The Serpent Rider wrote on 2024-05-14, 18:38:

Socket 478 3rd party coolers are harder to find and usually less effective than what's available for AMD s754/939/AM2/AM3/AM4 which incredibly all use the same clip

Irrelevant at this day, because you can 3D print Socket 478 mountings brackets for Socket AM2 coolers.

Cool, I didn't know there were mounting brackets. Do you know if they're available to purchase? I've seen tons of brackets on AliExpress to adapt LGA 775/115x/2011 to AM2, but I haven't seen s478. I don't have access to a 3D printer, so access to purchase instead of 3D printing is relevant to me...

Do you know if they're available to purchase?

Unfortunately, I can't recommend something online, because I bought mine locally.

But here's an example of such bracket: https://www.redpah.com/product/2353/socket-47 … cooling-adapter

bZbZbZ wrote on 2024-05-15, 14:19:

I don't have access to a 3D printer

You don't need to, there's services that print stuff on demand - pretty much the same as ordering a readymade part, other than that you'll have to upload a design file first.

elszgensa wrote on 2024-05-15, 15:13:

bZbZbZ wrote on 2024-05-15, 14:19:

I don't have access to a 3D printer

You don't need to, there's services that print stuff on demand - pretty much the same as ordering a readymade part, other than that you'll have to upload a design file first.

My local public library has a 3d printer. Upload your .stl file. Pick your color. Pay $0.10 a gram. They know me by name now.

dr_st wrote on 2024-05-15, 06:33:

My first P4 computer was such a system. It is a Compaq Evo N610c with 1.8GHz P4-M Northwood and ATI 7500. The only game I recall playing on it was Rayman 3, but there must have been a few others. The problem with that laptop is the poor thermal design which cooks the hard drive. Nowadays if I needed to revive it, I would probably use an IDE-to-SSD adapter of some sort.

that sounds like a nice revival project! that ati card, as modest as it might be, would handle various less demanding games with ease and few more demanding games too

There are several PCI goods with very good DOS support. Especially if you run the DOS games within Win 98. And there's always SBEMU.

That AM2 cooler bracket for 478 looks flimsy as hell. That tiny sliver of PLA or whatever is not going to keep a big AM2 tower cooler mounted with good pressure.

Not to forget p4 chipsets/boards with 3volt AGP support: SiS 645DX, VIA P4X266.

Linus did a Pentium 4 video. It's over, bros.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2024-05-20, 11:11:

Linus did a Pentium 4 video. It's over, bros.

Not really. He did a 'let's dig up what a magazine said was the best system 23 years ago and build it' build, not an ultimate retro anything.

And it looks like he landed at a 1.8GHz Willamette socket 423 with 512 megs of RDRAM. Odd place to land if you were trying to build an ultimate retro system...

The only thing I think he might have massively increased demand for is that funky sound card...

VivienM wrote on 2024-05-20, 11:24:

Not really. He did a 'let's dig up what a magazine said was the best system 23 years ago and build it' build, not an ultimate re […]
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The Serpent Rider wrote on 2024-05-20, 11:11:

Linus did a Pentium 4 video. It's over, bros.

Not really. He did a 'let's dig up what a magazine said was the best system 23 years ago and build it' build, not an ultimate retro anything.

And it looks like he landed at a 1.8GHz Willamette socket 423 with 512 megs of RDRAM. Odd place to land if you were trying to build an ultimate retro system...

The only thing I think he might have massively increased demand for is that funky sound card...

Which sound card?

Also which magazine thought a Williamette S423 with RDRAM was the best system? 😁

appiah4 wrote on 2024-05-20, 12:43:

Which sound card?

Also which magazine thought a Williamette S423 with RDRAM was the best system? 😁

Some Hercules thing, I think it was, with a crazy external breakout box. (And I call it a "crazy external breakout box" as someone who owned an Audigy Platinum eX at the time... this thing is much crazier than Creative's, it had all the outputs on the breakout box)

The video says the name of the magazine (Maximum PC maybe?), but I don't think they were necessarily wrong for a spring 2001 no-budget-constraints build. What were the other options? A Thunderbird Athlon? Tualatin PIIIs weren't out yet, a 1GHz P3 Coppermine would have felt dated. The P4 platform didn't really move away from RDRAM seriously until the i865 family and that's two years later.

That being said, some of their other recommendations aged even worse, e.g. IBM DeathStar 75GXP hard drives.

