Year 2000 System Build

The last year of the twentieth century brought about the Pentium 4 towards the end of the year. Though clocked at an impressive 1.5 GHz, it struggled to perform against high end Pentium III's and the Athlon Thunderbird. Also, this was perhaps the last year that there were multiple GPU contenders.

The Hardware

CPU's

• Intel Pentium 4 1.5 GHz (Willamette, 256K L2, 400 FSB)
• Intel Pentium III-EB 1.13 GHz (Coppermine, 256K L2, 133 FSB)
• AMD Athlon-C 1.2 GHz (Thunderbird, 256K L2, 266 FSB)

Chipset/Motherboard

• For Pentium 4 (Socket 423):
  • i850: Abit TH7, Asus P4T
• For Pentium III (up to dual Socket 370):
  • i815E/i820: Asus CUSL2, Asus P3C-E, Microstar 815E Pro
  • i820/i840 (dual): Asus P3C-D (i820), Intel OR840 (i840)
  • Via Apollo Pro133A: Asus P3V4X, GA-6VX-4X,
  • Via Apollo Pro133A (dual): Abit VP6, ASUS CUV4X-DLS, Iwill DVD266-R, MSI 694D Master-S
• For AMD Athlon (Socket 462)
  • Via KT133: Abit KT7-RAID, Aopen AK73 Pro, Asus A7V, MSI K7T-Pro2

Video Card

• Nvidia GeForce 2 Ultra 64MB
• Nvidia Quadro 2 Pro 64MB
• ATI Radeon DDR 64MB
• 3dfx Voodoo 5 6000 (technically, only the 5500 was commercially available)
• S3 Savage 2000 (Alternative)
• STMicro Kyro (Alternative)

Note that the STMicro Kyro and S3 Savage 2000 cannot compete with ATI/Nvidia, but they are listed here for their significance. The Savage 2000 was the last video card S3 released (its subsequent failure was a major contributor to S3's bankruptcy). The STMicro Kyro was an interesting budget solution that used Tile Rendering. The Voodoo 5 6000 was never publicly released, but those fortunate enough to have working samples have indicated it performed well in legacy titles.

Sound Card

• Aureal Vortex 2
  • Diamond Monster Sound MX300
• Creative Sound Blaster Live!