Re: CPU upgrade for P4C800-ED

You don't say if you have your current setup overclocked. However, as you
don't say that you have, I'll assume that you haven't - so my question to
you is - why bother with the 3.4 Prescott???

I have almost the same rig as you - P4C800-E Deluxe, 3.06GHz Northwood, 1GB
Corsair (XMS 4 x 256MB) - but I've got it overclocked to a FSB of 160MHz so
the processor is running at 3.7GHz (almost 10% faster than a 3.4 processor).
The RAM is running synchronously at 2-2-2-5.

I didn't really pay too much attention to when Prescott's came out but as I
recall - compared to Northwood's they ran a lot hotter and were rather
slower (MIPS/GHz) thus really needed the larger cache to make up the
difference - (I'd be willing to concede that my memory fails on this point
thought).

When I was looking for an easy and cheap upgrade recently I decided to go
the Pentium 805 and Asus P5P800-SE route. I've got a Vapochill Micro cooler
on the processor and got it overclocked to 3.6 GHz - an its a lot quicker
than the old machine! The bonus is that in addition to keeping my existing
RAM and graphics card, as it has a 865 chipset - so I was able to do a
straight harddrive swap without having to reinstall XP.

My P4C800 rig has been relegated to #2 spot. As for you, the processor and
board I'm suggesting are probably cheaper than the 3.4GHz Prescott you were
thinking of. Get your current motherboard and processor onto Ebay while
they've still got their looks - and the whole deal will (almost) pay for
itself :o))

I've not done a head-to-head comparison of encoding speeds (although I've
got the two machines next to each other so I could give it a go) but two
processor cores are way way better than Hyper-Threading!!

HTH

Pete




"Bazza" <Bazza@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:44b1dc40$0$21746$afc38c87@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I currently have a P4 3.0ghz Northwood CPU & I'm thinking of upgrading
to a Prescott 3.4ghz CPU ... assuming I can buy one somewhere.

From what I can tell thats the fastest socket478 CPU the P4C800-ED
supports using BIOS 1017+.

I have 1gb (2x512) of Corsair memory ... not sure exactly which but
they are fast'ish sticks (cost me a lot of $ when I brought them 2
years or so ago).

Encoding video is probably the most CPU entensive stuff I do ... which
is what I want to improve.

My Q ... is it worth the upgrade? And is the stock cooler OK?

TIA
Bazza...


.

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