentium 2 400mhz with a Voodoo 3 as I was working constantly (18 hours a day sometimes more) 7 days a week and I was only playing old games for years. Any internet searching I did at the time was at work and I lived in my own home for over 2 years without internet so when I wasn't working I was a hermit playing old games. I do feel like I missed out on the core series when it was new because of working non stop for years but I have had some amazing play throughs of a lot of old games with no internet to distract me or guide me through them.
I highly cherish your videos and everything I learn in them.
Thank you for the kind words.
Hey Phil! Thank you so much for sharing with us another great video!
Painkiller Black. Yes. I played this on my Athlon2 system I believe. Ran great. I like the fact that when you get closer and closer to the red end goal, there is a loud heartbeat noise which gets faster the closer to the goal that you get.
The step from pentium4 to core 2 duo was impressive
Still have my zotac mini itx systems, core2 e6600, e8200, q6700 and celerons. Finally replaced them with ivy bridge itx systems by 2012, but used the q6700 as a file server up till 2018. They did well. Goes to show how future proofed that tech was.
Great vid!
This bring so much memories ! I had a K7s5a with a Duron 800, then my mom bought a Packard Bell IMedia with a E6300 and a GeForce 7500 LE wich allowed me to finally play Freelancer, Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 in decent condition and also to do some vidéos FXs for my school project ! I later upgraded it with my first job at McDonald's with a E8400 on a P5ND Sli and Geforce 8600 to play some S.T.A.L.K.E.R and of course Crysis :). I'm currently gathering some parts to rebuild my old rig ;). I got fond memories with core 2 duo aswell it was good times !
Spot on observation Phil, I always felt that once the Core2 had been released that CPU's had matured, I had a core2 laptop with 1.8Ghz, in fact still have it, and that was still useful years late where as my P4 was obselte after about 2 years. I really loved my E6600 and Q6700 I didn't upgrade until 2600K. The E6600 and 2600K were 2 really venerable Intel CPU's that had some much overclocking scope, I still have my 2600k today , up until about 18 months ago it was my 2nd machine, which ran at 4.8Ghz day in day out for many years.
Back in the day i never had a Core 2 CPU, i switched directly from a P4 3,0 GHz to a I7 860 overclocked to 4GHz. But now, my server runs a Core 2 Quad Q9550.
My e6600 with default voltage perfectly run at a maximum stable frequency of 3300 mhz from its standard 2400 mhz. I kept it at 3200 mhz (8x400) from day one for many years afterwards. A great Intel CPU.
Nice OC! I believe I had mine running at 3 GHz but not sure.
Tom's Hardware had this image of the Athlon 64 X2 superimposed on Zinedine Zidane being red carded at the Italy Vs France game for their review.
I went from a 3800X2 to a E8400. A big upgrade.
Verry soon i clocked it to 3.6 Ghz at which it is still running to this day.
No longer my primary system of course, but i still keep it around.
Watching this on a core2 quad. Wild that such an old CPU has no issues doing this
🙂😄
If you enjoy overclocking the E2xxx processors could be pushed to double their base clock speed. LGA775 era Biostar were were the hidden gems and produced some of the best boards for overclocking
Very easily, I had a E2200 that would run stable at 2.8 and on a better board than I had it would run at 3.0. It was insane how well it overclocked.
Great video, Phil! I have a blast on my Core2 system these days. My first Core2 CPU back in the day was the E6850, which was a dual core powerhouse, and matched it with an ATI HD2900XT (should have opted for an Nvidia card, but oh well). I remember Crysis and Bioshock being the main reasons for upgrading, and even though Crysis ran poorly, it was still completely playable.
I still have a Q6600 computer with an 8800GTX. I remember jumping through many hoops to get a G0 stepping.
The E6600 was my first new up to date computer since a long time. I got my first job and was able to buy the Intel Bad Axe 2 motherboard, an ASUS EN8800 GTS 640M and of course a WD Raptor. We played Day of Defeat Source and BF2. We still play thos games today on our retro LAN sessions.
Nice video again!
