Gaming on P4 2.8GHz

[RavenSEAL]

^ what he said.... you at the very least should have a quad core these days.

What I would do:

BIOSTAR A75MH FM1 ~69$ (USB3)
AMD A6-3650 Llano ~109$ (quad core@2.6ghz) (comes with heatsink)
Crucial 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) ~39$
Seagate Barracuda Green ST1500DL003 1.5TB 5900 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s ~119$


Suddenly you have a respectable little pc

~336$

DX11 capable card
Blu Ray 3D playback
UVD3 (Universal Video Decoder) so new formats of film dont stress your cpu
USB3, so you can backup stuff, faster ect.
Quad core (4 cores, 4 threads) (will be a huge jump from your p4)
Llano's IGP
1500 GB of HD space.


That 7300 light Edition..... is giveing you around ~2900 points in 3Dmark 03?
To compair the Llanos IGP (gpu thats in the cpu) would give like ~17,000+ or something like that.

+1, Llano is awesome.

 

[Insomniator]

I can't believe the advice offered in this thread. The guy said like 6 times his rig is fine already and he was only asking if replacing his awful 7300 (even by P4 standards) would improve the performance on 1 game. If that game is running at all on a 7300, it is obviously old as hell, thus the P4 is not the problem.

Yes, the 5570 will be a huge boost. Good job. Do not buy a $400 machine for no reason.

 

[pauldun170]

He's using PCI-E. All PCI-E cards, regardless of version, should work with any PCI-E slot.

My experience is that it is not always the case.
I've run in to a couple of older PCIE 1.0a boards that would not work properly with PCIe 2.0 and later cards.

Since it is rare that anyone would still be using one of those older boards in a way that they would want to:
a. Put a modern video card in it
b. Have the intwerbz experience to log on to a forum to complain that their old pc isn't working with the fancy new video card

 

[pauldun170]

I can't believe the advice offered in this thread. The guy said like 6 times his rig is fine already and he was only asking if replacing his awful 7300 (even by P4 standards) would improve the performance on 1 game. If that game is running at all on a 7300, it is obviously old as hell, thus the P4 is not the problem.

Yes, the 5570 will be a huge boost. Good job. Do not buy a $400 machine for no reason.

Agreed
While I wouldn't recommend trying any modern titles on it, they get the job done and still have value.
In any case....$30 for a video card isn't a lot of money being dumped into it.

 

[BFG10K]

Given the choice to upgrade either his CPU/platform or his GPU, his GPU will provide the biggest benefit overall, by far.

 

[FalseChristian]

How does my i5 2500K overclocked to 4.5GHz compare to his 2.8GHz Pentium 4?

 

[Arkadrel]

How does my i5 2500K overclocked to 4.5GHz compare to his 2.8GHz Pentium 4?

With Passmark:

2.8ghz P4 (stock) = score of 741
3.4ghz 2600k (stock) = score of 10,082

Should give you a idea of what kinda ballpark your in.

The Pentium 4 had low IPC (kinda like bulldozer today vs intel),
but high clock speeds (2.8ghz was high back then).


You know the E-350 and E-450 APU's that AMD has a 18watts for CPU+IGP....
they re both rated higher than a P4 @ 2.8ghz in Passmark.


As bad as that might sound... the graphic card is the main problem.... its... really slow.

 

[m3t4lh34d]

Wouldn't his P4 2.8 most likely (if not certainly) be AGP? I don't think they make any of the models you've mentioned in AGP flavors.

The last game I played on a P4 2.8, which I had for some time and was good at the time, was Battlefield 1942 which zipped along pretty well on a 9600 Pro.

My mother still uses a P4 2.8, and after being used to newer computers for probably the last 6 or 7 years (how long ago did that P4 come out?), when I use it today it feels dog slow and would not be able to handle any sort of newer games released in the last 4 or 5 years on anything but the lowest resolution and graphics settings. If you're okay with that, then a $20 video card off ebay might be what you want.

No... I have a P4 2.8ghz sitting right next to me that I use for bitcoin mining with a PCI-E slot.

