Just to start off--I'm not too familiar with CPU upgrading and was hoping for some expert advice. I have a Dell Dimension 4600 P4 2.8 Ghz, socket 478, and I was interested in upgrading to a 3.4 Ghz, which I think is as high as the 478 got in terms of clock speed. First off, how can I tell if a P4 3.4 Ghz CPU I see for sale will be compatible with my board/system; and, second, will I notice a good boost from adding the 3.4 Ghz to my system ( I'm just hoping to squeeze a couple more years of gaming out of the system and was wondering if the 3.4 Ghz would help me do that or if the new games that will be coming out will be too much for even the 3.4 Ghz). Thanks very much for any insights.
Pentium 4 Upgrade--Will it be worth it?
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CaptRobertApril
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IMHO, best possible advice:
Toss the system, salvage what bits you can and get a new cheap motherboard and one of the newly price-slashed dualcores. (not the Pentium ones, Gawd forbid) If you play your cards right, you'll spend about $150 total and your rig will eat up 3.4GHz 478s for breakfast.
CompTIA_Rep
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IMHO, best possible advice:
Toss the system, salvage what bits you can and get a new cheap motherboard and one of the newly price-slashed dualcores. (not the Pentium ones, Gawd forbid) If you play your cards right, you'll spend about $150 total and your rig will eat up 3.4GHz 478s for breakfast.
I second that, though it was not what you want to do.
I dont believe there will be enough benefit from doing that upgrade, and P4's are now obsolete by a large margin.
As its been already said, you won't notice a huge boost. Only apps that will be affected would be multimedia encoding/decoding, etc. Games would be affected if you play around 800x600 resolutions, but I'm betting you don't.
if you want to be gaming future proof - save the $ for a video card.
if you want to be gaming future proof - save the $ for a video card.
bennie101
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I would salvage everything you could from your old dell sale you p4 on ebay and go out and get a new core duo
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819115013
And a cheap motherboard the P-4 is end of life in all means.
Thats what I did.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819115013
And a cheap motherboard the P-4 is end of life in all means.
Thats what I did.
Sorry for the delay...I was off-line for a while.
First, thanks to all for the advice. To answer Psychomunkey--may I call you Psychomunkey?
I've got 1 Gig of RAM and I recently upgraded my video card to a Radeon X1650 XT 256 MB AGP (yes, I'm a double threat guy--p4 and AGP!) so my thought was to just ride this system (only three years old) for as long as I could with the new video card before upgrading the whole thing. Just to give you the whole picture of where I'm coming from, there are some household politics involved too, since it's our home computer and wifey wouldn't be too jazzed about buying a new box after only three years...and I kind of agree. Anyway, I was just testing the waters to see if, as long as I was getting the new video card, a new processor would help even more, but it sounds like it wouldn't. I guess I'll enjoy the new x1650 for a while.
Thanks for the suggestion, but I'm on the East Coast 
You definitely got the spirit of what I was after: Our computer runs great and is solid, but I was just wondering about updating it a little so the processor was more up to date as future games will start to call for faster processors, though I'm OK for now. My new video card should help in the gaming area, and I'll look into those products you mentioned. You mentioned the motherboard at Fry's was a POS, do you think it would support a system well or would it be unstable?
You definitely got the spirit of what I was after: Our computer runs great and is solid, but I was just wondering about updating it a little so the processor was more up to date as future games will start to call for faster processors, though I'm OK for now. My new video card should help in the gaming area, and I'll look into those products you mentioned. You mentioned the motherboard at Fry's was a POS, do you think it would support a system well or would it be unstable?
rabidbunny
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yeah. don't worry too much about upgrading that system any more.. I ahve a modified dell 4550 that I would honestly not really have any performance increase.. the cpu in it is a northwood and is an overclocker, however, dell does not let you overclock on their systems. Otherwise, i would be in speed heaven..Until i got my c2duo system.
So, save your $$ for a new comptuer. You just may be able to use some of the parts from your dell, however, don't get your hopes up. If you don't want it, you can give it to me for my parents!
No, seriously!
good luck with your decision....
T.
So, save your $$ for a new comptuer. You just may be able to use some of the parts from your dell, however, don't get your hopes up. If you don't want it, you can give it to me for my parents!
No, seriously!
good luck with your decision....
T.
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