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Best upgrade options for this P3 based rig?

A

Antoneo

Diamond Member
I have the following under my possession:

Celeron 1.4GHz Tualatin
512MB PC100 SDRAM
WD 15GB 5400RPM hard drive
Matrox G400 16MB video card
SBLive!
Creative 6x4x24 burner

Needless to say, this computer smokes most machines that dare to come near it. I haven't turned it on for about a year or so ever since I found out that the Maxtor drive (7200 rpm fluid bearing quietness :roll: ) died and was the cause of instability. I initially replaced the old WD with that Maxtor too, so now I'm basically back to square one. I haven't tried the old WD drive yet and don't want to go through pains right now, but that's what I have.

I plan to use this for internet browsing, email, and word processing. But the last time I used this machine, while the Maxtor it felt less zippy/responsive than my P4 1.6A doing just simple tasks like that. Long loading times might have been the reason for that perception. Or perhaps my memory is skewed.

Now, what would be the cheapest upgrade I could make on this machine to improve responsiveness? I'm leaning towards getting a 7200rpm drive, something quiet like a Seagate or Samsung. I have a ATA133 controller card to use as well, but should money be spent on adding more RAM? All my RAM slots are full: 1x256 & 2x128. I don't play games... so I don't think a video card upgrade would do anything for me.

Would use of Windows XP (eyecandy off, and perhaps certain parts removed) feasible with this setup? I've used Win2k but the interface was too close to win95 imo. Uhm if those who ran old setups with winxp could save me trouble respond, that would be great!

I don't want to get rid of this rig yet 🙁.

Let me know what you think guys... 🙂

EDIT: Uh, now that I think about it, I don't know if all the RAM slots are occupied. The board has 4 slots.... hrmmm. I'll check it out later.
 
I got an old P3-600E lying around. It has 512MB SDRAM, a Promise Ultra66 controller, ancient TNT2 vid card, and a 120GB 7200RPM WD Caviar 8MB cache.

WinXP works very well with it. And I've found a new use for it-- An always-on FTP server hooked up to my broadband connection.

Takes a heck of a load off my main rig..
 
Yeah, get a 7200rmp 8mb cahce for it. Thats about the only uprgade you can give it to make it more responsive. I don't think adding more ram would do much if you have 512mb for it already.
 
The only way to upgrade your ram is ditch all of the pc100 and switch over to pc133 which would be pricey and little proformance gain. If you feel you need to spend money on it, get the harddrive as mentioned above
 
Does your motherboard allow you to overclock your CPU?
When I used to use that processor I had it easily overclocked to 1.6GHz. Of course whilst your Matrox card will work fine at that FSB, I am not sure that your present ram will allow you to overclock that far.
 
I have a mix of PC133 and PC100 ram in that computer, all of them Crucial/Micron sticks. It's an ASUS P3b-f so there are overclocking options 🙂. It's just that I think to run 1.6GHz I need to run the PCI bus out of spec, and I usually don't like doing that (I much prefer PCI*AGP lock).

wisdomtooth: I may wind up doing that, but then I'd have another machine running 24/7. Hrmm... well, I had to get all four of my wisdom teeth pulled out. 🙁

 
Originally posted by: Antoneo
I plan to use this for internet browsing, email, and word processing. But the last time I used this machine, while the Maxtor it felt less zippy/responsive than my P4 1.6 doing just simple tasks like that.
Click to expand...
You can't be serious... A 1.4GHz Celeron slower than a 1.6GHz P4? How can that be? :shocked:
For what you want to do with it... I wouldn't change anything.
Do a fresh reload of Windows and move on with your life. This machine doesn't need anymore money thrown at it. :laugh:
 
iirc those intel based chipsets i440bx and i815EP bstep would only support a max of 512mb of ram anyway, so ram really isnt an option, and no pci/agp lock kinda sucks for overclocking, and you have pc100 anyway.

i would leave it be, it will be a great websurfing computer, and probably runs very very cool especially with that 5400rpm drive.

maybe you should switch away from performance and try to go for quietness?
 
Hey Spikesoldier, what's going on 🙂. We used to play SC (my handle was previously MistaEng) a while back.

Nope, it runs up to 1 GB of RAM. It's a quiet machine, I've already taken steps way a long time ago to do so. Forton 300 PSU with 120mm fan, G400 is fanless, and the CPU came with a beefy stock heatsink & fan combo. I undervolted the CPU and it runs fine, very nice chip though the temp sensor in either my motherboard or the Slot-T adapter is telling me the wrong temps (almost sure of it.. either that or I have a hot chip: I remember something like 40C idle and 50 load).

