Any use for a 3.06 p4 nowadays?

Ninja Please! · 22 Jun 2009 at 17:01

Hey mates,
I have an old hyper threaded p4 cpu and was thinking about buying the biostar mobo for it as it's only around 60USD and would allow me to use ddr2, and pci express 16x, not to mention OC it to around 3.4-3.6ghz.

My question is would there be any point to bringing it back to life? Can you game on a p4? Or do a lot of the newer games require a better cpu? How much difference would there be between this chip and the worst dual core?

reflux · 22 Jun 2009 at 17:04

A Core 2 Duo at 2ghz is as fast as a Pentium D clocked at 4ghz, so a Pentium 4 is going to be left a long way behind. I think mobo manufacturers are slowly dropping Pentium support anyway.

JediFragger · 22 Jun 2009 at 17:05

Media centre? Would 1080p run ok on one of these? Anyone know?

Caracus2k · 22 Jun 2009 at 17:07

good for heating a small room!

Trunks9486 · 22 Jun 2009 at 17:08

Is it a Northwood core or a Prescott core? Socket 478?

I think 1080p is out of the question really... They are about the same performance, if not better than the Atom.

StevenRaith · 22 Jun 2009 at 17:14

Caracus2k said:
good for heating a small room!

And if you use it to build a small NAS system you can use it to heat a small room and stream media from. MythBuntu for the win in that respect.

It would suck a lot of juice, mind. Not the most efficient processors, the old Netburst chips...

Stonedofmoo · 22 Jun 2009 at 17:33

Trunks9486 said:
I think 1080p is out of the question really... They are about the same performance, if not better than the Atom.

What?!

You're having a laugh, a 3Gig P4 is quite a bit faster than the Atom.
To answer the question being it's the single core Pentium 4 it won't be very quick at anything, but 1080p decoding is well within its reach.

The only recent comparison I've seen was on Anandtech, it compared a P4 that's faster than yours, but you can still see the performance difference.
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/default.aspx?p=91&p2=92
The only areas the Atom comes close is in video, and that's because it's offloaded to the Nvidia ION platform iirc.

Ninja Please! · 22 Jun 2009 at 18:18

Yeah I was thinking htpc for this chip, or just sell it on the bay and forget p4's ever existed.

Trunks9486 · 22 Jun 2009 at 18:35

Well, my Athlon 64 2GHz is choppy with 720p video and so is my brothers old 2.6GH northwood with Hyper threading.

Thats why i said it cant do 1080p.

reflux · 22 Jun 2009 at 18:38

Yeah, my old Pentium M 2.13ghz (supposedly equivalent to a 3ghz P4) definitely couldn't handle 1080p.

I have a system at home with a 2.66ghz Northwood P4 and that won't even deal with 720p.

OrphanBoy · 22 Jun 2009 at 19:05

I finally got off working with a dual P4 3.6GHz machine (Xeons really) and it was surprisingly capable even with lots of multitasking. You should have a decent experience with a single-core 3.06. It's gonna be FAR better than an Atom machine (ignoring power usage!).

Thing is, I've been 'upgraded' to a 3.0GHz quad-core C2Q-based Xeon and it feels like a DOG. I hate it so much that I'm tempted to go back to the P4 Xeons!

StevenRaith · 22 Jun 2009 at 19:09

OrphanBoy said:
I finally got off working with a dual P4 3.6GHz machine (Xeons really) and it was surprisingly capable even with lots of multitasking. You should have a decent experience with a single-core 3.06. It's gonna be FAR better than an Atom machine (ignoring power usage!).

Thing is, I've been 'upgraded' to a 3.0GHz quad-core C2Q-based Xeon and it feels like a DOG. I hate it so much that I'm tempted to go back to the P4 Xeons!

Really?

I have a pair of twin 3.6Ghz Menon XW8200 workstations with 4gb RAM each at work, any my Q6600, evne with 4gb RAM, is like a rocketship in comparison to them, even after fresh installs of XP and Ubuntu.

Something must be seriously up with your new box!

OrphanBoy · 22 Jun 2009 at 19:17

Oh totally. But it's so locked down that I can't try and sort it out! I tell the IT dudes and they're like "make sure themes are disabled - they can slow your machine down a bit". Uh-huh. (machine in sig)
Tbh I'm blaming the virus checker. It's constantly checking files (and I'm often working with thousands of tiny files). The slowness is something I can't place, but I really hate using that machine!

StevenRaith · 22 Jun 2009 at 20:53

Sounds like a really crappy works build - I should know, I make good ones

- so throw rocks at your IT crowd until they either give in, or die from their injuries.

More realistically, if you're sure it's the AV doing a scan, ask them to set the scan to run at 7pm [or whenever you have left] and to automagically kill the machine afterwards.

Or to send a magic pakcet to turn the machine on at 6am and scan then - get it out of the way.

Or the rocks.

I know which I'd prefer...

snowdog · 22 Jun 2009 at 21:59

They are still fast enough as office machines and most games WILL work on them, though obviously they are very dated by now.

StevenRaith · 22 Jun 2009 at 23:12

snowdog said:
They are still fast enough as office machines and most games WILL work on them, though obviously they are very dated by now.

True to a degree, but I have a 2.8Ghz Northwood, CPU and mobo sitting here, and I can't be arsed hooking it up to something becauseI could do a saturday at work, and from that, have the money to get a faster CPU and mobo/RAM. Probably brand new. And I'm not gloating about my pay rate [whcih isn't all that otherwise I'd have an i7, not a Q6600!], it's just that the game has moved on so much.

Still, passive heatsink, perspex case wall mounted, CMOS clock based alarm and a script to start up winamp, and have a sleep button that actually sends it to sleep...and you'd have a reasonable, rather 'different' alarm clock!

Gammawolf · 23 Jun 2009 at 00:43

reflux said:
Yeah, my old Pentium M 2.13ghz (supposedly equivalent to a 3ghz P4) definitely couldn't handle 1080p.

I have a system at home with a 2.66ghz Northwood P4 and that won't even deal with 720p.

I've got a 1.6ghz Pentium M that just manages 720p, can't have too many programs running though or sound gets unsynced

, maybe its the rams fault 512mb gets filled quicky style.

Kanpai · 23 Jun 2009 at 07:29

I have a Pentium 4 HT 3ghz on my old pc, and it can playback 720p. I think it's a matter of the right codecs and settings tbh

clv101 · 23 Jun 2009 at 07:44

I have an old 3GHz P4 Northwood, 720p works, 1080p doesn't. It's using an old 9800PRO. The chip's power consumption should rule out any HTPC and NAS duties. I'd say junk it.

rixarena · 24 Jun 2009 at 16:00

I have an old P4 3Ghz machine, runs 2GB of RAM and an AGP ATi X800pro GFx card. Will Run BF2, 2142 and Cod4 on almost all high settings at 1440x900. Any bigger Res and it'll struggle. Obviously it's no good for newer games but if you like a lot of old classics it's worth it.