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

A little wow factor this morning.. I found a receipt for the parts in my PC, and realised it's a few days short of a year old! It's still running like the day i brought it! Odd really, i was convinced it was only a few months.
 
I think it would have to be my first ever 3D accelerator - a Power VR 3D Apocalypse complete with 4MB of onboard RAM. I remember being stunned at the graphics quality (I think Tomb Raider was bundled with the card).
 
Most recent wow factor was moving from a 19" to a 24" widescreen monitor. Awesome!

Probably the biggest was going from 56k to 512k BT Openworld broadband. I remember coming home from school and going onto napster to find I didn't have to wait 15 minutes to download a song, instead I could effectively stream mp3s. P0rn was also given a massive boost from dsl :)
 
After getting a stock celeron 300A and running it then OC it to 800Mhz the difference was amazing. Plus for those of you who remember those chips they ran cooler at 800MHz than they did at 300MHz. Best single WOW moment ever that.
 
After getting a stock celeron 300A and running it then OC it to 800Mhz the difference was amazing. Plus for those of you who remember those chips they ran cooler at 800MHz than they did at 300MHz. Best single WOW moment ever that.

You mean 450MHz - most struggled to get to 500MHz, let alone 800MHz.
 
Probably upgrading my 20" 4:3 Samsung to my current Dell 2707, the first couple of days i would sit there grinning at the size of it. Though now I find myself thinking "Maybe i'll get a 30" next year".

The change from 56k to 512k broadband was also great.
 
Several

Getting my first 3x NEC cd-rom drive for £399 :eek:

Getting my first voodoo card

Upgrading my pc totally after a few years to a 4200+, x800xt, etc and enjoying games afreah again.

Going from a 8800GTS 320Mb to a 4870.

Going from a 4200+ x2 to a q6600 at 3.8Ghz and then encoding a full video in 10 mins :D
 
You mean 450MHz - most struggled to get to 500MHz, let alone 800MHz.

Yeah my 300A topped out at 472.5, could have maybe done more with a chipset allowing more discrete control over FSB (this was in the days when FSB couldn't be tweaked 1mhz at a time).

800mhz would have meant a 178mhz FSB which I find hard to believe. I know there are cases of people with extreme cooling and overvolting breaking 600mhz but I'd can't believe anything over 150fsb (quite rare from mobos of the time anyway) would be running cooler than at 66fsb considering the extra voltage required.
 
First decent dedicated 3D graphics card, Voodoo 1. This then allowed me to play "GL Quake". Now that really "was" WOW.

This then started the great graphics card upgrade path to Voodoo 2 and then SLI (£199 each! a lot of money back then) and so on. Though subsequent upgrades have not really had the impact of my first dedicated 3D card.
 
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