Which of these two chips is better?

M

Mortagen

Weaksauce
Joined
Aug 31, 2007
Messages
81
Hi,

I'm looking at an upgrade for my old PC. I just want to upgrade its CPU at the moment, everything else is fine. Which of these are better?

3.4ghz / 16kb L1 / 512kb L2 (Northwood)

3.4ghz / 16kb L1 / 1mb L2 (Prescott)

3.4ghz / 8kb L1 / 512kb L2 / 2mb L3 / Extreme Edition (So it has an unlocked multiplier?)

These are Pentium 4s for socket 478.

Thanks! :)
 
Why bother? Keep the cpu u have right now and upgrade later on to something better. I doubt you will see much difference since, I'm guessing, you are not using ur computer for anything that requires much performance...
 
Why bother? Because the tasks i use it for don't require a brand new system or a complete overhaul... just a bit faster CPU. This isn't a primary PC it's just an old one of mine i use for some video editing and programming from time to time. Encoding and compiling can be slow but it isn't that slow that it bothers me, and my son uses it for games and always complains it is too slow for his DirectX9 games he plays so this upgrade should sort out both problems a little. I;m claiming this back on my tax so the price of the CPUs doesn't matter to me.

I have updated the first post to include a third CPU... now there is a northwood, prescott, and a gallatin there. Can someone please re-confirm which is the best one?

Thankyou =)
 
I don't have DDR2 and i still don't want to do a complete overhaul because its just a spare PC basically and i want to upgrade one single component... the 2.2ghz northwood to the best socket 478 it will take and then just leave it. It is frustrating when people don't listen and i have to keep explaining the same thing over and over... :rolleyes:
 
unless your getting any of the CPUs listed for free its not worth it to even bother with with out a a full upgrade the
 
I am claiming back on my tax return so if i dont the government just gets to keep my tax money.
 
the price of the cpu isnt an issue, i just need to know which is the best option when it comes to performance.
 
There are very cheap boards for Core2 that support DDR memory and AGP (I assume your 478 board uses those, so it will be a drop-in replacement for your system). ASRock has a few.
I suggest you get one of those boards and a cheap Core2 or Pentium Dual-Core. Will probably not cost much more than such a CPU (CPUs that are EOL tend to be much more expensive than comparable CPUs that are current) and has a LOT more effect. You'll get dualcore, and the much more efficient Core2 architecture (and lots of overclocking potential if you're interested in getting even more CPU performance).
This one for example:
http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=4CoreDual-SATA2 R2.0
 
Hi Scali2,

My primary desktop is a q9450 machine which runs all my tasks smoothly and too fast for my liking :cool: I can't get up and make a coffee anymore while i wait for it to do some cpu intensive task :p

I could upgrade m old Pentium 4 machine but i really just don't need to. The performance when i use it is ample for me i'd just like to bump up the speed a bit from 2.2ghz to something better while the parts are still available. A Core2 would be overkill for me on this machine and the only reason i'm bothering with this is because i'm putting in my tax return claim and can just fit in one last thing onto it so i've chosen to upgrade this machines old CPU.

I only use this machine when my wife is on mine or i have left my C2Q machine at work.

So can you please recommend one of the three above choices? :)

Regards, Mortagen
 
Mortagen said:
I don't have DDR2 and i still don't want to do a complete overhaul because its just a spare PC basically and i want to upgrade one single component... the 2.2ghz northwood to the best socket 478 it will take and then just leave it. It is frustrating when people don't listen and i have to keep explaining the same thing over and over... :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

with all due respect, it sounds like you're the one not listening. they're telling you it's not really worth it, and you keep arguing that you want to do it anyway. so if you know so much, why do you need to ask? see what I mean? the people who know better are telling you that to get a better upgrade you have to do something other than what you keep telling them you want to do.

not trying to be a d!ck, just save you some time and money. ;o
 
Mortagen said:
I don't have DDR2 and i still don't want to do a complete overhaul because its just a spare PC basically and i want to upgrade one single component... the 2.2ghz northwood to the best socket 478 it will take and then just leave it. It is frustrating when people don't listen and i have to keep explaining the same thing over and over... :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

I have had the same problem, i would say which is best to get a E6850 or a Q6600? And people start talking about just OCing my current CPU and updating the BIOS, When i said nothing about doing that, its like they avoid the whole question completely and give you what they would do with the system instead of simply answering the question.


