To hyperthread or not?

[Space cat]

I recently bought a secondhand Albacomp Aptiva with minimal information except that it worked (and it was cheap). The motherboard is a Foxconn 845GV4MR-ES which appears to be a good make and I'm looking to upgrade the CPU. According to Foxconn's (very limited) website, this board is socket 478 with 400/533 FSB and the best CPU I can put in there is a pentium 3.06Ghz. I checked on Intel's website and it's true; no newer CPUs have been made that will work in my board.

Now for the crunch factor, the price. I can get a 2.8GHz pentium for a quarter the price of a 3.06 but the 3.06 has hyperthreading. Now my understanding is that a hyperthreading CPU presents the operating system (XP SP2 in my case) with a second, virtual CPU. This should make things happen faster but by how much? I would guess that it won't be twice as fast because there's still only one physical CPU in there. Can anybody give me a rough idea of the speed advantage of the 3.06 over the 2.8? I'll be using it mostly for video processing and DVD authoring.

On a slightly different subject, I read something like this on another forum: "Why in God's name would anybody want to buy a secondhand processor?" That was from a forum administrator. Is this good advice or just scaremongering from somebody with an interest in selling new ones?

 

[Deluks]

Hyperthreading is useful in certain applications, but for general purpose computing, not worth the extra. If you are doing high end stuff like video editing, hardcore photoshopipng etc, then you should really be on dual-core by now.

eBuyer do an Asrock mobo with a low end core 2 duo chip for £85, with free delivery, a good option for an up to date budget machine. You could probably get a new AMD dual-core solution for even cheaper still.

 

[Space cat]

Thanks Deluks. Your comments on hyperthreading agree with something else I found on the internet. I get the impression that a single running program will only benefit from hyperthreading if it's been written to take advantage of multiple CPUs. I suppose that also applies to dual (or more) core CPUs - or does it?

I must say that I never even looked at replacing the whole motherboard. It's an interesting option. Unfortunately, the one you suggested will cost me too much in terms of other stuff. My present hardware needs four IDE channels and three PCI slots. Thanks anyway.

 

[Deluks]

OK, but you can get mobo's for about £30-£40 that will suit your needs, Asrock do one that has 4 ide channels, 4 PCI slots and both AGP and PCIx slots, so you can reuse existing graphic card yet still have an upgrade path. It also accepts either DDR1 (what you currently have) or DDR2 memory, again giving an upgrade path.

It's about £40........and the amazing E2160 CPU can be had for about £45. Food for thought.

If you are buying a CPU anyway, you can spend a bit more and get a faster more future proof system instead of faffing about with 3 year old technology. You can knock your current mobo and chip on eBay, you'll get about £20 min. towards your upgrade.

 

[Space cat]

If you are buying a CPU anyway, you can spend a bit more and get a faster more future proof system instead of faffing about with 3 year old technology.

OK Deluks, you've convinced me; at least in part. There's no point shelling out £55 (lowest price I could find) to improve something that's already out of date. I should've remembered my own golden rule: Never buy more computer than you actually need right now because, by the time you really need it, it'll be twice as good and half the price!

Unless a hyperthreading 3.06Ghz drops into my lap for a fiver - OK, maybe a tenner - I'll stick with my 1.8GHz celeron until such time as it just isn't up to the job.

 

[Deluks]

Sounds wise.

These guides might buy you even more time...

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/oc-guide.html

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,2188777,00.asp

http://techreport.com/articles.x/13815

 

[Space cat]

Thanks for the links Deluks. I've been running a 166 MHz pentium at 233 MHz for a few years now but I haven't yet tried it on a P4. I'll have a good read.

 

[Deluks]

I've been running a 166 MHz pentium at 233 MHz for a few years now

YOU SIR.......


are a tightwad.