The real question is, what do you (your son) plans to use this for. For Windows 98 the current Willamette is perfectly fine. You don't **need** to upgrade for that. Especially for the graphics card options that are available low profile. The MX440, given it's a 128bit version, is also a great card for W98.

For XP gaming, it'll be underpowered whatever you do.

If it's 1.7GHz Celeron (128kB cache) everything else will be faster. Go for 400MHz FSB Northwood P4. Those are 512kB cache.

But still SDRAM and P4 is not good combination...
...which could already be sufficient for Windows 98 like RandomStranger said.

Yeah, likely Win98 or WinME with a possible Windows 2000 dual boot. No XP on this machine.

It's a P4 1.7. As long as a 400fsb Northwood will work I might go for that. The extra cache (512 vs 256) might be a benefit in some instances.

Out of curiosity, how much faster (and cooler running) was a 1.8ghz Northwood vs a 1.8ghz Willamette?

The practical performance difference back then was negligible. Something like 5-10% closer to the bottom-end in VGA limited uses.

Regarding heat production, officially the Northwood has a little bit higher TDP. In practice I'd expect they are the same.

RandomStranger wrote on 2023-02-10, 08:53:

The practical performance difference back then was negligible. Something like 5-10% closer to the bottom-end in VGA limited uses.

Regarding heat production, officially the Northwood has a little bit higher TDP. In practice I'd expect they are the same.

It seems that the opposite is true. That is, Northwood is actually cooler. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_P … um_4_processors

zyga64 wrote on 2023-02-10, 09:45:

RandomStranger wrote on 2023-02-10, 08:53:

The practical performance difference back then was negligible. Something like 5-10% closer to the bottom-end in VGA limited uses.

Regarding heat production, officially the Northwood has a little bit higher TDP. In practice I'd expect they are the same.

It seems that the opposite is true. That is, Northwood is actually cooler. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_P … um_4_processors

I checked it in Intel's database, there they claim it's 68.1W for the Northwood and 66.7W for the Willy.
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/produ … ifications.html
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/produ … ifications.html
Though according to your Wiki page, there is a newer stepping for the NW that does have marginally lower TDP than the Willy. Still 0.6W difference is basically nothing. Though that's true for 1.4W as well.

If running Win98 then even the existing CPU is overkill for Win98. If its upgrading just because you can, then that's totally fine. Which model SFF is it, the good things about these old office PC's is typically they started out with good documentation of supported hardware.

Both your GPU choices are fine for Win98 even if they are a bottleneck You can get something like a GF 6200 in low profile which is better matched to the P4 but compatibility suffers. I'd stick with your original choices. Depending what games your playing you may get away with the onboard video. It wont be great but low profile AGP cards attract a premium these days which I'm not prepared to pay.

No onboard video (gx240). It came with a low profile "Rage 128 pro ultra agp" (oem card) and performance looks to be about TNT2 levels, maybe slightly less. So a 440mx or 5200 should give a bit of a boost.

Mid-level Northwoods are under $10 shipped on ebay so for that amount I might as well play around. I'm sure the stock 1.7 would be fine but what's the fun in that?

Originally it came with XP on it but I couldn't imagine running hardly any XP games on this thing.