Which CPU is best of these 3 oldies?

[Chiropteran]

Ah, my fault- I only read the first and last few messages, missed that one. I guess that settles it.

edit: But what is wrong with rambus? The northwood P4 were fastest with rambus, the SDR and DDR ram variations were actually slower. The problem with rambus was it was expensive and pricey for little gain, but at least on the early pentium 4 it wasn't hurting performance.

 

[pauldun170]

Ah, my fault- I only read the first and last few messages, missed that one. I guess that settles it.

edit: But what is wrong with rambus? The northwood P4 were fastest with rambus, the SDR and DDR ram variations were actually slower. The problem with rambus was it was expensive and pricey for little gain, but at least on the early pentium 4 it wasn't hurting performance.

The issue with Rambus is cost and availability if whats installed is insufficient.
I wasn't commenting on the tech itself.

 

[blckgrffn]

That's the catch with this old hardware. They actually sell plenty of slower CPUs today (see: Atom) - the thing is these come on newer platforms that help to prop up the CPU with better graphics, Windows 7 drivers, etc. You might just be giving your friend (and yourself) a headache.

I strongly encourage you to try and find something a few years newer on the cheap unless your time/their time is worth very little $$$. Life is short and all that

 

[Chiropteran]

That's the catch with this old hardware. They actually sell plenty of slower CPUs today (see: Atom) -

A 1.6ghz atom is slightly faster than a 2.4ghz Pentium 4. So, they aren't really that much slower...

A 1ghz AMD C-50 is slightly faster than a Pentium 4 2.8ghz and just a bit slower than a 3.06ghz Pentium 4. Amazing how far we have come since those days.

 

[blckgrffn]

A 1.6ghz atom is slightly faster than a 2.4ghz Pentium 4. So, they aren't really that much slower...

A 1ghz AMD C-50 is slightly faster than a Pentium 4 2.8ghz and just a bit slower than a 3.06ghz Pentium 4. Amazing how far we have come since those days.

Hmmm... I thought Anand and Bench said differently, perhaps I will have to review that assertion tomorrow...

 

[Chiropteran]

That was based on passmark, not any thorough analysis.

 

[blckgrffn]

Yeah, bench paints a pretty different picture:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/92?vs=110

http://ark.intel.com/products/43098/Intel-Atom-Processor-D510-(1M-Cache-1_66-GHz)

vs

http://ark.intel.com/products/27484...-HT-Technology-(2M-Cache-3_60-GHz-800-MHz-FSB)

But then again, that's just about the fastest P4 there ever was...

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2765/5

That is what I was thinking of. Obviously I only remembered the WoW score

For as slow as an Atom system feels to me when I use it, I don't think I could go back. My wife has a e-450 and an SSD, I think that would be about the minimum I would recommend to anybody these days...

 

[RadiclDreamer]

Please go visit Youtube. Seriously, that is all it should take to change your mind. P4 + 8/9-series IGP is a bad combo.

He never said he was gaming, only asked what CPU is best, in this case the 2.5 is the best

 

[Cerb]

He never said he was gaming, only asked what CPU is best, in this case the 2.5 is the best

Youtube would be an exceptionally non-gaming use example. Context, in this case an AGP slot, does matter.

 

[NTMBK]

+1 to need for an AGP slot. The AGP in the PC in my sig let me put a relatively modern graphics card in it, and actually make it bearable to use. I can even watch 720p video on it relatively smoothly with VLC (smooth enough to watch sitcoms, anyway).

 

[Compman55]

Being this thread is alive, I will add all the needed details. This friend needs a machine to read email, reserach on forums, and watch youtube videos. No gaming at all.

Here are the systems I have to give away:

P4 2.53 533 FSB. Dell with 845GV chipset with DDR ram. Has some kind of onboard with 8MB, no AGP port. Has a limit of 533 FSB cpus non hyperthread. No bios avail to correct. Feels overall slow.

Athlon XP 1600. Gigabyte Ga-7DXR+. AMD 761 chipset. limited to 266 FSB cpu;s so the barton core is out. Has AGP 4x slot, raid, really seems to feel nice with a ati radeon 7500 card. ITs old but still feels acceptable.

Celeron 2.6 400 FSB. Aopen motherbaord AX4B 845 chipset limited to 400 FSB. No bios to correct. Has agp 4x slot. Feels slow with radeon 7500. Once service pack 3 installed, it falls flat.

All have working cooling with fresh grease.

 

[blckgrffn]

My Grandma, to this day, uses an AXP 2000+ for all of those tasks with a GeForce2. I vote AMD in this case, due to the constraints the P4 has.