Awesome 👍
Ah painkiller, I love that game. Yahtzee's retro review summarized it perfectly. "Painkiller is in the same bucket as Serious Sam and the original Dooms in that it serves an antidote to fancy pants complex modern FPSing. There are no stealth elements, no key hunting, no escort quests, no dorky support characters dribbling in your earhole, no mission objectives besides kill everyone. Its just you, some guns, and the entire population of murder town between you and where you need to be. Its pure genocidal fun."
Haha yes!
I remember in public games of Supreme Commander's server titles "No Athlon!!!", "Core2Duo only!!!", etc. Funny times 😍
Happy Friday Phil! I still maintain a couple Core2Duo retro gaming systems. One is a custom build with a G41 motherboard and the other is an eMachines system with a purple ECS motherboard running an E8600. Very stable and fast XP systems overall.
Even if I used entry-level Pentium Dual Core E2140, It outperformed previously used P4 3.0 CPU. It even had decent overclock potential. What a monster.
Thanks for the kind words about Poland 😊 Great video as always! When these parts arrived to the market I had P4 with 2GB RAM and HD4350 with 512MB Vram and I really wanted to have dual core set 😢
Very nice!
It's incredible how some 775 motherboards are still usable today! If it can be modded to use a Xeon 3Ghz 771 CPU, you'll go from a Core 2 Duo to a quad core, then throw in a cheap SSD, some cheap DDR2 sticks (I just bought 8x 2GB chinese sticks for 20€/$, all Memtest86 approved) and a reasonable GPU and you'll have a very powerful machine for XP/7 games, or even for daily use with Windows 10 and barely noticeable slowdown. I use it daily and it's much better than a first generation Intel i5...
Around that time I worked in a computer store that built custom PCs. For the longest time they were the AMD AM2-based systems but we moved mostly to Core 2 Duos and Quads fairly quickly. I ended up getting one for myself, an E6420. Worked for everything I needed.
I used an Athlon XP 3000+ until 2008 when I decided to try laptop gaming. Switched to a C2D T9300 with 8800 GT and 4GB. It lasted me until I wanted to get onboard with the Sandy Bridge desktop. There was a lot of advancement between those three machines. I still find that laptop satisfying to pull out once in awhile. It makes a fine retro XP machine but very power hungry for a laptop.
Awesome video. Phil.Have quite a few intel core duos around .Still have my first one a 1.86 core duo over clocked to 3.0 ghz using air cooling.Still have it these days.
Found a place selling nvidia 9800 gts and nvidia gtx 260s new condition old stock.Also manged to pick up a Matrox g2 8 megabytes new old stock 2x agp.Will be doing some testing .
My buds and I have been recently been rocking BF2 on a LAN we set up every other weekend on old XP systems. I've used your vids to help me get the comps going if I ever get stuck. Old iMacs are now dirt cheap in my neck of the woods in Utah and they usually have some decent specs around the 2007-2009 years, core 2 duos and various GPUs like radeon x2600 Pro, Nvidia 9400m, and even an 8800 GS. Windows XP is perfect for them with bootcamp. Then of course I have made some real XP systems after being inspired by your videos, My favourite being a very pretty Dell XPS tower that I tossed a Q6600 in a with a gtx 750ti. Working on a few MacPros for the LAN collection with some x1900s or 8800GTs. Thanks for all the work you put into your vids. Especially your win98 and DOS build, they have been a tremendous help on some of my other Piii projects.
Awesome! Do you play the BF2 demo or full version with patches?
@@philscomputerlab full version patched to 1.5.runs well even on a radeon x1600, the least powerful GPU we have for an XP build.
Great video Phil. I absolutely love the Core 2 processors. I still use a core 2 duo e8600 and ati Radeon 4670 machine for windows xp games to this very day
From 02Feb2009 to Aug2023, i have replaced 4 motherboards with core2duo E8500 & Pentium E6600 lasted me 14.5 years and it is a legend like my playstation 2 which ps p2 motherboard spoil recently 2005 to 2023 almost 18 years. Sad to say aug 2023 no new afox LGA 775 motherboard are selling but i bought amd 4600G & playing ps 2 games using ps 2 emulator, elite old gamer have spoken..
