Finally a P4 worth something...

I\'ve always been a fan of the AMD Athlon XP, and as such never been too fond of the Intel Pentium 4. But now they\'ve made a P4 that\'s actually worth my time.

The Intel Pentium 4 \'Northwood\'. At 2.2 GHz it\'s pretty fast at everything. Another pro is the fact that it uses a less power than an Athlon XP, which generates a lot of heat... Forgive me God, but I\'m seriously considering upgrading to a P4 1.6 GHz Northwood as it can be OC\'d to 2.2 GHz and beyond... and that\'s with the included in-a-box fan. I\'d could live with that.

Besides the CPU/mainboard upgrade I think I\'ll get myself one of those cute little GeForce 4 cards. Mmmm, can\'t wait... but I\'m still a bit torn between a Northwood and an Athlon XP. My only gripe with the XP is the heat it generates... I don\'t want to waste my hard earned money in a meltdown.

P4 = very expensive
AMD athlon = cheap

nuff said

and there is NO need for gf4 since nearly no game stake advantage of gf3

I\'d better wait if I were you

Nah, the 1.6 GHz costs the same as the Athlon XP\'s. Besides, it\'s when it\'s overclocked the fun begins. At 2.2+ GHz it\'s amazing.

And the Geforce 4 Ti 4200 isn\'t going to be that expensive + it\'s faster than any Geforce 3 card out there. For more power and performance you can\'t go wrong.

[videoholic]

I know if I could look back to this day in the near future I will probably wish I never asked this, but what is entailed with overclocking your computer.  Are their any good sites that tell the procedures to tweak it, etc...

p4 1.6a northwood is the way to go

its beats the athlon in price, overclockability, and speed

[nO-One]

Well people are saying the Northwood is the new Celeron 300A, if so that\'s cool.

Originally posted by Videoholic
I know if I could look back to this day in the near future I will probably wish I never asked this, but what is entailed with overclocking your computer.  Are their any good sites that tell the procedures to tweak it, etc...

http://www.overclockers.com/
http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/index.html
http://www.pcnut.com/cool/index.html

Well, last night I was playing Civilization III on my sorry old Pentium 3 - 500, and the PC really bogged down later in the game when there were lots of units on the map.  It made me wish I had one of these newer PCs...  just for a few moments.  Then I remembered I\'m saving for a car, and forgot about it.  

BTW, in the article on Tom\'s Hardware, they they say:

The more reasonable of us might claim that the performance potential of the top processors from the AMD Athlon and Intel Pentium 4 series is completely sufficient. However, the urge to reach greater heights lies within all ambitious users who do not regard the PC as merely a simple tool. And lucky for us, for even the strongest and most expensive CPUs, there are methods of enhancing performance. (One can never get enough!)

Does this remind you of anything?  Heh heh, this sounds just like one of those import car magazines, and the picture looks alot like a turbo kit on a Civic or something.  I know I\'m not the first to make the comparison, but man I just thought it was so funny.

Cored- Unfortunately Tom\'s HW won\'t let you directly link to pics.  He\'s gotten cheap.

Video it can be as simple as going into your BIOS and selecting which speed you want.  I have an Asus CUSL2 mobo coupled with a p3 800eb.  If I want to oc all I have to do is hit Delete during startup, navigate to the CPU menu and choose 800 - 1300.

I\'ve only gotten it to be stable at 933, but since I am into DV editing I keep it at 800.  It\'s not recommended you OC since it can mess with sync & timings while exporting a movie.

I did notice a good improvement in UT and other games.  I would have gone for more than 933 but then I would have had to tweak other things, and then buy more expensive & loud cooling fans.  Just not worth it for me, but for others I can see the benefits.

As for the Northwood CPU, it\'s nice to see Intel price matching the Athlons.  When I upgrade next time, price/performance will be a huge factor and not just name brand.  Glad I got to hear all the Athlon testimonials on th enet.

[videoholic]

Bah, way over my head.  I\'ll stick with my 1.4 for a few more years.

Originally posted by THX
Cored- Unfortunately Tom\'s HW won\'t let you directly link to pics.  He\'s gotten cheap.

Ah yes, I see what you mean.  I dumped my cache, and reloaded this page, and now I can\'t see it anymore.  Too bad, it was pretty cool.  

[nO-One]

As you can see, they are pushing the Northwood to some extreme\'s, and some people are apparently getting pretty high using only air cooling.





kinda cool, and here I am dreaming about watercooling my Tbird

now thats extreme!

for us regular users, a P4 1.6a northwood will overclock to 2.2 G with a mere front side bus change

and thats with the stock cooler alone

a simple menu change in yer BIOS nets you 600 mhz increase

wow

i almost wish i didn\'t have a laptop, damn things suck for upgrading.

Originally posted by Samwise
Nah, the 1.6 GHz costs the same as the Athlon XP\'s.

Do you mean the 1.6 P4 costs the same as the Athlon 1.6ghz?  If so then you are betting you\'ll make up that performance in overclocking.  B/c stock for stock Athlons beat P4s in most benchmarking.

If you can make it work go for it.  Personally I don\'t go in for the overclocking.  I have enough software probs w/out having to worry about hardware problems.  I tried overclocking my Radeon LE but burned some damage on.  So no more overclocking for me.

But if you decide to do it, wait for the price on RDRAM to hit a good price.  Or are you thinking on DDR?

[nO-One]

Mr. Rob\'s got a point, the main problem with the P4 isn\'t it\'s performance it\'s a very good performer the thing is in order for it to perform the way it was designed to do you\'ll need rdram and it\'s expensive, it\'s horrible with normal sdram and it didn\'t do that well with ddr. On the other hand if one can afford some rdram the P4 is great.