Have a question about a system i wanna buy..

[Shaggy]

Heya guys hope you dont mind my newbie self asking you some questions. I have a friend selling a P4 system that im looking into buying and I wanted to get some input on what im buying. Heres the breakdown:

P4 1.4 ghz
Asus P4T mobo
128 megs pc800
Case with 300w power supply

I have all of the other Items that it doesnt have such as a sound card, video card, and drives. Im looking to get some pros and cons to what im buying. Right now my system is a PIII 733 with an Asus board (via chipset) 256 megs pc133. Any info anyone is willing to share will be greatly appreciated :)

[Rezman5]

Save your money...go buy or put together a nice AMD system. Better product, less money. How much is he offering it to you for? If its really cheap, might as well take it

[KeyboardCowboy]

how much is he asking for it????

[Shaggy]

300 bucks

[Shadow ÒÓ]

it's my understanding that you should avoid rambus like the plague. Proprietary memory that only worked for a couple of the P4's correct?

[DarkArctic]

I have to agree with all posts here. Pentium 4 is not worth it. Go AMD all the way. Better performer, cheaper and it can amke chili and fries! Well, almost.

-DarkArctic

[Shaggy]

Not much of an AMD fan although im sure its a great product. I have never owned one so I cant possibly talk about the AMD line or make any comments. Only thing I know is that I have had intel chips since my 486 sx 33 and I have never had a bad one or any problem with one. Im one of those people that sticks with brands that have proven themselves to me. Intel has never let me down so I think im gunna stick with em :)

[DarkArctic]

Oh and DDR memory is even supposed to outperform RD-RAM, another reason to go AMD.

-DarkArctic

[Shadow ÒÓ]

any chance someone could answer the question instead of trying to convert him to AMD? I too am interested to know if it's worth it (which I believe it isn't) and why.

[Yodums]

The seller doesn't have magical powers to turn that thing to AMD.

And yes I think that's a very good deal add about 128mb RAMBUS and hes going to be rolling.

Its equipped with a good motherboard and a good processor.

Just in the future you might have to add more ram since 128 is like what is minimal.

And your psu maybe too weak since P4 usually need the 350 watt and espically if you tend to poke it with high end drives at will defintely kill the juice at the start.

Go for it dude.

[Sonny]

Go ahead if it's in good condition but do take into account the price of RDRAM since it is one thing that you will be stuck with. If your comfortable with the prices of "proprietary" ram then by all means go for it. Just remember that they have to go in pairs.

*EDIT* Since YODUMS/SPAMMER or whatever he likes to call himself says to go buy it then I would say forget it. I just don't want to agree with this guy :D

[Shadow ÒÓ]

Since I havn't owned a P4 yet, I can't speak from experience, but what about the horrible reviews on Rambus and statements like "finally Intel fixed the bugs when they produced the 1.7" or the like.

It was my understanding the P4 had some real problems and was over hyped.

Rambus has to be installed in pairs, so you're looking at roughly $150 for a 128 meg upgrade?

Oh yea...and which P4 chips used Rambus? the 1.3 through the 1.6?

[Yodums]

Originally posted by Shadow ÒÓ
Since I havn't owned a P4 yet, I can't speak from experience, but what about the horrible reviews on Rambus and statements like "finally Intel fixed the bugs when they produced the 1.7" or the like.

It was my understanding the P4 had some real problems and was over hyped.

Rambus has to be installed in pairs, so you're looking at roughly $150 for a 128 meg upgrade?

Oh yea...and which P4 chips used Rambus? the 1.3 through the 1.6?

AS to my knowledge any P4 can use rambus as long as they have a rambus-compliant motherboard.

I've heard great things about RDRam and that the system will not take the 100% potential until you use that, and now I'm hearing in teh future DDR will be used by Intel in their upcoming chipsets for their Northwood I'm guessing.

PS Shadow: I like those eyes with the eyebrows I think I'll stick them on for fun as well!

[Chainsaw6]

First is it 478 pin or 428. Reason is it would be worth the dough if you could drop a mid year(2002)478 pin northwood supporting a 133 fsb(quad to 532). I think also that if you got good quality ram that it should go to pc1200. It looks like the northwoods will be the way to go.

[KeyboardCowboy]

Originally posted by Shaggy
Not much of an AMD fan although im sure its a great product. I have never owned one so I cant possibly talk about the AMD line or make any comments. Only thing I know is that I have had intel chips since my 486 sx 33 and I have never had a bad one or any problem with one. Im one of those people that sticks with brands that have proven themselves to me. Intel has never let me down so I think im gunna stick with em :)


for 300 bucks, i would go for it, i am not partial to brands, both intel and amd have worked well for me, see if you can talk him down a bit though, maybe 250

[dugans]

I haven't followed the p4 that closely, mainly because I haven't heard any great things about them until just recently (the 2gigs)

But: I am a hardware geek and would go for it myself: I would try to get either more ram at that price or drop the price though.

But even as it stands, 3 bills for 1.4 mhz cpu/mobo/128ram/case is a pretty good deal.

A good start to a Seti (or Folding) Farm, too!

[JetMech]

Any P4 board that uses the I850 chipset needs Rdram. The 1.4 P4 is not a good buy. The motherboard is about $175.00 new, The Ram is about $110.00 new and the chip (which is garbage) (you don't want anything less than 1.5 less than that is slower than a piii933) is about $140.00 new, if you can find one. The debate about P4 back in the day was because the P4 core is designed to require special code when writing programs for it and consequently does not run " business programs as fast as Athlon does. It also doesn't do math as fast as AMD as most of you folders know. Also the price of RDram was so high that the total cost of building a P4 system was ridiculous. $300.00 is ok only if the chip is 1.5 or higher.

[Burning Phoenix]

First of all i have had 2 P4 systems in the last 6 months and i don't where you guys are getting those RDRAM prices from. I have purchased my last 256 M (128 x 2) PC800 Samsung for $80 and the current prices i see are still around the same. You can get a single stick of 128 M noname brand for less than $35.

Now for the above mentioned system don't buy it!
My opinion from experience tells me i had trouble running a 300W PSU. Also i haven't seen any 300W PSU's with the extra 12v power plug for the motherboard. I have not heard anywhere that the P4 1.4 can perform better than the average high end P3's. Upgrade your current P3 733 to a P3 1000+ it'll probably run faster than that 1.4G. The only part i see worth any money there is the ASUS P4T ($175+).

Looking at those specs and you really want it it is probably worth $325+ new or being used don't pay more than $250!

[stompah]

Thats funny I have 2 300w PSUs sitting here with the extra plugs for P4.