Best out of two computers
 

Unfortunately I only attended the first week of a computer building course and never got around to starting again.

Can someone say which is the better processor out of these two:

A Pentium (R) 4 3.20Ghz

B Intel Dual Core 1.8Ghz.

and

Exactly how many years ago did you attend this course ? :E

Both processors are somewhat past it for current needs.... if forced and had absolutely no other choice I'd choose the Dual Core..... the right place for a Pentium 4 is the bin*.

*=Well, a recycling bin of course, collected by a designated WEEE contractor. :cool:

For Windows 7, probably yes. For Linux, no.

The last Windows XP PC I got rid of about 6 months ago was running very happily on a 3GHz P4. I intend to put Linux on the PC after my recent experimentation with a 1.8Ghz P4 laptop.

SD

Many thanks for the advice.

I have an Elonex Media Centre PC in my living room which I use purely to watch Bluray DVDs now although, before installing a Freesat PVR, I also used it for recording digital TV.

It happily runs W7 with just 4Gb of RAM.

Yes, but it's CPUs we're concerned with.

I've got 4 PCs and a laptop at home all running W7 Pro and all with 4GB RAM. But they've all got dual core CPUs - 3 x AMD Athlon 64 X2 and 2 x intel i5.

SD

Thank you for stating the obvious.

The point I was making is that the P4 in my Elonex is quite capable of running W7 and doing an adequate job. It is not heading for the bin anytime soon.

If you need any further clarification then just ask.

Just to point out that you made no reference to the fact your Elonex had a P4 in your original post. :O

While that's true, a $75 Atom board has similar performance to a P4 at a small fraction of the power consumption. My old P4 PC sounded like a jet engine, so I can't imagine having it in the living room. The Atom under the TV (for Xbmc) and i5 beside it (for MythTV) are inaudible from the sofa.

With respect, that has everything to do with poor case design and cheap, small diameter CPU & case fans running at high RPM, probably with noisy PSU and GPU fans as well, and very little to do with the actual power consumption of the CPU - about 85W for the 3.2 GHz P4.

I've built systems with similar or greater CPU power consumption, and they are very quiet, because I selected the components to ensure that they would be.

I'm not denying that it is possible to get similar computing grunt from a vastly more efficient package (e.g. the Atom, just 2.2W SDP!!), and with such low heat output there's far less requirement for cooling fans with associated noise.

SD

Oh dear!

I owe Saab Dastard an apology for my sarcasm.

Sorry.

In todays world, any electronic component, or device, is utterly obsolete at around 3 years of age.

Current CPU's use 1150 style socket, which made the previous 1155 style socket obsolete last year.
I built a new desktop computer from scratch in Aug 2012 using an Intel i7-3770 CPU with 1155 socket - and it is already obsolete.
The P4's use a 775 socket which became obsolete about 2009.

I have a nice used Gigabyte motherboard and Intel P4 3.00Ghz CPU for sale, from a previous upgrade, and I can't even get a kind look for it.

Older PCs make excellent firewalls, routers and NAS boxes with the appropriate software (like Smoothwall, FREESCO (nothing to do with SCO :yuk:), FreeNAS and etc.)

Dial down the GHz, rip out un-needed fans and they'll just sit there for years, doing their thing (just don't forget to DustBust 'em occasionally).

Waste not, want not.

Mac

:ok:

Mac,

Agreed - the only downside in my view can be the size of the cases. A full-size desktop or mid-tower case is a bit bulky for a firewall!

SD

P4 with hyper-threading, especially one of the later ones that supports x64, is more than good enough for W7 :cool:

They *both* are more than good enough for W7, however that's not the question.

IMHO, i'd pick the dual core due to the die process meaning it's far more energy-efficient. I could ask an ex-Intel friend but i'm sure he'd say roughly the same.

The problem I've seen with any single-core CPU has been with disk-intensive activity - e.g. AV scan, backup or disk transfer - is that the I/O interrupts can swamp the CPU, resulting in poor system performance. This doesn't happen (or not to the same extent) with dual-core systems, where 50% of CPU time is available even when running a disk-intensive process.

SD