Blain: Yeah, that was what I was thinking. I thought they should be at least the same in terms of CPU intensive tasks, but the *feel* was different. It might have been the Maxtor underperforming, it was problematic at the start with a strange whine while booting up. But, one thing was for sure, Photoshop on the P4 was noticeably much much faster and smooth. Probably because of the increased memory bandwidth and SSE.
 
My old rig was a p3b-f as well. If you could manage to hit 124 FSB, unlikely I know with that chip, the dividers actually allow you to slightly under clock your PCI bus with the one quarter divider.
 
I've always thought 5400 rpm hard drives seemed pretty sluggish compared to 7200 rpm drives. If you only have the one drive in there, see if you can pick up a 7200 rpm drive on sale for a good price and make that your primary drive. Then load Windows fresh on it and make the 5400 rpm drive a slave drive and copy over docuements etc so it works like a back up drive.

512 mb RAM will probably be fine - not much point in adding memory if you are only websurfing and word procesesing. Only newer games and photo/video work would really benefit from going above 512 mb. If you do get a wild hair for memory, replace the PC100 with PC133 and maybe O/C the CPU. If your mobo is good, you should have options that let you keep the PCI/AGP fairly close to spec while the CPU is overclocked.
 
Ok, great. I just stuck in the WD hard drive and fired it up only to hear it screech and wail. And I also discovered that I have one RAM slot free!! ::rubs hands together:: 😀

Yeah, so now I'm shopping around for a quiet hard drive, probably either a Seagate or a Samsung Spinpoint. 🙁.
 
to Antoneo:

You can always use it as an excuse to upgrade your main rig, you know. 😀

i.e. buy the BIGGEST, FASTEST, QUIETEST, BADDEST drive you can find for your main rig, then shuffle the existing drive in your main rig into the Tualatin box.

BTW, hope your 3rd-molar extractions go well. :thumbsup: One can usually tell on the panorex if your lower wisdoms will go easy or will take all afternoon.
 
Originally posted by: Antoneo
Ok, great. I just stuck in the WD hard drive and fired it up only to hear it screech and wail. And I also discovered that I have one RAM slot free!! ::rubs hands together:: 😀

Yeah, so now I'm shopping around for a quiet hard drive, probably either a Seagate or a Samsung Spinpoint. 🙁.
Click to expand...

WD hard drives are generally just as dependable as Maxtor or Seagate etc. I've had good luck with them at work and home - and they are QUIET too.
 
Originally posted by: wisdomtooth
to Antoneo:

You can always use it as an excuse to upgrade your main rig, you know. 😀

i.e. buy the BIGGEST, FASTEST, QUIETEST, BADDEST drive you can find for your main rig, then shuffle the existing drive in your main rig into the Tualatin box.

BTW, hope your 3rd-molar extractions go well. :thumbsup: One can usually tell on the panorex if your lower wisdoms will go easy or will take all afternoon.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I know 😀. Except I think I'm out of room physical spots to place a drive without a bay adapter. I'm near one terabyte (4x200+1x80).

wisdomtooth: No no, I meant to say I had all of my wisdom teeth out already in the past two years. The two upper ones were easy, but the bottom two were terrible. I was worried throughout the healing process that I would develop dry socket, but they went fine.

 
I have to say...Antoneo
I get the feeling that you really enjoyed this thread

I'm sure you haven't heard anything new here ..LOL
 
Originally posted by: Blain
Originally posted by: Antoneo
I plan to use this for internet browsing, email, and word processing. But the last time I used this machine, while the Maxtor it felt less zippy/responsive than my P4 1.6 doing just simple tasks like that.
Click to expand...
You can't be serious... A 1.4GHz Celeron slower than a 1.6GHz P4? How can that be? :shocked:
For what you want to do with it... I wouldn't change anything.
Do a fresh reload of Windows and move on with your life. This machine doesn't need anymore money thrown at it. :laugh:
Click to expand...

Pay attention this is a Tuallie. These aren't crap celleries and these DO smoke P4s.


