Upgrade advice needed

[Morkeleb]

Hi.

I currently have a Pentium 4 2,4 Ghz on a socket 478.
My motherboard is limited to 533 fsb.

I am thinking about upgrading, and cpu intensive tasks are mainly video encoding. I know pentium 4 is recommended for that.

But the fastest cpu for the motherboard is a 3,06 P4, and those are hard to get. I did not succeed in finding a shop which still sells it up till now. I concidered buying it privately on ebay, though.

As far as I have seen, if I want to to faster then 3 Ghz its best to upgrade to a MB with a Socket 775.

Do you agree with that?

Trouble is:
I would not only have to get a new CPU and motherboard, but also a new VGA card and probably also a new Ram as one of the two currently is only DDR 2700. And because I want a silent system I'd have to get a new CPU-cooler.

DO you think at least triple the money (whats what I calculated it would at least cost instead of just finding a 3,06 GHz P4) is worth the gained speed that i'd have with a P4 with 3,4 GHz? And I'm talking about reduced encoding time for videos here.

thanx in advance!

 

[o1die]

I would not get the 3.06, unless you can find one for less than $200. Your best bet would be a pricewatch combo special for the 3.0 (about $208). Those boards come with built in video, and use a single channel memory chipset, so you can use one or two sticks of 512 meg pc3200. To reduce fan noise on your heatsink, I would use the zalman "fan mate 1" rpm adjuster, about $5. Set it at 2500 idle, and it should still provide adequate cooling. There's not much difference in performance between socket 775 and 478, so the choice is yours.

 

[endyen]

If you want a quiet system for s775, you better factor in the cost of water cooling. No, for the imrovement you would see in encoding times, it would not be worth it, unless you do that for a living.

 

[whorush]

as far as video editing, check out these benches
http://www.aceshardware.com/read.jsp?id=65000331

the A64 does quite well. its a better all around processor, meaning that it does most other things better. it runs cooler, is 64bit, blocks some viruses, etc.

you can get a A64 2800 and an NF3 250 gb mobo for around 190 dollars. if you want to overclock, the s939 3000 can hit 2.65 ghz, fast enough to blow any intel chip away and it costs < $150

 

[pat]

These benches .. this is not video editing..it is 3D rendering..


-Always put the blame on you first, then on the hardware !!!

 

[Morkeleb]

I just noticed that the socket 478 P4's give a bit better performance for what I need, and less power consumption, and it would spare me the need to upgrade a vga card.
The only reason I did not concider that first is because then i'd be stuck on 3,4 Ghz with that board.

But i figured that that would not be as bad, as going 3,8 Ghz is not really an option, concidering it has horrible power usage.
Do you think the cpu's coming after the P4 3,8 GHz (which will work quite differently i presume as they have to rework them totally due to the head problem) will fit on s775 or even 478?

I think if I can get a 3,06 Ghz it will be around $160 or less, with a bit of luck.