Processors??

[daman]

Both my puters have pentium 4's 2Hz and little bigger,i know
pen 4's are pretty good processors but are there others better
faster then the pentium 4's???

 

[NJC]

Are you wanting to upgrade?

 

[daman]

I'm just wondering i may in the near future upgrade this one and
wasn't sure if there's somthing out better then the pen 4 nowdays.

 

[PandaBear]

Originally Posted By: daman
Both my puters have pentium 4's 2Hz and little bigger,i know
pen 4's are pretty good processors but are there others better
faster then the pentium 4's???


There are lots of different versions of P4, earlier ones with SDR and RD ram are pretty bad, the later ones with DDR/DDR2 are nice, up to Prescott being too hot and power consuming (not performance unless you want to overclock).

The problem with P4 and Pentium D is not that it is not doing its job, but the pipeline is too long and a branch would need to flush too much data out. This is the same reason a P4 needs to run at a higher frequency to match the performance of an Athlon (usually 20-30% faster, at least). Not a problem at the user level, but at a design point of view it is not as efficient as the same generation of Athlon processors, having the memory controller integrated made a huge difference for AMD.

I think they stopped making P4 for a while already, and replaced it with the Core architecture. It went back to a Pentium Pro/II/III types of architecture with shorter pipeline and improve its efficiency. This, along with the new low-k dielectric that Intel started using, fixed all the problem that P4 has and give Intel the top performance crown again. Pentium E is based ont he Core architecture with less cache, but still significantly faster than P4 even at a much lower frequency. I7 has been even better, except that they are selling at an even higher price at the moment and IMO not worth the price premium.


AMD has made some good processors on the low to mid ends as well. The Phenom II supposedly fix all the earlier issues and is able to match the Intel's Core architecture, but they are late to the party and now needs to compete with I7. There is nothing wrong with them if you don't overclock, or if you are looking for the top performance and are willing to pay for it.

 

[Quattro Pete]

Originally Posted By: daman
Both my puters have pentium 4's 2Hz and little bigger,i know
pen 4's are pretty good processors but are there others better
faster then the pentium 4's???

How old are they? Which Pentium4 are they exactly?

I have an old notebook with a 2.6GHz P4, and it's dog slow because the FSB is only 400MHz. Like Panda mentioned, it makes for a good portable heater, but there are much better CPUs and chipsets out there now.

 

[daman]

So a Athlon processor is a step up? been outa the loop for a wile.

 

[Quattro Pete]

Originally Posted By: daman
So a Athlon processor is a step up? been outa the loop for a wile.

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/cpu-charts-2008-q1-2008/3DMark06-CPU,370.html

Lots more benchmarks there, apart from this one.

They also have newer CPU charts from Q3/2008, but P4 is not longer on them since it's pretty old and slower than anything on those charts:
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/desktop-cpu-charts-q3-2008/benchmarks,31.html

 

[daman]

thanks for the info..

 

[ToyotaNSaturn]

I just reinstalled WinXP on the kid's computer this week as the old installation was full of muck. The upgrade that I gave the PC was a fresh 320GB Seagate ".11" series SATA hard disk. This is on a Pentium 4 2.8GHZ non-HT CPU system.

The difference is night & day with the new hard disk and fresh Windows installation! To see run Windows nicely due to a new installation is nice, but the faster hard drives take it over the top...all with a P4 CPU.

Old Pentiums are fine for day to day use. My son uses it for playing a few light-duty games and to sync his Sansa MP3 player. I wouldn't use one of these for heavy-duty gaming & such. They're fine for most people's generic computer needs.

 

[PandaBear]

If you are buying a new PC today, the Core2Quad and the Phenom II are pretty decent for the money. In a few months I think the socket AM3 based Phenom II and Intel's i7 would be affordable enough to be the main stream, with DDR3 memory instead of the current DDR2.

 

[daman]

I just want somthing as fast or faster/powerfull then what i'm using here,serfing the net,burning moves,music,not really into games.need a strong CPU for multi tasking.

 

[MONKEYMAN]

My Dell with a Pentium 4 2.66? or there abouts with 2 gb of RAM seems to just take it time with certain tasks no matter how much I tweak it. I had some extra parts and did a computer build. Bought a cheap motherboard/cpu combo for $40 at New Egg with a Sempron 1.9. Front side bus is higher. But, I think the "11" Series Seagate Sata hard drive made it faster then all the Pentium 4's I have. So, it looks like the weakest link can make things slower. You could upgrade the motherboard with a newer CPU or wait for a sale on a dual core computer. A new dual core machine with 3 or 4 gb of RAM may suit your needs well. The Toshiba laptop I have with a Pentium T3200 was quick from the get go.

 

[NJC]

Originally Posted By: ToyotaNSaturn
The difference is night & day with the new hard disk and fresh Windows installation! To see run Windows nicely due to a new installation is nice, but the faster hard drives take it over the top...all with a P4 CPU.

There can't be enough said for new Win installations. I have 3 week old XP installation running on a PIII - 933Mhz 512MB and for everydays tasks, it runs fine. And the newer hard drives are so much faster ... also a big difference.

