Bad caps were common on boards from this time period. I don't refer to it the "era of crap hardware" for nothing. As much as I detest single core Netburst CPUs, I couldn't get over the fact that most non-Intel chipsets were crap. While the P4s were slow toasters compared to the K7, at least they usually worked right. I had way too many bad experiences with the likes of chipsets from VIA, SiS, and even the occasional nForce (a friend had a nForce 2 Epox that was extremely difficult to find the right IDE drivers for Vista/7).

For me the "primo" XP era machine would have AGP paired with Socket 478 or Socket A. While PCIe and LGA775/Socket 939 were also XP era, they were really on the tail end of the OS and ran CPUs that were common in the Vista era... like Core2Duos.

I think the Pentium IV will become the least collectible architecture that Intel ever produced - they were unimpressive from start to finish, and they were shoveled into countless systems so they will never really become rare. Plus, there's nothing a Netburst CPU does that can't be done more efficiently by a fast P3 or a Pentium M / Core chip. Netburst is basically an architecture that should never have existed.

If I were building a pre- Core 2 Duo XP system, I'd start with a motherboard like this one, throw in a 2.1GHz Pentium M, 2GB of RAM, and a GeForce 6800 Ultra AGP card. Not exactly a common desktop configuration for the era, but it would run at roughly the speed of a 3GHz Pentium IV system and with much better efficiency and lower noise.

Well I guess from what's in my junk pile, my preferred "pre-Core 2" XP setup would be my DFI NF4 Ultra-D with Opteron 170.

In the photos it has 4GB RAM which is tricky to pull off with 939 (picky about RAM). This Opteron 170 will do about 2.5GHz on stock voltage. The chipset cooler is a Thermalright HR-05 SLI which I also use as my Slot-T heatsink for my P3-S. CPU heatsink is a Scythe Ninja II.

I had a Nortwood 2.6 system, with 2 GB RAM and a Radeon 9800. I was very happy with that machine. It was super stable and ran all the games. The limitation was mostly the video card as games quickly became quite demanding.

Later I had a cheap 754 Asrock motherboard with a Nvidia chipset (Not nForce) a Sempron 1.6 GHz overclocked to 2.4 GHz. The top AMD chips cost a fortune, so overclocking was in back in the day. But as soon as the E6600 came out I jumped back to Intel.

If I had to build a system from that era it would also be a Nortwood machine.

Here come comparisons:

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/cpu-charts … om-III,439.html

NJRoadfan wrote:

Bad caps were common on boards from this time period. I don't refer to it the "era of crap hardware" for nothing. As much as I detest single core Netburst CPUs, I couldn't get over the fact that most non-Intel chipsets were crap. While the P4s were slow toasters compared to the K7, at least they usually worked right. I had way too many bad experiences with the likes of chipsets from VIA, SiS, and even the occasional nForce (a friend had a nForce 2 Epox that was extremely difficult to find the right IDE drivers for Vista/7).

For me the "primo" XP era machine would have AGP paired with Socket 478 or Socket A. While PCIe and LGA775/Socket 939 were also XP era, they were really on the tail end of the OS and ran CPUs that were common in the Vista era... like Core2Duos.

While I agree that many boards during this era were of bad quality I would argue that most Asus boards were OK.
The only Asus boards I have that suffers from the capacitor plague are socket A boards. The Asus socket 478 and K8 boards seem well built with at least somewhat better caps.
I would have used AGP if I had a good working socket 754 AGP board. I have a MSI Nforce 3 board that works (with some bad caps) but I really hate that board.

swaaye wrote:

Well I guess from what's in my junk pile, my preferred "pre-Core 2" XP setup would be my DFI NF4 Ultra-D with Opteron 170.

In the photos it has 4GB RAM which is tricky to pull off with 939 (picky about RAM). This Opteron 170 will do about 2.5GHz on stock voltage. The chipset cooler is a Thermalright HR-05 SLI which I also use as my Slot-T heatsink for my P3-S. CPU heatsink is a Scythe Ninja II.

