Its that time... upgrade

[MaxPowers_68]

Alright well its that time. Three years later and my p4 2.6 Northwood is looking a little aged. I was wonding what should be my next upgrade for my comp. My mobo is in the sig but for those who are lazy, lol, its a p4c800 deluxe 478 800fsb. What would be the fastest chip i could use?

[xTrEmEoVrClOcKr]

I disagree, the fastest chip would obviously be a Dothan 7xx. I would recommend a 750 Dothan, they should get over 2.6ghz on air, and they are blazing fast. All you need is a CT479 adapter. Dothans are very good chips, low heatwattage, better clock-per-clock than A64 / P4, I would try to find one on ebay or the OCforums. Another alternative is selling all of your stuff, and going LGA755. Intel 640 (This will do 4.2ghz easily on air) + P5WD2 Deluxe + 2gb of PQI PC5400 + X800GTO, that would be roughly $740 for a full upgrade that would smoke your current system ;). Just my .02c

[barnz0432]

I would agree if you can afford it switch to 775 and go 64bit if you can.

[stang8118]

I agree wiht xtreme, i would go Dothan if you wanted to stick with your current mobo.

[larva]

A Pentium M is blazing fast, but suffers from one drawback inherent in S478 systems--the lack of 64bit support. I'm expecting 64 bit applications to be readily available in a year's time, so I'm hesitant to invest much in platforms that can't support it.

That being said, a P-M is probably the best cpu upgrade for your current rig, if that's the only thing you are considering.

I like the LGA stuff a lot, you could buy something like an P5P800 or AS8 Abit and run a P4-506 at 4GHz and have 64 bit support in addition to good core performance for ~$200. The lack of HT is the most serious drawback, but is also inherent in Pentium-Ms. You could also run a P4-630 to good effect, and they aren't that expensive these days. It gives a 2MB cache, HT, and 64 bit support, and would only be a ~$300 upgrade.

Considering how cheap the LGA alternitives are, you really have to think about how much you want to invest in something specific to S478. You will want to get off of AGP sooner or later, and when that happens, the party's over with S478. Between that and the lack of 64 bit support I'm hesitant to spend $200-250 on a processor upgrade when a LGA MB and CPU isn't hardly any more.

[MaxPowers_68]

Well ive had this computer for a couple of years now and plan to have it a couple more seeing as its more than enought for what i use it for (sims 2, unreal T04, school work, and internet). I just want to give some more umpf. Im planning on getting new mem for christmas and maybe a new cpu. Then 1-2 years down the road turn this one into my server and lose the server in my sig and then build another awsome system.

So no new system for me :) just wanna max this one out. Also i know the northwood is a little slower but the pipeline is shorter and it creats alot less heat. Would that be better than the prescott?

[xTrEmEoVrClOcKr]

Like we said earlier, a Dothan would be your best bet, they run really cool and have great clock-per-clock. BTW, the Northwoods are faster than the Prescotts in certain applications, they start losing over 3.8ghz to the Prescott.

[MaxPowers_68]

yeah i know but they run so much cooler and consume less power, i belive. I plan on keeping it intel though.

[hUMANbEATbOX]

a dothan will consume FAR less power than even a northwood, and it will be faster than any other chip you can buy, even with a whole new rig.

and dothan's are made by intel ;)

[MaxPowers_68]

yeah i knew that lol jk