AthlonXP was released in 2001 so a P4 was not the best PC you could buy in 2001.. As for 2000, the Thunderbird 1.2GHz was better than Williamette 1.5GHz.

It was the Hercules Game Theater XP sound card.

appiah4 wrote on 2024-05-20, 13:22:

AthlonXP was released in 2001 so a P4 was not the best PC you could buy in 2001..

Depends on the month... and Wikipedia has the Athlon XP as released in October, 2001, so that's 6 months after this magazine's publication. In October 2001 your Intel choice would have been a Willamette s. 478 1.9 or 2.0GHz with RDRAM, which... would have made you happy enough until Northwood hit in early January 2002 and, oops, it doesn't run on your Willamette s. 478 board with your PC800 RDRAM. (Been there, done that, had the Willamette for 4.5 years.)

Frankly, with the benefit of hindsight, I would argue that 2001 was a bad year for PC buying. If you had a PII/PIII from 1998 or so, you would have had a lot better options in 2002 - Athlon XP, Northwood, GeForce 4, etc. Then you keep that system with a few upgrades until 2006 and Conroe... (and then you keep that Conroe until Sandy/Ivy Bridge, then you... go the dark side with Ryzen, I guess)

I mean, even before AXP, the Athlon 1.4GHz was very often faster even then the fastest Willamette, but... not always, and P4 was the king in Quake 3 and some other things, I don't think that there was clearly one that was faster, but, P4 was a bad buy because it was way too expensive with rdram and so on,
perhaps for a ultimate, no price concerns PC at the time the P4 made more sense than, I think it was the more "premium" option, rdram, Intel 850 motherboard and so on.

but, with hindsight, the Athlon made a lot more sense, it had a better upgrade path and so on.
well, even at the time, it was far better value.

appiah4 wrote on 2024-05-20, 12:43:

Also which magazine thought a Williamette S423 with RDRAM was the best system? 😁

There was a fair bit of marketing hype in 2001 for the P4. A lot of system builders advertised the Pentium 4 as their high-end option.

Interestingly CGW maintained the Athlon for their 'killer rig' until late 2001 when they switched to the 2.0 GHz P4.

It was called good because those P4 CPUs came with 850/RDRAM while majority of users were still on SDRAM. The boost was considerable and DDR266 was not yet widespread.

VivienM wrote on 2024-05-20, 13:35:

Frankly, with the benefit of hindsight, I would argue that 2001 was a bad year for PC buying. If you had a PII/PIII from 1998 or so, you would have had a lot better options in 2002 - Athlon XP, Northwood, GeForce 4, etc. Then you keep that system with a few upgrades until 2006 and Conroe... (and then you keep that Conroe until Sandy/Ivy Bridge, then you... go the dark side with Ryzen, I guess)

At the time, the Geforce 3 numbers looked inarguably awesome. Some of the ram on my TNT2 had gotten flakey and my brief flirtation with a Radeon DDR was ruined by the state of the drivers at the time, so I had to do something. I didn't regret that purchase at all. I do regret trying to make my Geforce3 passively cooled though. I epoxied a 40mm tall socket 7 heat sink directly on the die. Worked OK for a few months, but it didn't survive the following summer. I didn't have AC.

On the other hand I had no trouble holding off on the P4 or the Thunderbird Athlons and waited for the Athlon XP. As stated before, I didn't have AC and I didn't need a space heater.

So while a P4 might be good for retro, I don't have the personal connection to make it nostalgic. But I did find a Sony VAIO R series the other day. The case has a hole through the middle. Might be the single heaviest case I've ever lifted for its volume. Finding drivers has been like looking for a 4 leaf clover. Replacing the broken parts has improved my tinker cad skills immensely. So I am making new memories here. I'll remember this guy.

VivienM wrote on 2024-05-20, 13:35:

Frankly, with the benefit of hindsight, I would argue that 2001 was a bad year for PC buying. If you had a PII/PIII from 1998 or so, you would have had a lot better options in 2002 - Athlon XP, Northwood, GeForce 4, etc. Then you keep that system with a few upgrades until 2006 and Conroe... (and then you keep that Conroe until Sandy/Ivy Bridge, then you... go the dark side with Ryzen, I guess)

No love for Coffee Lake CPUs?

I'm still running an i7-8700k in my "modern" gaming rig. 😁