Unless you're not into overclocking and benchmarking as a hobby, that system is redundant.

Maybe you could make it into a PC for friends to use and play retro games via LAN together?

Well it'll keep you warm with winter coming!

It's pretty redundant from a gaming perspective. The only reason to use is it because you want to (which is a perfectly valid reason). Maybe stick Windows 2000 on it or something. Or make an Intel + Nvidia Windows XP PC to go along side your AMD + AMD PC.

Was thinking along the lines as Almoststew1990 and adding a GF6 card and then you will have both the AMD/ATI and Intel/Nvidia camps represented?
Also really like his Win2k idea

It's a great board. SATA works really well in Win9x including the SATA RAID. (like you I didn't mess round with IDE RAID) but it's value is people that want a single Win9x/XP PC.

I've got a GF6800 Ultra in mine but also never use it. The P3 is more fun in 9x and S775 is better for XP but cant bring myself to dismantle it either.

Doornkaat wrote on 2020-10-25, 16:39:

Maybe you could make it into a PC for friends to use and play retro games via LAN together?

This is what I was thinking 😁

bZbZbZ wrote on 2020-10-25, 16:23:

Hi everyone, […]
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Hi everyone,

I've acquired a working Socket 478 system... it's an ASUS P4P800 Deluxe with Pentium 4 3.0 GHz (with hyperthreading).

Any recommendations on what to do with it? I already have four retro computers:

Windows 9x:
Pentium III 700 + Voodoo3 (authentic + Glide)
Athlon 64 2800 s754 + Radeon 9800 Pro (excessive performance)

Windows XP:
Athlon 64 X2 3800 s939 + Radeon X850 Pro (authentic)
Core 2 Quad Q6600 + Radeon 5850 (excessive performance)

So... If I install Windows 98SE on it, I won't get use of the Hyperthreading and it'll probably be very similar to my Athlon 64 s754. If I install Windows XP, this thing will be inferior to my two existing systems. So I'm struggling to think of a use case that brings me something I don't already have.

This motherboard has four IDE connectors which is kind of ridiculous. TBH I'm not interested in IDE RAID, it seems like a lot of effort for no practical benefit these days.

Any suggestions? Thanks in advance!

I'd build it up as a second XP rig and use it alongside your other XP rig to do some old-fashioned LAN retrogaming! 😀

Lately I built a system around a similar config but with the 3,2Ghz/800/512 Northwood and beside the voltage regulator heat where I preferred to add heatsinks on them, it's not bad at all even as a modern Office/generic machine. Using a modern Linux o.s. and with one of the latest HD AGP cards with bridge chip and 2GB DDR1 it's still going quite well. If your cpu is a Prescott should performs as fast as the 2.8Ghz Northwood when SSE3 is not needed. But the Prescott with HT consume quite an amount of watts but might benefit from SSE3 in some apps.
In linux you can activate both Pentium4 frequencies/voltages module control and AMD radeon dynamic power modulation and the PSU benefit from that in idle for sure.
I got the 3,4Ghz Prescott 478 and hope to build a new config with that sometime in future. 😀

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone!

The Windows 2000 idea is interesting... In your opinion is there any practical benefit to Win2k over XP? Even if there isn't, I wouldn't mind playing with that (or dual booting it for demonstration purposes).

I can't think of a single benefit of Win2000 over WinXP.

And it's really a redundant system, considering your other rigs.

Do you know the sSpec of that CPU? If not, can you show a CPU-Z screenshot? If it's a SL7QB, you might be able to install a 64-bit OS (I know you can on the P4P800 SE)

debs3759 wrote on 2020-10-28, 20:48:

Do you know the sSpec of that CPU? If not, can you show a CPU-Z screenshot? If it's a SL7QB, you might be able to install a 64-bit OS (I know you can on the P4P800 SE)

This P4 happens to be a Northwood. So 32-bit only. That's fine with me though, I have other x64 desktop computers that outperform this thing...

bZbZbZ wrote on 2020-10-28, 20:18:

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone!

The Windows 2000 idea is interesting... In your opinion is there any practical benefit to Win2k over XP? Even if there isn't, I wouldn't mind playing with that (or dual booting it for demonstration purposes).

Win2k is my primary OS for Win9x gaming now and plays 99% of my games just fine
OS runs good on P2/P3 era hardware which doesn't apply here but man will it fly . It's much more stable then 98SE, and at least 10 years ago it's 9x compatibility was better then XP's. (work arounds probably exist today, just haven't looked into it)

Plus it did turn 20 this year, I even did a little network to celebrate 😉
Windows 2000 20th Anniversary Client/server build

Suppose that's another idea? Server for rest of your retro machines?

Pure gaming wise though you already well covered so this is always going to be a niche build

I 2nd windows 2000 it's one of my all time favorite OS's