Is this PC worth upgrading?

Defiler Of The Coffin

RodgersLFC wrote: »

I have run Windows 7 Ultimate on a Dell Inspiron 1300 with a 1.8Ghz Pentium M processor and 2GB RAM, and I can assure you, it worked fine for email, web browsing and even streaming on youtube.

Again, the PC you have described is different to the OP's in CPU, RAM and bus speed. The Pentium M has a completely different architecture to the P4. My experience with a PC closer in spec is that it's simply not worth spending any more money on, even if he bought a new OS and more RAM he would do well to get even a year's worth of useful functionality.

RUSTEDCORE

Installing windows 7 ultimate SP1 now on my p4 build
Its actually an upgrade of a windows xp pc about 10 years old bought from a tesco. Was originally 2.9 celeron M with 256mb ram and onboard graphics.

Will post cpu-z and gpu-z then windows experience index when I get it sorted and will test with youtube/league of legends game

Defiler Of The Coffin

RUSTEDCORE wrote: »

Installing windows 7 ultimate SP1 now on my p4 build
Its actually an upgrade of a windows xp pc about 10 years old bought from a tesco. Was originally 2.9 celeron M with 256mb ram and onboard graphics.

Will post cpu-z and gpu-z then windows experience index when I get it sorted and will test with youtube/league of legends game

What specs does it have now?

RUSTEDCORE

Defiler Of The Coffin wrote: »

What specs does it have now?

3 ghz p4
2gb ram
256mb radeon {9550 I think)

Just sorting drivers then will have to let updates complete and 1 time background processes finish.

Torqay

Defiler Of The Coffin wrote: »

Again, the PC you have described is different to the OP's in CPU, RAM and bus speed. The Pentium M has a completely different architecture to the P4. My experience with a PC closer in spec is that it's simply not worth spending any more money on, even if he bought a new OS and more RAM he would do well to get even a year's worth of useful functionality.

That's what I'm saing all along, but some here want to give the impression that if the OP could only get himself to buy Windows 7, it will turn the Pentium 4 miraculously into a performance monster and catapult their "internet, youtube and office" experience into unkown spheres.

unkel

Torqay wrote: »

some here want to give the impression that if the OP could only get himself to buy Windows 7, it will turn the Pentium 4 miraculously into a performance monster

Nobody said that

Torqay wrote: »

catapult their "internet, youtube and office" experience into unkown spheres.

You're taking things totally out of proportion. The OP only wants to:

ks44 wrote: »

this PC is just used of the odd bit of browsing and microsoft office

This will be fine on his old PC with a memory upgrade and optionally a fresh install of whatever operating system. XP will do (for now), so will 7 or 8...

RUSTEDCORE

Yes all he really needs is 2gb of ram
if he wants to get a graphics card for 20 quid that would help
and if he has access to windows 7 for free or cheap LEGALLY I am of the opinion that would improve things to an extent if not only for the fact it will make the pc seem modern.

But for browsing and email xp with 2gb of ram will do the job

I am nearly finished installing my drivers though so just for shiz and giggles I will see what a very similar device with a 256mb graphics card and windows 7 can do.

If any of you want me to test anything or run a specific benchmark software let me know.

Torqay

yoyo wrote: »

Comparing a server OS with a normal install of Windows 7 Ultimate is hardly comparing like with like in fairness.. Sure if you cut half of 7s processes you will speed it up.

Nothing was cut. On the contrary, yoyo, a lot of additional services need to be enabled, settings applied and components added in order to turn it into a fully fledged workstation OS (hardware acceleration, themes, fast user switching, DirectX libraries, etc), as has been the case when I ran the benchmarks. But the performance results clearly indicate that Windows 7 is the worst of the lot, by a far cry. I do have a lot of gripes with Windows 8 but the missing start button or performance are none of them.

Please note, I'm not suggesting, the OP should install 2003 as it costs even more than Windows 7, a lot more in fact.

Torqay

unkel wrote: »

You're taking things totally out of proportion.

I couldn't find the irony tags.

RUSTEDCORE

OK so I built a 3ghz pentium 4 machine with 2 GB of ram and a 256mb graphics card and tested a bit. Generally im very surprised at its speed (or perhaps lack of lag).

It copies files really fast
Loads graphic intensive websites in 1-2 seconds consistently (I have 157 mb down 10 up).
It even plays 720p youtube videos with no visible lag

SPECS

On idle CPU goes from 1-10 or 1-20 most of the time but can jump to 90 though only for a second.









Will add more to this post such as games FPS etc

EDIT 1
Played league of legends on 1280x768 basic settings fullscreen and although I only got 22-25 FPS there was no visible lag and it played the same as on my gaming pc with a GDDR5 graphics card.

riclad

RE hd videos , the graphics card, video ram,and system ram ,
is most important , A PC with 3.oghz cpu should be able to run 720p videos fine.And its easier to cool than an intel i5,or i7 pc.
MY laptop is rated 2.5 windows index, cpu 1.8 ghz. gaming graphics 3.0
I never had any problem playing hd videos.

Torqay

Yes, you have proven your point that Windows 7 can be installed on an old clunker, something nobody ever doubted, in fact, my EeePC's Celery clearly beats the Pentium 4 in terms of slowliness.

