elszgensa wrote on 2024-05-04, 21:12:

I think people avoid them because they ran hotter than their AMD counterparts. But you're probably not running a retro rig 24/7/365, so who cares about the power consumption - just slap a decent cooler on there and enjoy.

edit: Oh right, and they fall into the "capacitor plague" timeframe, which may be another factor.

The heat factor is again where there is misconception because that doesn't affect all P4 processors equally. Some of the P4 processors (e.g. Northwood, Cedar Mill) have TDW values of similar to their AMD counterparts.

And while they were of the capacitor plague era, so were comparable AMD boards at the time. Personally I've had more success with socket 478 or LGA778 boards than the various AMD boards of that era. The latter seem more prone to capacitor issues in my experience.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-05-04, 22:52:

elszgensa wrote on 2024-05-04, 21:12:

I think people avoid them because they ran hotter than their AMD counterparts. But you're probably not running a retro rig 24/7/365, so who cares about the power consumption - just slap a decent cooler on there and enjoy.

edit: Oh right, and they fall into the "capacitor plague" timeframe, which may be another factor.

The heat factor is again where there is misconception because that doesn't affect all P4 processors equally. Some of the P4 processors (e.g. Northwood, Cedar Mill) have TDW values of similar to their AMD counterparts.

And while they were of the capacitor plague era, so were comparable AMD boards at the time. Personally I've had more success with socket 478 or LGA778 boards than the various AMD boards of that era. The latter seem more prone to capacitor issues in my experience.

I still use a Pentium 4 650 Gigabyte 8IPE775 with stock cooling and work really good, normal heat nothing disturbing. And is a 90nm CPU, i believe the latest 65nm are much better

By the way, this is a nice motherboard, still support 5 1/4 floppy! whats why still use

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-05-04, 22:49:

This is sort of a weird one. On the one hand, I agree that nostalgia does play a strong role in what people tend to pursue in terms of older hardware.

On the other hand, there is legacy hardware that was unpopular at the time that became popular once its value for retro gaming became known. Via C3 processors and GeForceFX cards come immediately to mind.

It's that latter scenario where I can see people discovering value in marrying up P4 processors with industrial socket 478/778 motherboards with ISA slots. All it takes is one YouTuber to advertise such a build and that can spark a sudden interest in the platform.

Sure, but... how many industrial 478/775 motherboards with ISA slots are out there? If one YouTuber gets people excited in this, within a week they'll be all gone on eBay or insane prices. Same as what's happened with the 'best' thin clients with the soundblaster-compatible audio. They're not $20 'near-ewaste' on eBay; they're unobtainium or hundreds of dollars now.

And I would say the Via C3 is a different situation. No one paid any attention to it for gaming at the time. No one wanted a DOS machine; if you had some DOS games you were really attached to, you probably... still owned the DOS/Win98 machine you played them on.

The FX5xxx series, absolutely, but... I guess my response would be, the P4 platform is 18-24 years old at this point. If the P4 had some superpowers for retrocomputing, I... feel like they would have been discovered in that time period. And it's worth noting - there is one iteration of the P4 platform that has some superpowers, arguably, and that's the 865/ICH5 generation... and what's happened there is that people have grabbed all the motherboards that do support newer processors with those chipsets.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2024-05-04, 21:56:

Hardware that is 15+ years old can be considered retro.

I agree.

The fact that a system can or can't run DOS cannot be the unique criteria to call a thing retro or not.

Most vogons users might have grew up in the 70/80's and have nostalgia for such systems. But the time window is shifting and slightly younger collectors like me primarily used windows 9X.

The hardware can be interesting for an historical/technical point of view even if it is not made for DOS.

I have three P4 systems. One Willammette with RDRAM, On Presscott 3.8 Gigawatt Gigahertz and one Dual Xeon Gallatin 3.2.

Having a system and experiencing first hand its strength and weaknesses is my key motivator. So even struggling with a bad system that runs hot is enjoyable to have a taste of what it was.

A p4's great for a PCX2 😀

It should also be noted that SBEMU and one particular fork VSBHDA are making shocking progress towards a pretty darn reasonable alternative ISA sound. I just got Jazz Jackrabbit running in DOS on AC97 on an Atom netbook and I couldn’t believe it.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-05-04, 22:52:

And while they were of the capacitor plague era, so were comparable AMD boards at the time. Personally I've had more success with socket 478 or LGA778 boards than the various AMD boards of that era. The latter seem more prone to capacitor issues in my experience.

I think the 'enthusiast' board manufacturers that were popular with people in the socket 462 era in particular used a lot of bad caps... but within a few years (probably around the start of the C2D era, maybe even earlier) those guys (minus Abit who didn't really survive) were all advertising 'solid Japanese capacitors' while Dell and other large OEMs were still selling boards with bad caps.

VivienM wrote on 2024-05-05, 02:17:

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-05-04, 22:52:

And while they were of the capacitor plague era, so were comparable AMD boards at the time. Personally I've had more success with socket 478 or LGA778 boards than the various AMD boards of that era. The latter seem more prone to capacitor issues in my experience.

I think the 'enthusiast' board manufacturers that were popular with people in the socket 462 era in particular used a lot of bad caps... but within a few years (probably around the start of the C2D era, maybe even earlier) those guys (minus Abit who didn't really survive) were all advertising 'solid Japanese capacitors' while Dell and other large OEMs were still selling boards with bad caps.

