The Celeron D should be quite a bit more powerful!

Personally I would go for a Northwood P4, but if it's between these two I would go with the Celeron D 😀

Can the board actually support Willamette AND Prescott? (IME its usually one or the other)

Anyways, the Celeron D should be faster across the board - it's clocked almost 1GHz higher, it has SSE3 (this can make a big difference in some applications/games), and has the same amount of cache (both are 256k). It also probably has a higher FSB which will help too. I'd go that route if the board will support it. If you wanted to upgrade "beyond" the Celeron D I would either overclock it (mine was a great clocker), or get a similar-era and similar-clock Pentium 4, which will bring a lot more cache and potentially hyper-threading into the picture, both of which can help performance. The P4 HT route shouldn't be terribly expensive, so you might want to consider that as well if your goal is to squeeze the most out of this system (and the cooling can handle it - a copper-core sink and decent exhaust/intake setup should do fine).

Reliability should be the same either way unless the board has an issue with one or the other or there's defective hardware somewhere.

At first I thought that too,but then I found this on Wikipedia:

"Despite its many improvements, the Prescott core of the Celeron D had at least one major drawback - heat. Unlike the fairly cool-running Northwood Celeron, the Prescott-256 had a class-rated TDP of 73 W, which prompted Intel to include a more intricate copper core/aluminum finned cooler to help handle the additional heat."

My heatsink is a "homemade" one,and it's rather small.
It's built from a old Intel heatsink brick,a fan that sounds like a plane engine and 2 ASUS levers from a ASUS heatsink.

My board supports Prescott and also Willamette. (I think it supports Northwood too but I don't have any Northwood CPU)
Also,I can overclock the CPUs.

PcBytes wrote:

At first I thought that too,but then I found this on Wikipedia: […]
Show full quote

At first I thought that too,but then I found this on Wikipedia:

"Despite its many improvements, the Prescott core of the Celeron D had at least one major drawback - heat. Unlike the fairly cool-running Northwood Celeron, the Prescott-256 had a class-rated TDP of 73 W, which prompted Intel to include a more intricate copper core/aluminum finned cooler to help handle the additional heat."

My heatsink is a "homemade" one,and it's rather small.
It's built from a old Intel heatsink brick,a fan that sounds like a plane engine and 2 ASUS levers from a ASUS heatsink.

My board supports Prescott and also Willamette. (I think it supports Northwood too but I don't have any Northwood CPU)
Also,I can overclock the CPUs.

If it supports Willamette and Prescott it will support Northwood (Northwood is "inbetween" them chronologically). As far as the rest:

- Willamette chips do not overclock worth beans.

- Celeron D (like anything else Prescott) has a horrible reputation for being hot enough to initiate a China Syndrome-style meltdown, but reality is far less dramatic. They did indeed ship with the copper-core 478 heatsinks (which are not bad heatsinks, and are pretty easily found these days (I'm seeing a lot between $5 and $15 on ebay)), but they didn't run outlandishly hot. At 73W (and which chip is that for?) it's lower than the top-spec Willamette 2GHz (the 1.7GHz has a TDP, according to Wikipedia, of 64W).

My advice would be to go with the Celeron D, and keep an eye on the temperatures - if it's running very high (like over 65* C) you should upgrade the cooling. The Willamette won't run all that much cooler though, so if it's okay with the Willamette, the Celeron D shouldn't be a problem. If it's already overheating with the Willamette I'd say it's time to upgrade your cooler regardless.

obobskivich wrote:

Can the board actually support Willamette AND Prescott? (IME its usually one or the other)

My Asrock board supports all CPUs. Willamette, Nortwood and Prescott:

http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/P4i65G/

The Asus board also supports it. Abit not. So it depends on the board really.

obobskivich wrote:

If it supports Willamette and Prescott it will support Northwood (Northwood is "inbetween" them chronologically). As far as the […]
Show full quote

PcBytes wrote:

At first I thought that too,but then I found this on Wikipedia: […]
Show full quote

At first I thought that too,but then I found this on Wikipedia:

"Despite its many improvements, the Prescott core of the Celeron D had at least one major drawback - heat. Unlike the fairly cool-running Northwood Celeron, the Prescott-256 had a class-rated TDP of 73 W, which prompted Intel to include a more intricate copper core/aluminum finned cooler to help handle the additional heat."

My heatsink is a "homemade" one,and it's rather small.
It's built from a old Intel heatsink brick,a fan that sounds like a plane engine and 2 ASUS levers from a ASUS heatsink.

