Pentium 4 3.8 VS 3.0 VS Celeron D 2.8 Ghz?

[Vin047]

3 Options:

Pentium 4 3.8 Ghz 2MB cache ~ £80 http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=220318434487
Pentium 4 3.0 Ghz 2MB cache ~ £50 http://www.ebuyer.com/product/134552/show_product_reviews
Celeron D 2.8 Ghz 256KB cache ~ Free Already have it

Mobo:

ASRock 775V88+ http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=775V88%2B

Am not going to upgrade my mobo or other components for a while (just recently built a new system anyway, this is just to squeeze some extra gaming from this PC ) and this mobo only accepts Celeron D or P4 single cores

Which one do you think I should go for? Is it worth £50 just to get a 0.2 Ghz upgrade (even tho its a pentium 4 vs celeron D and is a large cache upgrade!)? Or better to fork an extra £80 instead and get the 3.8Ghz? (Note that the 3.0 will come from a trusty website like eBuyer where as the 3.8 comes from ebay which can cause problems sometimes)

Any thoughts/recommendation? Thanks!

 

[daft]

do you know what core you Celeron D has, and do you know what core the P4 3GHz has?

 

[Guerreiro29]

In my opinion, it is not worth putting any money into upgrading your current setup. You can get an AMD X2, motherboard, and 2GB DDR2 for around $100. The X2 is not the fastest chip for gaming, but it will completely wipe the floor with the CPUs you are looking at. You may also need to get a new graphics card as you're currently using an AGP motherboard, but depending on what card you are currently using the integrated graphics card in the AMD 780G may be better anyway.

 

[megamanx00]

The 3.8GHz P4 would be a noticeable improvement, but it runs very hot and can throttle with the stock cooler if you don't have good case ventilation. Even though it would be considerably faster, it's still slow by today's standards. I guess you could compare it to a single core Athlon 4000. The 3.0 P4 might be a noticeable improvement, but I wouldn't think it would be worth it. It's up to you though. I think you should just overclock your Celeron as that's what I would do.

 

[jitpublisher]

What video card?

The P4 3.0ghz is definetly not worth it.
The 3.8ghz will net you a decent performance boost, if you have a fair video card. If your video card is as old as the P4's are, you would likely do much better with a video card upgrade.

 

[jamesgoddard]

I would let it be - not worth the cash

 

[jitpublisher]

^Yeah, really. It's kind of like you are asking which of these CPU's is the least crappiest. By todays standards, for a gaming rig they are just too far gone to expect much. It's your money, but I have to agree with others here, it just ain't worth it.

 

[Vin047]

Thanks for your replies. Yh the mobo is old as you can tell and uses AGP for graphics, however i do have a very good AGP card, the HD 3850 512MB! hence my graphics are great! but i can tell its a lil jerky since obviously the CPU is a bottleneck. Thats why I figured I could just get a new CPU and i'd be ok for a while longer. (I can play the games I want to play at high graphics, its jus a lil jerky thats all for some of them!)

people seem to agree that 3.0 is just not worth it, but surely the cache size would make a difference?

 

[blackwidow_rsa]

i went from a 2.8 celly to a cedar mill 3ghz. noticable improvement in a few apps especially games. but the jump wnt mean much today

 

[Vin047]

Also, im not much an expert at Overclocking so im not sure if i could venture into that, but i would certainly like to! (i have very good case cooling, my CPU runs on high load at 35 C!) think i should try overclock this baby then??

 

[ainarssems]

Save Your money until you can do full rebuild. Keep Celeron and overclock it if You can. 3.0GHz probably will not give any noticable improvement, 3.8 probably will but not worth the money spent. Also it will draw more power and create more heat than Your Celeron so You might run into power problems if your PSU is not up to the task or heat problems if you have not got good airflow in case. Also 3.8 deal looks a bit dodgy because ppart number says 670/ SL9U2. When You search for SL9U2 on Intel website it comes up as Xeon 3070 @2.66 GHz ( http://processorfinder.intel.com/details.aspx?sSpec=SL9U2 ) and 3.8 Pentium should be SL8PY or SL7Z3.. I would stay away from that deal. You say You want to squeeze some extra gaming but You never mentioned Your video card or RAM maybe it would be better to spend money there. Also it depens what games and what resolution are you playing or looking to play.

