s478 - P4EE or Dothan?

I have a ton of s478 stuff just collecting dust at the moment. Im going to put some of it together and make a rig to take to work to mess around with, perhaps fold or crunch, or just replace the workstation I currently have in my office.

What currently resides there is a 2yr old Dell whocareswhatmodel (need I say more? )

Mobo will be a P4C800-E dlx.

Ram will be 4 X 512 Mushkin Black Level 2 PC3500 (confirmed BH-5).

I have a P4 3.2 EE and I also have a Dothan 1.8ghz which I believe is a 745? Not 100% sure of the exact details on the dothan.

Which do you think would give the best day to day real world performance in a case?

With the P4 3.2 EE I can put pretty much any air cooler I decide on there. It will overclock SUBSTANTIALLY higher on the CPU. I dont know where it will land but on LN2 with this exact cpu/mobo/ram I got 5Ghz. I could throw a TRUE or a Tuniq Tower on there and I should be good to go at 4000-4200 maybe.....dunno.

With the Dothan I will be stuck with the crapazz HSF that comes with the CT-479 adapter. It will not overclock anywhere near any level even remotely being impressive, but.......that L2 cache boost could turn out to be quite sweet and even better than raw Ghz nontheless.

Is there some way to put a standard air cooler on top of a CT-479 adapter?

Which would you choose for a day to day real world rig? I could potentially get a better dothan, but OMG they are tough to find and super ridiculously expensive and really would prefer not to go that route for this project.

Thanks!

The Dothan. Way cooler, and a lot more efficient per clock than any P4. Even my Banias Pentium M 1.6 performs almost 40% faster than my P4 with twice the cache at the same speed.

Dothan = Gaming
EE = Real world

Take into account Dothan does not have HT of the EE, you will still have to wait for apps that grab large chunks of the processor, causing laggy switches between apps.

whats this L2 cache boost your talking about? dont they both have 2 Megs?

Niku-Sama said:

whats this L2 cache boost your talking about? dont they both have 2 Megs?

Click to expand...

No
Dothan = 2 MB L2
EE = 512 KB L2 + 2 MB L3

Dothan more L2 cache, faster, less latency.

Look here for how to mount a TT BT 120 on a Dothan (just happens that there was one of these for sale in our Classifieds yesterday).

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=411859

There's all sorts of other sinks that you can mount, although sometimes you just have to be creative. There was a big thread over at XS with pics...I'll try to locate the link to it and add it to this post.

The easiest are probably the Zalman 7000/7700 series.

Edit:

Found the thread.

Look thru here for some ideas:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?p=861457#post861457

We also have a sticky with good info on these.

TY for the input guys!

So Reefa....I notice you neglected to offer an opinion.....

Considering that you are one of the local foremost authorities on s478 and you still ACTIVELY use this socket....what thoughts do you have on the matter?

Well, I don't fold or crunch, so I don't really know what attributes would be the most coveted for that type of work.

My gut feeling is that it would end being a tie...some pluses for the P4 and some for the Pentium M, but in the end, the P4 EE would just be simpler to set up and run, so I would give it the nudge. Hyperthreading would be a plus, too.

I'll point you to a couple of articles / comparisons that might help you decide, based on your particulars. There are a few others that I'll try to locate when I get home...on an office PC without access to my "library".

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2382

http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/cpu/intel-pentium-m-desktop.html

dothan is faster/better for gaming and slightly behind in encoding vs P4's. due to the lack of instuction set's. i ran a [email protected] would do superpi 1m in 30secs. it was really fast in gaming vs my P4 [email protected] using the same card 6600GT AGP. then i had to get a better video card since the 6600GT was now the bottleneck.

if you want low power/heat cpu for gaming/surfing/word then Dothan. if do alot of multi tasking or encoding then take the P4.

TY Reefa and TY everyone else who contributed.

I have mounted a TRUE as well as a TT on my s478, but what I did was to remove the plastic bracket around the socket and hardmount it with a backplate.

I figured why try to mod with those fancy-azz clips and brackets when there are brackets allready made to mount these HSF on s478

I guess it will all come down to real world testing. Ill put the rig together and mess around with it for awhile, switch out CPUs and see what I like.

Looks like a tight race though.

What is the absolute, best, top of the line AGP GPU available?

I current have......a believe a 7600 GT which is a respectable AGP GPU, but Im sure I can get a top-o-da-liner one in the classifieds here, or [H], or anandtech, etc for pretty cheap.

7900 GT is the best? Or.....something else?

Every single other piece of hardware on this sucker is arguably the unequivocal king (or queen!) of s478.

Mobo is debatable....some will say the Abit is better but I have found this mobo to be a monster.

Ram - noone will say anything bad about my RAM I also have DDR500 (PC4000) 2 X 512 Teamgroup Xtreem (TY Maxi!!!!) which I love but I think adding an additional 2 X 512 for 2gig total will outweigh any extra speed.

Besides who doesnt love confirmed BH-5 Mushkin Black level 2!!!!???

