A blast from the past.. 1996 "Dream machine"

[Olo401]

Wow..

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/fea..._dream_machine

http://www.maximumpc.com/files/u112496/img012.jpg

[Lucavi]

Just goes to show how all things are relevative.

I remember dicking around on Dell's site a few years back - about 2004 - trying to build an "ultimate rig" when Dual Core processors had just come out. I put in the most expensive of everything they had, and came away with some $9,000 rig. It was actually pretty hilarious.

[Reality]

Maximum PC just did their dream machine in the latest issue

Came out to around $15,000 USD, TRI-SLI GTX480's, 2 PSU's, dual 6-core/12-thread Xeon's at 4Ghz, 24GB ram, 4.4 TB, watercooled of course

[CoronA1979]

My first PC cpu clock was I think 25MHZ, lol..

[Surealistic]

if your gonna drop 5k on a "dream" machine, why in the hell would you buy a used keyboard lol

[Mjd]

if your gonna drop 5k on a "dream" machine, why in the hell would you buy a used keyboard lol

I was just thinking the same thing when I was looking at the list.

[Seanr]

Damn, I can only imagine what that 5k would buy now.. or 9k in lucavi post... Although somethin better would come out in 2 months :<

[Surealistic]

as a salesman, you wait for the "next best thing" you will be waiting forever

to do upgrades, i always follow the "buy the best you can afford, that will give most improvement over what you have now"

like right now im using sli 9800gtx+'s, 4gb ddr2, and 2.3ghz dual core amd, for around the same price i could upgrade my video cards to like a single 280 or 285, or i could get a 6 core amd 2.8ghz, if i go the video card route i will not only continue my current bottleneck, but make it even worse, going the cpu route i will open up my video cards that i currently have, meaning hex core here i come lol

[Yabby]

Just goes to show how all things are relevative.

I remember dicking around on Dell's site a few years back - about 2004 - trying to build an "ultimate rig" when Dual Core processors had just come out. I put in the most expensive of everything they had, and came away with some $9,000 rig. It was actually pretty hilarious.

I remember doing this also and coming around the 13k mark. Sad thing was the same specs two years later were consider "Standard".

[Lucavi]

I remember doing this also and coming around the 13k mark. Sad thing was the same specs two years later were consider "Standard".

Isn't that just the best about PCs, though? You build your own God-rig for $13 complete with a $900 processor and 2-3 years later the damned thing is "meh" quality.

The saving grace is that theres always someone out there looking to buy today's version of "shit quality", so you can always e-bay your old parts as you upgrade, or better yet, build your friend's mother a "brand new, high tech" dream computer from the parts.

Our "standard" is the average adult's "GEE WILIKERS, HONEY!"-class computer, just perfect for them to check time.com and their sister-in-law's outdated facebook page.

[Olo401]

In '96 I was rocking a PPC Mac.. that was a pretty decent machine too.

[OWS_Tonx]

Damn, I can only imagine what that 5k would buy now.. or 9k in lucavi post... Although somethin better would come out in 2 months :<

I priced out myself a real nice machine for about $1700. If I could spend the $7k that I would on a dell laptop.. just imagine. hehe.

[dejet]

Lol I think I have my old pc somewhere from 1997(1 pc in my house) I really should look for it and see how low the specs where. I think back now and can't help but think how fast PC's and the technology industry has grown.

This really is the main reason I hate to buy new stuff, at what is it a near 500% increase per year for the last 20 years? It's hard to buy anything high end well knowing that it will be outdated by the Time he box is opened.

How long can we keep up this pace? Its out of hand to think what the next 15 to 20 years will bring.if the pace keeps up.

[Omniyoji]

I still have my old Sony VAIO from 10yrs ago I think. Monitor was very good tho~

http://www.computerpoweruser.com/ima...e/00580343.jpg

[Yabby]

Isn't that just the best about PCs, though? You build your own God-rig for $13 complete with a $900 processor and 2-3 years later the damned thing is "meh" quality.

The saving grace is that theres always someone out there looking to buy today's version of "shit quality", so you can always e-bay your old parts as you upgrade, or better yet, build your friend's mother a "brand new, high tech" dream computer from the parts.

Our "standard" is the average adult's "GEE WILIKERS, HONEY!"-class computer, just perfect for them to check time.com and their sister-in-law's outdated facebook page.

I'm not going to bitch about how fast technology moves. I just stopped worrying about having the best of the best right now. Things are at a point right now that a 200 dollar computer can do almost anything you need (Non-gamers/img/video editing aside). I remember getting my mother a computer for around that price to replace her old computer (less than 1GHZ, 128MB ram, 5GB HD) and she thought i had spent thousands of dollars. I let her think that because it was funny.

[Saroyan]

Wow, haha, that would have been quite a beast at the time, I think I had a Pentium 60 machine in 1996-97

[Norellicus]

I remember rocking a 386 SX with some god awful amount of memory, then upgrading to a 486 DX and thinking I was hot shit...then that christmas seeing my friend's pentium 233 and being insanely jealous.

[Ryany]

I hated the 90s in terms of how fast you had to upgrade. Stuff was far more expensive if you adjust to inflation and every new game that came out would run like shit, even with a good PC. I remember a PC that ran doom at 30 FPS ran Quake1 at like 5 FPS unless you used the shittiest settings.

[Mayareira]

I dropped bunch of thousands on my 80386 Victor computer Yeah, shit was expensive back then but it could run Gunship 2000 BITCHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Also upgraded to 8megs of RAM later on...that was the hottest thing ever. But for the majority of games it was conventional memory that was important. memmaker anyone?

[Knyghtmayre]

http://store.apple.com/us_smb_78313/...co=MTM3NDc4OTA

Configure that 8-core with every most-expensive option and it comes out to just shy of $21,000. Yeah, worth it...

$20,954.90 actually.