Need Advice On Used CPUs

[Rayvyn]

Here's the situation. I have an old motherboard that takes Intel Socket 478 P4s that are non-Presscott. I want to get a CPU possibly used or pulled and don't want to get ripped off. Does anyone know of an online vendor that has a good reputation?

Thanks,

Rayvyn

 

[The_Blood_Raven]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116215

http://directron.com/socket478cpu.html

All I can find.

 

[Rayvyn]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116215

http://directron.com/socket478cpu.html

All I can find.

Thanks. I've seen some on Pricewatch.com but don't know how reputable those companies are. They have really low prices so I'm wondering if they sell junk.

Rayvyn

 

[bobwya]

Thanks. I've seen some on Pricewatch.com but don't know how reputable those companies are. They have really low prices so I'm wondering if they sell junk.

Rayvyn

Don't forget the Northwood is 3+ CPU generations back. Most people have moved onto Athlon-64 or C2D/Q. They don't have much going for them: single-core, small cache and run quite hot (but not as bad as a Prescott). Also most MB for the P4 have only PCI slots which is a back-end bottleneck (since it is arbitrated for use by a single device at a time and has a ceiling of 133Mbytes transfer bandwidth) and use less resilient non-solid capacitors. Also AGP graphics is a pain in the butt - since you get overcharged for newer cards and then you have the driver issues for these, etc.!!

You can't really charge that much for these CPUs these days!! They were only around the 200.00 USD mark (tops) when they were originally sold.

I am building up a machine around a Prescott for my sis's wedding (but that's another storey) - my 4Ghz project !! Mind you I am using a hybrid server board with PCI-X slots... I wouldn't go back to PCI now that PCIe is well established!!

Lots of people use NewEgg (can't comment since I am stuck in the UK - with our high prices). I might even pull one off Ebay perhaps (lots for sale there)... But that would be a risk if someone has hard overclocked the CPU of course...

Bob

 

[The_Blood_Raven]

Both Newegg and Directron are great companies. I have purchased tons of things from Newegg and a few from Directron. I'm not so sure about pricewatch though, I have never dealt with them.

 

[bobwya]

... I'm not so sure about pricewatch though, I have never dealt with them.

Isn't pricewatch one of those dumb websites that finds the most expensive prices for products for you (depending how much cash the sellers send them) and also tells you how rubbish the resellers are!! :lol: :lol:

Bob

 

[Rayvyn]

Don't forget the Northwood is 3+ CPU generations back. Most people have moved onto Athlon-64 or C2D/Q. They don't have much going for them: single-core, small cache and run quite hot (but not as bad as a Prescott). Also most MB for the P4 have only PCI slots which is a back-end bottleneck (since it is arbitrated for use by a single device at a time and has a ceiling of 133Mbytes transfer bandwidth) and use less resilient non-solid capacitors. Also AGP graphics is a pain in the butt - since you get overcharged for newer cards and then you have the driver issues for these, etc.!!

You can't really charge that much for these CPUs these days!! They were only around the 200.00 USD mark (tops) when they were originally sold.

I am building up a machine around a Prescott for my sis's wedding (but that's another storey) - my 4Ghz project !! Mind you I am using a hybrid server board with PCI-X slots... I wouldn't go back to PCI now that PCIe is well established!!

Lots of people use NewEgg (can't comment since I am stuck in the UK - with our high prices). I might even pull one off Ebay perhaps (lots for sale there)... But that would be a risk if someone has hard overclocked the CPU of course...

Bob

Thanks for all the information but I have a new machine. I'm putting together an old machine that will run Windows 98 and Windows 2000. So it won't matter too much the performance. The graphics are easy, I have some old ATI cards that far exceed what I need to do graphically. In fact a few companies are putting out new PCI video cards that can be used in older machines.

As for the quality of the CPU, I plan to get a warranty and do a thorough burn-in before that 30-90 day warranty runs out. The places I'm looking at on pricewatch.com say they pull most of their CPUs from office computers where I doubt much overclocking goes on.


BTW I think overclocking is silly and pretty much worthless. I tend to think it's for people with too much time on their hands who just want to experiment. As a computer repair person of sorts, I can't tell you how many times I get a system in where the owner complains about frequent crashes and other glitches. I then look into the BIOS and see the person has overclocking settings all the way up. So I take it out of overclocking and the system is more stable provided he hasn't fried the CPU. Then the guy complains that he wants to overclock because you get more for your money. I then explain to the fool that he's paid me more than enough money to buy a faster CPU or that the speed isn't really worth it. But it never fails, I'll see him in a year or so after he's decided to play around again.

Boy I went off topic but I guess I had to vent.

Rayvyn

 

[Rayvyn]

Isn't pricewatch one of those dumb websites that finds the most expensive prices for products for you (depending how much cash the sellers send them) and also tells you how rubbish the resellers are!! :lol: :lol:

Bob

Well Pricewatch shows prices from Newegg and other good vendors. I've had nothing but luck when dealing with the vendors on there.

 

[bobwya]

Well Pricewatch shows prices from Newegg and other good vendors. I've had nothing but luck when dealing with the vendors on there.

Yeh I was just being sarcastic. Most times they are quite useful.

Bob

 

[sutrostyle]

My advice would be to buy on ebay. I have never been ripped off with a bad CPU there, but the price will be so low (perhaps $20) that it's not a big risk.

