Socket 478 Question

[Kerotan]

As some of you may have seen in the "Freebie Celeron Rig" thread I posted earlier on, I managed to cobble together a second PC from some free bits and pieces I acquired.

I'm now looking to make this into a Pentium 4 based machine, and was wondering about what would be best out of clock speed, cache size etc on these older CPUs.

For the amount I'm willing to spend [admittedly not a lot lol], I can probably get a 2.4-2.8GHz part with 1MB L2 Cache, or something between 3.2-3.6GHz with 512kb.

The system will mainly be used for downloads and multimedia with a little older/RTS gaming running Linux Ubuntu and XP SP3. It has a 256MB 9800Pro and 1GB DDR(266/333 I think).

I can't clock the CPU as the board is an Intel stock, so what would be best, more Hz clock or more MB cache?

 

[zak4994]

Hertz!

 

[DavidT]

With Intel's older chips, definitely Speed > Cache.

 

[ionicle]

agreed with above, speed more important than cache

besides, if i remember right, the more cache they have, the less they clock, one with 256k will clock higher, like a celeron, they can get to 3.5 if you have some good cooling

 

[Bungral]

Well, while not up to the speeds you're wanting, I can probably still have a 1.6GHz P4 available which you can have for the cost of P&P really.

 

[Kerotan]

OK guys, looked into this a little more and I'm pretty sure that the mobo supports 800FSB, problem is for that you need PC3200 RAM, and I've got 1*512 stick of that in, but the other two are 256Meg sticks of PC2700, which would throttle and 800FSB CPU.

Should I get a 533FSB processor and stick with the RAM I've got, or drop an extra £13 or so on another 512 of DDR-400 stuff, to get a better proccy?

And just out of interest- do people think these prices are ok:

- £11.50 for 2.8GHz/1M/800 or incl del?

Realised that they are all going for £20+ on the 'bay as soon as they are over 3GHz so for an old rig it's probably not worth spending too much.