P4 3Ghz Socket 478 - SL7PM or SL6WK ??

[neo6053]

hi, recently i plan to upgrade my old pc ..

but then i've given such choices .. i dunno which to choose ..

P4 3EGhz - SL7PM 1M/800
P4 3Ghz - SL6WK 512K/800

which one is better ?? i dunno which stepping r they ..


the SL7PM is Prescott core ? how bout the other ? i heard some say northwood is better while some say Prescott.. i get confused ... hope someone can asnwer me .. thx !!

 

[Stumps]

in the Socket 478 based P4's the Northwood core was the fastest core of the P4 upto about 3.4-3.6ghz.
The Northwood also ran considerably cooler than the Prescott, generally a Northwood P4 is usually 5% or so faster clock for clock.

I have two P4 systems, one with a 3.06ghz@3.45ghz Northwood and a 3Eghz@3.4ghz and generally they perform very similar, although the 3.06 does run nearly 15c cooler.

I would go for the Northwood for the above reasons....and they also overclocked pretty good, both of mine are using stock cooling and have no increase in voltages (Vcore)

 

[stevty2889]

Yeah go with the northwood. Strangely enough at the same clock speed, northwood actually outperforms prescott in most applications, and it runs a lot cooler, and uses less power. Even the the Prescott has more cache, the cache on the prescott is slower, so it doesn't really give any advantage. The SL6WK is a northwood.

 

[Denithor]

One question before you pull the trigger on that CPU--how much is it costing you?

For not a lot more you may be able to rebuild your system with a C2D chip instead and reuse your other components.

ASRock 4CoreDual-SATA (AGP+PCI-E slots, DDR+DDR2 sockets) for $66

e2140 (2x1.6GHz, 1MB cache) for $75
-or-
Celeron 420 (1.6GHz, 512k cache) for $43

And this if you don't have much RAM:
2x1GB Kingston N5 DDR2-667 for $47

This would give you a motherboard that will let you reuse your RAM and video card and move you into the faster Core2 performance bracket. You could then sell off your old parts to recover some of the money you spent on the new stuff.

Check out the benchmarks on this page and those following to see how the Celeron 420/e2140 compare to the P4 single- and dual-core processors. And keep in mind that if you get the faster DDR2 memory you can overclock these processors very easily to over 2GHz.

EDIT: One final benchmark to show you how much better C2D is versus P4. Here you see the e4300 (2x1.8GHz, 2MB cache) at stock easily beating out the Pentium D 945 (2x3.4GHz, 4MB cache). That PD945 is at least twice as powerful as the Northwood you are considering.

 

[neo6053]

thx alot ... Great helps from u guys .. now i know tat northwood is far more better than Prescott ..

but now, i would go for C2D due to advice from Denithor ^^
thx, buddy ...

 

[Blain]

Running stock speed, go for the Northwood.
OCing & encoding, go with a Prescott.

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: neo6053
now i know tat northwood is far more better than Prescott ..

You arrived at the wrong conclusion
The Northwood is not "far better" than the Prescott.

> Sharky's Side-By-Side <
> Hot Hardware Side-By-Side <
> AnandTech Side-By-Side <
> TechReport Side-By-Side <

 

[Denithor]

At this point, Northwood vs Prescott is irrelevant: they both lose completely and utterly compared to the Core2 architecture. It's a total waste of money to upgrade an old P4 system these days (one possible exception: finding a used chip for like $20 on the FS forums or eBay).

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: Denithor
At this point, Northwood vs Prescott is irrelevant:

You should have added... "IMO" to your statement.

 

[stevty2889]

Originally posted by: Blain
Running stock speed, go for the Northwood.
OCing & encoding, go with a Prescott.

While I agree the prescott is better for encoding, the socket 478 flamethrower prescotts are not a good choice for overclocking. While the 6xx series of prescotts did OK at overclocking the earlier 5xx series, and the socket 478 versions were space heaters.

 

[Blain]

The OP made no mention of OCing at all. The OCing got tossed into the mixed by member replies.

Assumptions that I made based on what the OP did & didn't say are...
The OP would be running @ default.
The OP would adaquately cool whatever CPU he purchased.