In 2008 the Core 2 Duo E8400 was my return to the Intel chips after long years with Amd, the last one was a Pentium III 800EB. And today im back with Amd with a Ryzen 7 7800x3d! Great video Phil!
Using all the good CPUs :D
I had (and still have) the quad core extreme @3Ghz - that served me so well, up until Jan 2020!
Great video! I was using Pentium D 945 until the Phenom release but decided to wait and ended up getting a deal on a QX6700 system I ran for some time. I was excited to step up to this since it was much better than my Pentium D even though I recently got it (but it was very cheap, now we know why lol). Kept using that until getting another deal on an i7 4930k system.
Beautiful movie and beautiful memories! Currently I have two computers based on E8600 and Q6700, both of course overclocked and paired with 2x HD 4850 512 MB Cross-Fire and GTX 260 SLI ❤️ and I chose Win 7. wonderful machines that have been doing a great job so far..... And most importantly!!! greetings from Poland ❤️
Win 7 64bit or Linux Mint, an C2D 8400 with 8 Gb and a SATA SSD still does a lot of things very well.
People forget there was a Core Duo (Yonah) mobile chip out before the Core 2 Duo (Merom.) Core 2 is the 2nd generation of these chips.
I remembered something thanks to this video: I used a Pentium M(Banias?) back then with an adapter(CT-479) on the Asus P4P800. Fun times when the notebook processor with 1 or 1.5GHz less was on par with power hungry desktop processors.
Later on the Pentium M became the Intel Core.
What's up Phil.
Great vid. Love me some Socket 775.
I have a couple 775 builds.
Another thing to note about the E8XXX CPU's over the E6XXX CPU's is that the E8XXX's ran 1333FSB as opposed to 1066FSB standard. And yes, they definitely were clocked higher and overclock quite nicely.
Here is some data that I have on my C2D and C2E builds (I have a lot of top end retro hardware, so if you ever need me to run any tests on any old popular equipment, let me know)
C2D System:
Antec Plusview 1000 AMG Gray
EVGA nForce 780i Solid Caps MB
OCZ ProXStream 1000w OCZ1000PXS
E8600 @ 4.25Ghz w/ Zalman CNPS9700 (1700FSB, can probably push for 4.4Ghz, but haven't bothered in years)
2 x 2GB Patriot DDR2 1066Mhz 5-5-5-15 @ 2.1v
2 x 8800 Ultra SLI
X-Fi Fatal1ty FPS SC
OCZ Vertex I SATA-II 250GB SSD
2 x WD VelociRaptor 150GB SATA-II 10k RPM
Win XP Pro 32-Bit
3D Mark:
03: 69k ;D
05: 27.5k
06: 19.6k
SiSoft Sandra
CPU Arithmetic: Dhry: 37k, Whet / iSSE2: 12k/23k
Mem Bandwidth: Int: 7.1k MB/s / Float: 7.1k MB/s
C2E System:
Cooler Master 690 II
ASUS ROG Rampage Extreme X48 (775 board with DDR3 RAM)
Cooler Master Silent Pro 1000w 80+ Bronze
Q9770 @ 4.2Ghz w/ CoolerMaster Hyper212 Red LED (1600FSB, can probably push for 4.4Ghz here too, but not worth it)
2 x 4GB Corsair Dominator DDR3 2000Mhz CL9
2 x ATI Radeon HD 5870 EyeFinity-6 CrossFire
SupremeFX 8-Channel
OCZ Vertex II SATA-II 240GB SSD
2 x WD VelociRaptor 150GB SATA-II 10k RPM
Win XP Pro 64-Bit Dual Boot with Windows 7 Ultimate 64-Bit
3D Mark:
03: 103k
05: 28k :/
06: 24k
11: E9,457
SiSoft Sandra
CPU Arithmetic: Haven't tested yet.
Mem Bandwidth: Haven't tested yet.
Very nice machines you built there!
