Celeron or nothing!

tba

My auld PC is on its last legs. Dying as I type. I figure that it needs an upgrade, but I dont have much money to spend being a student and all, I really just want to keep it ticking over for a while longer.

The main bottleneck in the machine is my willamette processor with a blistering 1.5ghz (socket 478 400 mhz). Having searched the internet and E-bay I have found nothing but celerons to replace it, and I have heard that they have dissapointing preformance.

My question is would getting this for example have any affect on my beast of a rig at all?

Borderfox

It probably will. So will more RAM. Whats the rest of the spec?

osmethod

How old is your PC....?
The willamette processor,1.5ghz (socket 478 400 mhz) is a pentium 4 processor...?

Can you explain the "bottleneck" symptoms a bit better....?

osmethod

tba

I have 512mb of ram, and a 128 mb graphic card.

I would be better off getting a completly new system but money is tight. Till the summer anyway.

The bottleneck is that the processor is the only thing I never upgraded in the PC and Its a bit behind the rest (I think anyway)

I suppose what Im really asking is, if getting a celeron is a waste of time and money?

Gone West

well this seems like a recent thing. Computers dont just slow down over time. You probably just have spyware

tba

FuzzyLogic wrote:

Computers dont just slow down over time. You probably just have spyware

Correct, but my preception of how fast PCs should be has changed over the last 3 years.

As for spyware thats a negative good buddy, this commputer in question aint got internet access.

osmethod

Sounds a decent enough spec....

Do you have loads of programs installed, particularly games, graphics and programming graphics...

Have you defragged lately and set a permanent swap file....
Download PerfectDisk - exceptional defragger... http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_description/0,fid,22552,00.asp

With loads of software installed/removed the registry can get very bloated

Have you loads of processes/programs running simultaneously... To many can starve processor resources...

If your AV is doing realtime scanning this can sloow a box considerably..

A buggy programme can also slow a box

Just some suggestions...

I wouldn't be particularly keen on a celeron because of its internal cache but then again... the whole thing is relative to what you use/do on your pc

osmethod

tba

I use high end 2D and 3D software such as photoshop, 3ds Max, AutoCAD etc.. they dont need much to run but when you open and edit huge files there is a major slow down. Extra ram has improved the situation but it still lags behind and can be very annoying, epecially as my flat mates PC is brand new and runs like the dickens.

Defrag may work but I suspect that its just that the PC is getting old and I want to get the last few drops out of it before I strip it for parts. (will try anyway)

Ive never used a celeron so I dont know what they're like, but lets say I got it would I see a major/minor increase in speed or are they just a load of silicon ****e?

Raskolnikov

tba wrote:

My question is would getting this for example have any affect on my beast of a rig at all?

For gaming? A negligible difference.

osmethod

Sounds to me that you could do with more memory....

I've seen a G4 Powerpc (mac) with Adobe photoshop, illustrator and quark express running with 512 MB of ram. Everything is lovely till one loads a 200MB file...talk about grinding to a halt...

Have a look around for some memory first because and check what the max is your box can take... I don't believe it to be your processor...

osmethod

Khannie

Raskolnikov wrote:

For gaming? A negligible difference.

Agreed. You'd see a difference allright, but not a big one. Celerons are sh1te for gaming. They're grand for a lot of stuff, but not really gaming.

I'd suggest having a good look on ebay for a P4. I've bought a 2nd hand processor (actually a celeron) on ebay before and it was grand. Most people are willing to ship a processor to any country since it's light. You just need to ask.

edit: just noticed that it's for graphics manipulation. Agree with osmethod: Ram, ram and more ram. You just can't have enough.

uberpixie

tba wrote:

My auld PC is on its last legs. Dying as I type. I figure that it needs an upgrade, but I dont have much money to spend being a student and all, I really just want to keep it ticking over for a while longer.

The main bottleneck in the machine is my willamette processor with a blistering 1.5ghz (socket 478 400 mhz). Having searched the internet and E-bay I have found nothing but celerons to replace it, and I have heard that they have dissapointing preformance.

My question is would getting this for example have any affect on my beast of a rig at all?

A willamette core is socket 423 NOT soc 478. You can't use that celeron unless you want to buy a new mobo.

The highest you could go is a 2nd hand willamette 2.0ghz. Maybe off ebay.

AFAIK soc 478 cpus started at 2.0ghz or so. Unless intel relesed lower clocked ones later?

If your box is actuallly a socket 423 then you will have to by rdram. 256mb of the stuff costs €100 off shop4memoery.com

Might just be a better idea to wait and do a full upgrade in the summer.

tba

uberpixie wrote:

A willamette core is socket 423 NOT soc 478. You can't use that celeron unless you want to buy a new mobo.

The highest you could go is a 2nd hand willamette 2.0ghz. Maybe off ebay.

AFAIK soc 478 cpus started at 2.0ghz or so. Unless intel relesed lower clocked ones later?

If your box is actuallly a socket 423 then you will have to by rdram. 256mb of the stuff costs €100 off shop4memoery.com

Might just be a better idea to wait and do a full upgrade in the summer.

weird Im getting these numbers back from my system check

• P4
• WIL
• 1500/400
• 478
• 256K
• SKTN

screw it, seems the best option is to hold on to my money and add it to the "new computer fund"

Thanks for the advice people

tba

ah see attachment for the socket no thing.

it Appears P4 Wils came in 423 AND 478 flavours, (for some reason that is beyond me.)

ressem

So you have got a modern hard drive (for graphics/video having two, one dedicated to work files, is better) , preferably less than 70% used, Windows reinstalled in the last two years?

I wouldn't bother with the celeron, if the issue is, as described, with loading/saving. Might speed up filters and redraws but not greatly.

There were 478 williamites but mostly used with ~ 2 gig CPUs

uberpixie

tba wrote:

ah see attachment for the socket no thing.

it Appears P4 Wils came in 423 AND 478 flavours, (for some reason that is beyond me.)

Weird. I always had though that anything below 2ghz in p4 was socket 423.

leeroybrown

As ressem suggests a windows reinstall might be in order. A P4 1.5 with 512Mb of RAM should be able to handle what you're doing. Windows installs tend to gather bloat and slow down over time. If you can temporarily connect it to the internet you could try a Windows Update. Sometimes the changes pulled down can blow some of the cobwebs away.