It's not like it's a hidden secret or something - it's the basis of the name. 32 bits of address mapping. 2^32 = 4294967296 = 4*(1024^3) = 4294967296*(1024^-3) Gi = 4Gi.
Last edited by mikkel (2008-09-18 08:52:38)
Don't forget the 64-bit hardware limitations which I believe are around a quarter of a million GB (48-bit (virtual, only 40-bit really) addressing, unless newer implementations have changed it).DeathUnlimited wrote:
Adding that you do not see the magical 4 because the OS addresses some of the memory to other components too, mainly to the video card.Scorpion0x17 wrote:
Please read one of my many other posts in these very forums explaining in great detail why ALL 32bit systems CAN and DO address upto 4GB - you may not see that magic number 4, but that doesn't mean it can't handle 4GB.Defiance wrote:
Quick heads up: 32 bit systems such as that proc and OS can't address more then about 3.5 gigs of RAM.
And 64-bit OS's can support huge, huge abounts of memory. 64-bit Vista's just have software level limits ranging from 4 to 128GB.
Not like anyone has mentioned any of this in any threads before or anything......
Freezer7Pro wrote:
That's what's going wrong.Ultimatrox wrote:
2.8ghz pentium 4
@OP: Don't just go out spending money because nubs on here say so - there's almost certainly nothing at all wrong with any of your hardware.
A reformat and re-install of everything will probably do the trick.
P4's are not bad processors and you can probably still get a lot of life out of it yet.
A reformat and re-install of everything will probably do the trick.
P4's are not bad processors and you can probably still get a lot of life out of it yet.
Yes they are. They are a horrendously poor design.Scorpion0x17 wrote:
P4's are not bad processors and you can probably still get a lot of life out of it yet.
The whole P4 debacle was a real mess and they were awful.
My current rig has a P4 and it is 5 years old. It wasn't all that bad.Bertster7 wrote:
Yes they are. They are a horrendously poor design.Scorpion0x17 wrote:
P4's are not bad processors and you can probably still get a lot of life out of it yet.
The whole P4 debacle was a real mess and they were awful.
It was inferior to a compably priced AMD system from the same era. Why is that? It's because Intel designed a complete lemon with the P4. They focused far too much on clock rates, which their marketing department told them was all they needed to worry about, because that's what consumers look at when buying a computer. This was a big mistake - but the lessons they learned in branch prediction (important in systems with such huge pipelines) and in various superscalar CPU design tricks, have been invaluable in making their current CPUs what they are today. You could look at the P4 as the weak link in a learning curve, or as a marketing experiment that didn't go particularly well.killer21 wrote:
My current rig has a P4 and it is 5 years old. It wasn't all that bad.Bertster7 wrote:
Yes they are. They are a horrendously poor design.Scorpion0x17 wrote:
P4's are not bad processors and you can probably still get a lot of life out of it yet.
The whole P4 debacle was a real mess and they were awful.
The point is that later P4s weren't all that bad. Yes, they're only about 40-45% as effective clock-per-clock as the C2D, but that doesn't make them unusable, ancient pieces of silicon. A nicely clocked P4 can very well do in a low-midrange system today. A 4GHz P4 with HT is about equal to a 2GHz C2D.Bertster7 wrote:
It was inferior to a compably priced AMD system from the same era. Why is that? It's because Intel designed a complete lemon with the P4. They focused far too much on clock rates, which their marketing department told them was all they needed to worry about, because that's what consumers look at when buying a computer. This was a big mistake - but the lessons they learned in branch prediction (important in systems with such huge pipelines) and in various superscalar CPU design tricks, have been invaluable in making their current CPUs what they are today. You could look at the P4 as the weak link in a learning curve, or as a marketing experiment that didn't go particularly well.killer21 wrote:
My current rig has a P4 and it is 5 years old. It wasn't all that bad.Bertster7 wrote:
Yes they are. They are a horrendously poor design.