If responsiveness is the key...SCISCI ^_^ I'm guessing you don't need a crazy 74gig scsci...just get a small SCSI HDD and you'll never go back.
 
just stick with 512Mb ram, for what you're planning on using it for more than 512 Mb won't be useful. Also go for the WinXP option.
 
blah, i hate it when people change their names! 🙂

im over here in korea now, SC capital of the world! bnet is real nice last time i checked when i was over here

i always wanted a tually rig, i really like that core, but i dont remember anything that could make that rig better, youre kinda at the pinnacle of performance on that platform there, buddy.

i would personally go with winxp, the rig my father uses everyday for: web/email/office/music/cd burning/p2p, runs on a p3 800EB with 256mb pc133, and a ati rage 128 pro, and suits him very well.

the only difference between that rig and yours would be the hard drive, and that machine probably has a lot of crap and bloat in it, but it runs pretty well. not fast enough for me of course, but it gets the job done. i currently run on an athlonXP mobile @ 2.2GHz, 1GB of pc3200, and have winxp on a WD 7200RPM/8MB drive. i would say its very fast, i hardly have any slowdowns whatsoever.

if i was you i would opt for a 160GB 7200RPM/8M seagate/samsung drive.

good to know youre sticking around though 🙂
 
If you go with XP, that 16MB Vid card is really going to make it drag. I know you're thinking of turning off the eye candy, etc. But you could pick up a 64MB card for a song.
 
Originally posted by: bendixG15
I have to say...Antoneo
I get the feeling that you really enjoyed this thread

I'm sure you haven't heard anything new here ..LOL
Click to expand...

Hahaha, yeah you're right 😀. I always liked seeing a P3 rig based thread pop up every so often in General Hardware, and then I think it was OldFart who constantly came in and recommended a Slot-T adapter + Tually as the final upgrade.

boomerang: Hrmm good point. I was thinking about getting a Ti4200 for my P4 and moving the R8500 into the Tually. Now if only someone sold me one for $50 shipped...

Spikesoldier: Last time I fired up SC, I got owned lol. I think I'm getting old, but then again I was never that good anyway. We'll get together and play a couple of games of SC again. 🙂
 
Ha ha!

I haven't seen Oldfart around much for a while. He was always a big help when I was dealing with my PIII based platforms. I too have a Tualy in my 3rd rig - which just crapped out due to the power supply going bad. I upgraded my old PIII 550E@733mzh with the ASUS ST-6 mobo and Tualy Celeron 1.0A@1.33Ghz based on recommendations from Oldfart. (no Slot-T adapter in that case).

As for the 1.4 Celery outstripping a P4 1.6 - I was never under the impression that that was the case. The Tualy was a great CPU for the money after the price dropped to ~$60 or less. I guess the early P4 at around 1.5 and 1.6 Ghz were not all that fast when you considered they were new architecture etc against the old PIII arcitecture of the Tualy Celerons. But when you factor in the DDR memory band width, the P4's still were faster etc. The argument was that even if the early P4's weren't as fast as people would have hoped, they had room to grow to much higher clock speeds - and they indeed have gone from about 1.5 to 3.6 Ghz so that ain't too shabby. It seems like it's time for a redesign since AMD is now taking a clear lead with the new A64 processors.

Anyway - the Tualy based computers are still pretty zippy for average usage - just not appropriate for latest games etc. Mine should service my daughter and ex as a good second computer for web/email/word processing and light gaming for another couple years. I just gotta replace the PS now - grrr..!!!

I noticed you said your Tualy is a 1.4 Ghz - are you running it at stock settings with FSB at 100 mhz? At Oldfarts recommendations, purchased the 1.0 and O/C'd it to 1.33 - that way I'd get my memory buss up to 133 vs 100 mhz and help keep things a little better. The 100 mhz FSB would limit performance a bit and they O/C nicely. I suppose the ideal situation would be a 1.1 overclocked to 1.5 Ghz - you'd get about the best possible performance and stability if you had good coolign - a bit more out of the memory buss too.
 
techwanabe: I haven't seen Oldfart around much either. He was also the person who recommended the tualatin upgrade for me as well. I went with a 1.4GHz just I didn't want to take the chance of getting a dud 1.0GHz or 1.2GHz, even though everyone seemed to be having success with those chips. Another factor was the PC100 ram (1 of the sticks) that I had, and there would be no chance that it could hit 133. I think there was a 110MHz FSB setting on my motherboard that would work, even if the PCI was slightly out of spec. But I don't expect much more performance in terms of CPU so I haven't bothered with tweaking. Oldfart had his 1.4GHz machine running at 1.6GHz IIRC.

I think the 1.4 Celery might have a chance beating out a 1.6 P4 (like you said, especially if it were a Willy) in CPU intensive tasks. I forgot why exactly the Willamettes sucked, if someone can refresh me that would be great.

It's a shame that Intel has forgone the NetBurst architecture after all that effort but now it looks like both parties are heading over to dual core designs. I'm very curious as to what they will do in terms of keeping the chips cool.
 
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