Be careful with shopping for the late P4 CPUs - the cheaper ones are usually LGA775, not mPGA478.
That listing doesn't seem to specify, so you'd have to try to figure it out from the Dell part number.

Is that 2.8Ghz a Northwood HT (HyperThreading) 800MHz FSB model? Because if so, there may be very little incentive to upgrade to anything faster. It's generally good practice to avoid the fastest possible CPU for each socket, as they command a premium.

106$ for a Pentium 4 EE 3.4 is certainly not super cheap in my book. I do not know of this store, but keep in mind even if the ad is legit, it could be referring to a S775 part.

Honestly, I'd say avoid Prescott. It's a lot tougher to cool and clock for clock there are occasions where it even regresses in performance slightly, compared to the Northwood core. I'd shoot for a Northwood 3.2 if you can find one on the cheap, but even that is just a 400MHz difference from your existing CPU.

There was a cheeky little space heater called the P4 3.2Ghz on socket 478.
But I would only get that one if its really really cheap because its not much of a power upgrade from your 2.8 and it carries almost no kudos as its not the Extreme Edition.

But before you buy remember it is a total space heater of a thing and its power usage will get you noticed on the national grid these days with its 82 watts (most of which it used all the time, and its 70°C "case temp"

One for the die hards out there Im sure!

Well, the Northwood 3.2 and 3.4 ain't that bad. The Prescott 3.2 and 3.4 on the other hand are very power hungry for their time.

I might try crap like trying to get an SL88F for $5 and strapping it to 800 FSB

Thanks for all your replies. If I had to guess, I believe it's a Northwood with HT. Will have to confirm when I get home later this evening. Looking into it, I think that the Northwoods 3GHz and up had 1MB of L2 at least instead of 512KB, but I'm confident that it wouldn't be a noticeable difference on its own🤷‍♂️

I'd be inclined to suggest sticking with what you have. What software are you going for?
1) If it's 98SE, then any high-GHz Northwood/Preshot is more than fast enough. Way more than fast enough.
2) If it's XP, well... you might as well look for a cheap later LGA775 board/CPU or a sandy/ivy bridge with PCI-E. i865 with AGP is not exactly the greatest XP machine around...

Also, what are you doing cooling-wise? If you reuse your existing cooler, chances are, noise will go up with a hotter CPU. If you were looking for something new, well, how easy is it to find a top of the line socket 478 cooler in 2023?

It's a shame how Intel scrubbed all the old stuff on their web site, because it would have been nice to get a CPU support list.

Ryder252 wrote on 2023-10-27, 21:19:

Thanks for all your replies. If I had to guess, I believe it's a Northwood with HT. Will have to confirm when I get home later this evening. Looking into it, I think that the Northwoods 3GHz and up had 1MB of L2 at least instead of 512KB, but I'm confident that it wouldn't be a noticeable difference on its own🤷‍♂️

1MB L2 is a Prescott. Most often they perform worse clock for clock than a Northwood (given it's an 800 MHz with hyper threading) only in few scenarios, will the bigger cache compensate for the longer pipeline of the Prescott ...

H3nrik V! wrote on 2023-10-27, 22:47:

1MB L2 is a Prescott. Most often they perform worse clock for clock than a Northwood (given it's an 800 MHz with hyper threading) only in few scenarios, will the bigger cache compensate for the longer pipeline of the Prescott ...

Ah, my mistake. Didn't look close enough at the "List of Pentium 4 Processors" Wikipedia page 🤣. To answer the other question, yes I unfortunately have XP on it - but it's for my dad, and I already have a killer 775 C2Q system for myself, so I figured I'd ask some ppl who know a ton more than I do about it.

If it was up to me, I'd have a nice Win2000 installation on it.

Ryder252 wrote on 2023-10-27, 23:17:

To answer the other question, yes I unfortunately have XP on it - but it's for my dad, and I already have a killer 775 C2Q system for myself, so I figured I'd ask some ppl who know a ton more than I do about it.

So... give your dad the killer 775 C2Q system and build a killer ivy bridge XP system 😀

VivienM wrote on 2023-10-27, 23:19:

So... give your dad the killer 775 C2Q system and build a killer ivy bridge XP system 😀

He wants to keep using this one though, he's stubborn🤣

Well okay, interesting development: System Information lists the cpu as Family 15 Model 3 - Prescott. To confirm, I installed CPU-Z and ran it; sure enough, it's shown to be a P4 HT 2.8 Prescott, even with a megabyte of L2. Funny how all signs pointed to it being a Northwood! Should be officially "Pentium 4 HT 2.8E rev. C0".