The whole P4 debacle was a real mess and they were awful.
They aren't super, but they're ok. Most tasks people on here use their computer for (gaming) isn't all that CPU bound, and a P4 can very well handle many modern games without any major issues.
Also note the difference between early P4s and late P4s. The old Willamettes from the early 2000's were only about 35% as fast as the later Prescotts and Gallatins.
The idea of any hi-fi system is to reproduce the source material as faithfully as possible, and to deliberately add distortion to everything you hear (due to amplifier deficiencies) because it sounds 'nice' is simply not high fidelity. If that is what you want to hear then there is no problem with that, but by adding so much additional material (by way of harmonics and intermodulation) you have a tailored sound system, not a hi-fi. - Rod Elliot, ESP
They were bad processors. The worst widely comerically available to consumers in that market sector.Freezer7Pro wrote:
The point is that later P4s weren't all that bad. Yes, they're only about 40-45% as effective clock-per-clock as the C2D, but that doesn't make them unusable, ancient pieces of silicon. A nicely clocked P4 can very well do in a low-midrange system today. A 4GHz P4 with HT is about equal to a 2GHz C2D.Bertster7 wrote:
It was inferior to a compably priced AMD system from the same era. Why is that? It's because Intel designed a complete lemon with the P4. They focused far too much on clock rates, which their marketing department told them was all they needed to worry about, because that's what consumers look at when buying a computer. This was a big mistake - but the lessons they learned in branch prediction (important in systems with such huge pipelines) and in various superscalar CPU design tricks, have been invaluable in making their current CPUs what they are today. You could look at the P4 as the weak link in a learning curve, or as a marketing experiment that didn't go particularly well.killer21 wrote:
My current rig has a P4 and it is 5 years old. It wasn't all that bad.
They aren't super, but they're ok. Most tasks people on here use their computer for (gaming) isn't all that CPU bound, and a P4 can very well handle many modern games without any major issues.
Also note the difference between early P4s and late P4s. The old Willamettes from the early 2000's were only about 35% as fast as the later Prescotts and Gallatins.
It is very clear that you haven't even read the Wiki page on Pentium 4.Bertster7 wrote:
They were bad processors. The worst widely comerically available to consumers in that market sector.Freezer7Pro wrote:
The point is that later P4s weren't all that bad. Yes, they're only about 40-45% as effective clock-per-clock as the C2D, but that doesn't make them unusable, ancient pieces of silicon. A nicely clocked P4 can very well do in a low-midrange system today. A 4GHz P4 with HT is about equal to a 2GHz C2D.Bertster7 wrote:
It was inferior to a compably priced AMD system from the same era. Why is that? It's because Intel designed a complete lemon with the P4. They focused far too much on clock rates, which their marketing department told them was all they needed to worry about, because that's what consumers look at when buying a computer. This was a big mistake - but the lessons they learned in branch prediction (important in systems with such huge pipelines) and in various superscalar CPU design tricks, have been invaluable in making their current CPUs what they are today. You could look at the P4 as the weak link in a learning curve, or as a marketing experiment that didn't go particularly well.
They aren't super, but they're ok. Most tasks people on here use their computer for (gaming) isn't all that CPU bound, and a P4 can very well handle many modern games without any major issues.
Also note the difference between early P4s and late P4s. The old Willamettes from the early 2000's were only about 35% as fast as the later Prescotts and Gallatins.
Here, take a good read:
AMD passed Intel with the Clawhammer and Newcastle, but were very equal to Intel by the time. Prescott didn't last long, it had the shortest life span of the P4 cores, as opposed to the long-lived Northwood, that's really the definition of Pentium 4.Wikipedia wrote:
Northwood
In October 2001, the Athlon XP regained a clear lead for AMD, but in January 2002, Intel released Pentium 4s with their new Northwood core at 1.6, 1.8, 2.0 and 2.2 GHz.[7][8] Northwood (product code 80532) combined an increase in the secondary cache size from 256 KiB to 512 KiB (increasing the transistor count to 55 million, up from 42 million) with a transition to a new 130 nm (0.13 micrometer) fabrication process.[8] By making the chip out of smaller transistors, chips can run at higher clocks or at the same speed while producing less heat.
