Powerleap upgrade worth it?

[nardvark]

Hi All:
I'm running a 1.7GHz willamette, and I'm wondering if you think it's worth it to shell out about $30-$40 for a powerleap 423->478 adaptor. I could then put in a socket 478 (northwood), up to 2.6GHz, just based on what seems to be available.

Does this seem like a waste of cash or a decent idea? It could become very affordable if I could find a used P4, but haven't seen too many used 478's floating around the FS/FT forums.

Thanks!

 

[LTC8K6]

This guy liked it.

My crack at him in that thread is because he said Willamette when he meant Northwood.

 

[nardvark]

hrm, thanks for the link. don't know how I missed that one in my search...

any other opinions on the economics of this?

I'm basically trying to figure out if my bottleneck is more likely my 1.7GHz cpu or my 384MB ram. If it's the ram, I'm probably just going to get a new mobo, because I'm stuck with rambus on this one...

 

[LTC8K6]

Tiger Direct has 128MB and 256MB PC800 sticks for $49 and $79.

Economics? Well, you are getting into the region of it possibly being cheaper to start over. The convenience of not having to reload everything and not having to deal with building a whole new pooter is worth a lot to me, though.

Your system will still be pretty fast with a Northwood and Rambus.

 

[Fingers]

What do you do with your system? both could be a potential bottleneck.

 

[nardvark]

I do light gaming at the moment (morrowind, warcraft 3), and am currently running a radeon 9100. I'm considering getting a new video card so that I can play half-life 2, and perhaps WOW.

I also do a fair amount of technical computing. Data analysis of large datasets in Matlab, some plasma simulations, and a lot of work in Excel. The CPU would help here, but it's not necessarily a deal-breaker that these things go faster.

Other than that, I normally run about 2 web browsers, e-mail, winamp, and a word processor during normal use, and I don't think I'm RAM limited here.

Thanks!

 

[Fingers]

I would say it would be worth it if you could find a good deal on the CPU and such but if there arn't any good deals around then may save and upgrade ram mobo and CPU. Kinda all depends on your money situation.

 

[CJP]

You can expect about a 30% increase in performance. I upgraded from a 1.8ghz willamette to a 2.6ghz Northwood (400fsb) this summer and that's about what I got. Things run a bit snappier and I can go up a resolution or maybe two in games so it's nothing dramatic. It just buys me more time before my next major upgrade.

 

[PhoenixOrion]

Originally posted by: LTC8K6
Tiger Direct has 128MB and 256MB PC800 sticks for $49 and $79.

Economics? Well, you are getting into the region of it possibly being cheaper to start over. The convenience of not having to reload everything and not having to deal with building a whole new pooter is worth a lot to me, though.

Your system will still be pretty fast with a Northwood and Rambus.

Don't put any more money into that box.

With the games you mentioned, you're better off going for new setup using DDR and gfx card powered with either p4 800fsb or a64 when you have something saved up for it.

 

[nardvark]

Hmmmm, all right. Thanks for the input everyone. I guess I'll wait and see, and if I can find someone who's parting a similar box out, I'll see if I can get their RAM or CPU cheap. Otherwise I'll stick with what I've got.

 

[PELarson]

Originally posted by: nardvark

Does this seem like a waste of cash or a decent idea? It could become very affordable if I could find a used P4, but haven't seen too many used 478's floating around the FS/FT forums.

A P4 2.8ghz CPU Open Box not used.

 

[nardvark]

Hmmm, has to be 400MHz FSB, but thanks.

 

[aka1nas]

I would also suggest that you not put more money in that box. I also think that for your useage pattern, Hyperthreading would come in handy for you (It sounds like you are heavily multitasking sometimes). You're better of getting a new board along with a new P4 then in that case.

 

[Zap]

My recommendation is don't do it.

$40 Powerleap adaptor
Can almost buy a new motherboard for that price... with USB 2.0, SATA, DDR support, 800MHz FSB support, AGP 8X, 5.1 sound...

$$$ CPU, can get the same, or can get something better. The 'Egg has the 2.4C for $137.

"Tiger Direct has 128MB and 256MB PC800 sticks for $49 and $79."
$79 can buy 512MB PC3200 DDR.

Do you live near a Fry's Electronics? You can often get 3GHz P4 combos for around $200 for CPU and motherboard. Pick up one of their frequent $60 (after rebate) 512MB DDR deals. Sell your current CPU/mobo/RDRAM for whatever you can get for it to offset your upgrade. End result? Cheaper than the Powerleap + 400FSB P4 2.6GHz + extra RDRAM. Also faster, more modern features, more room for expansion.

 

[wchou]

Originally posted by: CJP
You can expect about a 30% increase in performance. I upgraded from a 1.8ghz willamette to a 2.6ghz Northwood (400fsb) this summer and that's about what I got. Things run a bit snappier and I can go up a resolution or maybe two in games so it's nothing dramatic. It just buys me more time before my next major upgrade.

Correction:

1.8x.3 is not 2.6ghz
1.8x.44+.792+1.8=2.6ghz

44 percent!!!

If I am wrong please correct me, thanks.

 

[uOpt]

I have a powerleap update for a P2B mainboard with a 1.3 Ghz Celeron. Note that this means I don't only have an adapter, I have Adapter, CPU, fan etc in one powerleap package.

I am not very satisfied with this, and the reason is not performance. The performance is just fine, in fact better than I expected.

However, the fan is very loud and not temp-controlled, the CPU broke, I got a replacement sent to an address that I told them several times is not current anymore and now the replacement doesn't boot with the BIOS the other powerleap ran on. Need to re-flash and then it still might be just a broken replacement. Way too much trouble/work for a P2B, as much as I love than mainboard.

By now they also dropped the warranty from 3 to 1 year so that you wouldn't have that replacement problem anyway

 

[BigBadBiologist]

As Zap mentioned, the price of the adapter and a 100MHz FSB P4 just aren't worth it when you consider that you could get a refurb 865 chipset board on newegg for like $40 and a P4 ~3GHz 400MHz (800) FSB CPU for ~$160. I guess the extra cost for RAM could factor in, but if you look around the FS section here, you could probably find a pretty good deal for 2x 256meg PC3200.

 

[THUGSROOK]

Originally posted by: nardvark
Hi All:
I'm running a 1.7GHz willamette, and I'm wondering if you think it's worth it to shell out about $30-$40 for a powerleap 423->478 adaptor.

no ~ take it out back and shoot it.... seriously.
spend the $ and get yourself a good s478 motherboard.

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: wchou

Originally posted by: CJP
You can expect about a 30% increase in performance. I upgraded from a 1.8ghz willamette to a 2.6ghz Northwood (400fsb) this summer and that's about what I got.

Correction:

1.8x.3 is not 2.6ghz
1.8x.44+.792+1.8=2.6ghz

44 percent!!!

If I am wrong please correct me, thanks.

You are right in terms of absolute CPU MHz gain, but CJP is probably also right in terms of "overall" performance gain. Overall performance is not determined by CPU alone. Other factors that affect speed are amound and speed of RAM, speed of hard drive, speed of video card, etc. Though CPU can highly affect performance, the "overall" speed of a system will not increase by the speed of the processor upgrade.

So, you're both right! How 'bout that? Buy each other a drink.

 

[dannybin1742]

i upgraded my dell 8100 p4 1.3ghz to a Celeron 2.8ghz (400fsb)

i got the adapter for $40 from powerleap, and the cpu off ebay for $70

it was a cheap upgrade and the performance is much better