Old Pentium 4 computer Dont Throw away

[jimbo45]

Hi all
I've just upgraded an old P IV laptop computer to W7 x-86 and it REALLY FLIES. (Sony VAIO PGC 816)

(2GB RAM Full Pentium IV (not Celeron) 2.8 GHZ.

This gives some of the more modern laptops a real run for their money -- of course a full P IV is not a sensible choice these days for a laptop as the power consumption is Humungous -- you are lucky to get 90 mins of battery time with this one - especially with the HUGE screen and it weighs a ton.

However as an extra computer it's worth it (glad I never chucked it -- I added 1GB of RAM to it - it has 2 slots).

I just can't believe how FAST this old dynosaur is -- still has a beautiful screen so I'm using this one also as my TV / DVD viewing machine now.

I upgraded via XP home===> vista ultimate x-86 (non activated) ==> W7 RTM x-86 (from technet).

All the drivers were found.

Very happy with this although I wouldn't take it on the road - much to big and heavy.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[InvaderPar]

All my friends are still using XP (and some on some really crappy computers). They wouldn't move to Vista because they heard it was so bad. I've been using Vista happily for a year now. The moment I opened up Win7 though, I knew it's their next upgrade. I'm hoping I can get them all to use Win7 (with MSE) on their mediocre systems, it's not only nicer, safer, and more powerful, it also performs better than XP.

 

[Lee]

I to am running win 7 on a P4 with 2Gb of ram, and it flies. Battery time is about 80 minutes per battery, not bad, but not great either.

 

[zigzag3143]

I have 3 P-IV desktops and they love win 7. Not the keenest on aero, but backup servers adn media servers dont need it

 

[gforce23]

Same here. I installed the Home Premium RTM on a P4 2.4 with 512 megs of RAM, tweaked it a bit and now it boots from the BIOS splash to the desktop in about 45 seconds.
Now if I could only undervolt this processor, this thing would be perfect! It's idling at 42C (20C room temp) right now but shoots right up to 70C if I give it the beans.

 

[Antman]

Same here. I installed the Home Premium RTM on a P4 2.4 with 512 megs of RAM, tweaked it a bit and now it boots from the BIOS splash to the desktop in about 45 seconds.
Now if I could only undervolt this processor, this thing would be perfect! It's idling at 42C (20C room temp) right now but shoots right up to 70C if I give it the beans.

I would pull the fan, clean the interface areas, re-apply quality paste and re-install the fan. Maybe even a new $20 fan.

 

[gforce23]

I would pull the fan, clean the interface areas, re-apply quality paste and re-install the fan. Maybe even a new $20 fan.

Should've mentioned that earlier. I have a meticulous habit of cleaning the internals of all my PCs and laptops every 3-4 months. The P4 processor has a month old smear of Tuniq TX2 and a high airflow PWM fan was installed about 3 months back.

 

[torrentg]

Check my specs! My main rig is a P4. So is my other. This thing runs awesome, even for games. I credit that to Win 7, my knowledge of setting stuff up and the decent video card.

 

[jimbo45]

Hi there
also an interesting topic - note I was doing UPGRADES XP HOME==>VISTA Home Premium===>W7 Ultimate.

"C" Drive amount of data used on W7 -- 10GB, on Vista was 17 GB. Can't remember what XP used but W7 certainly is leaner and meaner tha VISTA.

I'm very pleased I've got a really useful extra machine. I was on the point of taking it on a one way trip to the tip.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[andych]

I just finished setting up an old Celeron 3.2ghz with 1.5 gb of DDR1 400 ram, Gigabyte GA81848-G P775 MB with an AGP Nvidia 7300GT Video Card.
Storage is by 2 off 40gb IDE HDD's.
I installed Home Premium and was pleasantly surprised at the WEI ratings.
4 for both CPU and RAM, 4.5 for the video card and 5.4 for the drives.
Not too bad at all, it is reasonably quick, will do everything needed of it etc.