My board supports Prescott and also Willamette. (I think it supports Northwood too but I don't have any Northwood CPU)
Also,I can overclock the CPUs.

If it supports Willamette and Prescott it will support Northwood (Northwood is "inbetween" them chronologically). As far as the rest:

- Willamette chips do not overclock worth beans.

- Celeron D (like anything else Prescott) has a horrible reputation for being hot enough to initiate a China Syndrome-style meltdown, but reality is far less dramatic. They did indeed ship with the copper-core 478 heatsinks (which are not bad heatsinks, and are pretty easily found these days (I'm seeing a lot between $5 and $15 on ebay)), but they didn't run outlandishly hot. At 73W (and which chip is that for?) it's lower than the top-spec Willamette 2GHz (the 1.7GHz has a TDP, according to Wikipedia, of 64W).

My advice would be to go with the Celeron D, and keep an eye on the temperatures - if it's running very high (like over 65* C) you should upgrade the cooling. The Willamette won't run all that much cooler though, so if it's okay with the Willamette, the Celeron D shouldn't be a problem. If it's already overheating with the Willamette I'd say it's time to upgrade your cooler regardless.

Well,the temps were those:
Celeron D - 67-70*C
Willamette 1.7GHz - 45-50*

Well,it seems the Willamette is cooler than the Celeron D.How does that happen?

If it helps,CPU thermal paste is "Manhattan".(that's the brand,not where I bought it from)

Also,I tried overclocking the Willamette from 1.7 up to 2.50GHz (so a bit lower than the Celeron D).
While the BIOS was showing the correct speed of 2.50GHz,Windows was detecting it as the normal 1.7GHz speed. I realized that was the CPU name string and not the real speed it was running at 🤣 (I know that from a Foxconn BIOS,where I overclocked once the Celeron D up to 3.0GHz but the CPU name string was still 2.66GHz)

Got no Northwood P4 lying around?

A 2.4, 2.6 or 2.8 model should offer a good compromise between performance and power draw.

Northwood is built on a smaller process and runs on a lower voltage, so it should run even cooler 😀

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Got no Northwood P4 lying around?

The only one I have is a 1.8A but it has bent pins and I don't even know if it works.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

So it depends on the board really.

Most definitely. 😀 I only bring it up because my 2.0GHz Willamette has more-often-than-not been a problem with newer 478 boards, and having bought a board or two over the years that end up being no good for it I don't want to see others repeat the same mistake. 😊

I knew there was an Asus (P4P800 if I'm not mistaken) that supports basically everything (iirc it can even take Pentium M with an adapter 🙄), but otherwise I'm not aware of many other "new" boards that play nice with Willamette. That ASRock looks very interesting. 😎

PcBytes wrote:

Well,the temps were those:
Celeron D - 67-70*C
Willamette 1.7GHz - 45-50*

That's too hot for the Celeron D, and I'm honestly surprised to see such an outlandish difference. I'm suspecting there might be a mounting or measurement discrepancy (e.g. one chip is reporting inaccurate information).

Well,it seems the Willamette is cooler than the Celeron D.How does that happen?

It's ~9W TDP lower; that shouldn't produce a 20* C difference though. 😳

If it helps,CPU thermal paste is "Manhattan".(that's the brand,not where I bought it from)

Never heard of it, but that isn't surprising (there's tons of different thermal paste formulations out there).

Also,I tried overclocking the Willamette from 1.7 up to 2.50GHz (so a bit lower than the Celeron D).
While the BIOS was showing the correct speed of 2.50GHz,Windows was detecting it as the normal 1.7GHz speed. I realized that was the CPU name string and not the real speed it was running at 🤣 (I know that from a Foxconn BIOS,where I overclocked once the Celeron D up to 3.0GHz but the CPU name string was still 2.66GHz)

2.50GHz is world-record class for a 1.7GHz Willamette. 😲 Did you verify this with CPU-Z? How hot did it run at 2.5GHz? Also I'd say submit your results to HWBot: http://hwbot.org/benchmark/cpu_frequency/rank … t=0#interval=20

Anyways, to your original question I'd probably upgrade the heatsink to one of the Intel copper-core models and use the Celeron D. Otherwise use the Willamette because at 70* C you're risking damage to the Celeron.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Got no Northwood P4 lying around?

A 2.4, 2.6 or 2.8 model should offer a good compromise between performance and power draw.

