Changing Proccesors

[Dombler]

I currently have a Athlon 1500+. I am wanting to buy a Pent 4. Would i have to switch out my motherboard in order to install the p4?

[amphoteric88]

short answer for a short question, yes

[Dombler]

Ok, thanks.

[amphoteric88]

if i were you though, i'd recommend just buying a faster athlon. a 2000+ is pretty cheap right now, and you wouldn't have to change anything
what motherboard do you have?

[Livy]

the p4 uses socket 478 and the athalon uses socket a i think. you may have to buy new ram depending on what type of ram you got the now, but if you got ddr ram, get a p4 ddr board.

[Prozac]

Carefull when buying a P4 board as a unscrupoulous vendor may try and flog you the wrong type. Socket 423 is the older socket of the Pentium 4 sockets. Socket 423 Pentium 4's are larger and use 423 pins. They are noticeable because they have a green plate around the processor core from which the actual pins protrude. The 423-pin Pentium 4's are also noticeably larger than the 478-pin units. Intel quickly moved on to the socket 478 format, supporting the newer designed 478-pin P4's. While the two sockets were essentially equals in terms of performance, socket 478 is now the Pentium 4 standard. Intel just is not making 423-pin processors anymore, and these chips are topped out at 2 GHz. Also, all the 512 KB L2 cache Pentium 4's come on Socket 478. Mounting of the CPU coolers are also different for the two sockets.....good luck :blink:

[amphoteric88]

yeah, the athlon 1500+ is a socket A processor.
even the fastest current athlon is a socket A, so theoretically you could get the best athlon and not have to change anything
the performance difference between athlon and pentium is minimum and athlon's are generally cheaper.
i'd stick with the athlon

[Lamsey]

Indeed. If you have an Athlon setup there's no point in changing to an Intel setup.

Stick with Athlon. It's cheaper and will serve you just as well as a Pentium.

[Somebody1234]

@Dombler,

Just be sure your motherboard supports the CPU you get if you do upgrade. Check the BIOS revision too. A lot of times, later BIOS revisions will support faster processors. It's always a good idea to update the BIOS before purchasing a new CPU.

What brand and model motherboard do you have?

[Dombler]

Thanks for your help guys (maybe gals, just dont know) i just ordered the AMD Athlon™ XP 2700+ for my computer. Hope the installation goes well :)

[amphoteric88]

i have the 2700+ myself. it's a great cpu, i've had no complaints.
very powerful too, the only thing is that you'll need a pretty heavy duty heatsink and fan. did you order retail or OEM?
if you ordered oem, you'll only get the cpu and nothing else, if you ordered retail you'll get a good cooler.
if you don't have a cooler, you should buy an all copper one, i had the thermaltake volcano 9 (which is part copper part aluminium), and it was letting the cpu run at 64-65 degrees idle. i have scorch marks on the underside because of that :(

[Dombler]

OEM, I have some fans sitting around some where.

[Livy]

i got xp 1500mobile. and i trundles along fine, good procesors.

[amphoteric88]

Originally posted by Dombler@22 April 2003 - 06:14
OEM, I have some fans sitting around some where.
i fear you may have to buy another fan and heatsink, Dombler.
i'm not trying to scare you into buying one, just saying that you should set aside a little bit more money to buy one. the 2700+ is a very powerful beast, but heat can be a problem.

[Somebody1234]

I think his heatsink may be fine. It depends on which one he has. All I know is the Volcanos you talked about earlier don't cool very well. They look nice and all but not very efficient.

I have an Athlon XP with stock heatsink and fan suppied by AMD. It uses microfin technology. It's compact and works really well I was quite surprised when I first installed it. It runs under 40c idle and under 50c under full load.

[amphoteric88]

i know what you mean about the volcano. it cost me 30 quid, and all it did was look nice.
i'm on my third heatsink now, i've got quite a collection :D
my point was that the power of the 2700 chip is really high. i had the p4 1.6GHz chip and the coolder i had for that was all aluminium, i had no problems at all.
aluminium isn't as good a heat conductor, so i thought that the cooler for the p4 would be worse than the athlon, but the p4 (approx 40 idle 45 load) ran much cooler than my athlon (around 46, 50 load)