Northwood Pentium 4 vs Celeron

[Greebo]

I'm fixing my mates computer and I owe him a few favours so I thought I would upgrade it while I was at it!

He currently has a socket 478 2.5 Celeron. Thinking of putting a 2.8Ghz Northwood Pentium 4 in it.

So whould he see much/any difference if I did?

What if the Northwood clocks to 3.2Ghz? ANy better?

Rest of system not finished yet but looking at getting a x1900xt or 2600xt to go with it.

Mainly for gaming at 1280 x 1024.

Thanks

 

[Pilky01]

I dont think there would be a huge improvment.

 

[jbloggs]

The 2.8GHz Northwood (especially if you o/c it to 3.2GHz) will be an improvement over a 2.5GHz Celeron...

 

[Justintime]

In everyday tasks, prolly not a lot if any. Gaming (some games) /encoding etc.. a very substantial gain.

 

[p4radox]

Northwood P4s are good chips, much better than the Celerons of the time. I'd definitely do it.

 

[JackRegan]

I think he will as the s478 celerons were quite chache starved.

If it is a Northwood and not a Prescot and depending on the motherboard a stable and cool overclock should not be a problem.

IIRC most chips clocked to arouund 215-225 without too much tweaking, so

Stock FSB 200 x Locked Multi 14 = 2.8
FSB 220 x 14 = 3.1 ish
FSB 230 x 14 = 3.2 ish

Rember to check the RAM is ok at these speed otherwise you may have to lower it from 400 to 333 and then find the sweet spot.

 

[Emlyn_Dewar]

Northwood P4 will be a nice move from the Celery, not a massive boost in clock speed at stock but the extra cache will be a massive help. Should be able to OC a little provided the cooling and motherboard are alright.
Nothing worse than a 478 gimped Celeron.

 

[Greebo]

Thanks for that.

Hopefully it will end up been quite a little decent gaming rig for minimum cost.

I'm just too nice to him really

 

[steve258]

X1900XT is PCI-E though and so is 2600XT although there is an AGP version.

And yes a 3.2Ghz Northwood is a nice speed up from 2.5Ghz Cely.

 

[Bonjour]

Would be a good improvement.

The celeron is castrated of cache.

We used to have a combination of celeries and northwoods at my old work and the difference between them was very noticeable indeed.

 

[Greebo]

X1900XT is PCI-E though and so is 2600XT although there is an AGP version.

And yes a 3.2Ghz Northwood is a nice speed up from 2.5Ghz Cely.

Mobo is a Asrock pci-e socket 478 board so looking at getting a pci-e card for it

But thanks for pointing that out as 99% of socket 478 boards are indeed AGP.

 

[Matteysan]

I loved my Northwood & definitely recommend that you put that in over a Celeron. I dunno what the overclocks would be like on that Asrock board though.