upgrading a intel 478 2.4ghz?

I think you mean fsb (front side bus).
Two components affect the fsb. The motherboard's chipset and the CPU itself.
To use a given fsb speed, both have to support that speed. If the chipset only supports lower speeds, a CPU with a faster fsb will usually work, but will just run at a slower speed.

Here is a possibility. You won't have a huge performance improvement though with only a 400MHz CPU increase. Your chipset is pretty old and is limiting your system. In addition to the fsb limitation, I believe it only supports single channel memory, which will also limit your performance.

It's the motherboard and its chipset that determines the memory type and fsb. Don't waste your money trying to upgrade a socket 478 system at this point, you are better off saving the money for a new system.

Generally, I'd not advice a Socket 478 upgrade, however. there's plenty of 2.8GHz northwoods around for a 400MHz jump but you won't get any substantial boost, so you'd better save the money for a future build.

My suggestion is to get a better mobo and overclock that 2.4. I have my 2.4c overclocked to 3.2 and it is rock solid stable. The 2.4 Northwood was the best overclocking P4.

Here's what I found for you. link

I just scored myself a 2.6 Northwood for an Gateway system that I have that's processor-less. $35,  

You can still find these things cheap.

I agree with that if we're talking about a P4 2.4. However, if the 2.4 chip is actually a Celeron (the poster doesn't actually say which he has and the 533Mhz might just be what that specific 845 chipset is capable of), the performance boost would be more substantial than just the 400Mhz bump. Maybe worth $70 if he wants to keep the computer for another year or two.

If the FSB is 533MHz, than it can only be a P4, because older P4 Celerons before the CeleronDs, all had a 400MHz FSB.

It could be a Celeron D...but it's more likely that it's a P4.

Very, very few i845 boards have a bios update for using celeronDs, and even if he had one of those boards, I doubt he's recently updated the bios.

This is a good point. Most were 865-based, as were all the best 478 boards.

I am not sure if the Northwood Bs were as good at overclocking as the Northwood Cs. Also, I think the 2.8C was a rival to the 2.4C in overclocking abililty. I have a 2.8C that runs 3.5GHz without any voltage increase. With voltage it will do at least 3.7GHz.

I also agree that upgrading the CPU on a socket 478 system isn't usually worth it. Especially if you are running an old board like the 845 that he has.

most likly its not worth it - when u upgrade the moboand cpu then you do the gpu then u need a new psu - what you save $50 for the case? and a old hdd.


FYI i have upgraded both socket 478 and 775 machines if they had intel mobos to c2d they easy way - with out installing new os - it works!

uninstall the drivers replace the mobo and chip with same brand chipship and fire it up - load your new drivers for pros only who do not care if the system crashes in 2 weeks or 2 months!

this is not recommended for stablity or sensitive data - before you slam me.

my own system is a dual raid, it orginaly was running a 560j with asus p5wd2-e premium. Last sept i swapped out mobo to p52-dh and an e6300 same raid

runs xp from the orginal system - raid 10 - the raid still works 6 months later

vista was install on reformatted on to a 2nd volume raid 0