Intel Pentium 4 Processor question

[Friction]

Hi guys,

I'm looking at a little processor upgrade for my current machine but need a little advice as to which one to go for.

The choices are a 3.4gig standard Northwood chip, or (same money albeit OEM) 3.4gig Prescott chip - which has the 1meg cache as opposed to 512k.

Price wise there is no difference (literally a few pence) and given the Prescott is OEM the retail box probably sells for more money so technically it should be the better chip right?

If I do get the OEM Prescott what sort of cooler should I use for it? I know being OEM it won't have one. I could use the one off my existing CPU (a P4 3.0gig) would that be alright to do?

I'm just a little confused as to which one to go for as I seem to recall reading that the Prescott's just tended to run a little hotter and weren't as good as a standard P4 chip?

Anyone care to shed any light on this for me?!

One more question - is it really worth spending the extra ?500 or so on the P4 3.4 Extreme edition chip? I know it has a 2meg cache but would this really give a massive performance increase over the regular 3.4 and Prescott CPUs?

Thanks in advance

Dave

[csuzw]

I think you will need a new cooler for the Prescott -I believe they run very hot - there was another thread recently that went into this a bit. Prescott is probably better choice but a decent HSF could set you back a bit.

Unless money doesn't matter then there is no point in the EE - its far too expensive.

[Ginza]

Iv got a 3.2 Prescott and it seems to run very nicely with no problems ?

[Montaver]

Get the Northwood, its faster and cooler.

[demon9k]

It depends what type of things you use your computer for. If you do a lot of encoding/ripping type tasks then according to Toms Hardware the prescott is better.

Infact if you look at the results at toms hardware the prescott seems to out perform the northwood on almost every test.

Benchmarks

As for the heat thing, unless you are going to be overclocking then I don't see the worry about its heat. I would just make sure you have one exhaust fan and then thats it.

[ascender]

Don't worry about buying OEM, its a good way to get something better/faster/shinier for your money. I'd buy a properly rated heatsink though as its not worth skimping on that.

So get the "fastest" but realistically, either chip is going to be way fast enough for anything you're going to throw at it at the moment.

[csuzw]

Usually I would say go OEM but with CPUs it may not be worth it depending how much a HSF will set you back. If you are sure your current HSF is OK then its definitely the better choice.

[Friction]

Thanks for all the info guys.

I've gone with the 3.4 Northwood in the end. I'd much rather buy the retail box with cooler as it's a safer option rather than risking the cooler I already have - or more importantly spending money on a decent one for the OEM CPU.

I did some digging after getting the advice from here, and had a look at the benchmarks Demon9k posted.

I've read the Northwood does run cooler than the Prescott and that the difference between the two is virtually non existent.

The Prescott performs best at higher speeds (higher clock speeds that is), it also supposedly takes a little longer to ramp up due to the longer pipelines in the processor architecture. This is also the reason the Prescott has a bigger cache - simply so that it can catch up the Northwood because the longer pipelines harm overall effieciency.

The Northwood is generally faster than the Prescott but this is dependent on the apps that you run.

Hope this is of help to anyone else with the same decision as me

Cheers

Dave

[Freddo]

just thought i'd chip in and say clock for clock especialy at 3.4ghz the northwood will spank the prescott, as well as overclocking better and running cooler, so you've done alright

[Friction]

just thought i'd chip in and say clock for clock especialy at 3.4ghz the northwood will spank the prescott, as well as overclocking better and running cooler, so you've done alright

That's exactly what I wanted to hear!

Thanks for that