 

[m3t4lh34d]

With Passmark:

2.8ghz P4 (stock) = score of 741
3.4ghz 2600k (stock) = score of 10,082

Should give you a idea of what kinda ballpark your in.

The Pentium 4 had low IPC (kinda like bulldozer today vs intel),
but high clock speeds (2.8ghz was high back then).


You know the E-350 and E-450 APU's that AMD has a 18watts for CPU+IGP....
they re both rated higher than a P4 @ 2.8ghz in Passmark.


As bad as that might sound... the graphic card is the main problem.... its... really slow.

To obtain a Passmark score, the program uses a suite of GPU, CPU, Memory, SSD/HDD tests to calculate the score. I'm 100% certain a 2600k's iGPU would destroy a 7300LE, as would the E-350 and E-450's APU (CPU/GPU).

Looking at a Passmark score from years ago on a Pentium 4 and comparing it to a score run on a rig 6-7 years later is not a valid way to compare results.

The most accurate way would be to use identical rigs, at least as close as possible. A more valid comparison would be on an LGA775 platform in which a Q9550 could be swapped with the P4 whilst the RAM,HDD, and GPU remained the same. THIS would provide an accurate spectrum of results to compare.

Nonetheless, the P4 IS most definitely about 15-20% the speed of a 2600k @ stock, perhaps closer to 40% in single threaded apps, but even so... it is a severely aging CPU. I'm not sure which socket P4 you're running but if it's LGA775, you could easily upgrade to a cheap Q6600 and be set for a couple years, and easily see a performance gain of 500%.


With all that said, the 7300LE is a horrible GPU, even for a P4 rig. I would suggest grabbing a 5750 or 5770 if you're running on a PCI-Express chipset, as it would provide the most bang for your buck these days, even if you aren't able to harness it's full capabilities with your CPU, you will be able to once you swap your CPU in the future. It's pointless to spend $50 on a GPU when in the future if you swap your CPU or platform entirely, you'll be bottlenecked by the GPU to an extent that you were nearly with the original P4. Get something worthwhile that will last. An HD5770 or 5750 will allow you to play a few DX11 games on low detail, and to at least enjoy gaming much more than you are now. A 5770 can be found open box or used for $75.

Good luck

 

[ThatsABigOne]

I really hope that the card that OP gets does not fit into the slot.

 

[Ghiedo27]

I really hope that the card that OP gets does not fit into the slot.

It will definitely fit. It's just a toss up whether that boards bios is compatible with a pcie 2.1 card. Many aren't.

 

[StinkyPinky]

Dark Age of Camelot is a decade old so he doesn't need some new rig to run it. Even a budget one. The rec specs are a p4 2.4 and a 4000 series Geforce

 

[SlowSpyder]

I don't think the $20 for an upgrade from a 2.8GHz to a 3.4GHz P4 is worth it in this case. Hell, I sold a E4300 for $20 shipped a month ago, and that's a much bigger step up.

The 651 is a much better processor... 20% more clock speed, 2MB L2 - twice the cache (I think Prescotts had 1MB), and running cooler while using less power. I'd take that for $20*

*With that being said, if a C2D was available for the same price, that would almost certainly be the better buy.

 

[Shawn]

What FPS are you getting now?

 

[MrTeal]

The 651 is a much better processor... 20% more clock speed, 2MB L2 - twice the cache (I think Prescotts had 1MB), and running cooler while using less power. I'd take that for $20*

*With that being said, if a C2D was available for the same price, that would almost certainly be the better buy.

At this point with that system, if he's not really feeling CPU limited why spend the money for such a small upgrade. I think I'd want more than 20-30% more performance if you're going to drop $20 in a system that old. Much bigger upgrades should be available for the same price if he's feeling CPU constrained, and if he's not why drop the $20 for something that won't make a huge difference? I've got a Pentium D 940 (basically two 641s on the same chip) sitting in the FS/T forum for $20 shipped that's been there for awhile, so if he's looking for an upgrade he might as well go for a bigger one since he'd probably pay about the same amount for a 30% increase as a 100% increase or more.