Question Pentium 4 Overclock

[kerangovender]

I have a Pentium 4 and I'm looking to overclock it to squeeze Al the performance I can get out of the pc I use for
I can't find which p4 it is but it goes up to 2.40ghz any ideas? It is an old pc

 

[RememberThe5th]

It really depends how old is it...
Could you download CPUZ and post screenshot of the CPU tab and motherboard tab? (Alt+ prnt screen is to capture the specific window)

 

[NightHawkRMX]

You would also need to know what cooler and what motherboard you have, to see if they allow for overclocking.

 

[kerangovender]

Here is the screenshot of the 2 tabs
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tsvRSGIb-bSYcjRtQi5ha-ZmTy2FIGIN/view?usp=drivesdk

 

[punkncat]

On a proc that old, with what is likely a PSU that old, etc. I am not really sure I would chance trying to OC that. Aside from the fact that you probably won't notice a discernable difference you are likely to damage or make something quit working.
You could purchase a VERY modest refurbished office machine for little money that would run laps around that box. Unless you have some very specific usage case for it or more specifically the headers it's probably time to retire that thing.

 

[kerangovender]

Here is the picture for all the tabs I could possibly get
https://drive.google.com/file/d/11PFJg5Qjdp4j7usHgkNQ6mhhThkH0faV/view?usp=drivesdk

 

[jeremyj_83]

On a proc that old, with what is likely a PSU that old, etc. I am not really sure I would chance trying to OC that. Aside from the fact that you probably won't notice a discernable difference you are likely to damage or make something quit working.
You could purchase a VERY modest refurbished office machine for little money that would run laps around that box. Unless you have some very specific usage case for it or more specifically the headers it's probably time to retire that thing.

That version of the P4 is 17 years old. Unless you are running something on Windows 98/2000/XP there is nothing that will run faster than even an Atom based Celeron.

 

[RodneyDawn]

Assuming that's the 512k northwood core, you MAY be able to pinmod for 533 FSB. your bios probably doesnt let you adjust FSB so a pinmod is your only option.

Even if it works however you wont see a huge improvement.
If you need legacy support but more speed I'd go for a Barton Core Athlon XP and socket A motherboard. get a 3200+ it will be a HUGE improvement over anything you could overclock that p4 to, and you could still run win9x 2k or XP.

 

[Azzyasi]

Unfortunatley the northwood 2.4 was a mediocre in it's times.
I remember fiddling with p4's prescott with oc near 4.5 or somenthing GHz.. that was insane, but my Barton 3200+ OC-ed was a clear winner even against many if not all p4 EE's and HT's.

If you want a retro-gaming for win 9x/XP you can get better hardware from that era.

If you just want to make it work a little faster for modern tasks, get any newer hardware and it will be orders of magnitude faster.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

This is excelent evidence why clocks arent everything.
If they were, we all used overclocked pentiums 4s, fx9590, or overclocked i3 9350k.

 

[mdd1963]

The P4's with 800 MHz FSB were much faster than the 4000/533 MHz FSB models...; I recall the P4/2400C (800 MHz FSB) trouncing the 3.0 GHz models in many benchmarks, including games...

Any tinkering with systems this old would now be relegated to simply a fondness for the old days...; any modern dual core running half the speed would decimate the P4, which likely can't even boot WIn10, much less run it nicely.

 

[sizzling]

Overclocking usually doesn’t help when you have terrible performance to start with. I know you didn’t say gaming but let’s use it as an example of what I mean. Let’s say you get 10fps average due to cpu limitations, then overclock your cpu by 10%, your at best now going to average 11fps.

 

[RodneyDawn]

The P4's with 800 MHz FSB were much faster than the 4000/533 MHz FSB models...; I recall the P4/2400C (800 MHz FSB) trouncing the 3.0 GHz models in many benchmarks, including games...

Any tinkering with systems this old would now be relegated to simply a fondness for the old days...; any modern dual core running half the speed would decimate the P4, which likely can't even boot WIn10, much less run it nicely.

you MIGHT be able to run windows 7 if you have enough ram and a decent graphics card, (I've done it on an Athlon XP 2800+) but that would be pushing it

Now for a retro system, I'd put a radeon x800 series (X850 if it has AGP) in it, 384mb of ram, and throw windows ME on it for a decent 9x gaming rig.

yeah prescott scaled much better than northwood but northwood was a considerable improvement over willamette

 

[NightHawkRMX]

Windows 7 will run fine, but i'd still grab a gpu for the aero effects.
If you dont want to buy a gpu, you actually could use windows xp or lubuntu linux.
The latest version of firefox for xp runs mostly all websites. You can run the latest version of apache open office on windows xp and type documents fine. Sure, you wont be secure, but if you stay away from shady sights, you will be fine.

I actually love windows xp and most of its flaws are caused by older hardware or slowly declininv software support. Used xp 32 bit on an older laptop with an I5, 12gb ram, intel hd, and a 240gb ssd. Latest version of chrome can run toms hardware and youtube at 1080p. and there are plenty of fun xp programs. Heck NFS se2 runs amazing with nglide.

 

[RodneyDawn]

Exactly. I always liked XP as well. Never had any trouble with it.
I prefer windows 7 but if I couln't run 7 I'd go back to XP in a heartbeat.

 

[Karadjgne]

I still have XP Pro on a P4 800MHz FSB @ 3.2GHz. Gotta say, the only thing outstanding in its performance is the heat levels that'll literally change the temps in my room 10°C after an hour of gaming. Need a toe warmer? Get a P4.

Seriously don't miss using it, 2Gb of ram that cost a small fortune, hours trying to get everything straight, Airconditioner that hated me...