- Jan 4, 2005
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I have to admit, I was probably nuts to put any money at all into an aging S939 box. But I love my little Shuttle and the S939 X2 4800+ just keeps chuggin' along, running XP and Vista 32-bit perfectly well. When 2 GB of RAM (the max this thing will support) is inadequate, I guess it'll be the boneyard for it. But for at least another year or two, I can't see disposing of this unit. So I wanted an upgrade to breathe a little life into ol' Betsy.
The system's problem was an EVGA 7800GT video card with a loud fan. You know the high-pitched whine an airliner's engines make in the passenger compartment at 35,000 feet? That's what it sounded like. It really sounded like the Space Shuttle! Even rivaTuner couldn't fix it. I wanted a) to reduce the noise; b) improve the video performance so I could play BluRays with the Shuttle at some point; c) hopefully reduce the power load (EVGA support was shocked that I got a 7800GT to run at all in that Shuttle. It sat in there for three years!).
So on the theory that a much newer card in a similar market segment would meet those needs, I got an EVGA single-slot 9600GT from NewEgg, for $84 after rebate. Installed the newest NVidia drivers, popped the card in, rebooted, and this little box makes a LOT less noise now. I think this thing will make an excellent HTPC at some point.
Oh, and the Shuttle unit went from 4400 in 3dMark06 to 8350. Now, of course, I'm pretty sure my X2 4800+ CPU is bottlenecking, but my E8600 system still only gets around 12,000. So not bad, all in all.
Anyone else got any stories to tell of good upgrades to their breadbox units?
The system's problem was an EVGA 7800GT video card with a loud fan. You know the high-pitched whine an airliner's engines make in the passenger compartment at 35,000 feet? That's what it sounded like. It really sounded like the Space Shuttle! Even rivaTuner couldn't fix it. I wanted a) to reduce the noise; b) improve the video performance so I could play BluRays with the Shuttle at some point; c) hopefully reduce the power load (EVGA support was shocked that I got a 7800GT to run at all in that Shuttle. It sat in there for three years!).
So on the theory that a much newer card in a similar market segment would meet those needs, I got an EVGA single-slot 9600GT from NewEgg, for $84 after rebate. Installed the newest NVidia drivers, popped the card in, rebooted, and this little box makes a LOT less noise now. I think this thing will make an excellent HTPC at some point.
Oh, and the Shuttle unit went from 4400 in 3dMark06 to 8350. Now, of course, I'm pretty sure my X2 4800+ CPU is bottlenecking, but my E8600 system still only gets around 12,000. So not bad, all in all.
Anyone else got any stories to tell of good upgrades to their breadbox units?