Tetrium wrote:This thread was bound to become a shooting match 😜
Yeah, it's bound to be an emotional topic but I think most of the forumers here are mature and will not stoop to the "OMFG, P4 is the suxxors N008!" type of comments.
The various views are quite interesting reading, answering my question indirectly as to why almost no one chooses to (re)build a s423/478 rig even though it's from the same era as Athlon/ Tualatin systems- a lot of it has to do with nostalgia and bad feelings over Intel's actions during late 2000-2001- the RDRAM debacle, over-pricing Tualatins and then terminating them, retarding the 815 chipset, persecuting VIA, pricing vs. AMD etc.
Also I suppose, the Athlon was the enthusiast platform in that era and as many are seeking to relive past days of glory- that platform becomes the default choice for them.
As for the Tualatin, probably the 1337ness of having a creaky old P3 exceeding 1ghz and beating newer platform is a factor. I know it was for me when I built my various 1ghz + P3 rigs 😁
Tetrium wrote:Anyway, I've read quite a lot about P4's supposed sluggishness. What would it take to have a Northwood, for instance, become 'quick'? Low memory latency?
Clock-for-clock it's an underperformer compared with , errrr, anything really 😵 but you must remember it can generate many more of those clocks than anything else from that era.
So with a P4 it's about getting as much mhz as possible, followed by memory speed and then latency. Example, a Northwood 1.6B is nowhere in the same league as a Tualatin at 1.6ghz (or even stock at 1.4ghz) or an Athlon at the same clock speed. But the Northwood can go far above 3ghz, lets say a 3.0c model at 3.6ghz or so- at that speed there is no Tualatin that can be overclocked to match it. Or take my Prescott 4ghz system for instance- it beats Athlon 64 3500+ chips clean off and matches/ beats the Sempron 140 (Phenom II architecture!) in some benchmarks. It is very very competitive with my old Athlon 64 3000+ @2.4ghz/ DFI NF3 system.
I will reserve my comments on AThlon XP chips as I have not owned any and I prefer to speak from experience rather than just talking from third party sources. I have heard of massive clocks in the 2.5+ range from them, at which point they're bound to be pretty fantastic.