 

[bobwya]

My advice would be to buy on ebay. I have never been ripped off with a bad CPU there, but the price will be so low (perhaps $20) that it's not a big risk.

+1 An old Northwood core is going to give pretty rubbish performance these days. Not really worth spending much dosh on. Just keep bidding on Ebay till you pull one for around 20.00 USD. That isn't much too lose and generally if they have been overclocked excessively they simply won't overclock anymore (but will still work fine at stock).

Bob

 

[o1die]

I use "starmicro" for cpus, which is their speciality. Make sure your board supports the cpu. The northwood p4's are the best, with 512 meg cache and 800 fsb, if your board supports it.

 

[Rayvyn]

+1 An old Northwood core is going to give pretty rubbish performance these days. Not really worth spending much dosh on. Just keep bidding on Ebay till you pull one for around 20.00 USD. That isn't much too lose and generally if they have been overclocked excessively they simply won't overclock anymore (but will still work fine at stock).

Bob

A Northwood core CPU will give excellent performance for a Windows 98, 2000 and XP system. I suggest at least 512MB memory for 98 and 1GB or 2GBs for the best performance in the newer OSes. I don't know why you think a 2.8Ghz Northwood CPU with 1GB of memory will give crappy performance. Please bear in mind that not everyone needs or wants to play the latest XYZ WW2 flight simulator or the latest cookie cutter FPS with new graphics. This system will be used for older games and applications. I currently have a 1.5Ghz P4 system I use for recording software on a regular basis and the performance is great.

As for CPUs. I've seen them burned out and unusable from overclocking. Yes it happens. Once you fry enough transistors you get so many errors the CPU is unusable.

Rayvyn

 

[Rayvyn]

I use "starmicro" for cpus, which is their speciality. Make sure your board supports the cpu. The northwood p4's are the best, with 512 meg cache and 800 fsb, if your board supports it.

Yea Starmicro was one of the companies I was curious about. Them and PCProgress seem to be two of the biggest vendors of after market CPUs. I've seen some nice deals on Starmicro but I tend to think the deal may be a little TOO good. Just my suspicious nature I guess. But hey it's only about 30 bux not a big loss.

Thanks,

Rayvyn

 

[MU_Engineer]

Don't forget the Northwood is 3+ CPU generations back. Most people have moved onto Athlon-64 or C2D/Q. They don't have much going for them: single-core, small cache and run quite hot (but not as bad as a Prescott). Also most MB for the P4 have only PCI slots which is a back-end bottleneck (since it is arbitrated for use by a single device at a time and has a ceiling of 133Mbytes transfer bandwidth) and use less resilient non-solid capacitors. Also AGP graphics is a pain in the butt - since you get overcharged for newer cards and then you have the driver issues for these, etc.!!

They are older systems, but he intended to run older OSes that may not have drivers for newer gear.

You can't really charge that much for these CPUs these days!! They were only around the 200.00 USD mark (tops) when they were originally sold.

Huh? I remember Northwood-B 3.06 HTs being near a grand and the Gallatin Xeon MP_based (Northwood multi-way server chip ) P4EE 3.46 with 2 MB L3 being that much too. There weren't many Northwoods *under* $200 in those days.

I am building up a machine around a Prescott for my sis's wedding (but that's another storey) - my 4Ghz project !! Mind you I am using a hybrid server board with PCI-X slots... I wouldn't go back to PCI now that PCIe is well established!!

All depends on what you plan to do with your rig.

Lots of people use NewEgg (can't comment since I am stuck in the UK - with our high prices). I might even pull one off Ebay perhaps (lots for sale there)... But that would be a risk if someone has hard overclocked the CPU of course...

I don't know if many highly-overclocked Northwoods would be on eBay. People who OC heavily probably went through the Northwood, an A64 single core, an Opteron 165, and a 65 nm C2D or Q6600 already. You're more likely than not to encounter pulls from retired P4 systems that the general population used on eBay today. You could also look for pulls at computer stores. Ones around me have them and are very willing to sell them, and I am not in that big of an area (small city of 100k people). I'd go that route as you have a door to beat down if they sell you a dud, rather than having the guy that sold you a dud on eBay disappear back to Russia or wherever with your money.

 

[bobwya]

... I don't know why you think a 2.8Ghz Northwood CPU with 1GB of memory will give crappy performance. Please bear in mind that not everyone needs or wants to play the latest XYZ WW2 flight simulator or the latest cookie cutter FPS with new graphics. This system will be used for older games and applications. I currently have a 1.5Ghz P4 system I use for recording software on a regular basis and the performance is great.

As for CPUs. I've seen them burned out and unusable from overclocking. Yes it happens. Once you fry enough transistors you get so many errors the CPU is unusable.

Rayvyn

Sorry I was really trying to say it is "perceived" as being rubbish. Just look at some of the responses to this thread. You would think processor started with the release of the C2D if you believe some people!!

I wouldn't be using a P4 Prescott for a build for my sister if it couldn't do HD (BD & x264) playback (OK with some CPU offload to the GPU). Now that is quite demanding even with offload. Whatever people say about Hyperthreading I always perceived it as giving a similar responsiveness to that of a dual-core system but with no actual speedup of CPU-bound processes (i.e. simply affecting latency).

I had to have my rant about the PCI bus but really it makes no odds unless you are doing some serious multitasking!!

Bob