I will play around a bit with an Asus AN8 SLI Deluxe later. Since I have upgraded my s939 box with the AN8-32 SLI Deluxe the old AN8 is available for some overclocking fun on the testbench.
I have an Opteron 165 and an Opteron 175. Sadly my Opterons also top out around 2500 mhz. I have a few X2 3800+ that at least will do 2.6 - 2.7.
Post some benchmarks scores !

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Later I had a cheap 754 Asrock motherboard with a Nvidia chipset (Not nForce) a Sempron 1.6 GHz overclocked to 2.4 GHz. The top AMD chips cost a fortune, so overclocking was in back in the day. But as soon as the E6600 came out I jumped back to Intel.

If I had to build a system from that era it would also be a Nortwood machine.

That chipset must have been Geforce 6100 / Nforce 410/430
That is the chipset used on the motherboard I use now. My Gigabyte board is not a very good motherboard for overclocking but I dont think that is the chipsets fault.
I have cold boot problems. Settings that are 100% stable wont post when the system has been shut off for an extended period of time.
I will try to post some benchmarks with a Sempron 1.6@2.4 since I have a few Semprons in my junk CPU box.

I think I will build a Northwood system with a P4 3.0C later to compare against this system.
It will probably be a socket 478 PCI-E system since this system use PCI-E. I would like to be able to test the same video cards.
I have a mATX board that fits the bill but I have no clue what chipset it uses.
I bought some Samsung TCCD DDR memory a few years ago and the memory was in a package along with the board and a Prescott 3.0E CPU.

I have Windows XP SP3 fully updated on the socket 754 system now. I run @ 2.4 ghz to avoid cold boot problems.
Youtube works perfectly with 720p fullscreen. The CPU load is ~30% with spikes up twords 80%.
I find this strange since my laptop with a 2.4 ghz Clawhammer hovers around 80% CPU load with the 480p setting.
Can it be that this newer Core supports a newer SSE standard?
One other diffrence is 266 mhz memory on this system vs 200 mhz memory on the laptop but the laptop uses 1T timing and this system 2T.
The rest of the timings are the same 3 3 3 8.
The laptop has 1mb cache this system only 512kb but that should tip the balance of scales twords the Clawhammer...
Perhaps the Geforce 9500GT is used to help decode but I thought only newer cards were able to decode flash these days?
[edit]It seems the 9500GT do help with the decoding[/edit]

Youtube 720P

The Geforce 9500GT helps with the decoding

Skyscraper wrote:

That chipset must have been Geforce 6100 / Nforce 410/430
That is the chipset used on the motherboard I use now. My Gigabyte board is not a very good motherboard for overclocking but I dont think that is the chipsets fault.

Yes that sounds right!

I had a cheap Asrock board and overvolting was disabled. However you could close some solder points to get 1.6V. I used a conductive pen, slapped an Arctic Cooling 64 on it and BAM I had 2.4 GHz.

I found this chipset to be very very stable and reliable.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Yes that sounds right! […]
Show full quote

Skyscraper wrote:

That chipset must have been Geforce 6100 / Nforce 410/430
That is the chipset used on the motherboard I use now. My Gigabyte board is not a very good motherboard for overclocking but I dont think that is the chipsets fault.

Yes that sounds right!

I had a cheap Asrock board and overvolting was disabled. However you could close some solder points to get 1.6V. I used a conductive pen, slapped an Arctic Cooling 64 on it and BAM I had 2.4 GHz.

I found this chipset to be very very stable and reliable.

I tried a Sempron 2800+@ 2.4 ghz

I used the disk with Windows XP SP2 and the Geforce 7900GTX.
The scores are not bad at all.
I had to use a divider for the memory since it diddnt like 300 mhz with only 2.8v

3dmark 2001

3dmark 2003

3dmark 2005

3dmark 2006

SuperPi 1m

This must have been a great system for no money at all back in 2004-2005.

