Don't have any experience with Lubuntu, but I can say that in Windows 7 my P4 640 (3.2GHz w/ HT) does feel quite a bit faster than my Barton 2800+.

My S939 A64 3700+ is also much faster than the Barton in Windows 7. For Athlon XP, I wouldn't go any newer than an XP-era OS.

Standard Def Steve wrote:

Don't have any experience with Lubuntu, but I can say that in Windows 7 my P4 640 (3.2GHz w/ HT) does feel quite a bit faster than my Barton 2800+.

My S939 A64 3700+ is also much faster than the Barton in Windows 7. For Athlon XP, I wouldn't go any newer than an XP-era OS.

Thank. As usual the thing that impress me everytime is the SSD boost that basically help everything here. The KT600 chipset has native sata and I'm impressed how good this chipset was.
For the A64 I only had experience with the 3500+ back in the XP time and I remember being faster but not so fast I was expecting in those days.

I've had the displeasure of using a 2.6 GHz P4 + Radeon 9600 + 2GB RAM on Windows 7 recently and I recycled that machine. 😀 Almost anything you do on a heavy modern OS will max out the P4 for extended periods of time. Windows Updates can take ages.

BTW, with Athlons of any sort you are better off with a Nvidia chipset than VIA. You'll get better performance all around. GUI performance in XP is especially bad.

Interesting, I didn't know that. I always thought KT600 was one of if not the most advanced Socket 462 chipset. In my case I wanted to try a SATA native one cause I had too many problems with external solutions. I hope to find a Geforce 7x00 AGP to test this system to its limits.

386SX wrote:

swaaye wrote:

Well I can tell you that if you use XP, a VIA chipset will feel slower than nForce because there's lower GUI performance on VIA for some reason. This affects Athlon and Athlon 64.

Windows 7 might get around this because you will be using the 3D hardware of the GPU. Assuming you have a WDDM card that can handle Aero.

Interesting, I didn't know that. I always thought KT600 was one of if not the most advanced Socket 462 chipset. In my case I wanted to try a SATA native one cause I had too many problems with external solutions. I hope to find a Geforce 7x00 AGP to test this system to its limits.

I've used VIA KT880 and it is still dogged. So is the K8T800 for Athlon 64. nForce2 stomps both of them in GUI performance and possibly other areas (disk IO?)

swaaye wrote:

386SX wrote:

swaaye wrote:

Well I can tell you that if you use XP, a VIA chipset will feel slower than nForce because there's lower GUI performance on VIA for some reason. This affects Athlon and Athlon 64.

Windows 7 might get around this because you will be using the 3D hardware of the GPU. Assuming you have a WDDM card that can handle Aero.

Interesting, I didn't know that. I always thought KT600 was one of if not the most advanced Socket 462 chipset. In my case I wanted to try a SATA native one cause I had too many problems with external solutions. I hope to find a Geforce 7x00 AGP to test this system to its limits.

I've used VIA KT880 and it is still dogged. So is the K8T800 for Athlon 64. nForce2 stomps both of them in GUI performance and possibly other areas (disk IO?)

I remember the Nforce2 was good but never thought that good considering its release date and the alternatives. I built this machine starting from an Enermax EG365 psu that has 30A on both 5v/3,3v rails and it's the first psu that I get this config to run stable. 5V is around 4,90v a bit less. At the wall plug the wattage totally around 115->140W. I saved a bit on Win ME using the G450 AGP running idle at 105W.

I'd stick with Windows XP as the latest OS for an Athlon XP 3200+ can even run Steam but the steam browser won't work as it requires SSE2 instructions which are unsupported by the Athlon 32bit CPUs

My Athlon XP windows xp build:
Athlon XP 3200+
Asus A7N8X-Deluxe Motherboard
2GB DDR 400 Corsair XMSC2 PRO
nvidia geforce 6600LE 256MB AGP
Creative X-Fi Fatal1ty Platinum PCI sound card
IDE DVD-RW and DVD Drives (one sony one NEC)
SATA 7200rpm hard drives.

Works well but I'm going to do most of my XP gaming on an Athlon 64 FX55 rig, I’ve currently got an up to date Linux install on it runs latest firefox etc, don't know what it would be like with windows 7.

My advice from experience is to avoid the VIA chipsets from that era and go with the nforce2 chipset boards.

synrgy87 wrote:

I'd stick with Windows XP as the latest OS for an Athlon XP 3200+ can even run Steam but the steam browser won't work as it requ […]
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I'd stick with Windows XP as the latest OS for an Athlon XP 3200+ can even run Steam but the steam browser won't work as it requires SSE2 instructions which are unsupported by the Athlon 32bit CPUs

My Athlon XP windows xp build:
Athlon XP 3200+
Asus A7N8X-Deluxe Motherboard
2GB DDR 400 Corsair XMSC2 PRO
nvidia geforce 6600LE 256MB AGP
Creative X-Fi Fatal1ty Platinum PCI sound card
IDE DVD-RW and DVD Drives (one sony one NEC)
SATA 7200rpm hard drives.

Works well but I'm going to do most of my XP gaming on an Athlon 64 FX55 rig, I’ve currently got an up to date Linux install on it runs latest firefox etc, don't know what it would be like with windows 7.

My advice from experience is to avoid the VIA chipsets from that era and go with the nforce2 chipset boards.

I think that at least in sata the Via chipset should theorically be better?

Iv had great experience with lga775 P4s and modern operating systems. Add in enough ram and a good gpu and they keep up fairly well on the web.

386SX wrote:

I think that at least in sata the Via chipset should theorically be better?

