New CPU Upgrade Questions

N

noomi

Geek Trainee
OK, so I'm in the process of upgrading my PC. So far I've gotten myself some more RAM and a decent video card, the next step leaves me with upgrading my proccesor. I have absolutely no experience with or have that much knowledge about proccessors. So I have a few questions.

1. Is the proccessor I currently have weak? if so why is that? Is it due to the FSB speed which is only 199.99Mhz? ( dont know what FSB means or is for )

2. How do I know which type of proccessor I can safely upgrade to without buying a new motherboard? Seen so many different types of slots and sockets for proccessors which leaves me clueless as to which one I have and which one I need...

3. Lastly, I'm looking forward to purchasing yet another P4 proccessor. Could you reccomend one for me that is powerful and yet affordable. Oh, also its mostly for gaming if it makes a difference :P

Heres some of my CPU Specs:

CPU(s)
Number of CPUs 2 (1 Physical)
CPU#1 APIC ID = 0
Name Intel Pentium 4
Code Name Northwood
Specification Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.20GHz
Family / Model / Stepping F 2 9
Extended Family / Model 0 0
Brand ID 9
Package mPGA-478
Core Stepping D1
Technology 0.13 µ
Supported Instructions Sets MMX, SSE, SSE2
CPU Clock Speed 3192.6 MHz
Clock multiplier x 16.0
Front Side Bus Frequency 199.5 MHz
Bus Speed 798.1 MHz
L1 Data Cache 8 KBytes, 4-way set associative, 64 Bytes line size
L1 Trace Cache 12 Kµops, 8-way set associative
L2 Cache 512 KBytes, 8-way set associative, 64 Bytes line size
L2 Speed 3192.6 MHz (Full)
L2 Location On Chip
L2 Data Prefetch Logic yes
L2 Bus Width 256 bits
CPU#2 APIC ID = 1
CPU Name Intel Pentium 4 (logical unit)
Click to expand...
 
Well if you're going to be gaming, then what we'd really suggest is an Athlon 64 processor. They are superior is gaming and generally perform the same as or better than equivelent P4s in most tasks apart from video editing/encoding. Not only that they'll run a lot cooler than any faster CPU you'll get from Intel.

However you will need a new motherboard to go with it, your RAM and other components should work with it though. I'd recommend depending on your budget an A64 3500 with Venice core, or the cheaper Venice 3000.

Btw, the FSB is the Front Side Bus. The FSB speed is the speed at which your main data bus on your motherboard operates at, however to achieve higher speeds your CPU has a much higher internal clock speed, which is determined by your FSB speed multiplied by your multiplyer, which in this case is 16x.
 
later on i recommend you change the motherboard and cpu to amd compliable, all the other parts should work, since amd provides more for the money.

however no its not slow because of fsb, the fsb is set to associate with the multiplier to provide raw clock speeds

front side bus x multiplier amount = speed which in ur case is 3.2gHz
thats a higher average speed in intel cpus.

in order to switch to a new cpu though i believe you would have to buy a new motherboard since they stopped producing socket 478 cpus, (now making commonly LGA775)

as my recommendation is to switch to the athlon line, a good motherboard from AMD and a Athlon 64 3000+ venice are around 250-300$ and would be a decent upgrade

can you label your other system specs?
 
cool, thanks for the advice guys. how can I find out the socket type for my proccessor?

And heres my other specs:

Mainboard and chipset
Motherboard manufacturer Dell Computer Corp.
Motherboard model 0U2424,
BIOS vendor Dell Computer Corporation
BIOS revision A06
BIOS release date 09/27/2004
Chipset Intel i875P rev. A2
Southbridge Intel 82801EB (ICH5) rev. 02
FSB Select 800 MHz
Performance Mode enabled

Memory
DRAM Type DDR-SDRAM
DRAM Size 2048 MBytes
DRAM Frequency 199.5 MHz
FSB:DRAM 1:1
CAS# Latency 3.0 clocks
RAS# to CAS# 3 clocks
RAS# Precharge 3 clocks
Cycle Time (TRAS) 8 clocks
# of memory modules 4
Module 0 Infineon DDR-SDRAM PC3200 - 512 MBytes
Module 1 Kingston DDR-SDRAM PC3200 - 512 MBytes
Module 2 Infineon DDR-SDRAM PC3200 - 512 MBytes
Module 3 Kingston DDR-SDRAM PC3200 - 512 MBytes
Click to expand...

Also an x850XT PE AGP


The funny thing is the whole upgrade thing started mainly cause of bf2, I'm dieing to be able to play that game at full settings. Bought another gig of ram putting me at 2Gigs DDR RAM, and bought the x850XT... still wasnt enough to play bf2 at highest settings, so i figured the only thing left to upgrade is my proccessor.
 
If your computer is a Dell like i think it is based on the specs you provides us with, your going to almost definately need a new Power Supply to give thet X850XTPE the juice it needs!
ALL OEM PC builders are well known for putting small wattage PUS's in their PC's and are also known for not making their PC's very up-gradeable. So your probably going to need a new PSU and a new Case to accompany the new PSU!
 
its a dell XPS gen 2 bought it back in 2003. People usually asume that dells are crap, but this xps its actually very upgradable and came with a 460W PSU. the x850xt only needs about 350W.
 
From the specs you listed, you've got an mPGA 478 CPU. Outside of getting a new motherboard (and likely new RAM and power supply), you're not going to get into a faster CPU with what you have. Quite honestly, if you want to increase gaming performance, upgrade your video card. However, what you have is pretty damn good, so I can't see why you want to ditch it just yet. In another year, it might be time, but right now, you're really throwing money away if you want to upgrade the CPU.
 
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