Okay. This is a custom assembled system that I assembled years ago. It looks pretty decent... black being the consitent color all over. Lets see what we have here. Lets look at the processor, motherboard and memory details first. 

 

 

 

 

 

Kinda outdated by today's standards? It sure is! I use and abuse this system for my R&D. So that is OK. Lets look at the graphics card details now.

Ah. The trusty old NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT. Outdated you say? It sure is! Who cares. But it still works. Now lets look at the "other stuff".

Yes. This is Windows Vista Ultimate x64 Edition. Sooner or later the entire world will move to 64-bit computing. Why disgrace the 64-bit processor by running a 32-bit operating system on it? Biased, you say? I consider myself a 64-bit computing evangelist! Make the change today. The choice is yours!

 

Windows Experience Score of 3.7. Not bad at all considering the age of the system. As you can see... the major hiccup here is the processor. Moral of the story: Pentium 4/D processors are dogs! Don't buy one. Buy a room heater instead!

Here are some more amusing stuff. 

 

 

 

Did you notice those multiple CD/DVD drives? Yes. Those are virtual drives, except two. Notice the two sound cards? Yes. I use them both at the same time. Also notice how I installed all 64-bit drivers for Windows Vista x64. Which brings us to the conclusion... "Seek and you shall find. Ask and you shall get."

NB: I don't have this system anymore. I sold this junk and bought myself a 22" Samsung LCD. :)

Many people don't know it, but today's PCs--including the system you're using right now--contain elements that have hardly changed at all in the last 20 years. Yes, CPUs are faster, hard drives are bigger, and RAM banks are larger. But in many fundamental ways, your PC isn't very different from the PCs of two decades ago.

Although some of the system elements have been modified over time, almost everything in your PC is a direct lineal descendent of the IBM PC AT--a seminal design that still shapes PC architecture two decades later.

In many ways, the PC's hardware consistency over time has been a good thing, a stabilizing force in the otherwise rapidly changing world of computing. It's been a huge positive for businesses and users because this consistency has made many peripherals completely interchangeable. For decades, we've been able to mix and match printers, keyboards, mice, monitors, scanners, modems, and more, largely without regard to the brand of PC.

Hardware standardization also has helped the bottom line by driving down prices: System and peripheral vendors have had a vast and uniform market from which to draw supplies, and to which to sell products, resulting in the commodity-level pricing that's behind today's amazingly low hardware costs. Overall, the PC AT's legacy has been an enormously positive one.

But it also has had a downside, principally in retarding innovation and slowing hardware advancements. The installed base--that is, the mass of existing, older, in-use hardware--acts like a giant speed brake on the computer industry because businesses and users are loath to give up older equipment that's still functional, even if newer designs would perform better or faster. As a result, new technologies tend to emerge piecemeal and more slowly than they would if hardware vendors could make a clean break with the past.

There's even a joke that made the rounds of the computing industry awhile ago: "Why was God able to create the universe in only seven days? Because he didn't have an installed base to deal with."

Despite this backward drag from the installed base, the Grail of many hardware engineers has long been a totally "legacy free" PC that can employ only fully modern, state-of-the-art, high-speed components and architectures. Such a PC would be faster, more compact, more reliable, and less expensive, as well as easier to manufacture and maintain.

- Fred Langa

The IBM PC shipped in 1981 -- over twenty years ago. The PC offered various expansion capabilities, including a parallel port, a pair of serial ports (on a separate card), and a keyboard port. It also supported a 5.25" 160KB single-sided floppy disk. The 8-bit PC/XT bus slots were expanded to 16-bit ISA slots in the PC/AT in late 1984. Later, IBM shipped the PS/2, whose enduring legacy in the PC universe today is a pair of compact connectors for the keyboard and mouse, and the 3.5" 1.44MB floppy drive.

Recently, I dug out an old Northgate Omnikey keyboard that's been gathering dust in my storage area. It's at least ten years old. I plugged in a PC-to-PS/2 keyboard adapter. It still works. This type of backwards compatibility has been the great strength of the PC over the years, but it's rapidly becoming an Achilles heel. Various factors have kept these anachronisms in place, such as corporate IT shops that need to support parallel and serial ports, or users with a pile of floppies that contain valuable data. We've even seen an ISA slots in a few new systems. And no doubt the Super I/O chip is still using ISA signaling to support legacy I/O.

So it's no surprise that a company like Apple Computers can push interesting new technologies into their hardware and software more quickly than PC manufacturers. But the buzz over the "legacy free" PCs is starting to heat up. It began several years ago, with both Intel and Microsoft encouraging PC makers to move away from legacy connections. Back then, the pleas fell mostly on deaf ears, but it's beginning to look like the industry is ready. Dell is starting to ship USB keyboards, Gateway will pay you to delete the floppy drive, and at least one component company -- ABIT -- is shipping a line of "legacy-free" motherboards.