Thanks for fleshing out the choices

 

[Cerb]

Athlon XP 1600. Gigabyte Ga-7DXR+. AMD 761 chipset. limited to 266 FSB cpu;s so the barton core is out. Has AGP 4x slot, raid, really seems to feel nice with a ati radeon 7500 card. ITs old but still feels acceptable.

Make sure the fan spins freely. The fan seizing eventually would be my only concern. It's not the fastest chipset around, but AMD's chipsets were as compatible and reliable as Intel's, IME.

If the AX4B weren't limited to 400 FSB (just checked AOpen's website), it would be an opportunity to swap CPUs.

 

[Shawn]

Can you put the P4 on the celeron mobo? Don't know if it'll support the FSB but it may switch to 533 automatically.

 

[Leyawiin]

Don't know about an Athlon XP 1600, but I have a stock XP 2500 in and old PC and its fine for all the things you said your friend would do. For just using the internet it "feels" about as fast the rig in my signature. Doesn't take much to do that.

 

[NTMBK]

What sorts of RAM do all those systems have, and what could they take? (Both what gen i.e. RDRAM, DDR, and what speeds they run at.) If they're on 512MB or less, then combining RAM into one Frankenstein machine might help.

I'd still recommend getting a machine with an AGP port- graphics cards are useful for accelerating video, not just playing games.

 

[Compman55]

They all take DDR 333 or 266 and the athlong can do 3GB and the others max at 2GB. I am low on that kind of ram. I have them in qtys of 256 per stick, so its kinda lame.

 

[Rvenger]

Are the caps even still good on any of those boards? Especially the AOpen.

And I completely agree about the XP 1600+ feeling faster. I sold my old Northwood 2.4b for an Athlon XP 1700+ Tbred back in the day.

 

[Compman55]

Why do you ask about the caps? Amazingly you are spot on. I had to replace them when the board was 3 yrs old. They all swelled up. My older gigabyte boards were the absolute worst.

I pretty much had to do almost all baords back in the day. Shockingly even boards with nichicon;s had sometimes swelled up.

Today people view AMD as a second choice. Back in the 2000's they in my opinion felt like they blew the intels out of the water. Which is why I asked today to see what peoples opinions are.

As much as I liked the P4 prescott room heater, I only liked it so much based on the awsome intel ICH5R raid 0. Raptor RAID 0 back then was to die for. AMD had nothing to compare. As a matter of fact that system is still in use today as a spare.

 

[Soulkeeper]

the celeron wins paper weight status

P4 should win in most everything long as HT is enabled

 

[Cerb]

Why do you ask about the caps?

Because around that time frame, there was industrial espionage going on, and one or more capacitor maker(s) got an incomplete formula, then put it into production. The result was caps that would go bad 1-3 years later.

Some makers got hit worse than others, and AOpen was one of them.

 

[cytg111]

The P4 board does not use rambus .. it is a lowlow cost system, why would they have gone with rambus.. also, without dualchannel memory access, it would be shit.

 

[NTMBK]

Rather sucks that they're all 256MB. If you could get a solid GB into that Athlon board then it'd not be a bad machine. I bet that in day to day use, when you have multiple browser windows open, music playing and maybe some work in Office running, the RAM will be the choke point. (Also another strike against the P4, as those integrated graphics will eat into your RAM.) It might be worth seeing if you can't pick up a 512MB stick second hand really cheap somewhere.

 

[blckgrffn]

Rather sucks that they're all 256MB. If you could get a solid GB into that Athlon board then it'd not be a bad machine. I bet that in day to day use, when you have multiple browser windows open, music playing and maybe some work in Office running, the RAM will be the choke point. (Also another strike against the P4, as those integrated graphics will eat into your RAM.) It might be worth seeing if you can't pick up a 512MB stick second hand really cheap somewhere.

With the stated workload, Linux is reasonable alternative.

People who get free PCs can't afford to be that picky

With any luck, the friend will get a taste of how nice having a PC is and then save up some money for a more modern build, taking care of the performance issue and the possible support burden off of the OP all in one shot

 

[sm625]

P4 2.53 533 FSB. Dell with 845GV chipset with DDR ram. Has some kind of onboard with 8MB, no AGP port. Has a limit of 533 FSB cpus non hyperthread. No bios avail to correct. Feels overall slow.

Athlon XP 1600. Gigabyte Ga-7DXR+. AMD 761 chipset. limited to 266 FSB cpu;s so the barton core is out. Has AGP 4x slot, raid, really seems to feel nice with a ati radeon 7500 card. ITs old but still feels acceptable.

There's the problem. It really takes an 865 chipset to make the P4 a usable system. Without it the 533 fsb is useless. It is bandwidth starved, and with no HT it is just going to be slow. It might even benchmark slower than the athlon xp 1600. The radeon 7500 is a bonus. It has about the same pixel pushing power as a 915G chipset.