Best budget Intel CPU?

Hello,
Right now I am running a 2100+ XP on an nforce 2 board at 2100ghz or so. I also have a 4200+ at 4600 speeds... Used to think it was badass, but I think it is now time to upgrade!

I am gonna want to be able to OC, but having it run stable is a lot more important, as it will eventually possibly be used as a server... I am also sort of a security nazi, lol.

Anyways, I don't want to spend too much money.

What would you guys recommend as the current best buy?
Thanks!

PS- mobo recommendations are greatly appreciated to!

The Celeron D's get good clocks as well as the 6x0 and 5x0 series, it depends what your budget is

<offtopic> Megadeth</offtopic>

GET THE intel 3.2E ( 478 ) ...ITS A BEAST .,..

but if you wanna save money , try to get something in the 540J models ..it was told to be a good one ....

P4 530J (3.0) is probably the best buy (pretty good overclocker too), it's around $175 on Newegg.

Personally I do not see the need for Pentium4 at the moment as the Celeron "D" processors will allow you to very likely hit 4GHz and the Prescott pipeline of that architecture shows a marked improvement over even the Northwood processors. If you are going to be doing a lot of video encoding (not playback) or database number crunching then the P4 will show quite a difference. For all intents and purposes, the below system will perform equally as fast as a Pentium4 3.4Ghz.

Celeron "D" LGA775 2.66GHz @ 200MHz fsb = 4GHz
ASUS P5P800 LGA775 Mainboard
Samsung DDR400 PC3200 of 512 X 2
XP-90 HeatSink & Fan
Enermax EG565P-VE FMA V2.0 530W

R

Celeron D would be the only one I would call a good 'budget' processor. If price is a concern this is a good choice, and a great overclocker.

ropey said:

If you are going to be doing a lot of video encoding (not playback) or database number crunching then the P4 will show quite a difference.

Click to expand...

I most likely will, as well as other things.

I am beginning to consider dual processing. What does Intel have to offer in that range? I have been out of the loop for a while... I assume Xeons are absolete now?

ropey said:

the Prescott pipeline of that architecture shows a marked improvement over even the Northwood processors.

Click to expand...

How?

TheFrag said:

I am beginning to consider dual processing. What does Intel have to offer in that range? I have been out of the loop for a while... I assume Xeons are absolete now?

Click to expand...

well you could go for dual core with a 820 processor those go for around 400 bucks...

See http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=363017 on how to build a cheap Xeon dullie. I just built one for a little over $400 but I had hdd's and OS...so for about $600 you probaly could build a complete dual rig.

Another word of advice...check ebay alot and offten, you will find incredible deals every now and them but you have to be watching and cetch them.

Stevie G said:

How?

Click to expand...

Clock-for-Clock a Prescott is in many functions measurably slower than the Northwood at Frequencies below 3.4GHz since Prescott's longer pipeline often results in a lower Instructions Per Clock (IPC) than Northwood. A longer pipeline does not reduce a CPUs IPC as many think, but it does make it harder to achieve its maximum IPC on all applications. This is because the IPC is governed by the number of executable units multiplied the number of cycles each instruction takes per stage to be executed over by the length of the pipeline by Hz.

This means a single 2Ghz FP unit with a 20 stage pipeline with each instruction only taking one cycle per pipeline stage has exactly the same IPC as a single 2Ghz FP unit with a 40 stage pipeline with each instruction only taking one cycle per pipeline stage!

The Northwood has a 20 stage pipeline vs the Prescotts 31 stage pipeline. Where the reduction in Prescott's IPC begins is at the branch prediction and follow-through to cache flush at point of invalid prediction rather than at the pipeline. Clearly a "que" of 20 stages is going to take less time (latency) to fill with new predictions. The Prescott begins to shine at speeds of 3.5GHz and faster because the pipeline is now at a more optimal fill rate and the Northwoods smaller cache needs more flushes than the 1MB cache of Prescott. When speeds of above 3.4GHz are obtained there is a dramatic change and the overall average branch misprediction rate is about 12% lower on the new Prescott core than Northwood.

Thus at higher speeds the above (and other) optimizations of Prescott begin to shine whilst the Northwood now begins to fall back due to smaller cache and necessary flushes become much greater.

Edit:

This is shown also by the Celeron "D" where @ 4GHz will for many functions be faster than the cache heavy lower speed Prescott. For any cache calls (512bytes/sector) that are less than (256kb/512bytes) 1024 byte instructions will show Celeron "D" faster than Pentium4. This changes when cache calls are larger of course as Celeron "D" then needs to flush and refill twice as often than P4 Northwood and four times as often as P4 Prescott.

R