Northwood is built on a smaller process and runs on a lower voltage, so it should run even cooler 😀

Technically the Celeron D is lower voltage and smaller process (its a 90nm part; Northwood is 130nm), but I'm very surprised by the temperatures being reported. I know when I had one a few years ago it didn't approach that level, even dramatically overclocked, but it was using the copper-core heatsink.

Northwood *is* however a better power/performance compromise, as many of the lower clocked ones run under 70W TDP and perform better than Willamette. 😀

obobskivich wrote:

Can the board actually support Willamette AND Prescott? (IME its usually one or the other)

http://www.cpu-upgrade.com/mb-ASUS/P4P800_SE.html#cs as the example. There are Willamettes in the 478-pin case. 423-pin variants aren't supported of course.
AFAIK, this board (and others from the 865/875 line) is supporting ALL socket478 CPUs (after the BIOS upgrade). I wish ASUS made something similar for the socket370 (no ISA and Mendochino support for Tualatin compatible boards, TUSL-2C as the example)...
The only trouble with Celeron D - many motherboards need a BIOS upgrade, because these CPUs were released in 2004 (Jyl) and the G1 stepping of Prescott/Celeron D is from 2005 (Nov).

Gamecollector wrote:

http://www.cpu-upgrade.com/mb-ASUS/P4P800_SE.html#cs as the example. There are Willamettes in the 478-pin case. 423-pin variants […]
Show full quote

obobskivich wrote:

Can the board actually support Willamette AND Prescott? (IME its usually one or the other)

http://www.cpu-upgrade.com/mb-ASUS/P4P800_SE.html#cs as the example. There are Willamettes in the 478-pin case. 423-pin variants aren't supported of course.
AFAIK, this board (and others from the 865/875 line) is supporting ALL socket478 CPUs (after the latest BIOS of course). I wish ASUS made something similar for socket370 (no ISA and Mendochino support for Tualatin compatible boards)...
The only trouble with Celeron D - many motherboards need BIOS upgrade, because this CPU was released in mid 2004.

I modified my board to run an EPOX EP-4PGM2I BIOS,and while the BIOS is from 2003 it supports Celeron D CPUs.
Also,my board is not a P4P800 SE. It's a P4P800-VM.

obobskivich wrote:

2.50GHz is world-record class for a 1.7GHz Willamette. 😲 Did you verify this with CPU-Z? How hot did it run at 2.5GHz?

Haven't tried CPU-Z yet but the temps were 49-50*.

Honestly I was dumbfounded to see how cool it was even though I've overclocked it to 2.5GHz.

I'll try CPU-Z and see what it says about it.

PcBytes wrote:

Haven't tried CPU-Z yet but the temps were 49-50*.

Honestly I was dumbfounded to see how cool it was even though I've overclocked it to 2.5GHz.

I'll try CPU-Z and see what it says about it.

I'd be curious to see what CPU-Z, AIDA, Astra, etc have to say about the overclock. If it's really working at those temperatures and that clock I'd say leave well enough alone and just go with it. 🤣

Alright,so first I found the EPoX BIOS didn't even do a thing to OC the CPU,so I changed it to a Foxconn BIOS.
Good news is that now the CPU really overclocks.
Bad news is that with this BIOS I can go up to only 132MHz .

I think 2.21GHz is still a world record.
Here's the CPU-Z file,so you can see that it really runs at 2.21GHz.

If I can find a BIOS that can up the FSB over 150MHz,I'll do another CPU-Z file at 2.55GHz.

PcBytes wrote:

At first I thought that too,but then I found this on Wikipedia: […]
Show full quote

At first I thought that too,but then I found this on Wikipedia:

"Despite its many improvements, the Prescott core of the Celeron D had at least one major drawback - heat. Unlike the fairly cool-running Northwood Celeron, the Prescott-256 had a class-rated TDP of 73 W, which prompted Intel to include a more intricate copper core/aluminum finned cooler to help handle the additional heat."

My heatsink is a "homemade" one,and it's rather small.
It's built from a old Intel heatsink brick,a fan that sounds like a plane engine and 2 ASUS levers from a ASUS heatsink.

My board supports Prescott and also Willamette. (I think it supports Northwood too but I don't have any Northwood CPU)
Also,I can overclock the CPUs.

Geez, my Phenom II x4 only uses 90w. Is it even worthwhile to build a Prescott machine when it uses so much power?

