Biggest 'WOW!' factor from a component you've upgraded?

[Egon]

Biggest wow by a country mile upgrading from a 17inch crt to a 22inch samsung 226bw, WOW,dont think i will ever have that again from any other upgrade now..

Same here, 17" Sammy to my current 22" HP w2207h - best money i've ever spent on a PC component - and probably the only part in a long while that had any wow factor.

Barton to Core 2 Duo was good, but certainly no wow factor, however there was a wow factor when I went back to use the Barton machine (was running as a server) I definitely realised the speed difference then.

 

[caithomas44]

that is a diffcult question.

Perhaps for me, there are 2 options.

Either the upgrade from a amd 4200 to a q600

or

the upgrade from a x1950xtx to a 8800gtx

 

[krooton]

9000 Pro to 9800XT
X2 3800+ @ 2.6Ghz to E2160 @ 3Ghz

 

[agnes]

pre built to custom built

less money and more performance.

ags

 

[dntbloodshot]

4Mb Diamond Monster 3D. Nothing will ever come close.

 

[Kezmo]

19" CRT to a Dell 2407 24" wide screen.

 

[Greenlizard0]

Has to be listening to music through an X-Fi card for the first time (in XP and the drivers worked like a charm). This was from an Audigy soundblaster.

Also playing Lost Planet with a 8800 640Mb GTS, rather than a 7600GS passive card.

 

[Samiad]

4Mb Diamond Monster 3D. Nothing will ever come close.

Definitely (same card for me). Running games in native 3dfx mode was night and day difference.

 

[ots3go]

When moving from a Athlon XP System to a 3200+ Winnie + SATA + PCI-e.

 

[GinG]

Going from an Advent 1800xp with 512mb ram to:

6300 C2D
2gb Ram
x1800xt

 

[Tetsu]

spectrum + 2 to NES

 

[ih8modem]

no single wow moment

I've had multiple wow moments as mentioned here.

1 - first PC ever (hows that for an upgrade!)
2 - VGA graphics from CGA.
3 - first soundblaster card + cdrom (oh my were cd's the most incredible thing!)
4 - 286 with 640k RAM to a 486DX2-66 with VESA Local BUS IDE and GFX and 4 MB RAM !

After that, the increases became less and less wow, more expected and in a lot of cases underwhelming. Guess I just got old or something.

 

[PhoenixUK]

CD-ROM.

Ye lol... I remember my first CD-ROM with x4 speed :O:O.

Other WOW moments :
- 286 ->>>> Pentium 133mhz 16mb ram 1GB HDD ( maaaaan that was biiiiig HDD).
- 8year old (and that was already few yrs ago) Belinea 17" CRT ->> 20" widescreen LCD.
- Riva TNT2 --->>>> Radeon 9600.
- 512MB Ram cheap value god knows what were the specs --->> 2GB OCZ Gold Edition.
- Shark 5quid optical mouse --->>> Logitech G5 Laser WOOOOOOOW.
- 2 cheap speakers and integrated soundcard ---->>> 5.1 Creative + Soundblaster Audigy.

- My first x2 speed CD-RW Writer .

Had many other upgrades but I think those were the biggest 'WOW factor' .


And non PC wise I think 2 biggest upgrades:

- Ericsson T10 ---->> SonyEricsson T300 (that time I could LITERALLY count on my fingers how many ppl had colour screen on their mobiles in the whole city).

SE T300 ---->>> W900i .



------------------
I'm hoping for next huge wow in about 7-8months which hopefully will be something like:

E2180 , 4gb DDR2 C4, 750GB F1, 3870XT , 20" widescreen ---->> Nehalem, 12gb triple channel DDR3, Raid0 setup, 4870x2 1gb CF, 24" widescreen .

 

[CliffyBiro]

3 years of a 1GB RAM laptop to 2GB Desktop.

Looking forward to going 4GB

 

[smithy1988]

My best upgrade has been a saitek eclipse 2 keyboard for those long evening gaming sessions.
I expect though i am about to be blown away past that
Currently- athlon 64 3200, 1 gb ram, nvidia 6200
Awaiting- Q6600, 4gb ram, ati 4850

 

[Monkeynut]

GeForce 2MX -> GeForce FX 5600 (yeah I know the card was crap but I recieved it as a present and it whooped the 'Force 2 in sheer generational gap)

Otherwise 2.1 Tiny speakers with a broken speaker (so mono lol) to 5.1 creative set. It was only a £40 set of speakers but having speakers that didn't crackle was like WHOOSH!

 

[Duran]

when i went from geforce2 MX200 to geforce 4800ti and recently from my 22" samsung lcd to 32" samsumg 1080p lcd. also i cant forget the day i build my first computer... it was amazing

 

[RobHague]

Sound Card? When i got my first PC it had no sound card, they were "optional" so when i finally got a new Sound Card (a SB PRO! ) hearing sounds in all the games for the first time gave them a whole new lease of life.

Though i cant forget to mention, and sorry to be unoriginal, but the first Graphics Card i bought, well the first 3D Accelerator. Before that i didnt know anything but software mode existed (except for rich people XD).

I remember buying a Voodoo2, first 3D Graphics card i had ever used (or seen in action) and i loaded up a demo that came with it, PowerVR racing. Was amazed, oh and a game called "Incoming" and "Forsaken"...

Unfortunatly it kept crashing my PC, locked up randomly. Anyway i ended up with a RivaTNT instead so it worked out ok. Still, thats been about the most significant thing ive upgraded and been impressed with the results of.

Nowerdays we are totally spoilt so nother really surprises or amazes us.

 

[TheRedZealot]

Celeron 1.4Ghz, 512mb ram and integrated graphics to E2180 @ 3.5Ghz, 4Gb ram and an 8800gt

 

[Klo]

I'd have to say it would my 9800pro.

Saying that, going from an AMD Athlon 2200 to a Q6600 made a slight difference!