Ali-K

Age/Occupation/Location?

I am 22 years old, I live in a town called Drobeta Turnu Severin in the country Romania and i am curently working at a local GSM Cell-Phone Service Company but i am a PC-Maniac, a tweaker-modder-overclocker-gamer... type of a guy :)

How long have you been a member of Guru3D forums?

A pretty long time... 2 years or something... Anyway i check Guru3D.com every day for news and drivers.

What did you first come here for?

Pictures of Video Cards, Reviews and Drivers.

What do you mainly use the system for?

Mainly GAMES, Multimedia and 3DMark...

How much did you spend on the rig?

On this one... i don't remember... more like lots of trades... like i gaved my old platform to a fatkid and now i got Athlon 64... my GIGABYTE Geforce 5900XT +110$ on a LeadTek A6600GT TDH AGP8X... and stuff like that.

How often do you update/buy a new rig?

As often i got some money... once a few days but since i'm far from being rich i mostly make trades.

What components are used?

-CASE: ASUS Vento 3600

-PSU: KeyMouse 500W

-CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3000+ (NewCastle) overclocked 5% from 2000MHz to 2100MHz alias 3100+ (Perfectly Stable)

-CPU Cooler: ASUS Crux with copper cilinder

-MB: ASUS K8NE-Deluxe

-RAM: 2x512MB APACER DIMMs with decreased latencies from 8-4-4-2,5 to 7-3-3-2,5

-HDDS: 2xMaxtor DiamondMax Plus 10, 80GB Each, SATA 150, RAID0

-VGA: WinFast A6600GT TDH overclocked GPU from 500 -> 558MHz and VRAM from 900 -> 998MHz

-IDE Rack Black

-CD-ROM LG 52x Black

-DVD-RW LG Black

-FDD 1.44 (legacy but useful on SATA driver installation)

-Fax-Modem Conexant 56Kb/s (D'ont laugh too much)

-DELL E771Pp 17 inch CRT Monitor

-2.1 U.S. BLASTER 35W "Sound System" and some cheap "Ultra-Bass" HUGE headphones with mic

-Logitech keyboard

-MITSUMI Optical Mouse

Why ATI or NVIDIA, why Intel/AMD?

I have something against Intel and Intel fans for a long time now... Mainly because of the people in Romania... They think computers = Pentiums and as big is the number as better the computer is... In their view there is Pentium 1,2,3 and 4 and eventualy 5 and 6... After you try to explain them about Intel, AMD and their processors... spending a half of hour with patience and drawings they finally say... "AMD... AMD... but what Pentium is this AMD?" Instead of asking the neighbor what computer they have they say "What Pentium you have" and that is just sick! I am a huge AMD fan and i will like AMD for all this existence no matter the ups and downs plus statistically speaking... games run better on AMDs... Finally i would like to give a cute but true comparation of AMD and Intel: AMD = SMART POWER and Intel = RAW POWER or BRAINS vesus MUSCLES.

In the Graphics arena i don't actually care what card is it as long it works perfectly. I had ATI cards before, i had a lot of nVIDIA cards too... and i think that ATI goes for quality while nVIDIA goes for speed... I like ATI better anyway... they're so like AMD in a way...

Does the system work as expected?

Now with the latest upgrades installed.... YES!!! IT DOES. But i would buy better hardware anytime if only i had (some) money.

What's the best part of your rig?

Of course is the AMD Athlon 64 Processor

What sucks and should not have been bought?

This time everything is working as expected.

Modified cases/video cards/other? Did you do it yourself? Walk us through it.

-CASE: 2 white LEDs on the HDD (instead of 1 red LED on the right side) and 2 bright red LEDs on PWR (instead of white) and insted of white LED on PWR button now its UV LED plus i removed the round sign on the PWR button so now is totally transparent.

-PSU: Modified all the cables so i could have as many connectors/types of connectors i need + replaced the sticker with my radioactive logo.

-CPU Cooler: Removed the ASUS sticker (uncentred).

-MB: Bruttaly removed the green LED (i hate green!).

-VGA: Removed the LeadTek sticker (was looking LAME), "resiliconized" and cleaned the GPU and PCIe to AGP conversion chip because of a weird stability problem in NFS-U2.

-VGA AUX COOLER: Dual Fan Blower buildt by MYSELF that runs at 5V to be silent

-The Rack, Optical drives and magnetical drive have suffered a red LED mod too, including the keyboard.

-The MITSUMI mouse runs now with "Microsoft" buttons from an old ball mouse so its a hybrid now ... :)

3DMark scores?

3DMark 2001 SE Pro - 18185

3DMark03 Pro - 8517

3DMark05 pro - 3660

PCMark04 Pro - 3911

MetaBench BETA - 3552

AMD N-Bench_V3 - 2693

Future upgrades?

The Keyboard, Mouse, Monitor and Sound System.