So many memories. I had Celeron D (socket 478) still until 2008 when I finally built my first good computers with E8200 and that was a jump!! Most of people around me were trying to save money and they were buying those cheap Athlons X2 and I had like double score in 3D Mark 2005 with overclocked E8200 together with 9800GTX. 😀
Great video and this brought back great memories. Back then I had sold a car and spent part of the money in a gaming PC. I bought a 320 MBs GF 8800 gts, an EVGA 680i motherboard and a c2d e6700. A while after that I managed to bring back from the US an ACER 16x10 monitor that ran at 1680x1050, so I used a resolution a bit superior to the tests here. That PC was great! I've tried BF2142 again a while ago, also my favorite. But I don't think there are many players around my area, so pings were really high for me. There's custom software you have to run to play the game, it's not dificult, but I do wish there was still an official server.
A true legend. I remember having an E6400 @ 3.4GHz 24/7 stable, benchmarked even higher but it throttled in Prime95 thanks to my cheap cooler which I had back then.
I had a shared PC with my sister in middle school but then we needed our own computers while she was in university and I was in high school. My first own PC and build was an E6600. I used it through university and even well into 2015 when I could afford newer tech. After that it became my parents HTPC until 2018 when I retired it. I still have it and occasionally boot it up for nostalgia. My now brother in-law helped financially to build it. I gifted him a ryzen 7 2700x a few years back and hopefully he gets as much use of it like the e6600 :)
I also bought an E6600, at the first price drop. I won the silicone lottery and was able to push it to 3.4GHz on an Abit AW9D using custom built water cooling. Faster than a $1000 extreme edition for only $250! Ran Windows Vista and upgraded to 8GB of RAM as soon as I could afford it. I remember hosting a COD4 dedicated server on that machine then launching the game to play on my own server! I also had a decent size raid for storage. The LAN party host would give me a gig port so I could share files at a LAN party while playing and hosting a game or two at the same time! The future had arrived and it blew everyone's minds. This C2D box also happened to be the fastest desktop computer for like two weeks on the driverheaven site. Good times indeed. I actually still have that machine and it still works just the same as it did 15 years ago!
I really enjoyed this video. The hardware used is pretty close to my first custom built PC I ever built which would be a Core 2 Quad system with the 9800GT. Before this I would just upgrade prebuilt towers. I got really big into EverQuest 2 at the time as well.
It was a huge leap at the time. Still using my C2D E6600 / Asus P5W DH and WD Raptor disks as an auxiliary NAS server. Still working up to date.
I was entering grad school and I didn't have the budget for a Socket 775 motherboard, but I did have the cash for a refurbished Socket 939 board that carried me until I could upgrade to a AM2+ board that I eventually stuffed a Phenom II X4 940 into later on. It was about the same performance as a higher clocked Core 2 Quad but slurped more power, but thankfully electricity was cheap where I lived and it helped heat my apartment in the winter. I ran that Phenom II from 2010 to 2013, when I finally grabbed an Ivy Bridge i5.
I currently use a Q9650 in my old workstation build in my room, still have my original E8500 and my Pentium 4 1.4. Q9650 system with 8 gbs ram and an HD5770, kills games up to 2016. Gonna be popping a gtx 570 in it looking forward to seeing the max fps skyrocket
I got an Core 2 Duo E8500 in 2008, with Windows XP On it, seriously that was a match made in heaven for me, not only XP felt much faster than XP on AMD Athlon Socket A ThunderBird CPU, but also so much more compatible with older games + games that were coming out also supported XP, and used it until around 2016, when I got a new PC with Windows 7 on it. Somehow never had to format that 2008 XP configuration once. The Hard Drive tho was a bit tired, it was making some funny noises during shutdown of the computer.
Whoa - Pizza Hut was giving NFS Most Wanted 2005 and Battlefield 2 out? Man, If I lived there, I would be in Heaven. (Never played BF2 tho, but I find BF1942 fun, so why BF2 wouldn't be fun too?)
I love how the Core2 was just an upgraded supped up Pentium iii. I had the E8400 3Ghz. I kept that right up to windows 10.
I too started my Core 2 adventure with an E6600 but very quickly upgraded to the Q6600 (which had just come out and was basically two E6600s in one CPU - the very first quad core as far as I remember). It was much better for Vista which was quite a power hog after its release...
