Is there any benefit to upgrade to a Northwood P4 if its paired with SDRAM?

[sindows]

I currently have a Willamette P4 at 1.7ghz and I'm tempted to upgrade to a Northwood BUT I have a chipset that only supports SDRAM. Will there be any noticeable speed increases? I ask this because we all know what a POS the Willamette was..but I feel I may be bottlenecked by my ram...

 

[Kwint Sommer]

Some things are CPU limited, some RAM limited; what are you hoping to improve? You can get a decent Socket 478 motherboard that will handle DDR RAM for less than $50, if you're going to upgrade I recommend a new motherboard.

 

[stevty2889]

The northwood will still perform better, however it will be bottlenecked by the ram. Depends a lot on what programs you are running, how much ram you have, hard drive speed, etc. Probably more worthwhile to save up some money and buy a cheap dell, that will still be way faster than your current system.

 

[cmrmrc]

also depends on which p4 you're getting....if you're getting a new 2.4ghz or something...then you may be fine....but if you're going with a p4 3ghz with 800mhz fsb...then SDRAM will really be bottlenecking your cpu.

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: stevty2889
Probably more worthwhile to save up some money and buy a cheap dell, that will still be way faster than your current system.

Agreed.

 

[rogue1979]

Are you sure you don't have a socket 423 motherboard? Northwood requires a socket 478.

 

[sindows]

Thanks for the replies. The reason I ask is becuase as is, the pc is very sluggish. Its paired with 512Mb ram which should be plenty for everyday tasks. However, its very sluggish and unresposive. Reinstalling Windows does not help at all and I'm assuming its the weak CPU. The harddrive is a 7200 western digital piece that I put in so thats not the bottleneck either.

When I say unresponsive, I mean it takes a long pause before anything opens. It takes a long pause for things to save. It takes about a minute to boot up, etc. Just the normal use of it is unbearable...

I really want to spend the lowest amount possible but at the same time, hope for it to be quicker.

The thing about getting a new/cheap system is that then I'll have another pc sitting around the house which is something I would rather not do.

 

[Stumps]

ewwww A Northwood and SDRAM, sure it's possible but it's gunna be horrible, you probably won't see any improvement at all....

IIRC P4's+ SDRAM = slower than a highend P3

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: rogue1979
Are you sure you don't have a socket 423 motherboard? Northwood requires a socket 478.

I forgot about that. I'm pretty sure that the majority of Williamette cores were Socket 423, not Socket 478. I know that they made some Socket 478 Williamettes, I just can't remember how many/what percentage. It seems like it was a fairly small percentage, though.

 

[Stumps]

Originally posted by: myocardia

Originally posted by: rogue1979
Are you sure you don't have a socket 423 motherboard? Northwood requires a socket 478.

I forgot about that. I'm pretty sure that the majority of Williamette cores were Socket 423, not Socket 478. I know that they made some Socket 478 Williamettes, I just can't remember how many/what percentage. It seems like it was a fairly small percentage, though.

IIRC we sold a lot of Williamettes (256kb L2)in skt 478, most were from 1.6ghz to 1.9ghz

the skt 423 only ever used with the i850 RDRAM chipset

 

[Vette73]

Just get a cheap AMD combo (board/cpu) from frys

 

[Acanthus]

Id really reccomend just saving up for a platform change.

New mobo+CPU+Proc.

A cheap combo would be much better than an upgrade for you.

Id look for Athlon64, Nforce 3 Ultra, DDR for cheap and fast.

 

[kmmatney]

Unless you an get a cheap northwood, say something for $40 or so, then it won't be worth it. Especially with $99 Athlon 64 3400+ and motherboard combos like the one in my sig.

 

[aka1nas]

Originally posted by: Stumps

Originally posted by: myocardia

Originally posted by: rogue1979
Are you sure you don't have a socket 423 motherboard? Northwood requires a socket 478.

I forgot about that. I'm pretty sure that the majority of Williamette cores were Socket 423, not Socket 478. I know that they made some Socket 478 Williamettes, I just can't remember how many/what percentage. It seems like it was a fairly small percentage, though.

IIRC we sold a lot of Williamettes (256kb L2)in skt 478, most were from 1.6ghz to 1.9ghz

the skt 423 only ever used with the i850 RDRAM chipset

The original sd-ram i845 chipset also started on socket 423. Everything but high-end machines wereusing the i845 with SD-RAM as Rambus was pricey back then.

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: sindows
However, its very sluggish and unresposive. Reinstalling Windows does not help at all and

Did you install all the necessary drivers?

If your system can handle a Northwood, there will be a bit of a performance increase. Beyond the clock speed difference, you'll have double the cache, which can help with the slower memory.

That said, with such an old system I would not recommend any upgrades at all, because that's just money down the drain IMO. Just set aside the money you would have spent on the CPU upgrade and periodically add to it. In no time you'll be able to afford a completely new computer. Keep an eye on Hot Deals, especially come Black Friday. Even now there's a Circuit City computer deal for a Gateway (I think) Sempron system for around $200. That's with 512MB DDR2, 160GB HDD, etc.

 

[Ayah]

New rig would be worth much, much more.

 

[Zap]

Correction to my post above... deal is for an Acer Aspire.

Here's the thread.

Acer Aspire AST180EA350M (around $190 after returning the monitor for $140 with the $40 coupon applied)

? AMD Athlon? 64 3500+
? 16x DVD/RW
? 512MB of 533 DDR2 memory
? 9-in-1 media card reader
? 160GB SATA hard drive
? keyboard, mouse, speakers, Windows XP Media Edition 2005, and on board graphics

Nice setup, even at full price of under $400 out the door with a 17" LCD monitor. The system even has a PCI-E 16x slot for video card upgrades and is based on latest socket AM2.

 

[Creig]

Originally posted by: sindows
Thanks for the replies. The reason I ask is becuase as is, the pc is very sluggish. Its paired with 512Mb ram which should be plenty for everyday tasks. However, its very sluggish and unresposive. Reinstalling Windows does not help at all and I'm assuming its the weak CPU. The harddrive is a 7200 western digital piece that I put in so thats not the bottleneck either.

When I say unresponsive, I mean it takes a long pause before anything opens. It takes a long pause for things to save. It takes about a minute to boot up, etc. Just the normal use of it is unbearable...

I don't think your problem has anything to do with CPU speed. Even a 500 MHz PIII system can be snappy if it's set up correctly. Have you checked everything that could be causing this slowdown? ie - swapfile size, background tasks running, hard drive space, make sure you have the latest IDE/AGP drivers, etc...

 

[imported_nah]

what about the possibility of viruses/malware/spyware ? these really slowdown yr PC-- the prob might not be hardware related--use hijackthis to find out whats running on yr PC--then delete each prog which u find to be suspicious (WARNING : check on this forum 1st )--run antivirus/antispy progs --then if nothings wrong run memtest 3.2 to see if yr RAM/CPU are OK--