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

[HangTime]

Just curious as to what upgrades you've made that have really made you sit back and think "WOW! That's incredible, what a difference it makes!".

I suspect for many games this may have been a graphics card upgrade, so if possible try and think of something different to keep it interesting. It could be a new sound setup, a new kb/mouse maybe, perhaps RAID0 raptors....

For me I'd say probably when I went from a 14" to 19" CRT about 8yrs ago. Not only did I gain a lot of desktop real estate, but it also made gaming a whole lot easier and more enjoyable.

Come to think of it getting an ISDN connection back in 1999 was pretty incredible too, going from ~100ms to ~20ms ping was a big help - not to mention the dialup time going from half a minute to half a second!

So, what upgrades have you been dead chuffed about?

 

[MikeHunt79]

My first decent soundcard with ASIO drivers.

Using audio programs such as Rebirth gave me 7ms latency instead of 70+ms!

 

[james.miller]

my 8800gtx. but then i suffered with ati onboard graphics for about 7 months before i bought the card lol

 

[TechMeh]

Probably making a move from a 6800XT to a 8500GT, tho my new build "should" be deliverd today

 

[benjo]

I'm ashamed to say i havent been wowed by any of my upgrades

I went from;
3700SD
1Gb DDR
X1800XT

to

[email protected]
4GB
8800GTS 512

I know the difference is there, but i havent been bowled over by the change :|

 

[helmutcheese]

1x Raptor X at launch (soon followed by a 2nd) never felt such a gain even with Top GPU's since 2001.

Was told by an old buddy on Winbeta (older and clever PC Tech peep) that the HDD is the slowest part of any modern PC and to stop wasting my cash upgrading to every new CPU/GPU and buy a "Faster" or 2nd HDD to then Raid0.

Guess what, he was right (as he always is).

 

[Craig321]

Just curious as to what upgrades you've made that have really made you sit back and think "WOW! That's incredible, what a difference it makes!".

I suspect for many games this may have been a graphics card upgrade, so if possible try and think of something different to keep it interesting. It could be a new sound setup, a new kb/mouse maybe, perhaps RAID0 raptors....

For me I'd say probably when I went from a 14" to 19" CRT about 8yrs ago. Not only did I gain a lot of desktop real estate, but it also made gaming a whole lot easier and more enjoyable.

Come to think of it getting an ISDN connection back in 1999 was pretty incredible too, going from ~100ms to ~20ms ping was a big help - not to mention the dialup time going from half a minute to half a second!

So, what upgrades have you been dead chuffed about?

My upgrade from a P4 3GHZ, 6800GT and 1GB RAM to an E6600, 8800GTX and 4GB RAM was amazing.

 

[shaffaaf27]

microsoft habu and saitek eclispe II

 

[Dano]

Raid0 on my old Abit KV8 motherboard, 9 minutes to install XP to a useable condition and seconds to boot from cold, so fast that my squad mates thought I was just restarting teamspeak when I told them I was going to reboot.

No other onboard raid solution has ever come close to the sheer speed of that one.

Other than that probably when I got my Voodoo3 3000

 

[C64]

Barton to core 2 duo

 

[TechMeh]

Barton to core 2 duo

I think you would see a massive improvement there

 

[benjo]

Barton to core 2 duo

You skipped a whole generation of CPU's

 

[Tom|Nbk]

It's not happened for so long because I've always upgrade hardware a LOT more often than I used to.

But I think the biggest wow was going from X800 > X1900XT from what I can remember.

 

[hp7909]

Radeon 9800
Athlon 64
But RAM upgrades have caused the best WoW moments. Remember first family PC being upgraded from around 8MB > 32MB
Broadband
Software upgrade: Vista

 

[subzero]

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..

 

[neoboy]

I guess I will have a "WOW" factor when I upgrade from my current socket A, 800XT

 

[willhub]

I never had a wow feeling, going from a FX5200 to a 9600, was not impressed, 9600 to X800XT PE, still was not impressed.

Celeron 1.2Ghz 384mb - Celery 2.8Ghz - P4 3Ghz, not impressed.
19" widescreen Acer to 22" widescreen Hyundai, not impressed much.

Actually, cheapo 5.1 from aldi to Z5500 was quite a wow, the amount of bass been put out at low volume compared to the old setup was quite good, but then again.. thats not a component.

 

[neoboy]

I never had a wow feeling, going from a FX5200 to a 9600, was not impressed, 9600 to X800XT PE, still was not impressed.

Celeron 1.2Ghz 384mb - Celery 2.8Ghz - P4 3Ghz, not impressed.
19" widescreen Acer to 22" widescreen Hyundai, not impressed much.

Actually, cheapo 5.1 from aldi to Z5500 was quite a wow, the amount of bass been put out at low volume compared to the old setup was quite good, but then again.. thats not a component.

Ah yes that reminds me, I used to have a cheap 5.1 set from Aldi too (Nordik by any chance?) and now I went to 2.1 Roth Audioblobs 2. The bass is absolutely amazing on this thing.

 

[$h@d0w]

Canopus Pure 3D Voodoo 1 6MB.

 

[Bakedgoods]

I went from...

AMD Athlon 64 3500+
1GB Ram
ATI X1800XT
Windows XP

To...

Q6600 Quad Core
2GB Ram (Now 4GB)
8800GTX
Windows Vista

Was quite a big difference