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A trip down the memory lane - rebuilding a Pentium 805 system :)

AnitaPeterson

AnitaPeterson

Diamond Member
Some years ago, I was a volunteer with a small charity which shipped second-hand computers to Eastern Europe. The program has ended, but I still have the repair/reuse/recycle bug... and like many of the old-timers here, I've slowly amassed a good collection of spare parts, which are quite handy for emergency repairs and replacements.

As it happens, a friend of mine - who knows my hobby - has just given me an Intel socket 775 motherboard with a Pentium 805 CPU, and now I'm contemplating what to do with it.

I have several DDR2 RAM sticks (1GB and 2GB size)... I got a GT630, a Radeon 5450, an old 250 GB IDE HDD, a used Asus Xonar soundcard, and an IDE DVD+/-RW drive. I also have a salvaged CM 212 cooler and plenty of Artic Silver 🙂

I'm thinking that all of this can be put together into a (still) nice rig. Granted, it won't run the latest games, but it should be good for any office jobs, internet surfing, and some light media editing/transcoding/HTPC duties. Also, from what I gather, the 805 is an overclocking monster, so with this aftermarket cooler I can probably push it well beyond 3.5 GHz... This will be a fun project for a couple of evenings, and I hope everything will run smoothly.

Once the machine is up and running, I'll just have to find a good home for it 😀

Has anyone else built a machine from such vintage parts recently? What did you do with it afterwards?
 
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Hmmm, going by Passmark the GT 630 looks to be nearly the speed of the 9600GT. (by specs I would have thought it to be closer to 9500GT since it has half the fillrate and memory bandwidth). I gamed with an X2 5200+ and 8800GTS then 9600GT for years. The Pentium D will be slower unless you get a pretty decent overclock out of it, but it should still make a perfectly capable legacy gaming rig.
 
Sounds fun. I wonder which is faster, a Pentium D 805, or my current PC's C-70 APU.

Edit: Looking at the Passmark scores, the C-70 is ahead by a miniscule amount. Pretty amazing, when you consider that the C-70 is 8.2W TDP, and the D 805 is what, at least 65W, if not 95W.
 
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I had a Dell with an 805 chip in it, I upgraded it to an 830 and it made the CPU fan run like a turbo from the additional heat. It was still maddeningly slow... so I retired it.
 
The 805 is also quite the furnace. Better start putting additional hours in at work to pay for the heightened A/C bill once you get that 805 up to 3.5ghz!

What chipset is on that board? Low-end Core2Duo cpus can be easily purchased for <$10.

Given the necessary advancements in anti-virus software, the Pentium D 805 isn't as capable even for office machines as it was in the past. It will be on the sluggish side.
 
"It will be on the sluggish side."

depends what sluggish is, but i won't disagree. at least it's a dual core. if you find anyone throwing out a water cooling setup, you can push it closer to 4GHz if installed, but you'll still need a mobo that can handle the clocks, not to mention the right set of RAM.
i'd put xp or linux on it and avoid vista/7/8x

it'll probably barely keep up with a core duo laptop cpu. and i've seen enough core 2 duo systems struggle with windows xp (w/3rd party software) after a few months.

"ide" is a setback, too, even compared to SATA150; so disabling some demanding services in the OS would help the drive not choke as much.

i had an athlon x2 (upper end version, too, i think) on windows 7 w/2-4GB RAM, and like charlie98, i retired mine, 'cuz it was too damn slow..
 
Down memory lane? damn, I still use my Pentium 945 machine. It initially have a 800 series CPU but I upgraded later.
 
When it costs more in electricity to power the CPU for a month, than what it's worth on eBay, then it's time to scrap it.

Edit: That is "Larry's Rule".
 
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Alright, here's what I figured out:

I can put this together in a HTPC-like desktop case (IN WIN IW-D500T), install an Audigy Platinum (with front panel) I had for several years in a drawer, use SATA HDD and DVD-RW units (thanks for the advice, fire400!), and add the Radeon 5450 vidcard (which has lower power requirements than the GT630).

And this would make a perfect HTPC and music capture/processing workstation...
 
AnitaPeterson said:
Alright, here's what I figured out:

I can put this together in a HTPC-like desktop case (IN WIN IW-D500T), install an Audigy Platinum (with front panel) I had for several years in a drawer, use SATA HDD and DVD-RW units (thanks for the advice, fire400!), and add the Radeon 5450 vidcard (which has lower power requirements than the GT630).

And this would make a perfect HTPC and music capture/processing workstation...
Click to expand...
If you have the overclocking bug and want to play, sell that pile of scrap and buy a Pentium AE and board. They've been on sale as combos for around $200. You could probably pull close to that out of the pile of parts you have.
 
AnitaPeterson said:
Alright, here's what I figured out:

I can put this together in a HTPC-like desktop case (IN WIN IW-D500T), install an Audigy Platinum (with front panel) I had for several years in a drawer, use SATA HDD and DVD-RW units (thanks for the advice, fire400!), and add the Radeon 5450 vidcard (which has lower power requirements than the GT630).

And this would make a perfect HTPC and music capture/processing workstation...
Click to expand...

Bad idea. Besides doubling as a space-heater when OC'ed, it'll be lower performance then even the lowest-end dual core you can currently buy.

