Pentium 4 question

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BioInclined

Limp Gawd
Joined
May 23, 2011
Messages
332
I stripped an old Dell PC...old.
I always planned on building a spare PC or a media PC just for storing movies and TV shows, maybe music.
I see in this PC is an Intel Pentium 4 '03(I assume that's the year.
It is the 2.8 GHz model, if my search is correct it was Dells top option at the time...BUT
It's only one core.
Is this CPU worth my time? No overclocking planned and I'm sure with one core it'd be tough. I would need a better board but I'd be looking for something cheap there too.

I can't find any info on the CPU other than specs.
Any help from you Intel guys would be greatly appreciated.
 
That chip is really really slow compared to todays cheap processors.

It's ok for surfing the web and emailing.
 
I would just leave the CPU alone and ton't build another rig just because you have that laying around. You'll be wasting your time just trying to find the parts.
 
Thanks guys for the quick responses.
I plan to build a HTPC soon anyway, I have no preference to AMD or Intel but with budget in mind I may go AMD again.

I am preparing to do a custom case, that was the only reaosn I wanted to check first, since the Dell frame is what I am using.
 
BioInclined said:
Thanks guys for the quick responses.
I plan to build a HTPC soon anyway, I have no preference to AMD or Intel but with budget in mind I may go AMD again.

I am preparing to do a custom case, that was the only reaosn I wanted to check first, since the Dell frame is what I am using.
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Man, I would never build a budget AMD build again. I've had nothing but trouble with them. I wanted to build a budget gaming rig with AMD; however, I started running into many problems. My advice for you is to stay away from AMD, this is really my experience, maybe others have not had problems with their AMD build but I will never ever build with AMD again.

That said, if you are building a HTPC, I would go with intel, preferably an i3.
 
I have done 4 AMD builds, no issues so far. CPUs were (2) 955 X4 B.E. and (2) X6 B.E.
I don't want it to get involve here though, this is Intel section.
I'm slowly building up my parts and as I had mentioned, I just happened to come across this and am not ready to snatch up any hardware yet, unless it's a smoking deal.
 
TheMusketeer said:
Man, I would never build a budget AMD build again. I've had nothing but trouble with them. I wanted to build a budget gaming rig with AMD; however, I started running into many problems. My advice for you is to stay away from AMD, this is really my experience, maybe others have not had problems with their AMD build but I will never ever build with AMD again.

That said, if you are building a HTPC, I would go with intel, preferably an i3.
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sounds like you just didnt know what you were doing, had nothing to do with it being an amd build

to answer the OP's question, if you have all the parts already at your disposal it should serve your purposes, but if you have buy parts for it you would be better off getting something newer
 
pstang said:
sounds like you just didnt know what you were doing, had nothing to do with it being an amd build

to answer the OP's question, if you have all the parts already at your disposal it should serve your purposes, but if you have buy parts for it you would be better off getting something newer
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What do you mean I don't know what I was doing? More like I received bad parts. Gave me so much headache.
 
I have to agree with pstang. I have an AMD X6 1075t gaming rig that I've had for almost a year and half; back before the i5 2500k came out and it's been rock solid. It's only mildly overclocked -3.5GHz- but I've never had an issue.

To the OP, it might not be worth your time. I'm sure it has hyperthreading but some webpages are so bloated that it might be tough and frustrating to even use it. I wouldn't bother unless you pair it with a halfway decent video card.
 
TheMusketeer said:
What do you mean I don't know what I was doing? More like I received bad parts. Gave me so much headache.
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You can receive bad parts from any manufacturer.

AMD rigs are good, cheap, and still able to get the job done. I have 5 AMD systems and they all run just fine.

But I do love my OC'd 2500k. :)
 
The Intel® Pentium® 4 processors by todays standard are slow and hot processors. I would go with an Intel Pentium G620 and a H61 chipset based board and you will have a much better performing system for your needs.
 
IntelEnthusiast said:
The Intel® Pentium® 4 processors by todays standard are slow and hot processors. I would go with an Intel Pentium G620 and a H61 chipset based board and you will have a much better performing system for your needs.
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Yes, I actually discovered something interesting today:

The IPC of the Pentium 4 is VERY SIMILAR to the Intel Atom!

See this comparison:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/93?vs=110

Same number of cores + HT, and the Pentium 4 is clocked a little over twice as fast. And that's about the margin of victory in most tests!

For comparison, here is that same dual core p4 (clocked faster and more cores than the OP) versus a G620. Wow, it takes a beating!

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/93?vs=406
 
I would say set it up with what you got and try out all the stuff you want to do with a media pc. You might be surprised in the versatility in the p4, especially if you add a modern videocard that can decode 1080p stuff if you even want that...

The only issues I can for see is the things already mentioned as in the p4 is hot which equals power hungry which at some point equals the cost of a newer more power efficient architecture. But keep in mind you already have the box so its a starting point :) I recommend running win 7 with XBMC as a front end for my media
 
rhansen5_99 said:
I would say set it up with what you got and try out all the stuff you want to do with a media pc. You might be surprised in the versatility in the p4, especially if you add a modern videocard that can decode 1080p stuff if you even want that...

