You got the perfect PC for playing Splinter Cell 😀

That would be brilliant for RTS games like Red Alert II and Starcraft and could probably run later games very well.

Very clean as well.

gigaraptor487 wrote:

That would be brilliant for RTS games like Red Alert II and Starcraft and could probably run later games very well.

Very clean as well.

Agreed. Should also run WarCraft 3, C&C Generals, Emperor, Empire Earth, etc quite nicely. 😀

Funny you guys should mention RTS games. I'm in the middle of an Age of Mythology playthrough on this machine. Runs like a charm! Rise of Nations and Caesar III are up next.

Newer games also run very well. Far Cry and Doom 3 are fairly smooth at 1024x768 and medium/high settings. Even F.E.A.R. is playable at 800x600 and low/medium settings.

I'll have some benchmarks up in a bit.

Age of Mythology and Rise of Nations were fun too; completely forgot about the "later" MSFT RTS games...

I remember playing Rise of Nations multiplayer with modified configurations so everyone could have much more units and the doomsday clock took much longer to count-down; haven't had it installed in ages though, so I'm probably not much help in making those changes right now. I do know it works though (Everyone in the LAN has to use the same config settings or it will crash, but he settings don't have to be the original Microsoft rules - I know it's all stored in an XML as well).

Max Payne 1 and 2 would be great choices for this system (well , MP2 could use a bit more GPU power , but this should do fine)

POSTAL 2 and HALF LIFE 2

Age of Mythology... I really need to get back to that game sometime. It's a cool game but I never played it as much as I'd like to.

I've never had a new one, but it's amazing how many P4 Dells show up in thrift stores (and occasionally, next to dumpsters) nowadays. It really shines light on how many they sold back then. I've ended up with several of them and they're good quality systems IMO. They get unfairly criticized in many enthusiast circles. Enthusiasts might not have always liked the expansion options or whatever, and that's fair enough, but they're well made. They use better quality components than many enthusiasts put into their builds.
The only major quality criticism I can make is the models that tried to run a Prescott in a small form factor case. Those of course have heat problems, but to be fair there was market demand for SFF Prescotts so I can't totally blame Dell for bringing some to market.

The one thing about these Dells that I really don't like is the clamshell cases. Maybe it's just because all the ones I've had were used and abused, but I find them difficult to use, sometimes even breaking apart. Perhaps if I had one in good condition I'd like it better.
I really like the case of the Dimension 3000, which just has a simple side panel that unlatches easily.
About a year ago I set my nephew up with a late P4 Dell to use for his games. It runs great, but I wish Speedfan could read the sensors and control the fans. That unfortunately seems to be a problem with Dells in general. I wish the data on their sensors/etc was public so apps like Speedfan could support it.

Used it pretty heavily in its original configuration, which was a Pentium 4 1.8A GHz and GeForce4 MX420.

By any chance, was that 1.8A CPU an SL6LA Northwood C1?
I got one of those CPUs on eBay that came in Dell packaging. It turns out to be an amazing overclocker on boards that allow doing this. By the time it was made, 1.8GHz was way below the capabilities of the C1 core stepping and could reliably run much faster.
I never found it's limit, I had it up to about 2.6GHz on stock voltage and decided to stop because I was worried about the motherboard (I was going over it's FSB limit). It ran for years in a relative's PC at 2.4GHz/533, limited by the board.

maximus wrote:

Newer games also run very well. Far Cry and Doom 3 are fairly smooth at 1024x768 and medium/high settings. Even F.E.A.R. is playable at 800x600 and low/medium settings.

Let's not get carried away here 🤣

For those games I wouldn't want to play on a Pentium 4.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Let's not get carried away here 🤣

For those games I wouldn't want to play on a Pentium 4.

I don't think that's getting carried away, my 3.2GHz P4 kicks those game's buns! In saying that I haven't tried FEAR yet...

@shamino: I agree, Dells have always caught a lot of undeserved flak from the enthusiast community. They're decent, well-built machines, very easy to find, and cheap as dirt. Some of the proprietary stuff is a hassle, sure, but nothing that can't be worked around.

One of my goals in this project was to find out how practical it would be to take a low-end Dell and turn it into something with a little more gaming utility. I'm very happy with the results. It's great because parts like the motherboard and CPU are practically worthless, so I don't have to worry about them the way I do with some of my other components. Plus I get instant offline activation with Dell XP CDs, which is nice.

Regarding the original Pentium 4 chip, I'm sure it was a Northwood, but I'm not sure about the stepping. I don't have it with me at the moment. I'd heard those chips were great overclockers, though. I'll keep it around in case I ever find a 478 board with overclocking capability.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Let's not get carried away here 🤣

For those games I wouldn't want to play on a Pentium 4.

Eh, I always find it interesting to play games on barely adequate hardware. There probably were plenty of people still rocking Pentium 4s and GeForce4 Ti's when the slew of next-gen games hit in 2004. Just scraping by with 30 fps is in a way more authentic than blasting through at 100+ fps with 8x AA, 16x AF, and all settings maxed out. 'Course that can be fun as well 😀

a 3Ghz P4 is just fine for Doom 3 , I ran the game back in the day on an Athlon XP 2100 , and it ran fine.

its the GPU that would need a boost in this case, with a GF4 the game will probably look more like the Xbox version

I always thought those cases were so damn ugly, shame as they are on of the better designs to work on.
I've got nothing against Dell or any of the other big guys though. Apart from their really cheap low end home market stuff the systems make a real good base to build from.

Darkman wrote:

its the GPU that would need a boost in this case, with a GF4 the game will probably look more like the Xbox version

For sure, it's pretty much like the Xbox version on steroids 🤣

I do have an FX 5950 Ultra waiting in the wings... that might liven things up a little. Judging from swaaye's video, it looks like Doom 3 had a lot of optimizations for the NV30 architecture.

if it was up to me, I would have gone one level up and used a Radeon X800 or GF6800 , I remember playing Doom3 with something similar although it might have been an X1650 I was using, but the performance should be similar.

if I remember correctly the first game to really give that Athlon XP 2100 a hard time was C&C3 , even the FMVs became out of sync, nevermind the gameplay, although I did actually finish the game on that machine.
I suspect that P4 would be pretty similar and would probably be the limit for it with a better GPU.

I guess "runs fine" can mean a lot of things 😀

I found Doom 3 at a high resolution can stress a Core 2 Duo with a GeForce 7800 GT. At the top 4:3 resolution of 1600 x 1200 I would be more comfortable with a Core 2 Duo and a Geforce 8 card.

Any chance you can do some benchmarks with your uber Pentium 4?

oh yeah , with a GF7800 , Doom3 maxed would be easy, Im just suggesting ways to make the most of that PC

if I remember correctly I think I played the game at 1024X768, I never really counted the frames, but it certainly didn't stutter in regards to the Core2Duo , I don't think Doom 3 supports multi core (unlike Quake 4 which does), so Im not sure how much faster it would be than an Athlon64 aside for architectural differences.

of course if I was building a dedicated XP machine I would go with something like a Athlon 64/GF7900/R1950/2GB/Audigy2ZS setup , but thats just me.

My XP machine would be Core 2 Duo or Phenom II / Athlon II with a GeForce 8 series and a PCIe X-Fi Titanium.