 

[RichB]

Little gain on newer PC's

I've had this discussion with many of my friends over the last couple of years....

Even though we've had all kinds of core changes, REAL speed on new PC's isn't all that much more than the old workhorse P4. Most software, especially games, makes little use of multicores, so the biggest bang for buck is the CPU speed. The P4, especially ones at 3ghz or more, is still a quite viable processor, and in games will outrun a dualcore 2 ghz hands down. Just be sure to have a modern video card in it.

 

[torrentg]

I've had this discussion with many of my friends over the last couple of years....

Even though we've had all kinds of core changes, REAL speed on new PC's isn't all that much more than the old workhorse P4. Most software, especially games, makes little use of multicores, so the biggest bang for buck is the CPU speed. The P4, especially ones at 3ghz or more, is still a quite viable processor, and in games will outrun a dualcore 2 ghz hands down. Just be sure to have a modern video card in it.

As much as I love my P4, I'd have to disagree. I can play all the latest games because of my awesome 256-bit video card but I can't play GTAIV for anything. That's because it's a cpu intensive game.

 

[Greg S]

My laptop agrees with 7 also. I followed one of the tut's to dual boot XP and 7. I really didn't want to lose the XP setup since it took me 4 plus years of hacking and customizing it the way I wanted. After 7 installed, it booted up in VGA which was no surprise. I also had no drivers for wireless as well as a few other items. At the time I was unfamiliar with 7's security. I had a USB drive with plenty of drivers downloaded but was unable to access the drive and couldn't access the drive XP was loaded on even though both were visible in 7. I shut down 7, booted into XP where I could access 7's drive. I downloaded all the latest drivers that 7 didn't have and pasted them on the 7 partition. Before going back into 7, I plugged the network cable in and then booted into 7 ready to install the drivers I downloaded in XP and pasted into 7. When the desktop loaded, the updates notification appeared so I clicked it and to my surprise, 7 had already found all the drivers it had missed on the initial setup boot. I guess plugging in the cable was the ticket for internet access,lol. Long story short, it all worked and works very fast on this older laptop.
Intel P4 HT 3.0 ghz
2 gigs Ram
Seagate 7200 rpm 60 gig HD
ATI Radeon 64 megs ram

All 7's bells and whistles work perfectly!

Hi all
I've just upgraded an old P IV laptop computer to W7 x-86 and it REALLY FLIES. (Sony VAIO PGC 816)

(2GB RAM Full Pentium IV (not Celeron) 2.8 GHZ.

This gives some of the more modern laptops a real run for their money -- of course a full P IV is not a sensible choice these days for a laptop as the power consumption is Humungous -- you are lucky to get 90 mins of battery time with this one - especially with the HUGE screen and it weighs a ton.

However as an extra computer it's worth it (glad I never chucked it -- I added 1GB of RAM to it - it has 2 slots).

I just can't believe how FAST this old dynosaur is -- still has a beautiful screen so I'm using this one also as my TV / DVD viewing machine now.

I upgraded via XP home===> vista ultimate x-86 (non activated) ==> W7 RTM x-86 (from technet).

All the drivers were found.

Very happy with this although I wouldn't take it on the road - much to big and heavy.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[jimbo45]

Hi all
Nice to see these older computers still running (and using W7).

The PIV processor is probably totally well suited to typical apps that are run on home machines anyway.

The main problem with PIV especially in a laptop is the horrendous power consumption which is probably why INTEL didn't develop processors along the main PIV line- but went more down the "Celeron" type of route.

If it existed I'm sure a 6 GHZ PIV processor would probably knock the socks off even some of the newer quads - but there again no 64 bit architecture on those processors.

Still good to see perfectly servicable computers being used rather than creating yet more Landfill -- and old PC's have quite a bit of heavy metal toxic waste in them.

Cheers
jimbo