 

[uc50ic4more]

Originally Posted By: NJC
Originally Posted By: ToyotaNSaturn
The difference is night & day with the new hard disk and fresh Windows installation! To see run Windows nicely due to a new installation is nice, but the faster hard drives take it over the top...all with a P4 CPU.

There can't be enough said for new Win installations. I have 3 week old XP installation running on a PIII - 933Mhz 512MB and for everydays tasks, it runs fine. And the newer hard drives are so much faster ... also a big difference.


Back when I was using a WinXP system to run a recording studio, I did a fresh install every 3 months like clockwork. I wish I had all of those afternoons back!

 

[daman]

I did a reformat on this one here Dell 2400 clean install, i bought it used with a BAD virus and other nasty's on it that i could not get off and boy did it make a difference.just orderd
a 1GB mem stick to speed it up some from 768.

 

[MONKEYMAN]

Originally Posted By: daman
I did a reformat on this one here Dell 2400 clean install, i bought it used with a BAD virus and other nasty's on it that i could not get off and boy did it make a difference.just orderd
a 1GB mem stick to speed it up some from 768.


My XP computer is a 2400 also. However, I can throw more things at my Dual Core computers without them hesitating. If I keep programs minimal, the 2400 does OK. I have an old Optiplex 933 Pentium III chugging right along with 256 mb of RAM. Works fine for Word 2000 and has blazing internet speeds on 26.6 dial-up.

 

[PandaBear]

daman,

Anything that came out since 2 years ago are faster/fast enough for you. You don't need processing power to do what you listed, my machine is even slower than you (1.8Ghz P4 in one, 2.4Ghz P4 in another, and 1.4Ghz Athlon and 1.0Ghz P3 at home) and I'm happy with it still.

But I'm using Windows 2000 still, so what do I know.

 

[MONKEYMAN]

Originally Posted By: PandaBear
daman,

Anything that came out since 2 years ago are faster/fast enough for you. You don't need processing power to do what you listed, my machine is even slower than you (1.8Ghz P4 in one, 2.4Ghz P4 in another, and 1.4Ghz Athlon and 1.0Ghz P3 at home) and I'm happy with it still.

But I'm using Windows 2000 still, so what do I know.


You know a lot!

Doesn't Windows 2000 use less resources? I pretty much have configured XP to be much like Windows 2000 to open programs faster and to be more responsive. I have Office 2003. It takes about 14 seconds for the print menu to appear. Office 2007 in my newer machines opens right away. Office 2000 on my Pentium 933 machine opens right away. So, doesn't it depend on the operating system you are using and the programs installed?

 

[greenaccord02]

A Core2Duo E6420 [email protected] paired with 4 gigs of DDR2-800 and a RAID array powers my big desktop. It's good when I have a big job to do. That thing can chew through just about anything without a second thought.

My wife has a E6550 w/ 3 gigs of 533. It's a little slower but I think that's because it runs Vista and it's a Dell. She got it before I married her or we wouldn't own it.

Our file server has a 2.8 GHz P4 (1M L2/400FSB without HyperThreading) with a gig of 2700. It gets the job done and then some. I don't know about benchmarks, but when I compiled a Linux kernel a few weeks back it did it in less time that I anticipated.

The newest addition to the network is a little Mini-ITX box equipped with a dual core Atom at 1.6 GHz and a gig of DDR2-800. This little jewel takes EM64T instruction set and is Hyperthreaded. It's the heart of the entertainment system and with a TV/Radio tuner, it does a fine job. It plays and records audio and video in all formats up to 720p.

Finally, my little EeePC 900 has a Celeron M in it that runs at 630Mhz on battery, 900Mhz on AC, and 990 Overclocked. It has two gigs of 533. Thanks to a carefully tuned and pruned loadset based on XP Pro it almost never slows down. I remote into it to surf during the day at work and to keep an eye on things via it's webcam. I can watch video and surf around all day long on that thing without it missing a beat. It's just a question of choosing your applications very carefully for size and speed.


So, to answer the question in the original post, I think a P4 is a great chip and unless you have a hardware problem, I'd just make sure you've got your system regularly maintained and pruned of software that leeches power Maybe upgrade your RAM if you can get a hold of some cheap chips. There's nothing that computer won't do for the average home/office user.
However, if you want to go all out with a new box, I'd wait a couple months and get an i7 system, several gigs of DDR3, a solid motherboard and videocard and a couple 10k rpm drives in a raid setup. Drop a grand and build it yourself.

 

[Quattro Pete]

Originally Posted By: greenaccord02
The newest addition to the network is a little Mini-ITX box equipped with a dual core Atom at 1.6 GHz and a gig of DDR2-800. This little jewel takes EM64T instruction set and is Hyperthreaded. It's the heart of the entertainment system and with a TV/Radio tuner, it does a fine job. It plays and records audio and video in all formats up to 720p.

That's interesting. Are you using the built-in Intel graphics card or an external graphics card? I am considering a similar setup, but the reviews I've read say that it struggles on this outdated Intel 945 chipset and integrated video card, making it unsuitable for media center duties. I do like the low power consumption aspects of it though.