P4B533V & Prescott

[Kevin Mar]

Currently, I have a Intel P4 Northwood 2.26GHz with 533Mhz bus on an Asus
P4B533-V with the 845G chipset. What are my options for upgrading the CPU?

Would this CPU work? Intel Pentium 4 2.8A GHz Prescott Socket 478 1MB L2
Cache 533MHz FSB

What is the highest I can go?

 

[Paul]

Currently, I have a Intel P4 Northwood 2.26GHz with 533Mhz bus on an Asus
P4B533-V with the 845G chipset. What are my options for upgrading the CPU?

Would this CPU work? Intel Pentium 4 2.8A GHz Prescott Socket 478 1MB L2
Cache 533MHz FSB

What is the highest I can go?

http://support.asus.com.tw/cpusupport/cpusupport.aspx?SLanguage=en-us

The fastest of these are Northwood processors. There are no
Prescott or CeleronD processors in the list (based on cache
size). I would think FSB533 Northwoods would be hard to find
at this point in time. Especially the 3.06/FSB533/512K.
BTW: The notation in the table, about needing revision 2, could
be referring to whether HyperThreading would work on the
3.06GHz or not. I don't think that entry necessarily implies
that the board would not POST if it was rev.1 and you used
a 3.06GHz.

Celeron 1.7 GHz (400 FSB, L2 cache:128KB)  
Celeron 1.8 GHz (400 FSB, L2 cache:128KB)  
Celeron 2.0 GHz (400 FSB, L2 cache:128KB)  
Celeron 2.1 GHz (400 FSB, L2 cache:128KB)  
Celeron 2.2 GHz (400 FSB, L2 cache:128KB)  
Celeron 2.3 GHz (400 FSB, L2 cache:128KB)  
Celeron 2.4 GHz (400 FSB, L2 cache:128KB)  
Celeron 2.5 GHz (400 FSB, L2 cache:128KB)  
Celeron 2.6 GHz (400 FSB, L2 cache:128KB)  
Celeron 2.7 GHz (400 FSB, L2 cache:128KB)  
Celeron 2.8 GHz (400 FSB, L2 cache:128KB)  
P4-1.4 GHz (Socket478, 400 FSB, L2 cache:256KB)  
P4-1.5 GHz (Socket478, 400 FSB, L2 cache:256KB)  
P4-1.6A GHz (Socket478, 400 FSB, L2 cache:512KB)  
P4-1.6 GHz (Socket478, 400 FSB, L2 cache:256KB)  
P4-1.7 GHz (Socket478, 400 FSB, L2 cache:256KB)  
P4-1.8A GHz (Socket478, 400 FSB, L2 cache:512KB)  
P4-1.8 GHz (Socket478, 400 FSB, L2 cache:256KB)  
P4-1.9 GHz (Socket478, 400 FSB, L2 cache:256KB)  
P4-2A GHz (Socket478, 400 FSB, L2 cache:512KB)  
P4-2 GHz (Socket478, 400 FSB, L2 cache:256KB)  
P4-2.20 GHz (400 FSB, L2 cache:512KB)  
P4-2.26 GHz (533 FSB, L2 cache:512KB)  
P4-2.40 GHz (400 FSB, L2 cache:512KB)  
P4-2.40B GHz (533 FSB, L2 cache:512KB)  
P4-2.50 GHz (400 FSB, L2 cache:512KB)  
P4-2.53 GHz (533 FSB, L2 cache:512KB)  
P4-2.60 GHz (400 FSB, L2 cache:512KB)  
P4-2.66 GHz (533 FSB, L2 cache:512KB)  
P4-2.80 GHz (533 FSB, L2 cache:512KB)  
P4-3.06 GHz (533 FSB, L2 cache:512KB, HT, C1/D1)  

I think it may be time for you to move to a new motherboard.
That would give you an opportunity to benefit from
dual channel memory, and perhaps give you more options for
a processor. The real question here is, would you see a lot
of improvement going from 2.26Ghz to say, 3.2Ghz. If this
is an email/web surfing/office applications machine, there
might not be enough sustained computing to make the upgrade
pay off. If the CPU runs at 100% all day long, then an upgrade
would be worth while. There are motherboards available, that
will allow reusing your old components (like P5P800, for
example), if you are not interested in upgrading
everything.

My old rule of thumb, is to wait until a doubling of
CPU speed is possible. Since that is no longer a very
useful rule any more, it begs the question of what new
rule we can use as a metric for upgrading.

Paul

 

[Kevin Mar]

Thanks for your reply.

I am planning on upgrading most of my components later on when the dual
cores come down in price. So I am looking for a cheap way to upgrade my
system in the time being. The thing that is holding me back is my video
card. Its a 6600GT AGP, and I feel it still has some potential for gaming.
I am trying to get better gameplay in counterstrike: source.

What do you think?

Thanks,
Kevin

 

[Paul]

Thanks for your reply.

I am planning on upgrading most of my components later on when the dual
cores come down in price. So I am looking for a cheap way to upgrade my
system in the time being. The thing that is holding me back is my video
card. Its a 6600GT AGP, and I feel it still has some potential for gaming.
I am trying to get better gameplay in counterstrike: source.

What do you think?

Thanks,
Kevin

You can see in this chart, what difference a twice-as-fast
processor makes to video card performance. For the video cards
that aren't challenged by 1024x768 (the ones on the top of
the chart), the use of a faster processor seems to be helping.
For the more gutless video cards, the twice as fast processor
is not helping frame rate.

http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030120/vgacharts-04.html

Going from 2.26/FSB533 to 3.06/FSB533, is going to increase
frame rate by 1.35x (35%), assuming the video card is infinitely
powerful. If that causes your worst frame rate to advance
above 30 frames per second, then you should perceive the
upgrade as worthwhile (at least as I understand it - I don't
know if CS:source is frame locked at 60Hz, like some new games
are, or the frame rate floats).

Is this machine used mainly for gaming or is this a "balanced
use" machine ? If you are doing nothing but gaming on the
machine, Athlon64 is the right answer right now. Finding
an overclockable processor and an A8V Deluxe revision 2, might
make a good platform to reuse your RAM and AGP video card.
If you also do stuff like video rendering or other things
that the P4 is better at, then continue with your Intel
plans.

I guess personally I'm not that excited about dual core.
One reason for that, is I do more hardware upgrading than
software upgrading, and all my current software really can
only take advantage of a single processor. While dual core
might lead to a smoother desktop experience, I would not
count on a dual core making games twice as fast. It will
take some time before the gaming industry figures out how
to get the best from two or more processors.

HTH,
Paul

 

[Paul]

Thanks for your reply.

I am planning on upgrading most of my components later on when the dual
cores come down in price. So I am looking for a cheap way to upgrade my
system in the time being. The thing that is holding me back is my video
card. Its a 6600GT AGP, and I feel it still has some potential for gaming.
I am trying to get better gameplay in counterstrike: source.

What do you think?

Thanks,
Kevin

Here is another benchmark. In this test, it doesn't seem to take
much processing power to saturate the video card. So, it is all
a question of whether the video card has anything in reserve, as
to how much your upgrade will be buying you.

"CS:Source 6800 versus speed of athlon64 used"
http://www.hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1027173177&postcount=1

Paul