Time to upgrade my Northwood P4

Tuppy_Glossop · 15 Feb 2012 at 17:40

My first post ! Since 2003 I have been running my tower with a P4 3.06 HT at its heart. It has never been OCd and has only ever had the stock cooler on. What a workhorse of a CPU. It has outlived two monitors, a motherboard, and a graphics card. Only the WD HD, Soundblaster card, and Thermaltake case have survived as long.

I'm upgrading to an i5 2500K and I'm not sure if I'm ready. It'll be like going from a Mini Metro (Fiat 500 if you're young) to a Porsche.

Justintime · 15 Feb 2012 at 19:10

You'll appreciate the difference definetly, thats a real upgrade.

Avathar77 · 15 Feb 2012 at 19:16

You will miss all that waiting time

Tuppy_Glossop · 15 Feb 2012 at 20:06

Think I got my money's worth out of it. FYI:

bainbridge · 15 Feb 2012 at 22:13

Haha thanks for the vintage screenie, good to hear you made the HD last a long time too as I've been running 2 for 4 yrs now...

Tuppy_Glossop · 16 Feb 2012 at 00:13

Super Pi 1M takes well over a minute. I sit and drool at the 5GHz thread in OCing with their 7 seconds.

remy87 · 16 Feb 2012 at 00:34

That will be as some calls it "a mahooosive" upgrade. Enjoy it!

insejn · 16 Feb 2012 at 08:28

Wow, 9 years old! That's quite the achievement. You might start wondering about loading times, or more so the lack of them.

linktoinsanity · 16 Feb 2012 at 09:57

I've still got one of those ticking away in my sister's computer. I wouldn't have it in my main PC anymore but it copes with web browsing and Windows 7, which is what she uses it for.

First commercial CPU with Hyperthreading I believe.

WingZero30 · 16 Feb 2012 at 10:17

OP is a brave man for running such a system for so long!! :eek:

It's same as with me upgrading from ati radeon 9200 se all the way to hd5850

Tuppy_Glossop · 16 Feb 2012 at 11:28

linktoinsanity said:
First commercial CPU with Hyperthreading I believe.

Correct. At that time AMDs were probably slightly more popular. When I researched this upgrade it seems they are now quite a bit behind.

insejn said:
Wow, 9 years old! That's quite the achievement.

Thanks. A sentimental part of me wants to see how long it will live. The other part wants to stick a good cooler on it and give it the electric chair treatment

I could have a service and pray in binary.

WingZero30 said:
It's same as with me upgrading from ati radeon 9200 se all the way to hd5850

My whole system is going through this level of change. Maybe I could do a little thread on it (which forum is best for such a thread - not Projects cos it seems a bit formal) and everyone can laugh at things like my GeForce FX5500.

scottmuir424 · 16 Feb 2012 at 11:30

big question is what you gonna do with all your free time now hehe

virdee2 · 16 Feb 2012 at 13:04

Tuppy_Glossop said:
Thanks. A sentimental part of me wants to see how long it will live. The other part wants to stick a good cooler on it and give it the electric chair treatment I could have a service and pray in binary.

Would love to see this! :O)

squarehead94 · 16 Feb 2012 at 13:37

the thing you will really miss is the ability to turn the pc on, walk to the kitchen, boil the kettle, make a cuppa, come back and it will just about be at the log on screen xD

Harlequin · 16 Feb 2012 at 13:39

mini metro - if thats a metro 6R4 then your going backwards

Silver21uk · 16 Feb 2012 at 13:59

Lol will be doing my upgrade at the end of this month, going from AMD X2 4400 only 5 yrs old and i thought i had left it long enough.

squarehead94 · 16 Feb 2012 at 14:01

i actually have a system in my room, itsa foxconn board, with 2gb dominators, a 40gb ide hard drive, and amazingly, an intel pentium d 3.6ghz. it actually handles windows 7 pretty well! lol

Harlequin · 16 Feb 2012 at 14:02

upgraded the missus machine - went from a phenom 9500 to an i3 - a world apart

Silver21uk · 16 Feb 2012 at 14:04

So it all goes to prove the point, just get the best at what you can afford and it will last. As long as you dont go looking for skirt in the mean time

Wolfe777 · 16 Feb 2012 at 14:07

Have the exact same processor in my still functioning backup PC but it is a Dell prebuilt.

Wacked a 9800 pro in it (ultimately 2 of them as one fried) around 2004 and that thing saw me through HL2 and the first year or so of WoW before the 2nd 9800 pro fried and I went back to console gaming until late 2010 when I built a i5 760 GTX 460 rig. But as it also had integrated graphics I still used that PC for general use right up to getting the new rig.

I thought that P4 was totally sweet despite the heat and truly epic loading times in HL2.

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