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Which CPU is best of these 3 oldies?

C

Compman55

Golden Member
2.6 GHz Celeron 400 FSB
2.53 P4 533 FSB
Athlon XP 1600+ 266FSB

Of all three systems the 1600+ feels the best. Would like to give one to a friend.
 
2.53 Ghz P4 that would be northwood B core I believe. Much faster than 1600+ which is ~1.6 Ghz P4, that's why it's called 1600+
 
Ok so the 2.53 would be the fastest. Of course the only motherboard out of all that has no AGP slot. It has intel 8mb onboard. How much better than the athlon 1600+?
 
If it has no AGP slot it is pretty much useless. Even surfing facebook and youtube is goign to need a gpu or else it is going to be slow as dirt. Unless you can find a radeon X300 pci card or something like that. Not terribly rare but not as prolific or cheap as an old agp card.

But all things being equal the 533 fsb chip is the best. It supports dual channel memory (dual DDR 266) which in itself is going to make it feel faster. The athlon could feel faster if it has a good chipset, some did support dual ddr.
 
The Athlon XP, with a good DDR chipset, such as SiS7xx, KT266A or higher, or nForce2 would be the best for common desktop uses.

The P4, in a nice mobo (848, 845P, 865P, 875P, 9xx) w/ an AGP slot, would be better, but with Intel IGP only, I'd scavenge parts and make it a door stop or network appliance. Even non-fullscreen Youtube will kill the old Intel IGPs, including low-end 900 series GMA.
 
For what it's worth I still use an Athlon 2000+ for about a week or so each year when watching a relative's dogs. Machine was a super budget build ~8 years ago and still running strong. Currently have it running with 1GB DDR and an AGP Geforce 4600ti, and it runs SD youtube just fine as well as other web browsing. Even handles fullscreen video on one monitor while web browsing on the other. The CPU is often running near full load while dong this but it runs fine. That Athlon 1600+ should run fine for day to day usage, and would definitely be what I'd prefer over a P4 with onboard graphics.

I will probably end up putting something more modern in its place at some point, but there's something nice about using a PC ~8 years later and it still running fine for day to day use. The original Athlon, and then Athlon XP were great chips. If I still had my Athlon thunderbird 1.1GHz I bet it'd do most day to day web browsing etc without issue.
 
The Athlon XP was a great chip. It was actually my first build...the 1700+ variety, which I OCed a little (to 1900+ speeds).
 
Compman55 said:
Ok so the 2.53 would be the fastest. Of course the only motherboard out of all that has no AGP slot. It has intel 8mb onboard. How much better than the athlon 1600+?
Click to expand...

With only Intel IGP it will be completely useless. You can still get PCI cards but they are way overpriced.

That Celeron will be by far the worst. The Northwood versions were so cache starved that in some things they were beaten by Coppermine Pentium 3s.

Do you have the systems on you? Might be worth checking if the mainboard from the Celeron will support the P4.
 
Athlon XP Mobile, barton core, 2500+ was the sweet chip!

Im getting some nostalgia from this thread remembering the old AXP series. So back in high school in late 2002 I got my first personal computer that wasn't a POS, it had a 2400+ AXP and a GF4 TI4600.

Within about 2 days of owning it I burned out the CPU by maxing out the voltage at 1.85 🙂

Thus, I entered the world of overclocking

(I sent the computer back to the manufacturer and they replaced the CPU no questions asked 😉)
 
in all honesty at this day and age all would make good linux boxes, the ram to get them up to a decent windows box would cost too much not to meantion finding a good Gfx card.

but if money was no object, you could get the ram up to 2gb, and a good 512mb AGP vid card, or PCI.
you might be able to do some pretty decent online gaming at 1600x1200(1024x768 would be vastly better, 720i/p eh might not be able to do because of drivers)

The celeron is junk. like a P3 with autism.good enough to use in a library or for a cash register.
the 1600+ would do better, hell would run any game up to 2005,
same with the P4, but would slightly better.
but a 2500+ would beat the shit out of the p4.

look up retestrak's forum for how to optimise xp

I have been building systems for about 15 years now. i have probably broken more computers testing that most have built.(what else can you do with trade-in computers that arent worth giving away)
for these cpus just the time to install xp fresh was a good indicator.
vista would run like 3 legged dogs.
Just for a laugh i try win7 on them. you can run them without activation for 30 days (just make sure in the Advanced system settings to set max performance)
 
Absolute0 said:
Athlon XP Mobile, barton core, 2500+ was the sweet chip!

Im getting some nostalgia from this thread remembering the old AXP series. So back in high school in late 2002 I got my first personal computer that wasn't a POS, it had a 2400+ AXP and a GF4 TI4600.

Within about 2 days of owning it I burned out the CPU by maxing out the voltage at 1.85 🙂

Thus, I entered the world of overclocking

(I sent the computer back to the manufacturer and they replaced the CPU no questions asked 😉)
Click to expand...
look how far youve come
 
Ebay usually has a steady supply of FX5200 and X1300 pci cards for around $15. Any time I see a really good deal on a lot of 3-5 for under $5 apiece, I snap them up. Somehow, somewhere, they end up getting used. I have none atm and actually need one.
 
I had a spare XP2500+ sitting around for awhile. With a clean install of windows XP it was ok but after AV and windows updates it was an absolute dog.

Flakiness under various light weight Linux kernels sealed the deal on it.
 
Why are people assuming the Pentium 4 would be using IGP? If it's a proper build with a northwood CPU it's probably using the 850E chipset. No IGP, didn't exist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_850#Intel_850E

I'd have to assume the OP must have at least one usable video card among all those old systems.

And yeah, the Pentium 4 is the best of those options, all else being equal. Although it depends on other factors too, if the P4 only has 256MB of RAM and the Athlon has 2GB, that will change the apparent performance.

Since the OP says Athlon feels faster, it's possible the P4's cooling device might not be functioning fully. That would cause it to clock down and throttle reducing performance, it wasn't unheard of when the CPU were current and for a CPU that is 10 years old or more it's not all that unlikely.
 
The Tbred B 1600+ were known to reach XP 3200+ speeds without a hitch. I am pretty sure they are fully unlocked. Just a FYI.
 
Last edited:
Chiropteran said:
Why are people assuming the Pentium 4 would be using IGP? If it's a proper build with a northwood CPU it's probably using the 850E chipset. No IGP, didn't exist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_850#Intel_850E

I'd have to assume the OP must have at least one usable video card among all those old systems.

And yeah, the Pentium 4 is the best of those options, all else being equal. Although it depends on other factors too, if the P4 only has 256MB of RAM and the Athlon has 2GB, that will change the apparent performance.

Since the OP says Athlon feels faster, it's possible the P4's cooling device might not be functioning fully. That would cause it to clock down and throttle reducing performance, it wasn't unheard of when the CPU were current and for a CPU that is 10 years old or more it's not all that unlikely.
Click to expand...

see post #5 from OP
Ok so the 2.53 would be the fastest. Of course the only motherboard out of all that has no AGP slot. It has intel 8mb onboard. How much better than the athlon 1600+?
Click to expand...

P4 world require an additional purchase of a PCI graphics card for it to be usable (with a modern GUI OS).

There is also the risk that the P4 motherboard uses Rambus memory.
OP would need to confirm that if the P4 is in the running
 
The Intel® Pentium® 4 would be the fastest of the processors but really even a low end current Intel Pentium G620 would be much faster than any of them. In the end when you are talking about systems that old you really can get better performance from the cheap box system at Wal-mart.
 
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