630 vs 540J

[Arkalius]

I'm going to be building a new system, and I'm considering whether I should get a P4 630 or 540J. The latter is slightly cheaper. The only difference I can see personally between teh 600 and 500 series CPUs is that the 600's have 2MB cache instead of 1, and support EM64T. I'm really not all that worried about 64 bit support. It's mostly a gaming rig and I don't expect that will do me much good. Plus, I'm putting this on a 955X chipset board, so I can upgrade the chip to something nicer down the line, perhaps a dual core when they have been out for awhile and are more perfected.

So the real question is this... is the 1MB extra L2 cache worth a few extra bucks and a drop of 200MHz clock speed? Or should just go with the 540J?

 

[GVX]

The performance is really close (probably almost identicle). I think the main advantage of going with a 630 (in your case) would be that the 6xx series is supposed to have superior power management and, hence, would produce less heat than a 5xx equivalent.

You probably won't notice any real-world difference in performance between the two.

 

[Dillusion]

630, sig.

 

[The Doc]

If I were you I would go with the 5xx series over the 6xx series because the extra 1MB of cache doesn't tend to help much with overclocking.

 

[Eva_Unit_0]

Well the "J" means that it does have the NX bit, so that's one advantage the 6-series doesn't have in this case. I personally would go with the 6-series for the EMT64 support, since although 64-bit windows doesn't show much of a difference yet, 64-bit linux is fantastic and shows marked performance increases over 32-bit. I guess if you're an M$ whore that wouldn't matter lol...that's all up to you. And the 64-bit capabilities might be useful in the future.

 

[Ruskin]

Well the "J" means that it does have the NX bit, so that's one advantage the 6-series doesn't have in this case.

The "J" on the 5xx series, generally indicates NX bit, but the 6xx series chips come with "Execute Disable Bit". Check out;
http://intel.com/products/processor/pentium4/index.htm

Personally, I would go for the 630. It is EM64T (64-bit capable), so even though you don't want to use that now, it does future proof you. Plus, they are very similar in comparison...

 

[PsiberWare]

If the price point is the same, and you are planning to upgrade at a later date, you may want to consider that the 6xx will probably retain more of its value than a comparably priced 5xx when it comes time to sell off/trade in your old chip.

And it would be easier to palm off on someone making the shift from 925 to 955 who doesn't want to drop a ton of money on the CPU in the process. Or making the shift from 32 bit windows to 64 bit windows.

To me, a 7.5% increase in speed of CPU isn't worth going backwards in technology at that level. If you were pushing the envelope and trying to squeeze every last nanosecond of clock, it might be a different story. But in a fairly vanilla setup, I'd choose the more flexible chip as opposed to the faster chip.

 

[Arkalius]

Well I hadn't realized the 600 series had more features than the 500 (other than the 2 I mentioned). I figured they were near about the same considering they are both Prescott cores. Well thanks for the tips then, I'll probably stick with the 630.

 

[Eva_Unit_0]

The "J" on the 5xx series, generally indicates NX bit, but the 6xx series chips come with "Execute Disable Bit"

Yeah...those are the same thing...

 

[delusion_2005]

lolz i have the very same problem your having when i was building my rig, i didn't get any of them i got the 640 instead lolz.

 

[Dillusion]

lolz i have the very same problem your having at the moment, i didn't get any of them i got the 640 instead lolz.

The 630 also supporrts the C1E halt state (downclocking when not in use) with two thermal management thingies (TM1 and TM2), along with the N0 cores hittin 4ghz ez.