Cyberdyne wrote:Strangely the P4 era especially Socket 423 and Socket 478 are a dead generation to me, Athlon XP covered that era just fine.
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Strangely the P4 era especially Socket 423 and Socket 478 are a dead generation to me, Athlon XP covered that era just fine.
Sure those Socket 775 Dual Core P4 were beasts, but they were also power hungry.
I would use Athlon XP for a fast 98SE machine all the way.
PS. I played Doom 3 on a fast Athlon XP system, and it was smooth, even Quake 4, but that lowered frames, if lot of action was present.
Same here, but I have a thing for socket 423 systems since I've never seen one back in the day. They also had sort of a mythical status in local PC magazines - they used to tease about the upcoming new pentium 4, RDRAM and stuff like that 😀. Of course things changed for me some time later when I had to choose between socket A and socket 478 - the latter being much more expensive. The firm I worked at part time had me build up a 2.2 GHz P4 and an athlon XP 2400+ for different customers. Needless to say, the athlon XP was a bit faster even if it ran 200Mhz slower. It was also quite a bit cheaper then the P4, so picking between the two platforms was very easy.
Regardless, I went trough some lengths to acquire a socket 423 system for my collection, and it's been great fun to mess around with.
Tetrium wrote:
s478 is in a way quite good I think, 12v CPU and some of these boards could work with AGP 2x cards.
To me, Socket A is kinda like a super Pentium 3.
Socket A is to socket 370 what socket 370 is to super 7. Much better memory performance, better CPU to PCI / AGP speeds, better I/O, - you name it. Also, it's very easy to find socket A boards that will run 3.3v AGP cards, while it's quite hard to find 478 boards with 3.3v agp pots - and most of the ones I did come across are either really slow or rather unstable.
Each platform has distinct advantages and disadvantages:
Socket A PROs:
- flexible - supports CPU's ranging from 500Mhz up to 2400Mhz.
- some boards have ISA slots - usually KT133 and some KT266 boards
- lots of socket A boards support 3.3v AGP cards - this is needed for running 3dfx cards like the V3, V4 and V5. KT133, KT266 and KT333 boads as well as some SiS boards support 3.3v agp cards. KT333A also supports fast Barton CPUs. This extra compatibility with older hardware is what makes socket A special. ISA? possible. AGP 3dfx cards? no problem.
- use less power and make less heat / noise then socket 478 platforms* - this is only true for later socket A boards paired with athlon XP processors. Early athlon CPUs made quite a bit of heat, and they were usually paired with crappy / noisy coolers.
Socket A Cons:
- quite a few crappy low cost boards were made - failing capacitors and even VRMs are not uncommon. These also tend to be unstable when they do run.
- while most skt A machines will usually run with any cheap ATX PSU, high-end builds (3000+, 3200+) need decent power and cooling. A 350W 80+ PSU is preferred, and one with a strong 5V rail at that. This is a problem since most modern PSUs have weak 5v rails and strong 12V rails to comply with the needs of modern hardware.
Socket 478 PROs:
- you can find faster CPUs for the 478 socket then you can for socket A - namely 3.4 and 3.6 GHz pentium 4's. There's also 64 bit compatible 478 CPUs. As such, the faster socket 478 PC money can buy is faster then the fastest socket A machine. This is sort of a mute point, since you could comfortably (and cheaply) move to LGA775 or 754/939 and get much better performance.
- the intel i865 and 875 chipsets are some of the most stable platforms form that time frame. Perfect drivers and compatibility with old and new operating systems
- sk 478 boards make heavy use of the 12v aux CPU connector. This lets you use modern PSUs w/o any issues - unlike socket A builds where you need a strong 5v rail even if you're using a motherboard with an aux cpu power connector. For some reason even nf2 boards draw cpu power from the 5v rail, despide the 12v aux. The only sk A board I've seen witch truly draws CPU power from the 12v rail is the Abit AN7, but it also taxes the 5v rail for some reason.
Socket 478 Cons:
- heat and power - lots of it. While most low to mid end sk478 machines ran OK, top end machines equipped with 2.8+ GHz prescott CPUs ran very hot and used loads of power. If you want to build one of these get a fancy PSU - preferably 450w 80+ or more.
- unlike socket A boards, skt478 comes with 1.5v AGP 4x or 8x. You could only run PCI 3dfx cards in these. There is the occasional VIA/SiS socket 478 board with 3.3v agp, but these are usually either slow or unstable.
As a side-note, my socket 478 boards seem to keep committing suicide. My GA-8IPE1000-G blew a mosfet and warped the CPU cooler bracket. My P4P800 Deluxe just up and died (NB failed), and my P4P800-X also blew a mosfet. This wile using a 3.2GHz P4 (witch also died with the P4P800-X), a 450w FSP 80+ PSU and a Tuniq Tower 120 cooler + aditional fan to blow on the mosfets (lesson learned from the 8IPE1000). In contrast my HP vecta VL with a P4P800-M / 250w PSU and a 2.66GHz northwood and HP cooler is still happily chugging along.