I am writing this page for all people asking me what machine I used to made all these beautiful AutoCAD 3D renders and databases.
1995-1998
486 DX-2 20/40 MHz, 4 MB RAM, 210 MB hard disk, a huge hard disk for that times and we never though that we can fill it. DOS, FoxPro, AutoCAD R10 and R12. We had no mouse, no Windows, etc. We had 13″ monochrome monitor.
Upgraded to 100 MHz, 8 MB RAM, 14″ SVGA color monitor, mouse, Windows 3.1, Office 4.0, and a lot of games. We ran out of disk space. We were using a lot of floppy disks to keep stuff. What a nostalgia!
Note: I started using computer alone in late 1996. Previously all what I done at computer was to watch my dad working or playing games with him.
1998-2001
AMD K6-II 333 Mhz, 32 MB RAM, 2 MB video card, 4.3 GB hard disk, Windows 95, Office 97, AutoCAD 14.
Later upgraded to 500 MHz processor, 128 MB RAM, 8 MB video card, 20 GB hard disk, installed Windows 98 and NT too because my dad was using a software requiring NT platform.
17″ CRT monitor bought in 2000.
2001-2004
AMD K7 Athlon, 850 MHz, 256 MB RAM, 32 MB video card, 20 GB hard disk kept.
2004-2009
AMD Athlon 2500+, 256 MB RAM, 80 GB hard disk, 32 MB video card kept, Windows XP.
Later upgraded to 512 MB RAM, 128 MB video, and an additional 120 GB hard disk.
17″ LCD monitor bought in 2005.
The first 4 computers had to be replaced after only 3 years, not only because were getting outdated, but because in the period I lived with parents they did not wanted to lose warranty, computer case being sealed, so we never cleaned them from dust, causing overheating over years and damage on motherboard. With a vacuum cleaner put in reverse (to push air) is possible to clean from dust without opening case, but my parents never though about this. I use vacuum cleaner since 2009 computer, sealed too, allowing it to run undamaged to present times. Or maybe INTEL motherboards are more reliable than AMD?
2009-2018
Pentium Dualcore 2800 Mhz, 2 GB RAM, 512 MB video card, 500 GB hard disk, still using Windows XP.
Later upgraded to 4 GB RAM and additional 1 TB hard disk.
24″ LCD monitor (1920×1200) bought in 2014.
A bit outdated computer, because of low budget, it was paid by grandparents from their pension, because I moved away from my parents in 2007 and my own income from online jobs was very low.
2016-2020
Intel i5 6500 (4 cores) 3.2 GHz, 16 GB RAM, no dedicated video card, 250 GB SSD, 2 TB hard disk, Windows 10.
This was my first computer bought from my own money. Despite that I was making money constantly since 2012, I did not rushed to buy another computer because I was still happy of the 2009 one, and I am not using any new software and also I am not playing any recent game that would require high video performance.
Because my favorite game, The Sims 2, don’t work properly on Windows 7, 8 10, I am keeping the 2009 computer too.
In 2017 I bought also a dedicated video card NVidia GTX 1050 TI and in 2018 a 27″ 4K monitor (3840×2160).
In 2018 I bought also a HP EliteBook 8770w, many friends asked me why did I bought such old, heavy and expensive laptop, I choose this model purposely because is the latest laptop with Windows XP support, so I can play The Sims 2 on it, I also installed Windows 10 on it to run web scraping software overnight, which I couldn’t do on desktop computer because it is noisy in bedroom and I have bad sleep, also it crashes sometimes (possible hardware problem) making me to lose hours of scraping. Sold the 2009 desktop computer.
2020-present
AMD Ryzen 9 3950X (16 core), 32 GB RAM, 500 GB + 2 TB SSD. I kept NVidia GTX 1050 TI from previous computer.
Appreciate the recommendation. Will try it out.|