Well I think having an XP build would be a very good way to utilise what you have there. I don't know if you've seen specifically the video that Phil has on XP gaming but I would check it out here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQDEWNs7e5M

A game like Far Cry seems to only really work properly on XP, due to driver issues and so on. Reflections etc don't work properly on later OS'. Additionally I don't know if it's your sort of thing but Star Wars Republic Commando doesn't support bump mapping past a certain era of cards (7000 series Nvidia I think) so that would be another reason.

I know 2 games doesn't seem like much, but as you go on, you'll find a number of games will have a number of quirks you may or may not struggle with running on later OS'. If I was you and you want to make use of it, having an XP gaming PC would be a nice way to go.

Good thing is with that GPU you have it would smash games like Far Cry at 1600x1200 too, if that's something that bothers you.

Plus with that Sound card and the right speaker setup you could have lovely audio in that era of games.

Always nice to see some Pentium 4 action 😀

The XP era spawns many years, so while Quake III runs at several 100s FPS, try later games like Far Cry or F.E.A.R. and you quickly run into performance limits. Here a Core 2 Duo with a newer PCIe graphics card gets the job done, whereas a P4 with AGP always feels like it struggles.

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Always nice to see some Pentium 4 action 😀

The XP era spawns many years, so while Quake III runs at several 100s FPS, try later games like Far Cry or F.E.A.R. and you quickly run into performance limits. Here a Core 2 Duo with a newer PCIe graphics card gets the job done, whereas a P4 with AGP always feels like it struggles.

I had sort of forgotten about Fear, depends what you consider playable I guess, I think that card would still pull around 30 FPS on good details, although I don't know what kinda CPU bottleneck you'd get, if at all.

That's using a AMD 37000 @ 2.2GHZ.

Would be interesting to know.

Here is my video review on the P4 EE for Socket 478 using an overclocked 7800 GS OC: https://youtu.be/LlUPhs1nM6Q

Gets 90 FPS at 1024 x 768 with medium details. But once you increase resolution, details, and especially soft shadows, it is a much more demanding game.

I agree with you, it's subjective what one feels is "running well".

Arandy wrote:

Pentium4 on steroids...yes but what to do with it?

I still have a P4 Prescott (3.4 GHz) I use for online activity. It is my garage computer that I use when working on the car and need to look up some torque specs, or some DIY youtube videos.

Oh my! Hello! Thank you for all your replies!

Ok, first modification done. I've switched from Win7 to WinXP. I'll fetch some games (Far Cry, F.E.A.R. and so on) asap. 😉

Another question: which ram would you pick? (I have them in my possession)
1) OCZ EL PC4000 2x512MB (stable at 255MHz) cl3-4-4-8 (over 6000+ points with sisoft sandra 2004)
2) currently installed 4x1GB Kingston PC3200 cl2.5-3-3-7 (over 5200+ points with sisoft sandra 2004)

I've got two raptors in my repository, should I fetch them? They are first era of raptors, one WD360 (36GB) and one WD740 (74GB).

Bye 😀

I'd go with two 1 GB sticks and the larger Raptor 😀

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

and especially soft shadows, it is a much more demanding game

F.E.A.R. is mostly GPU bound game and 7800GS is just not enough.

Arandy wrote:

I've got two raptors in my repository, should I fetch them?

Only if you like noisy HDD "like it's 1991".

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Here is my video review on the P4 EE for Socket 478 using an overclocked 7800 GS OC: https://youtu.be/LlUPhs1nM6Q

Gets 90 FPS at 1024 x 768 with medium details. But once you increase resolution, details, and especially soft shadows, it is a much more demanding game.

I agree with you, it's subjective what one feels is "running well".

Amazing how much the 7800 GS has gone up in price on eBay. 😲

Glad that I hoarded the cards when they were still cheap.

I'd go with as much ram as you can fit and do the xp 32 bit ram tweak to allow it to use it all

t3f4l wrote:

I'd go with as much ram as you can fit and do the xp 32 bit ram tweak to allow it to use it all

yes i've left 4x1gb sticks for now, but where i can find that tweak? 😀

Your hardware is also supported by Win98, You could build or duel boot to a seriously fast Win98 PC if that interests you?

I guess the tweak is the PAE switch?
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/librar ... s.85).aspx

chinny22 wrote:

Your hardware is also supported by Win98, You could build or duel boot to a seriously fast Win98 PC if that interests you?

I guess the tweak is the PAE switch?
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/librar ... s.85).aspx

Kinda, its done with a modified kernel, heres a couple of shots of my Windows XP 32-Bit machine running with 8GB Ram (Soon to be 16GB)

chinny22 wrote:

Your hardware is also supported by Win98, You could build or duel boot to a seriously fast Win98 PC if that interests you?

I guess the tweak is the PAE switch?
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/librar ... s.85).aspx

ok! thank you!