Lga775 is one of my favourite sockets. Soooo many great memories...
I was using s Pentium M on my ASUS P4P800 with the CT-479 adapter. So I had the nice performance of an overclocked mobile CPU (the Dothan went up to 2.4 GHz) and the very stable Intel chipsets. I had really enough of those VIA and NVIDIA chipsets on AMD platforms. I was using Athlon XPs before. After I bought my first C2D I never switched back to AMD.
I think the holy grail on Core 2 architecture is the Core 2 Quad Q9650. I used this CPU for such a long time. There was no need to upgrade to an Core i for many years.
i loved my core duo quad core CPU, ran Windows 7 like a dream. kept it till 2015 when i switched up to an i4970k, which i'm typing this message on right now :)
2006: when they launched the E8xxx series I bought it for about 200euros, had a Athlon XP 2500+ (@3200+ Barton core) on a nforce2 ultra motherboard before and had to upgrade due to the lack of SSE3/4. Now I still have the same C2Duo in my previous post config. The Athlon64 wasn’t what I wanted as my friends had it and the performance/power consumption wasn’t great. Stuck with Intel throughout the years and went back in recent years using your channel to build another 3Ghz Pentium Dual core system along with the C2Duo for retro gaming. Things like the Voodoo2/Velociraptor drives/Bluray optical/Soundblaster Live aren’t the norm nowadays but they aren’t forgotten. The only thing that keeps the nostalgia glasses on is the low quality of modern AAA games compared to the old days. Great respect for your work Phil!
The q9300 is the first one i bought, very efficient and fast, think it was their first quadcore 45nm cpu
I ended up being a little nostalgic and went with a similar childhood build I had growing up. 2009ish though. It's a Q9650 Core 2 Quad OC'd to 3.93 gHz, 16GB DDR3 RAM on a Asus P5P43TD motherboard, 1TB SSD, and tossed in a modern GPU (GTX 1050 TI) just to see what a similar old system of my childhood can do. It handles nearly everything I've thrown at it pretty well, and being one of the few LGA 775 boards with 16gb ram capacity, it's pretty cool. Some newer games don't work due to the lack of certain CPU instruction sets, but that's fine. These systems are really fun to play around with.
Beautiful 😍
I bought a Dell computer with an AMD X2 3800+ back in 2006/7ish? I maxed out the RAM to 4GB, put in a 128GB SSD, and then upgraded it to an AMD X2 6000+, and an Nvidia Geforce 6300 graphics card, and installed Windows 10 on it and gave it to a family friend who is still using it for basic web browsing to this day. It's obviously not fast but it's still very surprisingly usable for basic tasks.
Ahh the E6600, another excellent trip down memory lane. Thank you Phil. 😀👍
Upgraded from an AMD Athlon XP 1400 to a C2D E6400. Big jump. Thanks for the nostalgia.
As someone who doesnt play many games, I kept extending the life of my Core2 Quad, overclocked slightly, until about 2015. An amazing CPU.
I stuck with P3 systems until Core2 chips came into production. I also got Durons and Athlon chips instead of P4.
Core 2 Duo E8400 was the PCSX2 king for a long time. The whole line had amazing overclocking potential and Intel wasn't that greedy to lock the potential behind K models. Even my little Pentium E2200 could overclock almost 1Ghz over the original clock with the help of a decent cooler.
In 2006, my main computer was a Sempron 2400+ / 768Mb RAM / ASRock K7VT4A PRO / Radeon 9200 / 2 x Maxtor 80GB in RAID 1. I never though it was "slow" because I had been running Linux as my main OS for 8 years already. I only upgraded my system in 2010 to an Athlon II X2 24Oe / 8Gb RAM / ASRock 890GM Pro3 / Radeon HD 6770 / 2 x 1Tb Maxtor in RAID 1 (mostly because qemu is nicer with virtualization extensions). The computer I am using right now is an AMD FX 8320E / 32Gb RAM / Gigabyte GA-970A-DS3P / Radeon R7 360 / 2 x 1Tb Crucial SSD I built in 2016. Linux has allowed me to save a lot of money while not being annoyed with a slow computer. I still use the the Athlon II as a backup PC. At work they were throwing away a bunch of PCs with 4Gb DDR3-1600 sticks, now it's maxed out to 16Gb of RAM.