I guess if you find SATA 1 to be very, very exciting that might be the case.

The only time I think VIA is interesting is when I want to use a Voodoo5 with Athlon XP. KT333 works with 3.3v AGP whereas nForce does not.

swaaye wrote:

386SX wrote:

I think that at least in sata the Via chipset should theorically be better?

I guess if you find SATA 1 to be very, very exciting that might be the case.

The only time I think VIA is interesting is when I want to use a Voodoo5 with Athlon XP. KT333 works with 3.3v AGP whereas nForce does not.

Yes, KT333 is certainly a great vintage chipset for all kind of vintage bench!

I've always used IDE in all my pc until a netbook that had sata and lately with a Celeron J1800 system. So sata for me is quiet a "modern" thing, just like PCI Express. Still today it looks like a "new" bus to me considering I left desktop pc for notebook back in the Athlon 64 days. 😁

swaaye wrote:

Almost anything you do on a heavy modern OS will max out the P4 for extended periods of time. Windows Updates can take ages.

A late 3.8 Ghz P4 with hyperthreading is still fine with modern Windows 7 tasks; in fact, they even have VT-x for virtualization (I've often wondered how well virtualizing multiple VMs on a single core would go). Albeit, those P4s are pretty inefficient for what you get.

In fact, take a look at just how many instruction sets late prescotts support and you'll be surprised.

...and I would like to add the caveat that not many NetBurst BIOSes implemented VT-x, so even if the proc supports it, it'll be a hard time finding a mobo that does. Although that's not to say your BIOS cannot be hacked to add the functionality in; but is it worth it just to get the twisted satisfaction that you can virtualize an environment on a single core? Probably not.

Only few of Pentium 4's have Virtualization enabled (ex. Pentium 4 672 and 662).

But regarding the other features of the late Pentium 4, what do you think for the modern usage? I mean it always looked like a complex architecture that could have do much more even later.

Depends of the tasks, also what Pentium 4 3.0 Ghz model are you refering? there are 3.0C (Northwood), 3.0E/530/530J/630 (Prescott) and 631 (Cedar Mill)

In some areas, the Athlon XP will outperform the P4 and in others the P4 will outperform the XP, also one of the Athlon XP weak points is the lack of SSE2, also memory perfomance of the Athlon XP wasn't great compared to the P4, when P4 could enjoy higher memory bandwidth and dual channel RAM, the Athlon XP couldn't take advantage of dua channel due to it's bus not begin enough fast, in fact there barely difference between single channel and dual channel on the Athlon XP.

Sorry, I can't stand the VIA "bashing", although I always respect personal experience with certain hardware..

VIA had very capable solutions back in the day. The KT800 was both fast and reliable at a price well below other highend offers from nVidia. I had one Athlon XP rig and it was very stable. Together with a Hercules Prophet 9800 Pro card it was such a good system for playing demanding games like Battlefield 1942.
VIA also had a good Socket 939 solution. The K8T800 Pro, found on highend boards with all the best features, like the ECS Proton KV2 Extreme or the ASUS AV8 Deluxe, was also a reliable and well designed chipset, rock stable with most setups and at least on par with the market dominant nForce3 chipset.
I think via has a kind of bad reputation, relating from much much earlier chipsets. But for the Athlon XP or the Socket 939 there is no reason to avoid VIA based boards at all.
IMO many people underestimate VIA chipsets.

Never personally tried the KT800, I did have machines with the KT266 KT400 and KT600, all had issues with AGP, and the VIA drivers were hit and miss. Maybe i was just unlucky with them.

When i went Athlon 64 I went with a 3500+ venice core and a DFI Lanparty UT RDX200-CFDR ATI chipset board which was excellent, loved that system.

FGB wrote:

Sorry, I can't stand the VIA "bashing". […]
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Sorry, I can't stand the VIA "bashing".

VIA had very capable solutions back in the day. The KT800 was both fast and reliable at a price well below other highend offers from nVidia. I had one Athlon XP rig and it was very stable. Together with a Hercules Prophet 9800 Pro card it was such a good system for playing demanding games like Battlefield 1942.
VIA also had a good Socket 939 solution. The K8T800 Pro, found on highend boards with all the best features, like the ECS Proton KV2 Extreme or the ASUS AV8 Deluxe, was also a reliable and well designed chipset, rock stable with most setups and at least on par with the market dominant nForce3 chipset.
I think via has a kind of bad reputation, relating from much much earlier chipsets. But for the Athlon XP or the Socket 939 there is no reason to avoid VIA based boards at all.
IMO many people underestimate VIA chipsets.

I agree. Back in 2003 I also had an Athlon XP+ processor running on a VIA based motherboard and everything was pretty stable. However, for a retro system today I would probably pick the nForce3 chipset over the one from VIA for maximum performance.

Carlos S. M. wrote:

Depends of the tasks, also what Pentium 4 3.0 Ghz model are you refering? there are 3.0C (Northwood), 3.0E/530/530J/630 (Prescott) and 631 (Cedar Mill)

In some areas, the Athlon XP will outperform the P4 and in others the P4 will outperform the XP, also one of the Athlon XP weak points is the lack of SSE2, also memory perfomance of the Athlon XP wasn't great compared to the P4, when P4 could enjoy higher memory bandwidth and dual channel RAM, the Athlon XP couldn't take advantage of dua channel due to it's bus not begin enough fast, in fact there barely difference between single channel and dual channel on the Athlon XP.

I would like to try some day the Cedar Mill version considering the already high wattage. Does it use the 12V connector of the PSU?