The Pentium D 945 goes down to a multiplier of 12.

I have an issue with stability at super low speeds (multiplier, cache control, and duty cycle).

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-05-05, 12:49:

This is the reason I'm looking into these things before that happens. The trick to getting interesting hardware before it becomes popular and potentially unobtainium.

If this is your main motivation then yes, it's time.

I don't think the P4 will ever be as desirable P3's or earlier but i think your comparison to Via C3 or GeForceFX is about right. It's popularity will be due to it's usefulness more then any love or nostalgia for the hardware.

I've noticed more P4 based Win9x builds here in last 2-3 years, no doubt because earlier hardware is becoming harder to find.
Few years ago you couldn't give away a S478 PC (always useful for IDE drives) however I've only had 1 in the last 12 months.

P4 is perfect for that high end Win98 build. Forget ISA, this is not a DOS gaming machine. Instead stick a fx5900 and audigy2 in and let rip those late dx8 games from around 2001 to 2003.

Is true an Athlon XP can do the same, but the P4 is a cheaper, easier and probably more stable option.

My DOS issue with speeds has to do with timing bugs in the sound drivers. I feel like I have to tune the P4 independently for each game/app. It's annoying.

fosterwj03 wrote on 2024-05-06, 02:50:

My DOS issue with speeds has to do with timing bugs in the sound drivers. I feel like I have to tune the P4 independently for each game/app. It's annoying.

Which games do you have issues with?

kolderman wrote on 2024-05-06, 02:43:

Forget ISA, this is not a DOS gaming machine.

But... what do I do with my ISA slots then? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I love my Pentium 4. Its defintely retro, but I dont use it for DOS games, thats what my 486 or pentium 1 are for.
My P4 is a beast and i use it to play early to mid 2000s games like GTA 3, Oni, Dungeon Seige, Blacksite Area 51, and a ton of other games of that era.

I generally consider P4 retro too. I own various P4s waiting to be built again:

- ABIT IS7-E + P4 HT 2.8
- MSI 865PE Neo2-LS + same CPU
- GB 8IG1000 Pro + P4 3.0 HT
- ASRock 775i65PE + P4 631
- ASRock P4Dual-915GL + P4 2.8 HT
- Chaintech 9BJA0 + P4 2.5GHz (FSB 400)

Out of those, only the ASRocks are currently often used, more specifically the 915 as it allows me to run PCI-E GPUs on it. (HD4870 + Northwood is a funky combo 🤣)

P4 probably isn't underrated then, instead there is the scope of "retro" or vintage

for me its a rolling 15/20 years, over 20 years definitely and over 15 is kinda vintage, computer tech moving as quickly as it does

another useful 'border' between vintage and non vintage is 32 / 64 bits

but some see native dos as an important component too

anyway, a late P4 is able to run windows XP (and 98) very well while being fast enough to get the best from some pretty impressive video cards and combine to play just about anything 90's through mid 2000's., and that's a long time back in the tech world

I am not sure they are underrated for anything or underrated at any point in time. They are of course another interesting piece of history though. The P4 was a great opportunity for AMD.

leileilol wrote on 2024-05-06, 02:13:

The Pentium 4 launched before 9/11 so I have a hard time being convinced it's not retro.

To be very clear about this : P4 is very much a retro CPU/platform in my point of view.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-05-06, 12:39:

kolderman wrote on 2024-05-06, 02:43:

Forget ISA, this is not a DOS gaming machine.

But... what do I do with my ISA slots then? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

P4 mobos with ISA a rarer than hens teeth, but practically they are not much use, although I suppose if you only play late DOS games that are not speed sensitive it might be a nice platform to get SPDIF out of say an Audigy2 and mix it with midi sound from a ISA card. Personally I just rely on my C3 and k63 for all DOS gaming needs.

kolderman wrote on 2024-05-06, 02:43:

P4 is perfect for that high end Win98 build. Forget ISA, this is not a DOS gaming machine. Instead stick a fx5900 and audigy2 in and let rip those late dx8 games from around 2001 to 2003.