A 2.4 GHz P4 was released in April 2002, and the bus speed increased from 400 MT/s to 533 MT/s for a 2.26 GHz, 2.4 GHz, and 2.53 GHz part in May, 2.66 GHz and 2.8 GHz parts in August, and a 3.06 GHz Pentium 4 arrived in November. With Northwood, the Pentium 4 came of age. The battle for performance leadership remained competitive (as AMD introduced faster versions of the Athlon XP) but most observers agreed that the fastest Northwood P4 was usually ahead of its rival. This was particularly so in the summer of 2002, when AMD's changeover to a 130 nm production process did not help the "Barton" and "Thoroughbred" Athlon XP CPUs clock high enough to overcome the advantage of P4s in the 2.4 to 2.8 GHz range.[9]
The 3.06 GHz processor acquired Hyper-Threading technology that first appeared in Xeon, enabling multiple threads to be run together by duplicating some parts of the processor in order to let the operating system believe that there are two logical processors.
In April 2003, Intel launched new 800 MT/s FSB variants, ranging from 2.4 to 3.0 GHz.[10] This was meant to help the Pentium 4 better compete with AMD's Opteron line of processors. However, when Opteron was launched, due to its server-oriented positioning motherboard manufacturers didn't initially build motherboards with AGP controllers. Because AGP was the primary graphics expansion port at the time, this missing feature prevented the Opteron from encroaching on the Pentium 4's market segment. AMD did boost the Athlon XP's bus speed from 333 MT/s to 400 MT/s, but it wasn't enough to hold off the new 3.0 GHz P4.[11] A 3.2 GHz Pentium 4 Northwood variant was launched in June and a final 3.4 GHz version was launched in early 2004.
Overclocking early stepping Northwood cores yielded a startling phenomenon. When core voltage (Vcore) was increased past 1.7 V, the processor would slowly become more unstable over time, before dying and becoming totally unusable. This became known as Sudden Northwood Death Syndrome, which is caused by electromigration.[12]
Last edited by Freezer7Pro (2008-09-18 10:36:18)
The idea of any hi-fi system is to reproduce the source material as faithfully as possible, and to deliberately add distortion to everything you hear (due to amplifier deficiencies) because it sounds 'nice' is simply not high fidelity. If that is what you want to hear then there is no problem with that, but by adding so much additional material (by way of harmonics and intermodulation) you have a tailored sound system, not a hi-fi. - Rod Elliot, ESP
I stand by my previous statement.Freezer7Pro wrote:
It is very clear that you haven't even read the Wiki page on Pentium 4.Bertster7 wrote:
They were bad processors. The worst widely comerically available to consumers in that market sector.Freezer7Pro wrote:
The point is that later P4s weren't all that bad. Yes, they're only about 40-45% as effective clock-per-clock as the C2D, but that doesn't make them unusable, ancient pieces of silicon. A nicely clocked P4 can very well do in a low-midrange system today. A 4GHz P4 with HT is about equal to a 2GHz C2D.
They aren't super, but they're ok. Most tasks people on here use their computer for (gaming) isn't all that CPU bound, and a P4 can very well handle many modern games without any major issues.
Also note the difference between early P4s and late P4s. The old Willamettes from the early 2000's were only about 35% as fast as the later Prescotts and Gallatins.
