pentium 4 or pentium D?

wildwolf

Golden Member
Jan 9, 2000
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76
I'm motherboard limited and don't want to spend more $ on motherboard (which may require power supply upgrade, etc...)

Which is the better CPU?
Prescot based Pentium 4 (520, 530, 540, 550, 560, etc. )
or
Pentium D based (920, 930, 940, 950, 960, etc.)

I'm running a 2.8Ghz Prescott 520 now. When I bought this board, I thought I had upgradeability, but that seems to be for only the 2nd edition of the printed circuit board.

I have the Asus P5DL2.
 

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
15,950
1,604
126
I posted this elsewhere. I had repairs to do on a six-year-old system for my brother, and it's at the end of its life-cycle. So we came up with this combination, for use with some DDR2 I've already got here:

mATX Gigabyte mobo

Allendale Dual Core

That's pretty much "bottom-of-the-line," but it's still C2D upgradeable to C2Q -- just not "SLI-ready." Fact is, graphics card is not even needed with this.

That's chump-change for a motherboard. Of course, you could always post your P5DL2 and Prescott on "For Sale/Trade" at these forums, save the DDR2 modules, and do something like this.

I just did a froogle-google on the P5DL2, and Spartan Tech is still selling it for $189. Somebody who "just wants a computer" may want to buy both the mobo and the processor.
 

ghost recon88

Diamond Member
Oct 2, 2005
6,196
1
81
If you go dual-core, get a 9xx series one. 65nm so they run a tad cooler, and 4MB of L2 vs. 2MB like the 8xx ones have.

Edit1: As posted above, you can get a C2D CPU and mobo combo for under $200. Not sure how much the Pentium D dual-cores are that you were looking at.
 

taltamir

Lifer
Mar 21, 2004
13,576
6
76
can you tell us what kind of ram and what socket do you have?

I would hazard an educated guess that with tech that old that it would be cheaper to do a motherboard upgrade then buy one of those...
 

secretanchitman

Diamond Member
Apr 11, 2001
9,352
23
91
i'd get a pentium D 9 series processor...i think your mobo only supports celeron, p4, and pd.

p4 is too old/outdated.
 

PCTC2

Diamond Member
Feb 18, 2007
3,892
33
91
Do you mean you have the P5LD2? Cuz if you have that, it is "Core2Duo Ready" so you can pick up the E2140 that BonzaiDuck suggested and it should work with the latest BIOS update.
 

wildwolf

Golden Member
Jan 9, 2000
1,690
0
76
I've got the revision 1 board, and it's very CPU limited. If I had a 2.0 board, I'd be all set.

I think in the end, I'll just need to hang on to them a bit more.