What can one do with a P4 Prescott and a celeron

I have one P4 and one celeron PCs donated to me one can take a PCI Express 16 gen2 i believe and one a 8x AGP slot. i think there both Socket 775. what do you guys suggest i do with them? i was thinking that one could be a Emulator Box. and the other for something else?

 

What core does the P4 sport? Most of them were crap.

 

Well, the line can be hard to trace with computers. There is a ''lot'' you can do with them, but at the same time they are pretty dated.
If your underlying question is ''Are they worth keeping?'', my answer is yes. I always find it usefull to have a few backup PC for various reasons.
In any case, if they are truly socket 775, check out what mobos are. Some of the 775 mobos still have some value and can still resell decently.
Otherwise if they can take high end core 2 quads, maybe they can be upgraded for cheap.

P4 are at a low value now, but you have some collectors and enthusiasts trying to rebuild period authentic machines and they are looking for parts.
As the hardware becomes rarer due to being trashed, the stuff can take on value.
If your computer is very clean, it is worth keeping, and cases can always be reused.

 

Yeah, the P4's arent great and they run ungodly hot and use an awful lot of power, the Prescott in particular is bad OTOH.

Not to say they aren't fantastic for learning from and building early proof on concept machines on. My first plex server im working on is going to be using a P4, and then when i understand it fully im assembling the destitute build of logical increments.

 

Northwood is better than Prescott at temperature.In fact,it runs the same as S478 Willamettes,I've checked that.

 

there not aftermarket boards ones this http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?cc=us&lc=en&docname=c00196251 and another is a foxconn. i just want to know how i can make use of these machines. i was considering just running emulators on the more powerful one. for the first 5 gen consoles.

 

its one core two threads!

 

The Pentium 4 was a horrible processer. L775 motherboards are good as most can use various Core 2, later Celeron and Pentium D chips, all of which will generally out perform the P4. Older motherboards I generally recycle.

Unless you are a hardcore intel collector, I can't think of a single reason why anyone would need or want a P4. Older machines from the 8086 to the Pentium are desirable due to hardware and speed. Even pentium 2 with it's slot CPUs are quite nice, but once you get to Pentium III the motherboards tended to phase old technology out so that ISA slots were in the 1s, even PS2 mice and serial ports were slowing being phased out. So generally the main difference is going to be speed of the system, even if you wanted to run a specific OS or program there isn't a reason for the P4 over other CPUs. As mentioned the P4s generally ran hot and a lot of P4 systems were generally quite big and heavy.

Work chucked out some P4 machines, as they were 775 sockets, a quick motherboard BIOS flash and I soon upgraded them to P6400 Core Duos which did give a marked improvement.

One thing I don't like about CPUs nowdays is how a) It's really hard to explain to a layman the differences between CPUs, b) How it's impossible to determine what CPU would be faster without looking up it's specs. Some 4th Gen i7 CPUs run slower in relative terms then some 3rd gen i3 CPUs...

 

I get your point man, but the link provided that it supports 800mhz FSB i personally want to change the CPU but i don't think the BIOS would accept that, (going by there specs page) but i could give it a go!

 

I used to have a P4 prescott based PC (Pentium 4 650). When I say used to, I mean until just over a week a ago. Replaced it with a G3258 based system, and tbh, I haven't really seen much difference. For basic web browsing, creating text documents etc, I found the P4 to be more than adequate. I'm going to be keeping it as a backup.

The new fan is much quieter though, which is a bonus.

 

You know what... Since the G3258 is out i may as well go for that, i have PSU and some PC cases lying about. ill just strip the guts and keep the boards just in case there needed.

 

For retro gaming rig enthusiasts, a fast PIII is generally regarded as the platform of choice for later 3dfx cards, like voodoo 5 or maybe a voodoo 2 sli. The reason is there is a kind of glitch in the 3dfx cards when it is run on newer generations, like p4, and it makes the card overheat and you can kill your video card. 3DfX died before those computers existed so these glitches were never patched.

A fast PIII however provides a good platform with plenty of speed to accommodate the GPU.

 

ah right i used to have a 550 and a 800 and 1.4ghz p3 they were amazing

 

I was just going to suggest the same, though tbh those old all-ceramic pentiums are way better for this.

As for other options you could built a really shitty mame cabinet or a small server that cant compete against a raspberry pi yet consumes way more power.

 

Make a Windows 98 or Windows 2000 Professional computer build, it will work or barely.

 

This hardware is too new for this.

 

How so? I can run Windows 98 and 2000 on my current PC.

Only reason I didnt stick with 2000 when I upgraded to a Q6600 (not current PC) was because Pro didnt support more than 2 cores.

 

No drivers for chipset, sound, LAN, VGA mode 640x480 in 98. Maybe a little better with 2000.

 

LAN/Sound/VGA are unrelated to processor though. You could put a P4 and a PCI video card/sound/nic in no problem.

Though I get your general jist, its just about doable still.

I have to run DOS on some 775 machines with industrial motherboards that still have ISA slots for running some old machinery for example.