Sad news

I tried the other DFI board.
Its dead. It will not even rev the CPU fan.
If it at least would have posted that would have made me more inclined to recapping it.

The DFI on the test bench.

Can someone spot anything strange exept the bad caps?

Back on the Wall of the Dead

Is this the DFI board ?:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/190990479523

What is so special about them ?
(me clueless, having used intel only so far... 😀 )

bestemor wrote:

Is this the DFI board ?: http://www.ebay.com/itm/190990479523 […]
Show full quote

Is this the DFI board ?:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/190990479523

What is so special about them ?
(me clueless, having used intel only so far... 😀 )

Yes thats a Socket 754 DFI board. The price seem fair.
The socket 939 boards are even more expensive.

They were great boards for overclocking. That is the only thing they do better than the Asus boards from the same era.
Memory modules that could do 275 mhz with 2.5 3 3 7 2t timings on an Asus board often could do those timings close to 300 mhz with 1t on the DFI board
If you liked overclocking you wanted one. If you did not overclock you probably never knew DFI existed 😀
I had an Asus board

Skyscraper wrote:

Is NetBurst really slower than K8?

I followed the topic 'bout Athlon XP and I kinda like the idea, but there are no measurable limits to what you suggest.

For example: I could easily throw a Pentium 6x1 in my PC with P35 chipset, then overclock it to 4.5 or 5Ghz (whatever stable on air), and results will not be correct to the time period.

What will really be interresting for me is - Althon (socket A) vs. s754 vs s939. All single cores. And ... may be clock per clock?

We all know how far superior the Core architecture is compared to the Netburst. But I have never measured how AMD improved their CPUs over these years (up to socket 939).

Actually, I jumped from Nforce 2 to Core2Duo, and continued with intel, so I've never ever owned any AMD, released after the socket A.

Space Cowboy wrote:

I followed the topic 'bout Athlon XP and I kinda like the idea, but there are no measurable limits to what you suggest. […]
Show full quote

Skyscraper wrote:

Is NetBurst really slower than K8?

I followed the topic 'bout Athlon XP and I kinda like the idea, but there are no measurable limits to what you suggest.

For example: I could easily throw a Pentium 6x1 in my PC with P35 chipset, then overclock it to 4.5 or 5Ghz (whatever stable on air), and results will not be correct to the time period.

What will really be interresting for me is - Althon (socket A) vs. s754 vs s939. All single cores. And ... may be clock per clock?

We all know how far superior the Core architecture is compared to the Netburst. But I have never measured how AMD improved their CPUs over these years (up to socket 939).

Actually, I jumped from Nforce 2 to Core2Duo, and continued with intel, so I've never ever owned any AMD, released after the socket A.

I will add some benchmark scores with an Intel 925X Alderwood motherboard and a single core P4.
That would be a fair comparison

The caps on the DFI board look bad...I mean, REALLY bad. You might have a pretty good chance of reviving it.

Looking forward to more 754 builds 😀

The machine I use everyday is an old Dell Dimension 4600. I've upgraded it to high hell and beyond whatever it was supposed to do though. It is unfortunately a Pentium 4, but I made sure to upgrade it to be the "best pentium 4" I could. (yes, an oxymoron) 🤣

So, it's CPU is a Pentium 4 Extreme, 3.2Ghz, socket 478. I would have liked to make it a 3.4, but I couldn't find any and since it's still using stock cooling I didn't want to press my luck.

The GPU is the best AGP card around, the Radeon HD 4670. Why? Because why not. It plays 1080p video on youtube just fine and my monitor is plugged in through HDMI. Not because I prefer it over DVI since it's the same thing, but I like not having to twist the little screws anymore.

The Hard Drive is a Velociraptor. I once tried to use an SSD in the machine, but that was unstable for some reason, So I put that in the modern laptop I never use.

The RAM is maxed out at 4GB DDR 3200, only 3.2 of it is seen by the OS.