And as you have pointed out, the CPU load with Windows 7 is constantly hovering between 1 and 20%, which is why Windows 7 is falling behind XP and Windows 8 in CPU benchmarks and quite significantly so. A factor very much noticable on an old single core processor with slow bus speed.

But while we're at it, I'm about to upgrade an Optiplex with a C2D E7500 from XP to Windows7, Geekbench CPU benchmark score is 3358, will post the Windows 7 result later.

Defiler Of The Coffin

Interesting post RUSTEDCORE. I'm wondering if the OP's CPU features hyper-threading. My 3GHz P4 back didn't back in 2003.

I'm also wondering if the OP has come to a conclusion yet?

Torqay

Defiler Of The Coffin wrote: »

Interesting post RUSTEDCORE. I'm wondering if the OP's CPU features hyper-threading. My 3GHz P4 back didn't back in 2003.

If it was a 3.0 GHz processor, it must have had HT, maybe it was disabled in the BIOS.

P4 w/o HT were clocked at 2.93 GHz and 3.06 GHz. The only 3.0 GHz Pentium 4 was a 130nm Northie and it had HT.

List of all P4

Defiler Of The Coffin

Torqay wrote: »

If it was a 3.0 GHz processor, it must have had HT, maybe it was disabled in the BIOS.

P4 w/o HT were clocked at 2.93 GHz and 3.06 GHz. The only 3.0 GHz Pentium 4 was a 130nm Northie and it had HT.

List of all P4

Cheers. That list you gave does show two Northwood CPUs (SL6YH and SL74Q) clocked at 3GHz seemingly without Hyper Threading?

Now that I think of it the System Properties box may have shown the clock speed at something like 2.99GHz. (Un)fortunately that machine has been sent to the WEEE site so I can't confirm it.

RUSTEDCORE

a quick 10% increase on cpu/ram by upping bus speed to 220 gets cpu and ram experience index to 4.1.

Now...should I OC the cpu to 3.5 and ram a bit and maybe even rhe radeon then tweak windows hmm... could be entertaining...but id have to do a proper overclock .

Torqay

Well, who would have thunk it? A rotten XP installation (more than 4 yrs old) is putting a fresh Windows 7 installation to a shame (that is after I have done away with the worst resource hogs such as search/indexing, superfetch, etc.):

Torqay

Defiler Of The Coffin wrote: »

Cheers. That list you gave does show two Northwood CPUs (SL6YH and SL74Q) clocked at 3GHz seemingly without Hyper Threading?

I stand corrected.

BostonB

Personally I wouldn't go near a P4 for regular use these days. I have to support someone with a P4, 2.8 NW and 4GB (basic graphics) and I find it very poor on the web. I also use a Dual Xeon 2.4 (P4 based), (basic graphics) with 4GB and its also pretty slow. Both are on W7. The Xeon is a bit better obviously. Couldn't get W8 on either as the CPU doesn't support it. Might consider going back to Xp on them.

A coreduo or core2duo can be picked up for less than 100 and is infinitely better on the web. We have a 1.5 Core2Duo laptop, with 2GB and its much better than those P4 machines. I use a E8500 C2D and those late c2ds are really very fast for the price of them 2nd hand. Windows 8 flies on the those C2D machines, even with 2GB of RAM.

I know someone who stuck a SSD in a P4 but it still wasn't as quick as a basic Core duo on w8 for the web. Of course IE10 and other browsers can use the GFX a bit. So that helps too.

The P4 is worth nothing. So nothing to be lost by sticking cheap ram in it, and even decent gfx card of that era in it, can be got for peanuts. Could use it as backup machine, media server etc.

rubadub

I had the 3.06 in a dimension 2400. It was overheating with the HT turned on so I turned it off in the BIOS, I didn't notice any difference. I did change the paste and read how to do it right, maybe the (ebay) chip itself was dodgy or the fan was not suited to the hotter running chip. It is fine now though.

I read a few guys with the same system, some said WIN 7 was a little faster than XP, some found little difference.

The difference between Lubuntu & XP was amazing. They guy who owned it couldn't believe it. I think not having to have AV software also make a huge difference.

Torqay

Well, the processor is one thing, the bus speed and memory is another story. I just happen to have 7 year old desktop here with a single core 1.6 GHz AMD Semrpron here, a crappy CPU by all means and yet it is faring surprisingly well, thanks to DDR2 RAM clocked at 667 MHz.

Today, a web browser with a few tabs open can easily shove 1 GB of data into the system memory and a slow bus is a huge bottleneck.

Torqay

BostonB wrote: »

I also use a Dual Xeon 2.4 (P4 based), (basic graphics) with 4GB and its also pretty slow. Both are on W7. The Xeon is a bit better obviously. Couldn't get W8 on either as the CPU doesn't support it. Might consider going back to Xp on them.

Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's. It's a server, so give it a server OS (if you happen to have a spare Win2k3 license) and get another year of support (April 2015).

A few tips here: Fastest. Modern. OS. Ever. (at the time of writing)

yoyo

Right I think this thread has finally run it's course. If you want it re-opened op send me on a pm, but it is just turning into another vs thread

Nick