What do we mean by "legacy" here? Specifically, we're talking about a set of I/O options that have been part of the PC architecture for a long, long time.

If you look at "legacy-free" meaning a system that eliminates the entire kit and caboodle of this table, then we're still several years out. PCI and AGP will be around for at least two more years before PCI Express surfaces in force. Even then, don't expect systems to get rid of PCI slots anytime soon. Parallel IDE hard drives will probably be around for a couple more years, but will gradually give way to Serial ATA. Similarly, parallel SCSI will yield to serial-attached SCSI.

Actually, we shouldn't forget that the VGA port is also a legacy standard. In fact, VGA hardware is the only remaining piece of hardware that interacts directly with Windows. There is a move afoot to eliminate VGA, called the Universal Graphics Adapter or "UGA". The firmware-based UGA functionality will be accessible via a UGA driver built into the next version of Windows, codenamed Longhorn. If the graphics chip makers consider removing VGA at that time, we could be completely legacy-free.

- Loyd Case

Did you know that the latest Intel Macs are actually "Legacy Free PCs"? In case you do not believe me, do a Google search for any Intel Mac's hardware specifications.

Why a Legacy Free PC?

Three words... simplicity, stability and evolution.

How can we define Legacy Free PCs now? Here is an overview:

Must Have

x86-64 Processor

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64

EFI

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensible_Firmware_Interface

PCI-Express

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI-Express

USB

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB

SATA

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SATA

Must Not Have

BIOS

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BIOS

ISA Bus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISA_bus

PCI Bus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_bus

AGP

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerated_Graphics_Port

Serial Ports

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ports

Parallel Port

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_port

PS/2 Ports

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS/2_connector

VGA Port

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vga_port

Floppy Disk Controller

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk_controller

Game Port

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_port

Indeed, as system designers are freed of the constraints of the past, we'll likely see radical PC designs that will not only be faster, smaller, and better than today's designs, but that will make the traditional beige-box PC seem positively antiquated. And I, for one, can't wait!

Legacy Mode: Legacy mode is what the processor defaults to in basic 32-bit software. If you run a 32-bit Linux or Windows installation you’ve been running in legacy mode; if you’ve looked at any performance benchmarks it should be obvious that not only is the AMD Athlon™ 64 processor more than happy to run this way, it delivers excellent performance while doing so.

Compatibility Mode: Compatibility mode is designed for a 64-bit processor that still needs the capability to run 32-bit applications. The AMD Athlon 64 processor is capable of this natively, which eliminates the need for 32-bit emulation on the hardware level.

Long Mode: True 64-bit Long Mode is intended for a native 64-bit OS environment where the application is also running 64-bit. Windows XP Professional x64 Edition is capable of using both modes, and the AMD Athlon 64 processor is capable of switching between 64-bit Long Mode and Compatibility mode from within the 64-bit OS.

Why Move to 64-bit?

If 32-bit systems offer excellent performance now, why move to a 64-bit OS at all? It’s a question with a multi-faceted answer, depending on your needs.

Increased Memory Addressing: Standard 32-bit computers have a 4 GB limit on addressable memory. 64-bit computing offers a memory address limitation measured in exabytes that will open this potential bottleneck for years to come.

Increased Computational Power: The AMD Athlon™ 64 processor adds an additional eight General Purpose Registers and eight 128-bit streaming SIMD extension (SSE) registers. Using a 64-bit OS opens these for application-usage for the first time. Increasing the raw computation capability of the processor in turn opens the door to increased visual detail in games, unprecedented scientific modeling, and stronger performance across a wide range of applications.

No Performance Penalty for Running in 32-bit: Unlike computer platforms that emulate 32-bit or x86 compatibility, AMD64 architecture can execute such commands natively. The advantage to this is that even legacy 32-bit code is delivered with no performance penalty. When running in a 64-bit OS, Microsoft’s WoW (Windows on Windows) 64 mode allows the chip to natively access programs; in a 32-bit OS such as Windows XP (standard), no such operating mode is needed. This is in direct contrast to other 64-bit designs, which require emulation (and take a massive performance penalty for executing 32-bit x86 operations).

Moving to 64-bit will not universally improve performance in all applications and test suites, but it won’t degrade performance either. This logically translates into a scenario where the “worst case” possibility is performance equality, and the best-case is a significant performance boost. For end-user, corporation, or major business server, this is a universal win.

This information was taken from a document on http://www.amd.com