Dell, HP, and most of the other manufacturers got stung by the bad run of Nichicon HM/HN caps as well as general defectiveness of Nippon Chemi KZG and KZJ caps in the S775 era, especially in their SFF and uSFF hot boxes.

The main appeal of a Pentium 4 build these days is that the parts are still relatively easy to find and not ridiculously expensive. And the 845pe, 865pe chipsets are generally trouble free. If ISA slots are not a requirement, there's nothing wrong with a P4 build for late DOS, Win98 and early XP gaming. Sure, a Preshott pulls almost as much power as a 6-core Phenom II, but these days we are used to such power draw.

It's just that anything a P4 can do, the Athlon64 can do better, and likely use less power, and have better heatsink retention and selection. (aside from SATA quirks on Via chipsets).

my plex server is still a p4 2.8ghz northwood (debian bookworm runs great on it). i got a drawer full of 2.4c northwoods that were great budget overclockers back in the day.

problem with the p4 is lack of isa and the problem with industrial p4 boards with isa is crippled agp slots (or dma implementation of isa). i'm sure the perfect p4 industrial board exists, but i'll never be able to get one.

frankly, i would argue the advent of sse2 is the delineator for the end of the retro era.

Bit of a monologue, but bare with me.

Q1 : What is retro (to me) ?
A1 : Retro is cool old hardware.

Q2 : How old is "old" to me ?
A2 :
Vintage hardware : SSE(1)
Retro hardware : Everything without AVX(1) support at least (+ no UEFI).
Obsolete hardware : AVX1 + UEFI
Modern hardware : AVX2 (and later)

Timeline issue :
In 2004 PCIe and DDR2 were introduced on new socket LGA 775.
Retro hardware back then would be considered 286/386 which were considered too old to use as normal PCs (about 20 year old system).
In 2024, P4s on LGA 775 is basically as old as 286/386 were back then (which at this point are 40 years old, so 60's tech in 2004 😁).

After all that, what "retro" means to you ?
If it's different from my view on this, it's going to take a while to get to conclusion of this topic...
Everything is after all limited by point of view. We aren't the same, we think differently about things.
Since definitions are "fluid", there is no way to everyone to agree on simple answer.

P4 - as boring as a modern computer, except old, slow, and hot.

Sockel 478 and 939 are the last generations which i would consider retro and pre-widescreen era. When was Sockel 478 introduced? 2001 and people were rocking it till 2006.

agent_x007 wrote on 2024-05-05, 09:15:

In 2024, P4s on LGA 775 is basically as old as 286/386 were back then (which at this point are 40 years old, so 60's tech in 2004 😁).

Is not retro or not related, but there is a big difference, in a P4 775 you can install windows 10 for example, and modern web browser, or install XP and use modern web browser. Im talking about web browsing because are so important now to every day work

In a 80s computer not only was impossible to use any OS from 2004, but same, was impossible to use any software from 2004 in a 80s OS, like DOS

pixel_workbench wrote on 2024-05-05, 06:33:

It's just that anything a P4 can do, the Athlon64 can do better,

Well, you'll need specify the usecase and then say which cpu is better.

Let's separate here 2 different era's. Because Athlon was superior within multiple comparisons during the beginning 2 core era (before the core 2 duo has been released).
- the 1 core era
- the 2 core era

comparison 1 core era

The Athlon64 is superior mostly on games only.

Office

CAD and 3D

Games

pixel_workbench wrote on 2024-05-05, 06:33:

It's just that anything a P4 can do, the Athlon64 can do better,

comparison 2 core era

Office

Mutimedia

3D Rendering

Games

VivienM wrote on 2024-05-05, 01:39:

Sure, but... how many industrial 478/775 motherboards with ISA slots are out there? If one YouTuber gets people excited in this, within a week they'll be all gone on eBay or insane prices.

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.

I guess my response would be, the P4 platform is 18-24 years old at this point. If the P4 had some superpowers for retrocomputing, I... feel like they would have been discovered in that time period.

The retro computing environment continuously changes. There are still modern-retro hardware and utilities for retro computing that are being invented today. This can change the potential usefulness of older hardware.

For example, my own P4 build would be a lot less functional and interesting without a utility like CPUSPD and the Orpheus II sound card. Both of those didn't exist 5 years ago.

pixel_workbench wrote on 2024-05-05, 06:33:

It's just that anything a P4 can do, the Athlon64 can do better, and likely use less power, and have better heatsink retention and selection. (aside from SATA quirks on Via chipsets).

Are there any Athlon64 boards with ISA slots?

stanwebber wrote on 2024-05-05, 08:43:

problem with the p4 is lack of isa and the problem with industrial p4 boards with isa is crippled agp slots (or dma implementation of isa). i'm sure the perfect p4 industrial board exists, but i'll never be able to get one.

There are motherboards like the Advantech AIMB-742 that are available now. It just seems like nobody is interested in them.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-05-05, 12:51:

stanwebber wrote on 2024-05-05, 08:43:

problem with the p4 is lack of isa and the problem with industrial p4 boards with isa is crippled agp slots (or dma implementation of isa). i'm sure the perfect p4 industrial board exists, but i'll never be able to get one.

There are motherboards like the Advantech AIMB-742 that are available now. It just seems like nobody is interested in them.

The problem is that they cost what i earn in a month!