 

[ainarssems]

Go for overclock. How much RAM have You got?

 

[Vin047]

yh i forgot to mention most of the details in 1st post (sorry!)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB AGP Graphics Card
3GB 333 DDR RAM

Im assuming thats ok?
I know that most of todays games wont work too well on this system, but the thing is, i dont play cpu intensive games. The latest games i got are Red Alert 3 and Left 4 Dead (both, i assume, arent CPU intense like COD4, COD5 etc) and the thing is, i think mainly cos of my graphics card, these games work almost perfectly on high graphics settings (i say ALMOST perfectly cos of the few hiccups i get, which im sure are due to the CPU)

 

[ainarssems]

Cache size might make little difference depending of game but don't expect much. It would make more diff in photo or video editting if You have the same instructions to apply for a batch of pictures or frames in video and those instructions would not allocate in 256kb and would in 2MB. But in games everything is changing depending from what You Do so I would not expect much difference

 

[ainarssems]

You have enough memory. Try to overclock cpu and memory. This System probably has cost You a lot already and not worth putting any more into it.

 

[ainarssems]

On the other thought how is Your memory configured? is it 2x1GB+ 2x512MB working in dual cannel?

 

[4745454b]

I'm not sure why people say the P4 3GHz won't be much in improvement. It should be quite a bit better. The P4s deep pipeline requires high frequencies (which is mostly a tie between these chips) and a large amount of L2 cache to keep the chip "feed". The Celeries are slow because they've had so much cache disabled. In my opinion, spending 50 to get a normal P4 might not be so bad of an idea. I would not get the 3.8GHz chip, to many heat issues from what I've heard.

A HT P4 at 3GHz with 3GBs of ram and a 3850 should be ok for low/medium gaming. Just keep saving up your money so you can get better stuff. (keep in mind that chip is OEM, and you probably can't re-use your current cooler. You'll need to spend more money and get a cooler as well.)

 

[jamesgoddard]

The P4 631 you listed WILL NOT WORK

The mobo only supports 90nm chips (http://www.asrock.com/mb/cpu.asp?Model=775V88%2b&s=775) and the 631 you linked is a 65nm chip

 

[jamesgoddard]

Also - something fishy with the P4 3.8 on ebay - SL9U2 is not a valid sSpec number for a P4 - check for yourself... http://processorfinder.intel.com/List.aspx?ParentRadio=All&ProcFam=483&SearchKey=

Anyone any ideas about this???

 

[ainarssems]

Yeah, like I said before SL9U2 comes up as Xeon and I believe all starting with SL9 are Core arhitechture based 65nm and would not be compatible with his board

 

[jamesgoddard]

hah didn't see your post... must be fishy if we both think so

 

[ainarssems]

I might be fishy or it might be Intel. For example SL8BA is a Pentium M 1.7 CPU but You can't find it on intel website at all.

 

[Vin047]

woh thanks a lot for the tip! the 3.8Ghz on ebay did look a lil dodgy to me too, definately won't be going for that one now! And thanks for the heads up about the ebuyer one i posted! should have seen that (CPU support list says 630 NOT 631 which is whats on ebuyer)

lol looks like i dont really have a choice then!

well actually... i found this one on ebay
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&item=290281327568

not sure tho, what do you think? Cache is 1MB (still an improvement over what i have) and its 3.4 Ghz. Price isnt too steep either. Also could someone check if this would work on my mobo? (i checked, but dont hurt to hear from the experts!) I assume most would say still stick with 2.8 but that was because before the price for the others was... not worth it, but this?

FYI i probably wont be building a new system for a while so this really is the last upgrade for me anyway (just to get some last moments of glory before this system becomes.. legacy )

 

[4745454b]

I like that one as well. 600MHz faster then your current chip, and 4x the L2 cache. All this for under 40 shipped. Spend a bit more on a nice cooler, and for a bit over 50 you can have a better CPU. You are better off getting something more recent, as even the C2D based 2140-2180 would be a much better gaming CPU. But if your looking for something to keep you entertained while your saving the money, this is a pretty good chip.

 

[psymanproductions]

not much point really, get a new pc man