The Sound is a SB Xfi.

If I had more PCI slots I would have put in a Killer NIC (now hanging out in my Tualatin) and USB 3.0 just for kicks, and maybe when SSDs get more affordable I'll try that again.

It runs XP like a champ, and I have tried Windows 7 on it. 7, runs okay, but not as speedy as XP, so I'm sticking with XP despite it being dead in a few months. I was originally hoping that ReactOS would be in a usable state by then, but I guess that's not happening any time soon.

I also have another machine with a Pentium D, it just isn't fun to use though for some reason, mostly because the damned proprietary PSU and small form factor severely limit its potential.

Rumor has it that I am inheriting a Dimension 4600 from a relative after it gets replaced. After 10 years, its time for it to go... but not until after I pull out the expensive DDR SDRAM. This was one of the few 4600s that survived. Most of them had a faulty power supply that failed a year after it was built earning it a spot on many "worst computer ever built" lists. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/ … 7031900296.html

Now I usually see them at the thrift store priced at a bargain $25.

I updated the reserved (2nd) post with some SuperPi 1m times.
Sceenshot links are present.

Post screens of your own Windows XP era systems SuperPi 1m times.

Athlon 64 3500+ socket 939

Skyscraper wrote:

... Can someone spot anything strange exept the bad caps?

As far as the pics allow, the major gremlin I spot are those two busted caps:

The green coil nearby cooked them and they bloated. They could be Chemicon KZG, a series that had plague problems back in the time. There's a fair chance that mobo would work after a recap, provided you don't spot any other problems.

TELVM wrote:

As far as the pics allow, the major gremlin I spot are those two busted caps:

Yes those are the only problem I can spot aswell

Here is an update with 3dmark scores for two more Video Cards I tested with the socket 754 platform.
The Geforce 9500Gt needed some overclocking to make it suck less.
The Geforce 9600GT seem to be a well balanced card for this system.

Asus Geforce 9500GT

9500GT (overclocked) 3dmark 2001

9500GT (overclocked) 3dmark 2003

9500GT (overclocked) 3dmark 2005

9500GT (overclocked) 3dmark 2006

Geforce 9600GT

9600GT 3dmark 2001

9600GT 3dmark 2003

9600GT 3dmark 2005

9600GT 3dmark 2006

[quote="NJRoadfan"]Rumor has it that I am inheriting a Dimension 4600 from a relative after it gets replaced. After 10 years, its time for it to go... but not until after I pull out the expensive DDR SDRAM. This was one of the few 4600s that survived. Most of them had a faulty power supply that failed a year after it was built earning it a spot on many "worst computer ever built" lists. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/ … 7031900296.html

Now I usually see them at the thrift store priced at a bargain $25.[/quote]

Good thing I replaced that PSU then. 🤣

Here is an update with a new system on the test bench.

Pentium 4 Prescott 3.0E socket 478
ASRrock P4VM890 with PCI-E!
Geforce 7900 GTX

This motherboard uses single channel memory so its on even terms with the s754 system.
I read somewere that this motherboard only has 4 PCI-E lanes? GPU-Z thinks its 16. I do not think it would be much of a bottleneck if the rumour about 4 lanes is true.
The P4VM890 does not like overclocking since you can not change the core voltage. The board undervolts and provides the Prescott with less than 1.1v under load.

The ASRock P4VM890

3dmark 2001

3dmark 2003

3dmark 2005

3dmark 2006

Superpi 1m

Without good overclocking options and with only single channel memory the Prescott is no speed demon.
I will not test this system with other hardware since it isnt much fun to play around with 😁
But with a Prescott 3.4@~3.6 and some 2 2 2 5 memory I guess the performance would not be that far off the socket 754 system running at 2.4 ghz.
The socket 478 Pentium 4 system has one big advantage over the socket 754 system though. It handles Youtube 720p without help from the GPU.

Youtube 720P

The next system on the test bench will also be a Prescott system but one that is more fun to tinker with.