Here, take a good read:AMD passed Intel with the Clawhammer and Newcastle, but were very equal to Intel by the time. Prescott didn't last long, it had the shortest life span of the P4 cores, as opposed to the long-lived Northwood, that's really the definition of Pentium 4.Wikipedia wrote:
Northwood
In October 2001, the Athlon XP regained a clear lead for AMD, but in January 2002, Intel released Pentium 4s with their new Northwood core at 1.6, 1.8, 2.0 and 2.2 GHz.[7][8] Northwood (product code 80532) combined an increase in the secondary cache size from 256 KiB to 512 KiB (increasing the transistor count to 55 million, up from 42 million) with a transition to a new 130 nm (0.13 micrometer) fabrication process.[8] By making the chip out of smaller transistors, chips can run at higher clocks or at the same speed while producing less heat.
A 2.4 GHz P4 was released in April 2002, and the bus speed increased from 400 MT/s to 533 MT/s for a 2.26 GHz, 2.4 GHz, and 2.53 GHz part in May, 2.66 GHz and 2.8 GHz parts in August, and a 3.06 GHz Pentium 4 arrived in November. With Northwood, the Pentium 4 came of age. The battle for performance leadership remained competitive (as AMD introduced faster versions of the Athlon XP) but most observers agreed that the fastest Northwood P4 was usually ahead of its rival. This was particularly so in the summer of 2002, when AMD's changeover to a 130 nm production process did not help the "Barton" and "Thoroughbred" Athlon XP CPUs clock high enough to overcome the advantage of P4s in the 2.4 to 2.8 GHz range.[9]
The 3.06 GHz processor acquired Hyper-Threading technology that first appeared in Xeon, enabling multiple threads to be run together by duplicating some parts of the processor in order to let the operating system believe that there are two logical processors.
In April 2003, Intel launched new 800 MT/s FSB variants, ranging from 2.4 to 3.0 GHz.[10] This was meant to help the Pentium 4 better compete with AMD's Opteron line of processors. However, when Opteron was launched, due to its server-oriented positioning motherboard manufacturers didn't initially build motherboards with AGP controllers. Because AGP was the primary graphics expansion port at the time, this missing feature prevented the Opteron from encroaching on the Pentium 4's market segment. AMD did boost the Athlon XP's bus speed from 333 MT/s to 400 MT/s, but it wasn't enough to hold off the new 3.0 GHz P4.[11] A 3.2 GHz Pentium 4 Northwood variant was launched in June and a final 3.4 GHz version was launched in early 2004.
Overclocking early stepping Northwood cores yielded a startling phenomenon. When core voltage (Vcore) was increased past 1.7 V, the processor would slowly become more unstable over time, before dying and becoming totally unusable. This became known as Sudden Northwood Death Syndrome, which is caused by electromigration.[12]
Tunnel vision perhaps? I agree that the initial P4's weren't...ok they sucked but the later versions, which I currently have, worked just fine. I was able to use it while playing more "modern" games such as BF2 and CoD4, although, that really is dependent on your video card than processor power but you get the point.
What process is showing all the CPU usage?
I concede I was wrong, 32 bit hardware can and does access 4 GB.Scorpion0x17 wrote:
Please read one of my many other posts in these very forums explaining in great detail why ALL 32bit systems CAN and DO address upto 4GB - you may not see that magic number 4, but that doesn't mean it can't handle 4GB.
However, that doesn't quite mean that the OS can get it's hands on it.
By the way, I had a Northwood for quite some time and had no obvious complaints. It was a good deal slower then my E8400 though.
I will agree they were overpriced at the time.Bertster7 wrote:
It was inferior to a compably priced AMD system from the same era.killer21 wrote:
My current rig has a P4 and it is 5 years old. It wasn't all that bad.Bertster7 wrote:
Yes they are. They are a horrendously poor design.
The whole P4 debacle was a real mess and they were awful.
That doesn't automatically make them bad processors.
The PC I'm currently using has a 2.6GHz HT P4 - and it is in some ways better than my AthlonXP 3200+ build (well, it works for a start! )...
But seriously, when doing some things it's faster and more responsive, but not when doing other things...
And this PC also only has 1GB RAM where my AthlonXP PC has 2GB...
Google "3gig switch". A lot of auto cad user's, use it. I did when i was running a 32bit OS. It does help.