PcBytes wrote:

Also,I tried overclocking the Willamette from 1.7 up to 2.50GHz (so a bit lower than the Celeron D).
While the BIOS was showing the correct speed of 2.50GHz,Windows was detecting it as the normal 1.7GHz speed. I realized that was the CPU name string and not the real speed it was running at 🤣 (I know that from a Foxconn BIOS,where I overclocked once the Celeron D up to 3.0GHz but the CPU name string was still 2.66GHz)

My guess is that Intel added the speed rating to the name string to prevent remarking of it's chips.

PcBytes wrote:

Alright,so first I found the EPoX BIOS didn't even do a thing to OC the CPU,so I changed it to a Foxconn BIOS. Good news is that […]
Show full quote

Alright,so first I found the EPoX BIOS didn't even do a thing to OC the CPU,so I changed it to a Foxconn BIOS.
Good news is that now the CPU really overclocks.
Bad news is that with this BIOS I can go up to only 132MHz .

I think 2.21GHz is still a world record.
Here's the CPU-Z file,so you can see that it really runs at 2.21GHz.

CPUZ.zip

If I can find a BIOS that can up the FSB over 150MHz,I'll do another CPU-Z file at 2.55GHz.

Unfortunately I can't say I'm surprised that it wasn't actually clocking that high, and I highly doubt it will reach 2.55GHz. 2.2GHz sounds much more reasonable (I've put my 2.0GHz to around that in the past); not quite world-record worthy, but respectable for a Willamette. 😊

I'm guessing using the non-standard BIOS is why you're having or have had problems. What does the board do with its proper BIOS loaded? (and why do you seem to have an aversion to using the proper BIOS?) How hot is it running even at 2.2GHz?

sliderider wrote:

Geez, my Phenom II x4 only uses 90w. Is it even worthwhile to build a Prescott machine when it uses so much power?

Pentium 4 has some advantages over said Phenom II X4 when it comes to older software, like being a single-core 32-bit processor that won't have problems with non-SMP operating systems or games that have multi-core bugs (and aside from some early models, it's probably the fastest such CPU). But that doesn't mean it's as efficient as most modern hardware in terms of performance-per-watt, and if that's a consideration I wouldn't bother one with as a "daily driver" or what-have-you. But to run Windows 98/XP it can be a good choice, especially given that Pentium 4 systems tend to be a dime a dozen. 😀

obobskivich wrote:

PcBytes wrote:

Alright,so first I found the EPoX BIOS didn't even do a thing to OC the CPU,so I changed it to a Foxconn BIOS. Good news is that […]
Show full quote

Alright,so first I found the EPoX BIOS didn't even do a thing to OC the CPU,so I changed it to a Foxconn BIOS.
Good news is that now the CPU really overclocks.
Bad news is that with this BIOS I can go up to only 132MHz .

I think 2.21GHz is still a world record.
Here's the CPU-Z file,so you can see that it really runs at 2.21GHz.

CPUZ.zip

If I can find a BIOS that can up the FSB over 150MHz,I'll do another CPU-Z file at 2.55GHz.

Unfortunately I can't say I'm surprised that it wasn't actually clocking that high, and I highly doubt it will reach 2.55GHz. 2.2GHz sounds much more reasonable (I've put my 2.0GHz to around that in the past); not quite world-record worthy, but respectable for a Willamette. 😊

I'm guessing using the non-standard BIOS is why you're having or have had problems. What does the board do with its proper BIOS loaded? (and why do you seem to have an aversion to using the proper BIOS?) How hot is it running even at 2.2GHz?

The original AMI BIOS it has doesn't have any OC features. ASUS does that on every -VM or -MX board.(the latter is even worse as they removed the AGP port)

Upon checking with AIDA I've found that the FSB was limited by the CPU/Memory ratio which was locked on around 4:5 on the Foxconn BIOS.

I'll see if I can find another Award BIOS with OC options that go over 150MHz and doesn't lock the CPU/Memory ratio.

Alright,I have the following problems with the EPoX bios and I'm wondering if it can be fixed.
When booting,all other devices have IRQs,but the Network Controller has no IRQ (it says NA).

Alright guys,new update:
Just found my Northwood 1.8A and as far as I can say I'm real happy with it.

Funny thing is that the Foxconn BIOS I use auto-overclocks the CPU to 2.40GHz,by using 133x18.0.Isn't the Northwood on 100MHz FSB?Or was that the Willamette that runs on 100MHz FSB

Here's a picture of CPU-Z,along with Darth Vader:

Here's the link to the exact Northwood I use:
http://www.cpu-world.com/sspec/SL/SL66Q.html#comments

Northwood A is a 100 MHz FSB CPU, yes.