As for your Question, The second one is the best(Prescott) Has 1mb L2 cache while the others only have 512kb.

Here is one on newegg:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116027
 
Mortagen said:
So can you please recommend one of the three above choices? :)

Regards, Mortagen
Click to expand...

No I can't, because unless you put prices on these CPUs, I am still of the opinion that the ASRock board and a low-end socket 775 CPU is the cheapest and best value for money (especially those Extreme Editions tend to be more expensive than an entire new system, regardless of how fast or old they are, they just have this collector status, and the prices remain sky-high).
The board I pointed out, costs $59.99 on Newegg.
The cheapest S775 CPU is a Celeron at $39.99.
For $49.99 you have a dualcore.
So that gives you an upgrade for $100 to $110. I think it will be hard to find any of the CPUs you mentioned for less than that. Not to mention that they're probably slower than even that Celeron... especially if you're also going to overclock.
 
Mortagen said:
Hi,

I'm looking at an upgrade for my old PC. I just want to upgrade its CPU at the moment, everything else is fine. Which of these are better?

3.4ghz / 16kb L1 / 512kb L2 (Northwood)

3.4ghz / 16kb L1 / 1mb L2 (Prescott)

3.4ghz / 8kb L1 / 512kb L2 / 2mb L3 / Extreme Edition (So it has an unlocked multiplier?)

These are Pentium 4s for socket 478.

Thanks! :)
Click to expand...
I upgraded from a P4 2.66GHz Northwood to the 3.4GHz Northwood a while back. Great performance increase. Also ran cooler than the Prescott's. It was my favorite Skt.478 CPU.:)
 
@ synaptical: I don't listen to people who avoid answering my question... its annoying!

@ 3far4shot: Yes it gets very annoying, thanks for your answer :)

@ Danny Bui: Thanks :)

@ Scali2: I avoided listing pricing so just MAYBE you would answer my question instead of doing what i was trying to avoid and have you go out and price parts when thats not what i was asking for at all and i specifically noted that. Not that it mattered at all because you still went out and did that anyway... :rolleyes:

@ rockit00: Thanks for that info, are you still running that machine?

I think i have my answer now... extreme edition followed by prescott in second place. Thanks to those of you who answered my question :)
 
The Northwood chips were faster and cooler than Prescotts when at the same clock speed. Even though the Prescotts had a larger cache and better pre-fetching, they still couldn't make up for the 31-stage pipeline (vs 20 for Northwood).

I don't know how well the Extreme editions performed with their extra level of cache, but I imagine that the extra latency could have some detrimental effect in the case of a cache-miss. Whether it's enough to negate any potential performance gain... I couldn't tell ya.

For price-performance, your best bet (since you're stuck on a P4) is going to be the non-extreme Northwood.



One more thing you should keep in mind, if you motherboard is really old, it may not accept a 800FSB processor.
 
The northwoods were always the best P4 CPU, I would recomend that one.

Faster and cooler.
 
Mortagen said:
@ Scali2: I avoided listing pricing so just MAYBE you would answer my question instead of doing what i was trying to avoid and have you go out and price parts when thats not what i was asking for at all and i specifically noted that. Not that it mattered at all because you still went out and did that anyway... :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Yes, I believe in giving good advice, rather than directly answering a question. People don't always ask the right question.

Aside from that, it's easy enough to find out how such processors perform. There are plenty of reviews and benchmarks. Try the CPU charts at Tomshardware for example.
It's also quite easy to find some more in-depth info on the different types of processors on Wikipedia for example.
You could have put in some more effort searching for yourself.
 
Mortagen said:
@ synaptical: I don't listen to people who avoid answering my question... its annoying!

@ 3far4shot: Yes it gets very annoying, thanks for your answer :)

@ Danny Bui: Thanks :)

@ Scali2: I avoided listing pricing so just MAYBE you would answer my question instead of doing what i was trying to avoid and have you go out and price parts when thats not what i was asking for at all and i specifically noted that. Not that it mattered at all because you still went out and did that anyway... :rolleyes:

@ rockit00: Thanks for that info, are you still running that machine?

I think i have my answer now... extreme edition followed by prescott in second place. Thanks to those of you who answered my question :)
Click to expand...
No I'm not running the Northwood/IS-7 setup. I Caught the speedbug and jumped to a 3.8GHz Prescott/AS-8 setup.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top