1.4g Tbird to 1.5g P4... Any improvement?

[Lawton]

Hey. I'm switching out my ECS K7S5A (SiS745) & 1.4g (pre-XP) Tbird for an ECS P4S5A (SiS645DX) & a 1.5G 256k cache P4. Am I going to see any appreciable improvement?

Thanks in advance for replies.

 

[mechBgon]

I retired my personal K7S5A, 256Mb PC133 and 1GHz Duron to be the new "IT Service Loaner" computer at work. Compared to our 1.3GHz Pentium4 (256kb L2 cache) with 384Mb of PC800 RDRAM and a Maxtor 7200rpm hard drive, the P4 seems subjectively about on par with the Duron. Based on that, I'd have to speculate that the 1.5GHz P4 is going to seem slower, not faster, than the 1.4Tbird.

edit: maybe this will give a better basis for what to expect: http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1360&p=18 The 256kb P4's are just not that strong.

 

[Pink0]

No. You are not going to see an appreciable improvement. What you are talking about is a willamette p4. It is a horrible, horrible performer. An Athon XP 1.53Ghz can easily match a 2.0willamette even though its PR is only 1800. The PR is more accurate for northwoods.
I would guess that your new P4 will be around 30% slower than your Athlon in SSE2 applications and closer to half the speed in some important ones and especially scientific apps like DC. Don't even bother. That board will take a northwood though. If you can get one, do that.
P.S. The Athlon uses Exclusive cache meaning that it stores different information in L1 and L2. This means that it has 384K of total cache. The willamette, however, replicates the same data in both the L1 and L2 cache so you only get 256K total. The Athlon has half again as much cache (150%)

 

[Pink0]

By the way, the link that mechBgon provided is benching a willamette P4 using RDram which it needs for decent performance. Since you're going to be using the 645DX chipset you'll be using DDR and the performance will be even less than what you're seeing in that benchmark. Going from a 1.4 Tbird to a 1.5willamette is like going from a Porsche Boxter to a Ford Taurus.

 

[Pink0]

Wait a minute. You've got a ECS K7S5A. If you've got PC133 in there put in some DDR. If you've updated your BIOS that thing will take right up to the Athlon XP 2200+!!!! Why don't you just get a $60 Athlon Xp instead? It will kick the CRAP out of that Willamette.

 

[Duvie]

My opnion even with the pc133 the 1.4tbird is likley faster....Heck in reviews the 1.3ghz tbird beat the 1.5ghz p4....

I would agree get an xp processor which works in ecs mobos and some ddr and you will have a much bigger and noticeable improvement.

xp 1900 or 2000


ECS is not an overclockers board, but I think you already knew that....

 

[Pink0]

Heck in reviews the 1.3ghz tbird beat the 1.5ghz p4....

HA! In the reviews the 1ghz Tbird beat the 1.5ghz p4 and that's with Rd. The 1ghz p3 isn't far behind!

 

[rogue1979]

Unless you can overclock the 1.5GHz Willy to 1800-1900MHz, the Tbird will walk all over it. That is assuming you don't clock the 'bird to 1500-1550MHz, then the Willy will still get whipped.

 

[Soulkeeper]

bawhahahahahaha
1.5ghz P4 would get stomped by the 1.4ghz TB
bawhahahaha


a concerned reader
--Soul_keeper

 

[Soulkeeper]

you are downgrading
for your sake i hope that is a socket 478 and not 423 board
then you can upgrade later to the latest cpu's
ohh well have fun

 

[Lawton]

Hey guys. Thanks for the responses. I am NOT gonna do it. What I will do is upgrade the processor to an XP2000+ or a 2100+

Thanks VERY much.

 

[CrazySaint]

Originally posted by: Lawton
Hey guys. Thanks for the responses. I am NOT gonna do it. What I will do is upgrade the processor to an XP2000+ or a 2100+

Thanks VERY much.

Smart move

 

[Lawton]

Hey guys. Thanks again for all your helpful comments, etc., with this. The XP2000+ is here and installed in my K7S5A. It's quite nice, and it's most definately an upgrade from the non- pre-XP 1.4g T-bird that I was running.

Woo hoo hoo!!!!

 

[Pink0]

Good to hear. You might consider some DDR too!

 

[Lawton]

Already running 256 Corsair DDR.