Getting my SFF up to date. Help on 478 cpu's please.

[lordrobs]

Ok so my main PC is in pc heaven after the mobo died and I don't want to throw money at an old socket A system... so my media PC has been promoted to media and gaming pc

Its an Asus S-Presso currently fitted with a 6800XT, 1GB pc3200, 120GB HD, Celeron 2.66GHz

The GFX is what was going to be fitted to my main pc, if I had bought something specifically for the S-Presso I'd have got something less power hungry

I'm thinking that a change to a P4 would bring it up to speed a touch but having only ever really been interested in AMD I have no idea whats best to go for. Prescott, Northwood its all foreign to me so come on people... educate me!

My only other concern is that the whole PC is powered by a 220W PSU. Its ok at the moment but am I asking for trouble with upgrading the cpu?

 

[danlightbulb]

You may have trouble getting a 478 pentium now. Ive been looking and can't really find any at a reasonable price (considering they are now out of production and old technology).

 

[lordrobs]

Yeah it will have to be second hand.

Which in a way helps me as if the psu can't handle it I can just pass it on without incurring too much cost.

Question is what do I go for? Decisions, decisions

 

[easyrider]

Look for a second hand northwood P4

 

[lordrobs]

Northwood, cool, at least I know which one to look out for

I know it doesn't support HT and that the max supprotable speed is 3400 so... the hunt begins!

 

[easyrider]

Speeds range from 1.3GHz to 3.8GHz.
42 million transistors, 0.18-micron process, 217 sq. mm die (Willamette).
55 million transistors, 0.13-micron process, 131 sq. mm die (Northwood).
125 million transistors, 0.09-micron process, 112 sq. mm die (Prescott).
Software compatible with previous Intel 32-bit processors.
Some Prescott versions support EM64T (64-bit extensions) and Execute Disable Bit (buffer overflow protection).
Processor (front-side) bus runs at 400MHz, 533MHz, 800MHz, or 1066MHz.
Arithmetic logic units (ALUs) run at twice the processor core frequency.
Hyper-pipelined (20-stage or 31-stage) technology.
Hyper-threading technology support in all 2.4GHz and faster processors running an 800MHz bus and all 3.06GHz and faster processors running a 533MHz bus.
Very deep out-of-order instruction execution.
Enhanced branch prediction.
8KB or 16KB L1 cache plus 12K micro-op execution trace cache.
256KB, 512KB, or 1MB of on-die, full-core speed 256-bit-wide L2 cache with eight-way associativity.
L2 cache can handle up to 4GB RAM and supports ECC.
2MB of on-die, full-speed L3 cache (Extreme Edition).
SSE2—SSE plus 144 new instructions for graphics and sound processing (Willamette and Northwood).
SSE3—SSE2 plus 13 new instructions for graphics and sound processing (Prescott).
Enhanced floating-point unit.
Multiple low-power states.

 

[Justintime]

Northwood, cool, at least I know which one to look out for

I know it doesn't support HT and that the max supprotable speed is 3400 so... the hunt begins!

CPU Intel P4 up to 3.4 GHz+ (Northwood and Prescott) - Says nothing about no HT cpus, and the chipset is a 865G on the P4P8T board so a fairly later 478 chipset. Best bet is a Northwood, never mind it supports prescott, psu might be up to it but i would'nt risk it due to the power consumption and potential heat problems.