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I upgraded from a p3 500 mhz with 512 sdram and single 40 gig 7200 rpm drive running window 98 to:
a p4 2 gig northwood 1 gig ddr ram 2 60 gig 7200s raid0 drives running win xp pro..
now my concern is that this ssytem does not feel 4 times faster than the old p3....and i believe that considering the chip is 4 times faster raw and the fsb is 4x faster as well that expecting 4 x the speed is conservative....i do feel an improvement in the raid0 setup when transferring files and such but this is unrelated reaaly....boot up is slightly faster and the loading of programs really doesnt seem any faster....and i am still geting 100% cpu usage dueing activities like high resource games....is it XP hggin all my souped up resources...i havent tried dropping back to win98 casue it would require a little more time than i have but even with say a doubling of the resource needs by Xp over 98 the system should feel much faster....i am wondering if either winXP or the p4 was a technological flop becsue right now i am nor impressed....FYI i have tried all the win XP tweaks and all my drivers are updated...i conider myself a pretty avanced user and am always up to date with the latest drivers and updates and such so please dont refer me to some newb weaking page...just offer your opinions
i shouldnt have said upgraded....as i actually bought a whole new system and still have the old intact as it was....
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I dont have any experience with the P4, Im running AMD XP. Try running some benchmarks and see if and where you're system is bottlenecking. Do a search and find what services on your particular XP are unnecessary, a know a lot of them are reserved for networking so if you're not on a LAN you can cut down on your cpu usage.
For what its worth I didnt notice a great big difference with XP when compared to 98, but hardware-wise just going from 512sd to 1024ddr shouldve made a noticeable impact. Guess you'll never really know unless you run both machines on the same OS :/
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I have a p4 with Xp...everything is instantaneous...the CPU is rarely used...I've never seen it go up high yet
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From all the articles and reviews I have read no one will notice any change in performance from 1000 to a 2000mhz system either. Speed has increased so much that our minds cannot even notice it, as we are down to miliseconds of increased performance. It is called marketing, some people have to have bragging rights, and the latest greatest products. Even those into gaming, where the game's software limitations prevent an increase in their speed, are into overclocking because it has to be fast. Strange world, in a third world country a doctor would die to have a pentium computer on the desk to use. While we throw them out to the garbage dump as unuseable relics. Some groups are trying to save this waste by sending old computers to these people.
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Well u said your frontside bus is 400mhz..Well it can be but not with DDR MEMORY...thats clocked at 266mhz...I could see that being a bottleneck on your system...And there are alot of little tweaks u can do in XP...U should run a search on google for XP TWEAKS...And most of the updates for XP are either bug fixes or security setting..U should update but isnt really gonna do anything for optimizing your system..I have looked at alot of motherboards lately and i havent seen any that say RDRAM Powered...I see DDR POwered...I always thought that the new P4 Socket 478 Mb's would support RDram since the mb's can accept a 400Mhz FSB...If anyone could shed some light on this it would be greatly appreciated...And if P4 dont support RDRAM then what Mb's do?
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although it was a typo i said i didnt need the newbie XP tweaking guids as i have been thru all that...as for the dram mobos u can find an ASUS and an ABIT dram chipset on their site
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I agree with David above. How much faster than "right away" can you get? From what I read on this forum, very few of us are doing major league number crunching or running CAD software, where maybe these speed differences would show up more clearly. But when a web page on my DSL equipped home computer loads in less than a full second, on a PIII 700MHz machine, how much improvement could I possibly see on a P4 2gig machine?? I think they call it "diminishing returns". My .02
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big brags going on in the pc chips,memory, disk speed etc etc, but the point is what you get are more calculations per sec,more bits of data per sec, but if your not doing 10 different things at the same time then you wont notice nothing, fsb,is the big problem, but you should have tried to mess with a similar set up in the store,before shelling out,after all you wouldn't spend so much money on a car without a test drive, if you dont like it take it back, you should have a warranty,wait untill a real computer comes out,in your dreams,
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well maybe if all your doing is webpage browsing on cable or dsl(which has nothing to do with the topic or the processor) then u wouldnt notice from a 333mhz p2 to a 2.2p4 and none would be the wiser.....but things like loading graphic intensive programs such as photoshop and games there really isnt a difference and to me that is bs.....they overhype the increase in performance from the p3 to the p4 and convince you it will be faster...yet their hihgh end p3s are priced comparable to the mid high end p4s....thats tellu something....it is becoming my opinnion that the p4 was indeed a flop....and XP too
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Your original comp already had a fast hard drive and more than enough ram, so it was probably much faster than you realized. Expecting a four fold increase in speed is not realistic. Go to pcpitstop.com and run the system tests there to see how your computer stacks up against similar ones.
