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Pentium 4

EverStaR

EverStaR

Experienced Member
Joined
Jan 17, 2024
Messages
198
What is your idea Pentium 4 system and why? Are you a gamer, OS enthusiast, or other? Please weigh in with your dream ma Hine and logic behind it! I don't discriminate on your passion, tell it like it is for you!

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EverStaR said:
What is your idea Pentium 4 system and why? Are you a gamer, OS enthusiast, or other? Please weigh in with your dream ma Hine and logic behind it! I don't discriminate on your passion, tell it like it is for you!

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My idea.. or thougts rather on pentium 4 systems is simple.. leave them on the curb for trash pickup.. and if you have one well put it on the curb . Ya know.. because they are all crap ...

Why do so many of you want to reminisce about such a relatively recent and garbage period in computing. When home computers hit the rock bottom.. What a complete waste of time and effort.
 
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I use my fancy P4 as a win98 tweener and I value it quite a bit to be honest. I also use another less feature rich P4 system as backup file server. Not fast enough to use in general but still very useful.
 
I use an Advantech AIMB-742 in a rackmount chassis to drive various gizmos. It also has a good floppy controller (FM/MFM-capable) that supports 2 drives--also has an on-board CF card slot. It's an industrial board, so it's not the typical consumer fare.
 
You can make a nice Windows ME machine with last gen P4 motherboards and get to use SATA HDs (in IDE mode).

Personally, I tend to stick with Athlon, Athlon XP Athlon 64, or early Opteron rigs from that time period or just use a fast earlier P3.

I do have a Thinkcentre P4 1.6ghz and a Dell Dimension 8300 3gzh I kept around.
 
VERAULT said:
Why do so many of you want to reminisce about such a relatively recent and garbage period in computing. When home computers hit the rock bottom.. What a complete waste of time and effort.
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You could ask the same about every Macintosh Apple released in the early to mid-90s. They were all crap. Still, people collect (and even use) them.

I have various Pentium 4 systems, though all 1st gen (socket 423) with RAMBUS memory. They are special because they are so oddly different and of course were a dead-end.
 
I have several P4 systems, from the first Willamette with 512MB SDRAM to one of the last, a Prescott HT 3.2E with 4GB DDR2. I use them to play with Linux and experiment. I like to learn about what kind of computing these things can do. I compare their abilities to other systems both older and newer.

I can use my P4HT 3.2E as a daily driver, for the most part. Not really "modern" computing. But it can use modern browsers and recent office software. It falls apart when trying to use as an entertainment device for video or TV. But as an office computer for word processing and spreadsheets and simple databases it works just fine. And it does Youtube just fine using SMTube. And for period Operating Systems and games it can perform just as it ever did. If all I had was a P4HT 3.2E I would be satisfied. I'de partition it and put modern Linux (antiX or MX or Debian) on it for more current stuff and keep the old XP partition for retro computing.

Seaken
 
In my opinion, a lot of these systems that are contemporary with the P4 series, whether WinTel or Apple MAC are not really "Vintage". Kids today like to use word like this to juice up their posts, like "epic" or "awesome". These computers are not Vintage, but they can be interesting.

Seaken
 
Willamette core.
I really don't fancy the P4 because it was so many bad ideas on a chip and if you won the RAMBUS lottery, coupled with terrible memory. Even when I want to build an example P4 system I cannot help but want to make it incredibly cheesy because that generation really reminds me of people who paid way too much thinking it was the future and got smoked by a last-gen PIII.....then later on got burned by the first wave of bad capacitors.
That whole generation is something you point at and laugh whenever you see it. People running 98 on P4's are twice the fun because you can laugh at ugly strangers wearing ugly clothing.
 
Unknown_K said:
The P4 was around for something like 7 or 8 years and evolved quite a bit over that time.
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The Pentium 4 was around for 5 years, not 7 or 8. The first Pentium 4 was released in 2001, the last was released in 2006.

The only thing that evolved with the Pentium 4 was its insane power consumption. The only three things that were introduced with the Pentium 4 was SSE2, SSE3 and Hyperthreading. x86_64 was invented by AMD and Intel had to shoe horn it into the Pentium 4 design. It did not work well. The Pentium 4 was heavily dependent on large fast caches to perform well, something which Intel never added to the design, except at the very end with the Prescott-2M and Cedar Mill. Even then, the cache ordering was wrong, it was optimized for 32 bit code, so 64 bit code had a performance penalty. The later 64 bit Celerons were orders of magnitude worse because of their tiny 256k or 512k of cache.
 
GiGaBiTe said:
The Pentium 4 was around for 5 years, not 7 or 8. The first Pentium 4 was released in 2001, the last was released in 2006.

The only thing that evolved with the Pentium 4 was its insane power consumption. The only three things that were introduced with the Pentium 4 was SSE2, SSE3 and Hyperthreading. x86_64 was invented by AMD and Intel had to shoe horn it into the Pentium 4 design. It did not work well. The Pentium 4 was heavily dependent on large fast caches to perform well, something which Intel never added to the design, except at the very end with the Prescott-2M and Cedar Mill. Even then, the cache ordering was wrong, it was optimized for 32 bit code, so 64 bit code had a performance penalty. The later 64 bit Celerons were orders of magnitude worse because of their tiny 256k or 512k of cache.
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Nov 20, 2000, first orders to Dec 7, 2007, last orders, August 8, 2008, last shipments.
Started at 180nm then 130, 90, 65. Sockets 423, 478, 775.
As far as a CPU goes that's a long time.
 
I think the more important topic is Hawaiian Punch changed its formula completely 35 years ago and no one ever seemed to notice. Even though it tastes completely different than it used to. We have huge Mysteries like this to unravel and you guys are arguing about disposable crappy garbage processors. I want back my tasty beverage I enjoyed when I was young!
 
As much as (some) folks dislike the P4, it's useful when you need a 32-bit CPU that can still run stuff at a reasonable speed. I still prefer the AMD socket 754 for that general era, though socket 939 was for me, a big nothing.
 
Sounds like a lot of people use these as W98 systems. I don't know, this is likely one that seems like it can be skipped. Lot of dislike for these! Is it retro prejudice or real? Trying to recall if I outright skipped the P4 or not.
 
Chuck(G) said:
As much as (some) folks dislike the P4, it's useful when you need a 32-bit CPU that can still run stuff at a reasonable speed. I still prefer the AMD socket 754 for that general era, though socket 939 was for me, a big nothing.
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939 had dual channel RAM and you could use cheap 3Ghz Opterons on them. Also (unless I am mistaken) the 939 platform was the first that allowed SLI/Crossfire dual GPUs.
 
Could be--but just the dearth of CPUs for that socket (using eBay as a gauge), says that it wasn't a big seller. I do have a 939 board here that I run occasionally with 2K server on it. Although a single-drive FDC, it is FM-capable.
 
So let me ask this, $200 delivered last gen p4, win 98, full complete system , one doesnt have a satisfactory 98 Se system, what would they have to loose?
 
What are you talking about $200.00!?!! These things are free everywhere!!!! Because they are literal ewaste (junk). Youd really spend $200 on an relatively recent obsolete worthless machine??

Whats wrong with you??!

And whats all this nonsense about win98 on a P4.. no p4s came with windows 98 .. am i missing something in this group delusion?
 
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