The only issues I can for see is the things already mentioned as in the p4 is hot which equals power hungry which at some point equals the cost of a newer more power efficient architecture. But keep in mind you already have the box so its a starting point :) I recommend running win 7 with XBMC as a front end for my media
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No.

His Pentium 4 system (circa 2003) has has an AGP slot if we're lucky (if unlucky, it could be onboard!)

Have fun paying a $50 premium for an AGP card with DXVA support. And good luck finding modern AGP cards that are properly supported. There's no point playing those driver games.
 
Pentium 4s are good for pfSense, and for giving away to friends who don't have enough money to buy a real computer.
 
defaultluser said:
Yes, I actually discovered something interesting today:

The IPC of the Pentium 4 is VERY SIMILAR to the Intel Atom!

See this comparison:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/93?vs=110

Same number of cores + HT, and the Pentium 4 is clocked a little over twice as fast. And that's about the margin of victory in most tests!

For comparison, here is that same dual core p4 (clocked faster and more cores than the OP) versus a G620. Wow, it takes a beating!

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/93?vs=406
Click to expand...

Looking at IPC alone can be misleading, especially when you consider that the Atom has newer processor extensions like more advanced SSE, quad pumped FSBs and hyperthreading. If Intel were to take a P4 from 9 years ago today and add the same improvements it probably would respectively hang well with at least late gen Core or even i3 devices in some tasks but it still woudn't mean it would be a great processor.

But even ignoring all of that, lets just look at power consumption. Chances are a P4 system, barebones, everything integrated would probably be sitting around 100w under load. an A4 would likely be in the 55-65w range, and a G20 in the 40s. Sure the P4 is free but power starts to add up after a while.
 
Heck a Intel® Atom™ Processor D2500 1.86GHz is only 10w. You can pick up this board for $70 that would take less power and may even have better graphics then you would have on that old Intel® Pentium® 4 system.
 
Ryokurin said:
Looking at IPC alone can be misleading, especially when you consider that the Atom has newer processor extensions like more advanced SSE
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Pentium 4 955 has SSE3.

EVERY Pentium 4 in existence has SSE2, which covers most use cases for 128-bit vector operations, with SSE3 extending the feature.

Atom supports SSSE3, which is only a small extension of the above. SSE2/SSE is much more widely supported, and the newer version is unlike to affect most benchmarks.

quad pumped FSBs
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Standard on the Pentium 4. They reused it for Atom.

and hyperthreading.
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Standard on the Pentium 4 model I linked in the comparison. Also reused on the Atom

http://ark.intel.com/products/27614...-Edition-955-(4M-Cache-3_46-GHz-1066-MHz-FSB)

You still going to insist that the features are not comparable?

The reason the Pentium 4 has such low IPC is because of the first attempt at a trace cache replacing real decoder throughput. This meant that the dual integer units were often starved. The Atom has dual integer units, but due to the lack of out-of-order execution, the second unit is not fully-utilized.

The peak SSE2/3 throughput between the Atom and the Pentium 4 is also exactly the same, as the P4 can do two independent 128-bit vector operations every two clocks, and the Atom can do ONE 128-bit vector operation in a single clock.
 
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Do we know it was a P4 955? that came out in 2005, not 2003 like OP stated the vintage of the chip was. and SSE3 was available on some versions of the Prescott, still a little newer than the chip he likely has. It's also is very likely that the chips didn't have hyperthreading as that was just starting to arrive on the scene at that point. Not that it matters as hyperthreading has improved over the past 10 years. And the Atom would still be helped by the onboard memory controller on some chips as well.

My point still stands. 10 years of improvements can make a difference in performance in some applications performance. To get roughly the same performance but lose 90+ watts of power in 10 years is impressive.
 
Ryokurin said:
Do we know it was a P4 955? that came out in 2005, not 2003 like OP stated the vintage of the chip was. and SSE3 was available on some versions of the Prescott, still a little newer than the chip he likely has. It's also is very likely that the chips didn't have hyperthreading as that was just starting to arrive on the scene at that point. Not that it matters as hyperthreading has improved over the past 10 years. And the Atom would still be helped by the onboard memory controller on some chips as well.

My point still stands. 10 years of improvements can make a difference in performance in some applications performance. To get roughly the same performance but lose 90+ watts of power in 10 years is impressive.
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STOP GETTING DISTRACTED

The test is what is important, not the make and model of the OP's CPU.

At no point did I make ANY claims about the IPC of the OP's CPU.

I MADE A GENERAL observation relating to the general line of Pentium 4 processors, and for that observation I used a processor with the SAME AMOUNT of cores and threads as the Atom I wanted to compare it to.

Were you reading a single line of my post before you started formulating your response that had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH MY GENERAL OBSERVATIONS?

And if you insist on being a stickler over the %5-10 performance difference brought by the integrated memory controller, then here's a comparison with an external memory controller:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/93?vs=91

There's some outliers, but the AVERAGE performance seems to scale with clock speed.

Looks about the same to me, how about you? CAN YOU SAY "LOST IN THE NOISE?" I sure know I can!
 
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