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Best non C2D socket 775 CPU?

P4s don't in any genuine way "suck" that's way too strong.

They were behind AMD but nowhere near as far behind as AMD is now in terms of performance. Everyone got very het up about the heat "issue" but the point is they were designed to take it so the heat wasn't an issue.. it was like someone from the UK going to Egypt and assuming you would die in that heat! :p

9xx and 6xx chips where actually not too bad for heat anyway and nicely quick.

My old 570J now THAT was hot :) so hot its what got me into watercooling so I love it even though its long gone now :D
 
matt100 said:
P4s don't in any genuine way "suck" that's way too strong.

They were behind AMD but nowhere near as far behind as AMD is now in terms of performance. Everyone got very het up about the heat "issue" but the point is they were designed to take it so the heat wasn't an issue.. it was like someone from the UK going to Egypt and assuming you would die in that heat! :p

9xx and 6xx chips where actually not too bad for heat anyway and nicely quick.

My old 570J now THAT was hot :) so hot its what got me into watercooling so I love it even though its long gone now :D
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Quoted for truth. the 9xx series P4's were actually very good indeed and they even buried AMD CPUs for computationally intensive tasks, they just weren't that great for gaming.

But these things ran with SOCKET temperatures of over 80C when overclocked, and we didn't bat an eyelid. That's why I'm not scared now when I see mid-70's under load with quads. The socket temperatures are still way under 50C so in comparison they are very cool running indeed.
 
the other thing was the whole netburst architecture was very good for tasks that liked long pipelines, iirc it was things like encoding etc with long predictable steps that it was often in front of AMD 64s on, things like gaming however yes the AMD 64s did beat them on but it was a much more mixed bag than now where other than price the AMDs get beaten on pretty much every measurable element.

Just goes to show how you shouldn't annoy your competitor, especially if they are significantly bigger than you! :)
 
WJA96 said:
Quoted for truth. the 9xx series P4's were actually very good indeed and they even buried AMD CPUs for computationally intensive tasks, they just weren't that great for gaming.
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Not really, they buried AMD cpus in synthetic memory bandwidth benchmarks when highly overclocked. It's true they were better performing that AthlonXP, the 32bit AMD processor, but northwood clocked at 2.4Ghz pretty much out performed the best AthlonXP processors at stock speeds. But Athlon64 crushed P4 clock for clock, and in most cases the lower clocked Athlon64's out performed even the highest clocked P4's in both gaming, and pure number crunching power. There was pretty much nothing in the real world that a P4 could do better than an Athlon64.

Intel didnt switch from the Netburst architecture to NGMA just for the gamers, it was to address a serious lack of computing power that the P4 suffered from. There is virtually nothing that a Core 2 Duo does worse than a P4 (apart from synthetic memory bandwidth tests), and the C2D does it at a fraction of the P4's clock speed.

As clock speeds go up on Phenom, and C2D, the old P4 Netburst architecture will only look worse and worse. To match the performance of a 3.2Ghz Core2 the poor old P4 would need to be close to 6.4Ghz! and probably drawing 250+ watts!. And thats not counting the fact that the first leaked info about the next Core processor (Nehalem) indicates another large jump in performance.

I would have thought a motherboard/cpu swap would be worth considering. Its a pitty the OP's friend just bought ram and graphics, as it will make the selection of motherboards very very limited. But there are a few MATX boards with AGP/DDR that support Core2 Duo.

The biggest reason why Intel were not much farther behind AMD, was because they managed the impressive (at the time) 3.73Ghz P4's. But considering a 2.2Ghz Athlon64 could beat them just shows how far behind AMD they really were. But those 3.73Ghz P4's were power hungry hot monsters, far less impressive than the Athlon64's.

Matt's probably right about encoding, but only just. Not sure what version of SSE the P4 and Athlon64 have, but on well programmed software that is coded for SSE, and has very few branches the P4 did "ok". But still clock for clock, and performance per watt it was a dead end technology.
 
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no one is trying to suggest its in any way close or preferable to c2d and most of us had a64 for good reason too as that was in front of p4.

The point about netburst looking worse and worse, well, what do you expect? I expect after a very short while nehalem will make current c2d look a bit silly too that's progress!

The point I was rather clumsily trying to make was that P4 was by no means rubbish as a lot of people seem to suggest, there's an awful lot of received wisdom around this point with people who I completely believe saw that A64 outperformed P4 in most things, saw that P4 ran a lot hotter than their A64 (although designed to do this so its a non issue) and just branded netburst and P4 rubbish.

That just wasn't the case, even the clock for clock thing is a non point really.. if phenom had come out at 5ghz and battered a 3ghz c2d I'd have one.. yes its nice to say clock for clock its better as on the face of it that seems more efficient but you had to talk clock for clock with A64 because you couldn't get them to the clock speed that P4 started at let alone clocked to!

And before anyone fanboys me i KNOW clockspeed isn't everything but that argument works both ways.. if its not neccessarily good to have it high then its not neccessarily better to have it low :)

I know in lots of synthetic benchmarks my old 570J at about 4.3ghz had the legs on most moderately clocked A64s.

I got the chip free and I would never have paid for one but it was pretty impressive and I only swapped for A64 when the X2 came along because with HT I found the P4 system felt much snappier in windows.
 
sr4470 said:
At stock the 570 isn't much cop though. Not many people overclock, even I don't now...
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you are aware of what forum you're on though? I think you'll find a fair few of us clock here.

tbh a stock 3000/3200 A64 isn't really going to start any parties either.
 
matt100 said:
you are aware of what forum you're on though? I think you'll find a fair few of us clock here.

tbh a stock 3000/3200 A64 isn't really going to start any parties either.
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I say that as someone who runs an old-skool 3Ghz Pentium 4 ;) I'll stand by my suggestion of replacing the motherboard though.

A stock A64 3200 may not be lightning fast, but I'd take it over the 570 :)
 
just had a butchers at that toms hardware cpu charts thing and stock speeds the 570 and indeed the much cooler 660 has the 3200 on pretty much every benchmark.

However Thats not really the point, I know what you mean and given the choice I would suggest to the OP that a mobo swap might be an idea if only because you could probably sell the existing setup and get something like a pentium 2160/80 and a mobo for not appreciably more than a new P4.

Still, something like a 660 would give a fair amount of oompf for not much outlay.
 
Yeah, but I can also tell you the A64 is a lot cheaper in the used CPU market ;)

matt100 said:
Still, something like a 660 would give a fair amount of oompf for not much outlay.
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Perhaps but used 775 Pentium 4s never seem to be reasonable prices. I got mine (socket 478 Northwood) through a swap deal with a motherboard and RAM.
 
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