Is true an Athlon XP can do the same, but the P4 is a cheaper, easier and probably more stable option.

That sounds like my retro 98 project, which is actually an AM2 K8M800 setup (but an FX59something and an Audigy 2ZS)...

... and that's maybe where we come back full-circle. Ignoring my weird AM2 setup for a second, there are tons of AGP socket 754 options out there and still quite plentiful (unlike socket 462). Is a P4 really preferable to the AMD option? The P4 might have functional SATA support under 98SE, but probably also runs much hotter...

kolderman wrote on 2024-05-06, 22:45:

P4 mobos with ISA a rarer than hens teeth, but practically they are not much use, although I suppose if you only play late DOS games that are not speed sensitive it might be a nice platform to get SPDIF out of say an Audigy2 and mix it with midi sound from a ISA card.

That's what I thought at first too, until I built my current P4 system. It turns out it throttles far better than I expected. Just disabling L1 & L2 turns it into a mid-range 486. And it can be throttled further down to ~286 speeds.

It's been a pleasant surprise to see how flexible this system is.

I think P4 soc 478 is perfect for a retro w98/xp windows computer IMHO. Like PcBytes have a few p4 boards (and one complete system built)
added: Wanna see something funny ? I own two GA-8ipe1000-g rev 4 boards, both socket 478 but Giga's website has an error and has some wrong specs on main page with info on the GA-8I865GME-775 not 8ipe1000-g
https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-8IPE1000-G-rev-4x
https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/gigaby … -8ipe1000-pro-g

kolderman wrote on 2024-05-06, 02:43:

P4 is perfect for that high end Win98 build. Forget ISA, this is not a DOS gaming machine. Instead stick a fx5900 and audigy2 in and let rip those late dx8 games from around 2001 to 2003.

Is true an Athlon XP can do the same, but the P4 is a cheaper, easier and probably more stable option.

Law212 wrote on 2024-05-06, 13:13:

I love my Pentium 4. Its defintely retro, but I dont use it for DOS games, thats what my 486 or pentium 1 are for.
My P4 is a beast and i use it to play early to mid 2000s games like GTA 3, Oni, Dungeon Seige, Blacksite Area 51, and a ton of other games of that era.

Yup, these comments are bang on.

My first retro build was a P4 and it’s a beast. It was one of my cheaper builds, relatively stress free, and played a surprisingly wide range of games on high settings, including late-era DOS using SB16 emulation (which isn’t perfect but works for most games I play).

It was a great entry point into the hobby for me. Maybe I could have picked an AMD platform, but I got great results and am very happy to have this machine in my collection, along with the bonus warmth during winter 😉

I neither consider P4 as retro. I'd rather put them to modern classics.

P4’s are in my opinion “older” computers that can still be used.

Retro according to me is anything pre-32bit that cannot boot a kernel, like XT V20’s and 286es and so on.

Although, I also identified SSE2 as the requirement for a still modern-ish system, anything before that could be called “retro” in varying degrees.

I think we are blurring the line between retro and vintage here. Although i don't think a p4 is necessarily retro either. But clearly a p2 with 3 isa slots running win95 and playing midi music is a retro pc.

kolderman wrote on 2024-05-08, 11:25:

I think we are blurring the line between retro and vintage here. Although i don't think a p4 is necessarily retro either. But clearly a p2 with 3 isa slots running win95 and playing midi music is a retro pc.

The line was always blurry. Depends if you define retro by age, function or something else. Even Prescotts rached 20 years of age and the latest introduced models are 19 (+1 year if Cedar Mill is included) and they were discontinued just 3 months shy of 16 years ago. So based on age a strong case could be made that at least s478 platforms should be fully considered retro. Based on function a strong case could be made that platforms with AGP should be considered retro. Based on something else... well, I consider the entirety of the XP era (the end of mainstream support is Q2 2009) retro.