The (Personal) Computer CPU (Hi)story

It was in the eclipse summer of the year 2000 (if I recall correctly) when I received my first computer as a gift from abroad (huge shout-out to Elly and Rob Wardenaar by the way, thank you, sincerely), an IBM PC rocking a Pentium MMX (that's a 166 MHz frequency processor), 32 MB of RAM, and 0 (zero) dedicated video memory. Desktop unit, monitor, keyboard, and mouse.

Playing in Paint: This is a photo of a photo we took to showcase to our donors that we indeed use the Pentium PC they gifted us (Thank you!). My job and my sister's is to sit in front of a computer all day so I guess they paved the way for that.

For the sake of comparison - modern medium-range GPUs have around 8 gigabytes of dedicated memory, and any sane-person workstation should have at least that same amount of system RAM, if not double that at 16 gigs. For perspective, the Pentium III was out at about this time.

The IBM PC 340 model is most likely what it was. And how many wonderful games were played on it! Quake 1 and 2, Diablo, FIFA 98, FIFA 2000, Prince of Persia 1 and 2, Broken Sword 1 and 2, Mahjongg, Heroes of Might and Magic II, Supaplex, Prehistorik, Bomberman, The Incredible Machine 1 and 2, Jazz Jackrabbit, Midtown Madness, Demolition Racer, Disney's Hercules, Tarzan, The Lion King, The Jungle Book... and many others that slip my memory.

I also have to mention that I've broken it many times by messing with the various Windows 95 files and software I installed from wherever just to learn a bit more about it and how to use it (and make more room for video games). I remember now! It had a 1.2-gigabyte hard disk drive, of which some of was obviously taken by the system files. Imagine the pain of not being able to install a game because of a lack of storage. That's unheard of these days. I also remember booting it up just to "play" in Paint with my sister. Shoutout to that guy who eventually installed for us a CD-ROM drive and a shitton of old-school games.

Fast forward to the summer of 2004 when my grandparents gave me the money to buy a new PC for high school; for "programming". I went to a computer shop and they made a system for me: the glorious Athlon XP 2600+, with a Radeon 9600 SE graphics card. I played the bulk of my single-player gaming experience on this one, then I poured hundreds of hours into DOTA and then into (Vanilla) World of Warcraft, the notorious online videogame, in which I sank thousands of hours (and still play now again!).

Sometime in 2008, I came home from college and, as always, powered up my high school setup to play some WoW. Booze and snacks were from an early friends meetup I had in my room that day.

This PC was great and all but still, I dreamt of owning an Athlon 3200+ (Barton) CPU and the Radeon 9800XT, the enthusiast beast GPU of the time which allowed for higher detailed graphics and improved monitor resolutions.

Come college in 2007 and I needed a new PC. My dad, working abroad at the time, gave me the money to buy a pre-build I've fallen in love with - an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+ with 2 GB of RAM & an ATI Radeon X1600 Pro 256 MB, a system on which I played WoW so much so that the PSU died twice and the GPU was overheating so badly (no active cooling) that they eventually replaced it for me with a Sapphire Radeon HD 6450. Funnily enough, this system's product page is still online.

The overheating issue got so bad that I often had to stay out of some raid fights in the revamped Naxxramas (Wrath of the Lich King expac) because it would shut down to protect itself. Those were the days!

So it seems that after that first Intel Pentium, fate would only let me have AMD CPUs paired with ATI Radeon GPUs (bought by AMD, in the meantime). Naturally, almost precisely 8 years after I quit PC gaming, but decided to get back into it, I had to build myself a high-end all-AMD rig.

Of course, I had to go with the top this time around, at least in terms of CPU horsepower (for games, video editing, etc). The 1800X Ryzen was the obvious choice. I initially had to pair it with an RX 560 GPU. I couldn't find an RX 580 in any store, online or traditional, due to the mining craze. One could wonder, was I cursed for always having to end up with a middle-range x60 version of each ATI (AMD) GPU generation?

Aesthetics. I has it!

I eventually and happily upgraded to an RX 590 (Sapphire AMD 50 Gold Edition, mind you). Curse ended! You can see a list of all the components and peripherals I currently own here. When writing this, this system is about 5 years old, but not to say it's become sluggish or something, not at all, it still goes strong.