CPU (if I go with the 3.2EE) is 2nd best s478 with the SL7CH (3.4EE) being ever so slightly better than the SL7AA(3.2 EE)

That only leaves the GPU

there is no 7900GT agp its a 7900GS APG and then there is the new ati 3k line in agp if you want to go that route.

from a gaming standpoint i would take the dothan over the P4 EE's esp with a higher end gpu. as the P4 EE's even oced wont be able to hold a candle to the Dothan...

also you have to keep in mind if your going to run the Dothan you need the Asus CT-479 adpater, dothan is not plug/play with desktop boards. it is after all a mobile cpu even if intel labled it 478, its layout is completly different then P4's. as well the CT-479 only works on asus boards, mine was the P4P800-SE loved that board. many ran the P4C800 board with the CT-479, both were comparable in benchmarks.

for ram i was running OCZ ddr400 EL rev2.1 sticks, with a 1:1 ratio it was more then fast enough for me at 200mhz.

I allready have several CT-479 adapters

1 for full stock usage, and 1 I plan on modifying to be able to mount an LN2 tube on top of (fan connector needs to be unsoldered and resoldered in a different position for clearance issues) as well as voltmod it

I could almost put together a sister rig.

I can match your board (actually have at least 3 P4C800-E Dlx to choose from, plus about 4 of the 865PE models - P4P800s), but can't match your P4EE, although I've got a few decent Northwoods and a handful of Pentium M processors to choose from. Like you, I've got a handful of CT-479 adapters. Doesn't hurt to have a few, as you never know when you're going to have a need for another one.

High end cooling would have to be in the form of dry ice for me, once I get my tube from thideras. Got to find a way to mount it, but since I don't have to invent it, just find it and copy it, it shouldn't be an issue. I know that I've seen it done. This type of cooling will be a new adventure for me.

Ram...I bet I could find a stick or two of DDR lying around if I looked hard enough.

My best AGP GPU would be a Sapphire 1950 Pro 512 MB variety.

Could be fun, but just too dang busy with other stuff to really be able to give a go. Of course, if you start having way too much fun, I might not be able to resist.

Reefa? Find a bit of DDR ram if you look?

You ARE the OCF library of DDR.

Since I have been an active member (approx 1 year) I think I have PERSONALLY seen 20 or so DDR transactions where you were the buyer LOL......

bump 4 reefa madness!!!!!!

Reefa I did not know you held such expertise. Good to know.

Reefa is THE king of DDR ram and s478. I cant recall coming across anyone else that uses that platform as much recently.

Reefa, come join me in the s478 benching waters!! Its fun

Post some scores on hwbot. The s478 scores there are WEAK WEAK WEAK. I took a break from benching s478 subzero for awhile because it was like shooting fish in a barrel. Come make it competitive!!! Take me off of my platform and knock off some of my #1 hardware scores to give me a reason to come back to it

FYI, its going to be awhile for me to hit the dothans subzero. We just finished our Forum Wars, and then I put together my SLI gaming watercooled rig, and now Im focusing on a cool azz Toms Hardware LN2 competition (I hope I get picked to compete!!!!!).

But please, come make benching s478 some fun. The scores are weeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaak and it got boring.

Here's just a taste. Ive got TONS of sick sick sick screenies on Spi, Wprime, etc.....CPUZ is just easier to link to

http://valid.x86-secret.com/show_oc.php?id=311436
http://valid.x86-secret.com/show_oc.php?id=304849
http://valid.x86-secret.com/show_oc.php?id=314322

The rest are on my hwbot profile
http://www.hwbot.org/user.do?userId=12155

Dawgdoc said:

Reefa? Find a bit of DDR ram if you look?

You ARE the OCF library of DDR.

Since I have been an active member (approx 1 year) I think I have PERSONALLY seen 20 or so DDR transactions where you were the buyer LOL......

Click to expand...

Now way...you're obviously confused me with someone else.

But I will keep an I on what you're doing here. Might just have to join you.

Sounds like you've got yourself a nice horde of parts, as well.

Reefa_Madness said:

Now way...you're obviously confused me with someone else.

Click to expand...

Yea, because the name "Reefa Madness" is not only so common that I trip over you "people", but also its a real bland plain name that no-one remembers!

aw come on dawg, DOTHAN ss's!! sorry i was never a fan of P4 benching, you will find some of my stuff on hwbot for my old Dothan rig. still wish i didnt sell the cpu/mobo/1gig ram for $125.

I have a suggestion...why not bench them both and compare them across a multitude of benchmarks / apps and put the issue to rest?

With so many people running both platforms today, there must surely be a ton of interest in something like this, right?

Actually, what I'm really wanting to do is to do an "ode to the i865".

I have 865PE boards that will run Northwoods and prior P4s, along with the mobile Pentium 4, S478 Prescotts, Pentium M, Socket LGA775 Prescotts, either single or dual cores such as the 540s and the 805s / 820s, and my "gem of uniqueness", an AsRock Conroe865PE that I purchased from England which will run all those listed LGA775s AND Conroes such as the E2xxx/E4xxx/E6xxx thru the M0 stepping...all with DDR1 and AGP!

I specifically picked up an E4600 with the 12 multi so that the FSB limitation of the 865PE wouldn't be as big a deal on the Conroe board, as it would be if running an 8 or 9 multi. If I can get close to 300 FSB, say 285-290, then I would be in excess of 3.0GHz on the proc.

Wouldn't that make for an interesting tribute to the 865PE chipset?

Edit:
At the same time I played with the Conroe board, I intended to pull out all my old AGP cards (GeForce 2/4/6 and R9500/9700/9800/x800) and see what kind of scores these cards would hit, when there was no concern of a CPU bottleneck.