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My old system was a P3 600 with 512sdram and a 5200 20GB HDD. I built a new P4 1.9 with 512DDR and 7200 40GB HDD. The performance is amazing (for me based on my needs and expectations), and can't compare to my prior system. XP runs flawlessly on MSI 845 Ultra board and I would say it feels 4x faster. While researching, it became clear not all systems operate equally based on clock speeds, but rather work more effectively with "friendly" components. Check your setup and make certain you have everything optimized to work together. I would follow the recommendations and install sisoft sandra and find out where your power is going as I have not had similar problems with CPU drainage and check your heating system for possible problems. My CPU at idle is running at 14C and heavy use at 35C - you may have a problem there.
Good Luck.
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I just think some people dont know how to use XP...If u dont like it then get rid of it...As for mumus question..I really dont think you are seeing the big picture when using a P4...I mean when u are talking about opening photoshop and not seeing a diffrence..well no $hi*...I mean how long oes it take to load photoshop? Like 6 sec top..if u saw a 2 sec increase would u brag about it...I think a faster computer should be used for Video encoding which i know u would see a huge diffrence in performance...The only way i could see someone seeing and increase in speed from running or loading a game is if there last system wasnt making the minumum req...If you are looking for a game to load instantly u might as well throw your system out the window and wait a long while...If you bought a P4 system just because u wanted to see photoshop or a game load quicker then u wasted your money and time.
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This is interesting. I have a celeron 541mhz cpu with 83mhz FSB speed,256mb sdram and am running XP PRO.
On sunday i am going to buy a new motherboard that enables 266 mhz fsb and a 1.5mhz celeron processer.
My current machine seems pretty fast although at the lower end of the spec scale.
Will i notice much of a difference with the new MOBO + Pro????
I hate wasting money!!!LOLAny advice appreciated by myself and others
DIRK.
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well you guys that are arguing against me are actually arguing my point exactly....if im not suppose to see increases in performance in those areas then wtf did i pay for?....bragging rights that i have a p4?....if thats the case then they should include a sticker that i can post on my ass saying i have a p4 so i can brag casue thats all this thing seems good for for it....
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I really dont know why some people just love their P4's w/ DDR memory, i feel that P4's are faster and better performers if teamed up with RDRAM. Yeah, sure, DDR sounds cool: Double Data Rate, but from what i heard the P4 uses "quad-pumped fsb" or something quad and only RD can make good use of it. I think that DDR is better off with AMD's.
Or am i wrong in any way?
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I agree with the above statement...Mumu i never said u wouldnt see and increase in performance...But u have to try using it for more then photoshop or a video game...Have u tried doing a benchmark on video encodeing...There is a free program called tmpgenc..Try running some video through it and test between both of your systems...If you dont notice an improvment then something is wrong...I have a pentuim III 800 384MB..It takes me usually around 12 hrs to encode a 100min movie...Been awhile since I encoded but probably a good estimate but anyway try doing some encodeing on your systems and see if u notice and improvement...I asked earlier if anyone knows does the socket 478 MB's support RDRAM? I have seen DDR systems but it just dont make since if the FSB on a 478 is 400MHz...There would be a huge improvement in speed if the bus speed was clocked at 400MHz instead of 266Mhz...good luck
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Chad, I have a 1.7 P4 with an intel D850MVL (same as D850MV, but with LAN connection) motherboard. It's a socket 478, with two dual rdram channels (each channel supporting up to two RIMM's...which means four total RIMM's)...
I have two PC800 RDRAM sitting in my first channel. Oh yeah, yeah it's 400 mhz bus speed
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oh yea, i know the p4 does great on benchmarks.....but i didnt by it for benchmark testing....and if video editing is the only thing u can think of then i stick by my flop convivtions
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For most everyday uses, in terms of hardware and windoze, we're long past the point of diminishing returns.
And frankly, a P3 running 98se feels more nimble than a P4 running XP.
Your experience reflects the performance erosion and drudgery of the windoze treadmill.
But you sound like a dutiful consumer.
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Then Take it back or get rid of it...I'm sure there is more u could use it for then video editing or encoding but that is the only thing i would use it for...Right now that would be the only reason I would buy a P4 is for video encoding cuz it would save me probably around 10hrs on each movie...And i do alot of encoding...So either take ur P4 back or figure out what it could be used for or just give it to me and stop whining about it...THE END
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The thing that you seem to be missing, Mumu is that as power of your computer goes up, the power of the software goes up. I hardly think a person can play Black and White with any sense of speed on a P2 233. Yet we know that webpages run decently well if you have a P2 or P4.
In essense, if you are a casual user who looks at webpages or does simple things then by all means don't buy a P4. However, if you are a computer intensive user such as I am you want to keep up with the hardware. With my system (P4 1.7 Ghz, 768 DDr, 15,000 RPM SCSI Hard Drive, Geforce 3, on and on) I find that it is incredibly fast compartivly. Where I work, I usually use old Celeron 500 computers that run Windows 98. There is an INCREDIBLE speed difference there, and it's due in large part to the processor and memory.
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yo i dunno wut's amd athlon xp wut does it do? and would p3 amd athlon xp 900mhz would be good to buy? which softweare is better win98 or winxp?
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