What computer upgrade has made you go WOW?

From a nice old single core at i think 1.8 ghz, 512mb ram, ATI X300, 50 gb hd and a nice bulky monitor.

To a Quad core at 3.2 ghz, 4gb ram, HD 4870, 500gb hd and a 26" screen.
 
1) 64mb ram upgraded to 192mb

Unreal Tournament went zoooooom! I remember looking on OcUK drooling over the 256mb ram sticks (which were about £250) and thinking "I'll never have that much ram!" :p

2) Nvidia FX5200 > ATi 9800pro, the FX5200 was a mistake, once again the main reason for the upgrade was Unreal! Unreal 2 and UT2k3 were amazing with the upgrade.

3) Dual and eventually triple screen monitors, 24". I'm back down to 2 now as 3 was overkill but it was certainly fun for a while (despite the eyestrain/mahoosive amounts of light in your face) 2 x 24" is a nice amount of screenage :)
 
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Oh yea....lol. Broadband was by far the biggest and best step :)

1. Broadband
2. Eyefinity
3. IGP ===> FX5200 (lol tbh but it made FFXI playable :))
 
56k to 1mb connection was the biggest leap for me. then it was going from my radeon 7500 to my 9800xt. farcry had just come out too and i was just blown away.
 
Showing my age slightly:

Spectrum 48k -> Spectrum 128k, polish soon tarnished by the realisation that the inbuilt tape drive was shonky as all hell and it's heads would constantly go out of alignment.

Amstrad PC1512 -> my own 386 sx25 with a 40Mb Hard disk (40Mb?! Who'd ever be able to fill that!)

I guess the next big WOW was getting the 3DFX card, the first 3D Accelerator. You had to loop through a cable between it and the main 2D video card (some dodgy cheap VESA compliant thing). Games had never looked so good before.

Broadband from 56k dial up. In dialup days it was essential to have software like GetRight around to ensure you could do resuming downloads. Downloading 25Mb of file was something I'd do only if I really had to, and then it would take a few days of downloading only when the internet was on.
 
Lots of defining moments for me including:

Going from 4mb to 8mb in my 486DX2 66.
Using hardware acceleration in Quake 2 - the colour lighting was incredible!
Upgrading from my Voodoo Rush to a Voodoo 2 (I think).

Good times :cool:
 
As others have said, getting broadband has easily been the most impressive upgrade. We had dialup fairly early on (we had AOL v1!) so I still remembered the days of our 14.4k modem the first time I used a broadband connection. Not having to use AOL to go online was awesome too.

Windows 95 and XP were also big upgrades in my eyes, it took me a long time to get used to not using DOS!
 
My new Kobalt G860 laptop with GTX 280m graphics, i7 CPU and win7 64. Amazing machine that plays every game I have thrown at it with no problems. Had it 4 months now, and it still gives me a wow factor. It blows my old core 2/ 9800 gtx desktop away.
 
Ummmm, a few things for me, I agree Broadband was and still is a big upgrade for me, but others things that really impressed me was going from floppy disk to CD, I remember my first double speed CD Rom costing me £150 :o, also my first openGL 3D GPU the 3dFX voodoo 1, was amazed @ the difference compared with my old GPU, and going from windows 3.11 for workgroups to windows 95, massive difference.
 
  • Upgrading from a VIC-20 to Commodore 64

  • Upgrading from tape drive to floppy disk on my Commodore 64

  • My first 486 machine

  • Windows 95

  • Using two Voodo² cards in SLI

  • Windows XP

Probably lots more, but those are the highlights.

:)
 
bakes0310 said:
9800xt to a x1900xtx, then finally to a 280gtx.
Click to expand...

i just don't think modern graphics card changes have the same impact they did in the first and second generation - they fundamentally changed what your pc can do, now it is a bit smoother, bit higher resolution, few more effects

My last gpu upgrade was 6800gt to trisli8800gtx and it was good but not as good as adding a voodooII!
 
For me it was when i linked to the chair and I was first uploaded into a jumping simulation and I saw my friend jump from building to building. it was a combination of the hardware and software for me.
 
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