a thread about Pentiums

[floppybootstomp]

When it comes to Socket A boards and AMD CPU's, I think I'm fairly clued up.

But supposing I wanted to buy an Intel Pentium 4 based system? No, don't laugh, supposing I did want to I wouldn't have much of a clue as to what to buy.

I'm hearing good things about the Pentium Northwood series, how a 1.6Ghz CPU can be taken comfortably to 2.4Ghz on FSB alone and still run at 40C with a modest, near silent cooler.

I realise speed isn't everything and that a similarly priced Athlon XP may win out in some benchmarks, but I must admit to being curious about this new breed of P4's.

What I'm not clear on is :

1) Pricing.
2) Rim Ram & DDR RAM compatibility.
3) Good motherboards to suit.
4) Suitable CPU coolers.

Anybody out there any experience of such a setup and can offer any insight?

I'm mostly confused about the costing and the RAM, including the cost of the RAM.

Also, anybody out there considering building a P4 based system?

If you're all clued up on this stuff, could you possibly list a suitable system with pricing? UK sterling or dollars is fine, that'll give me a good idea.

I did read somewhere that a P4 costing £177.00 could easily top 3Ghz.

Again, just curious atm, wondering if Intel could finally be making a comeback. I'm not fond of Intel and all the cock-ups they've made and their blatantly dishonest advertising, but it's perhaps wise not to ignore what's going down.

[Mad dog]

From what i understand, the P4 only shows it's true strength when it uses it's ultra fast 800Mhz memory RDRAM or whatever it's called, but i'm not sure of this. In bench marks P4s tend to beat the Athlons but these do tend to be 3D benchmarks and in many 'real-world' or office test the Athlons beat the P4s. It's hard to know what to make of it all really.

AS far as actual components are concerned, i can tell you that the Gigabyte 8IRXP is PCPro's current fav. As for memory i don't know. The DDR boards where developed to try and make P4s cheaper and more affordable, but whether the performance hit is worth it???? More research needed. As far as coolers go, you can use more or less any AMD capable cooler on one i think. Except that not all P4 mobos have the mounting holes for the 80mm HS.

Your last point about making Intel making a comeback. Well you can never say never. They do have alot of reseources behind them and alot of experience in this field. And of course just think, a few years back we where all singing Intel's parise and cursing the chepo imatation AMD's an Cyrix's.

[prod]

If you go for a P4 1.6, make sure it is the 1.6A.
They are doing the letter designation thing again with the newer northwoods. The A ones are the new ones with double the cache. And the B ones run on 533Mhz bus.
But if you want to really overclock, the older 1.6 (no letter) has been known to hit 2.0Ghz. Not sure about the northwoods overclocking potential, but the larger cache has limited past cpus.
IMO the P4s are pretty comparable to athlon now, except for price anyway.

EDIT: 1.6A doing 2.4Ghz at overclockers.com (http://www.overclockers.com/tips828/index06.asp). Holy SHIZNIT :rolleyes:

[ImaginAsian]

Sorry can't help u in the Intel department all that much Flops. I think Pat has an Intel setup so hopefully she can help.

As for cooling, Alpha has a P4 version of the 8045 ;)