To put things in perspective a Celeron G465 (that's a single core Sandy Bridge with HT @ 1.9GHz) is faster then the Pentium4 EE 3.73GHz. That's how poorly P4's perform.

In short P4 systems are not worth any money you spend on them. If you have the OC bug, TerryMathews suggestion of a Pentium AE makes more sense. If you can afford one that is.
 
AnitaPeterson said:
As it happens, a friend of mine - who knows my hobby - has just given me an Intel socket 775 motherboard with a Pentium 805 CPU, and now I'm contemplating what to do with it.
Click to expand...

Space Heater!

ummm is there anything else to do with a smithfield? 😀

You are aware even D2500 Atom at this point would give the 805 a run for its money in performance.. 😀
 
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What's the brand\model number of the board? What chipset?

I would sell the Pentium and the heatsink for like $15 and buy a first-gen Conroe. They are well below the $10 mark on ebay with free shipping, and a lot of them had the 800 or 1066 FSB, which is backwards compatible with several garbage chipsets that preceded the P35, at least going back to the 945+ICH7, so there is a chance your board can run a more appropriate CPU.

Maybe I am spoiled, but I do not feel like Netburst has any place in the modern world, even on an ultralight Linux system, it is just too weak.

I would not trust a netburst part to even run a recent build of Firefox or WebKit. Especially if you plan to give this PC to someone as a gift? Please don't torture them, try to put a few bucks in.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-E4600...CPU-/191240472411?pt=CPUs&hash=item2c86d2075b



Knowing the model number of the board would be helpful though. You really want to put the fastest $10 CPU in it that you can. If it can support Penryn that is a really big deal because then you are conservatively looking at 3.6 GHz overclocks.
 
Yes, I would look at what chipset the board has. I have upgraded a lot of the LGA775 Pentium D boards with Core duo's like the E2220 that will absolutely run circles around any Pentium D at stock and can do a decent overclock. It will also run a lot more cool and efficient.
 
How does a P-D 805 compare to an Athlon64 X2 4800+ S939 rig? I just talked to a friend today, that I set up with an X2 4800+ and 4x512MB (2GB) DDR RAM about 2-3 years ago, with Windows 7 64-bit.

It's been good to him, and he likes it. (I think that he was on a Pentium III before that, something really old.)

I was thinking though, of "upgrading" him to something slightly more modern. Maybe a mini-ITX C2D E3300 2.5Ghz 45nm dual-core, with 2x2GB (4GB) DDR2, in an ITX case.

I don't know if that would be a huge upgrade though, I think that the X2 4800+ is 2.4Ghz already.

Are high-end S939 CPUs still in demand on ebay? If I could pick up an E3300 for $10 shipped, somehow I doubt S939 stuff would go for more, but I suppose you never know.

If I could get $50 for the CPU, and $30 for the RAM, then I could pick up an ITX AM1 combo with a 5350 for $80-90. (A very respectable CPU in its own right.)
 
you know what's dirt cheap now is clarkdale. i3 540 and 550 for $10-20, and they will do 4.5 GHz easily, and unlike this new unlocked pentium, you do get 4 threads at least.
 
alyarb said:
you know what's dirt cheap now is clarkdale. i3 540 and 550 for $10-20, and they will do 4.5 GHz easily, and unlike this new unlocked pentium, you do get 4 threads at least.
Click to expand...

The reason that those chips are so cheap, is because good overclocking motherboards for them are hard to find and expensive.
 
VirtualLarry said:
How does a P-D 805 compare to an Athlon64 X2 4800+ S939 rig? I just talked to a friend today, that I set up with an X2 4800+ and 4x512MB (2GB) DDR RAM about 2-3 years ago, with Windows 7 64-bit.

It's been good to him, and he likes it. (I think that he was on a Pentium III before that, something really old.)

I was thinking though, of "upgrading" him to something slightly more modern. Maybe a mini-ITX C2D E3300 2.5Ghz 45nm dual-core, with 2x2GB (4GB) DDR2, in an ITX case.

I don't know if that would be a huge upgrade though, I think that the X2 4800+ is 2.4Ghz already.

Are high-end S939 CPUs still in demand on ebay? If I could pick up an E3300 for $10 shipped, somehow I doubt S939 stuff would go for more, but I suppose you never know.

If I could get $50 for the CPU, and $30 for the RAM, then I could pick up an ITX AM1 combo with a 5350 for $80-90. (A very respectable CPU in its own right.)
Click to expand...

While the E3300 is a bit faster than the 4800+, I don't think it is worth the upgrade. First I would see what the current board he has will handle or if you insist on a C2D the are faster ones like an E8400 @ 3.0GHz for $15.
 
The board is running an 805 now. The chances of it supporting a 1333 FSB are incredibly slim. I'd say 1066 max, BUT that is not a bad thing. You can still get Conroe running at 3+ GHz.
 
Still have an 820 machine in one of my offices and is used daily. It actually isn't all that bad for web browsing and MS Office type tasks. It's running Windows 7 pro and has 4gb of RAM. I've even thought about throwing in an SSD to replace the original 120gb drive.
 
"As it happens, a friend of mine - who knows my hobby - has just given me an Intel socket 775 motherboard with a Pentium 805 CPU, and now I'm contemplating what to do with it."

If you do decide to follow through with this, send it to one of your Canadian friends or at least someone in a northern colder climate.
 
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