Release Notes: My All-Time Top Five Greatest PC Upgrades

Posted 08/11/2009 at 11:45am | by Will Smith

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After 15 years of building and upgrading PCs, I’ve made some awesome upgrades to my own PCs. These hardware updates either opened the doors to exciting new functionality, or served as force multipliers, greatly increasing my rig’s performance in one fell swoop. Best of all, a killer upgrade can even revitalize a tired old rig.

Now, there’s a subtle difference between upgrades and a complete system overhaul, but for my purposes, an upgrade is anything you can do without reinstalling Windows. Here’s my definitive list of My All-Time Top Five Greatest PC Upgrades:

5. Athlon 64 X2 4800 to Core 2 Quad QX6600

When I upgraded my CPU from a dual-core Athlon to a quad-core Core 2, ripping my entire DVD collection suddenly became a real, tenable possibility. Where the X2 4800 took four hours to rip to DIVX or WMV 9, my trusty Q6600 could do more-demanding H.264 encodes at DVD resolution in just about real-time.

4. Voodoo 2 SLI to GeForce DDR

The launch of the original GeForce DDR marked the last time a 3dfx card graced my system. That first GeForce featured a hardware transform-and-lighting engine that was the precursor to today’s infinitely programmable GPUs. That power finally convinced me to retire my trusty pair of Voodoo 2 boards running in SLI.

3. Wang 386 SX 25MHz to Pentium 60

Let’s face it, my old Wang was a slow, slow computer, even when it was brand new. The upgrade to a Pentium 60 opened the door to the world of photo editing and multiplayer gaming, with Doom, Duke3D, and eventually Quake.

2. GeForce 4 Ti 4600 to Radeon 9700

The launch of the Radeon 9700 marked the beginning of the modern programmable graphics era. With support for the nascent DirectX 9 standard in the form of Shader Model 2.0, the 9700 Pro not only opened the door to DirectX 9, it also was a performance beast in the DirectX 8 games I was actually playing.

1. Pentium 2 SL2W8 to Dual Celeron 300a

The SL2W8 was the Celeron 300a’s rich cousin—a 300MHz Pentium 2 designed for a 66MHz bus. It just so happened to run like gangbusters on a 100MHz bus, giving overclockers a cool 150MHz speed boost. I dropped the SL2W8 in a heartbeat when Abit launched the BP6—a dual-Socket 370, 440BX-equipped mobo designed to run two Celeron 300a procs running at 450MHz. It was an incredible machine, and opened the door to the world of Windows NT, CD ripping, and photo editing for me.

What was your best PC upgrade? I’d love to hear, either via email (will@maximumpc.com) or shoot me a message on Twitter—my username is @willsmith.