[geeks] p4 processor spec q

[Lionel Peterson]

On Dec 15, 2009, at 10:24 PM, adh at an.bradford.ma.us (Sandwich Maker)  
wrote:

>
> i'm noodling performance upgrades for my gf's machine, which currently
> has a non-hyperthreaded 2.8/533; i don't know if the chipset supports
> hyperthreading, or if that'd get her anything under xp pro.  ebay has
> 3.2/800 cpus for ~$30...  the ram is already pc3200.

Make sure the MB can take an 800 MHz frontside bus, if it can't, you  
may not even get degraded performance, but I'm not sure.

I have found it more economical to upgrade MB to LGA775 MB and a low- 
end CPU with DDR2 memory than look for slightly better 478 CPUs. For a  
little more than $100 i bet you could get 4 Gigs of RAM, a dual core  
CPU, and a low-end MB. $150 could buy you a nicer MB & maybe a  
Wolfdale Celeron E3200 (which supports virtualization, like XPmode  
under Win7, for instance, a nicely integrated WinXP VM).

To offset the price of the new bits, you could sell off the PC3200  
RAM, which is fetching a premium these days...

Just a thought,

Lionel