2012 equivalent of pentium 4 2 8ghz

Are you going to run XP? and what version of those Adobe apps?
I think any modern CPU will outperform that old single core processor.
What your budget?

I think a better question is, what is your budget?

You will need to get ram.cpu.mobo.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/25

CPU's have gone a very long way since Pentium4's

Any of today's lowest end cpu is miles ahead of a Pentium 4


It is hard to make a recommendation because I am not sure what your budget is like and I am not sure if you rather buy a name brand, get someone to build it or to build it yourself.


I recommend that you build it yourself or you go to a "microbytes, or any computer only store that builds pc's"

You will want the following

A pentium G630 or G850 (about 70 to 80$ cpu)

Those are the Pentium 4's of today (if not the celerons of today but perform astonishingly well)

You can also get a Core I3.


If you go AMD, you can go for a phenom X4 if still in stock or an FX43XX

I would recommend an AMD A8 or A10 as they bring better balance for processing and video.




No matter what CPU you use, let it be a higher end Intel Core I5 to a lower end AMD FX4350

You will not see a massive difference in computer operation.

A computer can only go as fast as it can read the information given to it.

For the best computing experience, I STRONGLY suggest, you get a computer with an SSD Harddrive.

something like 180Gig or 256Gig ssd hard drive. (if you need more space, get a regular drive on the side for storage)


If you plan on building it yourself let us know and I am sure someone can make a full list of parts for you.

Almost any current CPU you can buy now will better better than that P4 (even a low end Sandy Bridge Celeron).

As C00lIT alluded to, though, I would suggest a decent quad for your uses.

As long as you have a decent budget to work with, any low cost modern CPU will outperform your old P4.