VOGONS


First post, by _tk

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I have a P4 Prescott, SL7E2 (1M Cache, 2.80A GHz, 533 MHz FSB). I have a line on an inexpensive Asus P4PE-X and I've gotten mixed results as to if this board can support this processor or not.

I know it's not the greatest processor or motherboard, but I have the processor and the motherboard is nice and cheap. Will probably end up using it as a 98Se or Xp rig (running early XP games), so I'm not too concerned about the processor or 2GB RAM limit of the board.

Anyone remember trying this combination? It looks like the "X" came out in the middle of '03, so it should be late enough to support (if they added this Prescott support, but they did add 800MHz FSB).

Reply 1 of 8, by mr.cat

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It isn't on the supported CPUs list, so you'd need a custom BIOS.
The P4PE-X/TE variant does have support for that 90nm model, but the P4PE-X/SE doesn't... I have no clue what's the difference, however. On the surface they look quite similar.
I had the TE model way back when, but I mostly used it with Northwoods. I do remember it being very fussy about FSB, that was probably with a 800MHz CPU.

Prescott is quite demanding on the VRM, so these older mobos are not necessarily up to the job. This board is boasted as overclock-friendly, so idk.

Reply 2 of 8, by _tk

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I cannot find anything or anyone that says it does support Prescott. And Asus made a lot of different versions of the P4Pe (normal, X, X/TE, etc). For some reason it's a bit confusing figuring out what the differences were 20 years later, even an Asus board...especially once you throw the different revisions in.

Oh well, I'm not sure what a P4 will really do for me at this point that my P3 1.4 Tualatin won't. After I remembered how hot the Prescott ran not sure I even want to mess with it.

Reply 3 of 8, by mr.cat

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The power usage of the SL7E2 doesn't seem to bad, compared to some of the heavy hitters that this board supports. But I guess the cache configuration bits are missing in the BIOS.
Yeah, might not be that interesting if you have Tualatin as an alternative.

Reply 4 of 8, by Katmai500

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A 2.8/533 Northwood would be pretty cheap to acquire and equally or more performant than Prescott. If you’re in the US, that big auction site has them (SL6PF) for $7 with shipping.

Reply 5 of 8, by Horun

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Have had issues with the some Prescotts in some boards. The SL7E2 is a D0 stepping Prescott.
My SL7E5 D0 step Prescott would error on boot/no boot on a few Giga and MSI i865 boards.
Do know the SL7K9 C0 stepping Prescott C0 works well in all my Giga, Asus and MSI boards...
The SL6PF would be a good one if you cannot find a C0 step prescott, think there were issues with some boards/bios with D0 stepping from my experience

Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 6 of 8, by The Serpent Rider

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in general, you don't want to use Prescott, unless you're intending to utilise their high oveclocking potential. Prescott is overall slower than Northwood.

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 7 of 8, by SPBHM

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Pretty sure Prescott requires some MB changes and if it doesn't list compatibility it's probably not going to work
I have the P4PE pure model and while I like the board... it's fairly limited in some ways,
the FSB200 OC is achieved via OC, there is no guaranteed stability,
also at least on mine it has options for running CL3 ram but it only works with CL2 and CL2.5 for some reason, even if you set 3 it runs at 2.5, and not all ram can handle 400 at cl2.5

other than that, on mine also when I OC the FSB, even with PCI locked to 33 the sata raid controller (onboard but provided by a third party chip) becomes unstable long before the rest of the system,

perhaps the X model improved the behavior with CL3 and FSB200, but I don't know.

and realistically... P4 benefits clearly from dual channel ram, 865 or 875 is ideal to extract the best out of it.

Reply 8 of 8, by _tk

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Thanks all for the replies. I'm not really into over-clocking...I'm just trying to utilize parts that I have laying around so I can get a few PC's together for an old fashion LAN party with my kids.

If I do go for the motherboard, I'll probably pick up one of those really cheap P4 2.8/533 Northwoods and be done with it.