Arandy wrote:

I've upgraded it with 4 sticks of Kingston PC3200 DDR400, a Seagate 7200.11 500GB hard drive and overclocked to 3800Mhz/1.56V. T […]
Show full quote

I've upgraded it with 4 sticks of Kingston PC3200 DDR400, a Seagate 7200.11 500GB hard drive and overclocked to 3800Mhz/1.56V.
This is the full part list:
- CPU - Pentium4 Prescott 3.0GHz rev D1 Socket 478
- CPU COOLER - Cooler Master Aquagate Mini R120
- MAINBOARD - ABIT IC7 w/Microcool northpole heatsink installed on northbridge
- RAM - 4x1GB Kingston DDR400 PC3200 (OS sees 3.5GB)
- AGP - CARD ATI Radeon X800XL w/Ati Silencer5
- AUDIO CARD - Sound Blaster Audigy2 PCI
- HDD - Seagate 7200.11 500GB SATA
- PSU - Enermax SFX 265W
- MONITOR - 2x17" Samsung 4:3
- Logitech PS2 Keyboard
- Logitech G1 USB Gaming mouse (good old WoW days)
plus a few fans to keep rams and mosfets cool.

I have 2 sticks of 512MB OCZ EL GOLD PC4000 3-4-4-8 2.8V and they run stable at 255MHz, should I put them in?
Got a Radeon HD3450 512MB AGP with HDMI port, should I put in and connect it to my 32" TV? (Youtube runs much smoother with this one)

Do you want to watch HD video on this machine? If you do, then I suggest installing the HD3450.
The late ATI AGP cards (starting from the HD2000 series) have H.264 acceleration that dramatically offloads the CPU, so that's a major point in favor of those cards.
I have an HD2600 and at least on that generation, it doesn't accelerate Flash/youtube but it will accelerate through the MPC-BE player. Maybe your HD3450 is working on youtube, if that's the case then that's even better.
If the acceleration is working then you should see only negligible CPU usage (like < 5% IIRC) while watching 1080p H.264 videos.

In case you have situations where H.264 is not being accelerated, the Prescott CPU is also a good thing for that application. I have found that it decodes H.264 faster than the Northwood does, and the difference is important in this speed range because if you have to do software decoding, then these CPUs are on the borderline of dropping or not dropping frames in 720p/1080p. I think Hyperthreading is also beneficial for H.264 so you'd want to make sure that's enabled, if H.264 is important to you on this machine.

shamino wrote:

Do you want to watch HD video on this machine? If you do, then I suggest installing the HD3450. The late ATI AGP cards (startin […]
Show full quote

Arandy wrote:

I've upgraded it with 4 sticks of Kingston PC3200 DDR400, a Seagate 7200.11 500GB hard drive and overclocked to 3800Mhz/1.56V. T […]
Show full quote

I've upgraded it with 4 sticks of Kingston PC3200 DDR400, a Seagate 7200.11 500GB hard drive and overclocked to 3800Mhz/1.56V.
This is the full part list:
- CPU - Pentium4 Prescott 3.0GHz rev D1 Socket 478
- CPU COOLER - Cooler Master Aquagate Mini R120
- MAINBOARD - ABIT IC7 w/Microcool northpole heatsink installed on northbridge
- RAM - 4x1GB Kingston DDR400 PC3200 (OS sees 3.5GB)
- AGP - CARD ATI Radeon X800XL w/Ati Silencer5
- AUDIO CARD - Sound Blaster Audigy2 PCI
- HDD - Seagate 7200.11 500GB SATA
- PSU - Enermax SFX 265W
- MONITOR - 2x17" Samsung 4:3
- Logitech PS2 Keyboard
- Logitech G1 USB Gaming mouse (good old WoW days)
plus a few fans to keep rams and mosfets cool.

I have 2 sticks of 512MB OCZ EL GOLD PC4000 3-4-4-8 2.8V and they run stable at 255MHz, should I put them in?
Got a Radeon HD3450 512MB AGP with HDMI port, should I put in and connect it to my 32" TV? (Youtube runs much smoother with this one)

Do you want to watch HD video on this machine? If you do, then I suggest installing the HD3450.
The late ATI AGP cards (starting from the HD2000 series) have H.264 acceleration that dramatically offloads the CPU, so that's a major point in favor of those cards.
I have an HD2600 and at least on that generation, it doesn't accelerate Flash/youtube but it will accelerate through the MPC-BE player. Maybe your HD3450 is working on youtube, if that's the case then that's even better.
If the acceleration is working then you should see only negligible CPU usage (like < 5% IIRC) while watching 1080p H.264 videos.

In case you have situations where H.264 is not being accelerated, the Prescott CPU is also a good thing for that application. I have found that it decodes H.264 faster than the Northwood does, and the difference is important in this speed range because if you have to do software decoding, then these CPUs are on the borderline of dropping or not dropping frames in 720p/1080p. I think Hyperthreading is also beneficial for H.264 so you'd want to make sure that's enabled, if H.264 is important to you on this machine.

I agree with your analysis. 😀

From my POV, I think that all depends on what tasks this machine will be put on. For retro WinXP gaming, I'd probably put in X800XL and 2x512MB PC4000 OCZ. For Home office and Internet surfing I'd probably put in HD3450 and 4 sticks of 1GB PC3200.
So far the manchine has two drives with WinXP and Win7 respectively...so I can choose wich drive to start at boot. That said, WinXP is much much faster than Win7 on this machine. And I believe Youtube experience is much smoother on WinXP compared to Win7 (using Google Chrome Browser).

😀