Vintage buld; which CPU?!

[m25]

At the moment, I have, these more or less old CPUs, some SDRAM and DDR sticks, old CD-RW drive and HDD. I am pretty annoyed of seeing this useless stuff around and was thinking about building a PC for fun as a second PC, so which one do you guys think is the most convenient (cheaper and better board to find)?! I don't want it to have a maxed out setup but also want it to perform tasks like word processing or web surfing pretty well while the graphics can be onboard.
By the first reasoning, the DX2 is more or less out of question while the rest of the CPUs have all their strong and weak points points like;
-The P3 runs cool and performs decently but boards are limited in options and onboard video of the time is prohibitive.
-The Celeron 633 will probably OC to 950MHz but has the same board problems as the P3
-The PentiumM could easily OC to 1.5G, run passively cooled and easily outperform the others but those ~$100 S479 desktop boards are a bit too much for the purpose.
-The 1.8Ghz Celeron lags compared to the PentiumM and it won't OC since it's a 180nm Willamette, but there are a lot of brand new, cheap S478 mobos, complete with decent onboard graphics, SATA2 and PCI-e.

 

[yourmothersanastronaut]

I suggest the PIII. You said you wanted a vintage build, the PIII looks like the most vintage while still having decent performance. Put Linux on this machine and it almost won't matter what CPU you're using :lol:

 

[TechnologyCoordinator]

I suggest the PIII. You said you wanted a vintage build, the PIII looks like the most vintage while still having decent performance. Put Linux on this machine and it almost won't matter what CPU you're using :lol:

I'm with YMAA on this one. Pentium III is ventige with decent performance. 486 would just be suicide. While the 1.8 gigashizzle is just too fast.

 

[SEALBoy]

Completely off-topic, but did Jack leave the forumz?

 

[m25]

Yes, actually the 1.8G Celeron looks pretty fast, but it's much more than 1 year younger than the P3 :roll:

 

[TechnologyCoordinator]

Completely off-topic, but did Jack leave the forumz?

Yes, blame the Master of Misinformation, BaronBS.


Jack's Thread: http://forumz.tomshardware.com/hardware/Adios-Amigos-ftopict239476.html

Major_Spittle's Thread: http://forumz.tomshardware.com/hardware/Jack-ftopict239488.html

 

[TechnologyCoordinator]

Yes, actually the 1.8G Celeron looks pretty fast, but it's much more than 1 year younger than the P3 :roll:

I could swear it was the Pentium III that was the first to 1 gigashizzle?

 

[elpresidente2075]

Yes, actually the 1.8G Celeron looks pretty fast, but it's much more than 1 year younger than the P3 :roll:

I could swear it was the Pentium III that was the first to 1 gigashizzle?

Yeah it was, I remember reading it in Popular Science way back then. They were talking about some STATE OF THE ART 1Ghz systems that could do all this stuff.

On m25's question, I think that the one that would cost the least to make a passable system would be the best choice. I was in a similar situation recently, and decided to make a headless Debian file/http/samba server. Just dropped a (admittedly newer) 3200 I had laying around into a new mobo and put in 256 megs of old DDR I had laying around, and voila! headless server. Has yet to crash due to anything besides power failure in the month or two I've had it running.

But that's just a thought. If you want a second pc, make sure you're not going to be so frustrated with it that you're going to put more money into it to make it acceptable than you have to.

Have fun

 

[joefriday]

Actually I thought AMD's Tbird took the one "gigahizzle" crown.

One the topic at hand, I'd say go with the Celeron 1.8GHz. As you mentioned, it will give you the most modern board for a decently cheap price, and still offers performance besting that of the 733MHz PIII and the oced 950MHz Celeron. The 1.3 P-M, while obviously the strongest of the bunch, suffers from the high cost of desktop motherboards. At least the Celron should have enough power to perform the tasks that you desire from it.

 

[SEALBoy]

Actually, you're both wrong. The Pentium III was NOT first to 1GHz, that honor goes to the ORIGINAL, Slot A, K7, Athlon. The Thunderbird came soon after that, for Socket A.

And I'm not counting obscure chips that may have been the first to technically cross the 1GHz barrier (I don't know).

 

[rabidbunny]

I would go with the faster celeron since I think it is the newest cpu and may be the easiest to find parts for.

Otherwise, maybe you can find some cheap combo or system on ebay that may be a bit more powerful and have some newer stuff?

Good luck with whatever cpu you decide on! wish i had some $$ to play around with and build another computer, old or new.
I just love putting computers together!

 

[I800C0LLECT]

Isn't the Celeron 633 one of those great and wonderful overclocking celly's?

I'm probably wrong, but that seems to carry a lot of bragging rights in it's own if it was. Otherwise, PIII.

 

[m25]

Actually, you're both wrong. The Pentium III was NOT first to 1GHz, that honor goes to the ORIGINAL, Slot A, K7, Athlon. The Thunderbird came soon after that, for Socket A.