Being born in 1997 I got my first computer in April 2006. Unfortunately, it was possibly the worst choice - a chinese OEM with Celeron D, integrated VIA Unichrome Graphics and a very loud and propably dangerous power supply. I still got that computer today - now the motherboard hosts a Pentium 4 HT 3.6 GHz along with Palit Radeon X850 XT in AGP slot all powered by solid FSP PSU - it's a neat machine for overpowered 98/ME setup.
The E6600 I use in my "Core2AGP" setup - a rather rare combination :D The motherboard is Asus P5PE-VM, its i865G chipset support the early C2D CPUs. The graphics card I use is EVGA GeForce 7800 GS AGP, it's a very good combination with that CPU
Currently have an E6700 paired with 4GB DDR2 800 and an 8800 GTX as my dedicated XP machine and it's brilliant, handles any game from the early 2000s until 2008-ish without any issues. Love that system and I wouldn't change a thing about it.
My dad went from a 733MHz Pentium III to a Dell Dimension E521 with a 2.2GHz AMD Athlon 64x2 4400+, and what an absolute beast it was! My grandad picked up a 2.6GHz Core 2 Duo eMachines desktop in 2007 as well. Computing was absolutely wild as a kid in the late 2000s 😁
I myself had a 1.8GHz Pentium Dual Core in an Acer Aspire M1610, and I upgraded it with a GeForce 9400GT.
Another video perfectly timed for my lunch break! Thanks Phil!
I have very fond memories of this era. The first PC that I built myself was a Cedar Mill Pentium 4 661. It was 2008, I was 16 and quite ignorant of CPUs and how they worked. I grew up with the Pentium 4 and the GHz race. I saw the 3.6ghz Pentium 4 and the 2 to 3 ish Ghz Core 2 line and decided to go for the Pentium 4.
I eventually got the amazing Q9650 in 2009 using the same motherboard and it was the biggest upgrade I've ever done. Amazing to think that was just a drop in replacement for the Pentium 4. I don't think we'll ever get that again.
I used that q9650 as my main gaming PC up until 2014, stunning performance, especially when overclocked to 4ghz. I kept it going as a second PC up until 2018 and it could still game then.
I dabbled with lots of core 2 duo CPUs from 2010 until 2014 as second PCs or PCs I built for LAN parties on a very small budget. I had an amazing E8600 overclocked to 4.6GHz at one point!
Great era, very enthusiast friendly with overclocking widely available and a wonderful platform to learn on.
Did some say 661? 😊 Coming soon...
@@philscomputerlabAwsome! Another incredible overclocker, I manged 5Ghz on that CPU once and it kept quiet cool too.
My poor C2D E8500 finally kicked the bucket this year. It had been run without a heatsink for 5-6 years at one point in an office computer and seemed to suffer no ill effects other than the temp diode being stuck at -99C. I went to power up the machine to run some Homeworld Cataclysm and it just gets stuck in a post loop.
😳
I did have a skt775 build at 1 point, can't remember what CPU I had, but it was 1 of the very last quad core Core2 processors. 1st off I had a GTX295, and then upgraded to 2 ATI 5970 in crossfire for a total of 4 GPU 👍👍👍👍. I did have Vista on it at 1st, just because I have a soft spot for Vista. I can't remember why now but I ended up moving to Win7, but by then it felt less like a retro machine and more like just an old PC. That being said it's great fun playing with all this top end old hardware you could never afford at the time. In the end I sold a lot of my retro kit to buy my 3080, just keeping my XP build, which I just love, and would never part with.
6:50..
Greetings from Poland.
I personally built myself a Windows XP/Windows 7 Hybrid PC Using a Core 2 Quad Q9550, 4 GB of DDR2 and a GTX 760 OC back in January 2023. It works extremely well for old games like Painkiller or HL2, but also surprisingly pretty well for modern games Like GTA V/Genshin Impact. What do you think of my Hybrid PC project? :)