And I'm not counting obscure chips that may have been the first to technically cross the 1GHz barrier (I don't know).

Right; It was the last SlotA chip, and I even remember it was the Orion core with a 128K L2 and 512K, off-die, 1/3 core speed L2. That thing was announced just a couple of days before intel announced their 1GHz P3

 

[m25]

Isn't the Celeron 633 one of those great and wonderful overclocking celly's?

I'm probably wrong, but that seems to carry a lot of bragging rights in it's own if it was. Otherwise, PIII.

It will probably be able to run 950MHz (FSB100) and stock volts with a good coler, but I have seen a couple of reviews and after them, a 1.0Ghz (Coppermine) celeron, is still clearly beaten by a 750MHz P3....I have made quite a handful of experiments with the P3 (including breaking a 'superfluous' pin) ;have to see if it has survived :mrgreen:

 

[I800C0LLECT]

eff it. Start a museum for enthusiast hardware...

I remember the PIII's taking out those overclocked celly's as well. But I also remember they carried a heavy price tag.

That'd be sweet to see that PIII come back from the dead.

 

[1Tanker]

Isn't the Celeron 633 one of those great and wonderful overclocking celly's?

I'm probably wrong, but that seems to carry a lot of bragging rights in it's own if it was. Otherwise, PIII.

Yeah, the Coppermine Celly's were great. The 566 gave the best bang/$(and had the best multi for Celly overclocking)... i have one that is stable @952MHz. With a nice BX440 board, your chances of hitting 950MHz(100x9.5)should be pretty good. The PIII 733 should still compete with the overclocked Celly(but will require PC133 SDRAM). The PIII won't likely O/C much, due to the AGP/PCI buses quickly getting out of spec. So, i would pick the 733 if i was content with a not-so great O/C, or the 633 if you want to have some fun, and a great O/C. GL

Edit: Sorry, i started my post before yours was posted... same thoughts as me.

 

[carver_g]

Actually, you're both wrong. The Pentium III was NOT first to 1GHz, that honor goes to the ORIGINAL, Slot A, K7, Athlon. The Thunderbird came soon after that, for Socket A.

And I'm not counting obscure chips that may have been the first to technically cross the 1GHz barrier (I don't know).

Right; It was the last SlotA chip, and I even remember it was the Orion core with a 128K L2 and 512K, off-die, 1/3 core speed L2. That thing was announced just a couple of days before intel announced their 1GHz P3

One day!

 

[SEALBoy]

Intel had to really jump the gun to get their 1GHz PIII out. It was released much earlier than they had originally planned.

 

[Wisecracker]

Put me down for the DX2

I will contribute to your cause:

(1) MS4125 mobo Intel Overdrive Socket2 (no cpu)
- - 8 30-pin simm slots (no memory)
- - 9 cache slots - 6 populated!
- - 7 AT slots (2- VLB)
- - 1 XT slot

(1) sig EIDE controller card
(1) Diamond Stealth 64 video card
(1) 230-watt power supply
- and various cables and brackets with serial and parallel ports

There is a Seagate ST3243A hard drive (213 mb !) that you can't have but I will attempt to spin it up and copy the contents for you.

I'm thinkin' DOS 3.2 , maybe Win 3.1, early mosaic (maybe even the original Netscape with mail client), early DOS versions of DesignCAD 2d & 3d, the PFS prof series (Write, Plan & File) which was an early (but great!) word processing, spreadsheet and data base program - probably circa 1985 (ouch!)

If I keep digging I could probably find an ISA SCSI controller and scsi cd-roms from 4x to 30x (and maybe even an early cd burner - smart & friendly??
- but I doubt you could ever get the burner to work
(and I'm certain the EIDE controller would not recognize cd roms!)

Do yah remember how to set those interupts ???

:lol: [/list][/list]

 

[joefriday]

Actually, you're both wrong. The Pentium III was NOT first to 1GHz, that honor goes to the ORIGINAL, Slot A, K7, Athlon. The Thunderbird came soon after that, for Socket A.

Ah, yes, thank you for that. I seem to have forgotten about the Orion core that reached 1000MHz. AMD did make slot A Tbirds too. I have a 900 MHz slot A Tbird in the closet.

 

[djplanet]

In response to the OP, I would go for the Pentium M. IMO, it pays homage to Conroe. It is the first chip developed by the little Israel Intel team that could, the sole team whose philosophy rejected Netburst and its ensuing heat. The Pentium M was the best processor Intel offered until July '06 (heat/performance wise).

 

[m25]

Holy crap! I'm just amazed about how many people love the DX2

 

[apt403]

Super Socket 7 FTW! F*ck that K6 up!

The Coppermine got my vote.

 

[m25]

Super Socket 7 FTW! F*ck that K6 up!

The Coppermine got my vote.

8O Who ever mentioned the Super Socket 7?! There isn't even a Socket7 CPU in my lineup!

 

[apt403]

Just throwing it out there.

Plus, "Super Socket 7" were the first words I thought of after I hit the reply button.