Pentium 4 and graphics card: halp!

Technology and Gaming
#1

Hello,

I just got an old pentium 4 3ghz cast-off from my dept. It’s marginally better than my last machine. I’m too poor currently to invest in anything better. I’ve been contemplating getting an ATI 4670 graphics card for it: cheap, not too powerhungry for my 305W PSU, but maybe much better gameplay.

So my question: is there any point in getting that graphics card? My interwebnet searchings give mixed answers, some people saying the CPU bottleneck makes it pointless. But would that setup perform noticeably better than my last machine: a laptop with a 2ghz pentium(m) and an ATI mobility radeon X600? That was managing most source games at low settings: rarely above 30fps, much lower for some things, but playable.

Another question: I see from a benchmark test (and a quick search) that the older pentium 4s don’t have the multimedia instruction sets that later chips have, including my laptop chip. Do those instructions actually make an effective difference for games, or is most of the difference down to the graphics card?

So, yes - please help me decide whether I should buy a 4670!

Alternatively, I wait a year until I finish the studying, get a job, buy a decent machine. But what if BM comes out before then? And would the above run it…?

#2

socket lga775 i assume? just upgrade the cpu at the same time.
I dont own a 4670, but i do own an msi radeon 4890 and i dont own any games i cant play on full settings. (but i do have a c2q q9650 cpu)

Cant really say what you should do unless you tell us the computer model and maybe the motherboard spec’s

#3

Thanks for that. Hmm… quick poke around tells me the socket should support a core 2, but the forums say there’s more to it than just the socket. The chipset also seems to be not the only problem (intel i945g/gz) - things like BIOS not knowing about any new chip I put in as well. All a bit beyond my paygrade, I think. Might leave the processor alone!

#4

The i945 is an old chipset, it can only handle processors from the pentium 4, D and celeron D families. Most likely not worth changing the processor.

The 4670 will be limited by the CPU speed. It all depends on what you want to play too. You should be able play older games such as CS:S and the orange box, albeit with lower settings, on that PC with the 4670 installed.

Also bare in mind that the motherboard may have custom BIOS installed which may limit RAM capacity, CPU support etc beyond the original limitation of the motherboard. Often this is to ensure you have to return to the manufacturer in order to upgrade, meaning more money in their pocket.

If you feel the need to game now it’s probably your best bet, if you can wait I would save for a better computer.

#5

That’s great, cheers. I’ll probably get a 4670 - was just checking, plenty of cheap ones on ebay.

#6

I’m assuming that you are looking at a PCI Express card. Did you make sure that the system you got has a PCI Express slot? Some of the workstation class machines that were available in P4s didn’t have a card slot, although the traces and mounting points show up on the main board. If you have to go PCI, then that adds another bottleneck. Also, you might want to see if it’s an x8 or x16 slot, if it does have one.

#7

Yeah, there’s a PCI x16 express slot, physically and detected in PC Wizard. The 4670 runs its power from the PCI too, and as far as I can tell, it’ll manage fine with the stock 305W power supply…?

#8

On a different note: having benchmarked the pentium 4, I went to passmark to compare -

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/common_cpus.html

I have to say, I hadn’t quite grasped how much computing power had moved on since I last bought a machine. The pentium 4 scores 548; the top i7 there is 6290… 16 times higher.

#9

Er, or 11 times higher, if we’re using “actually correct” maths…

#10

TRIPLE POST!
my suggestion: burn the PC and get a new one… seriously…
it isnt THAT expensive to get stuff that can play TF2 or similar <.<

#11

Wow, that’s good technical advice fx. -_-

I can totally understand the situation of not being able to afford stuffs :frowning: Staying at the cutting edge is impossible, do what you can, with what you have.

#12

I have a 4670 myself, and it’s a very good upgrade indeed.
The CPU will certainly be your bottleneck, but if the video is your bottleneck at the moment, you will still get an improvement.
Also, the 4670 wouldn’t be lost… later when you upgrade CPU and whatever else, you will be able to put that 4670 in there and get good performance. With a good machine, the 4670 can run just about anything you throw at it.

Budget-wise, I’d suggest the video card. Cause if you want to upgrade the CPU, you’ll probably have to change motherboard, RAM and power supply as well. Not ‘that’ expensive if you get the right deals, but still much more expensive than a video card.

#13

If the 4670 won’t take a big bite out of your paycheck, I see no reason to suggest against it. In this case, your CPU will be a bottleneck with more recent games, but it should handle CSS just fine. The first thing that I would do to upgrade performance is upgrade the GFX card, then maybe add some RAM. 3Ghz P4 is probably the best thing you can have for that particular chipset, anything else would require upgrading your motherboard, PSU, etc. which obviously is beyond your budget.

I used to game on a PIII machine with 256mb RAM until 2008, I remember getting an old (but still fast) ATi GFX card from a friend and it changed the games from being unrunnable to playable at medium-high settings. Source is light on the CPU, but still requires a decent graphics card.

#14

I just like saying things short, and this questions doesn’t need any longer answer. P4 is outdated and thats final.

#15

Well, you know, not everyone has enough money to afford a new computer, but I guess you can’t understand that.

#16

What we wanna do is put ourselves in this members shoes, see what we would do within his limits. What you’re doing is sitting there acting all high and mighty. Helps no one mate, just so you know…

Also, because I realise I have’t actually given any advice here…how much ram do you have? If you can, I’d probably put a little more in. But not at the expense of a half decent GPU

#17

px: yeah, I know P4’s outdated - note my link above, pointing out it’s an order of magnitude less powerful than today’s best.

Cheers for asking Siggs: Ram is 2 gig DDR2 SD ram.

Even if I only manage to play HL2 with better quality than my old laptop, that’ll make me very happy. Even that was fairly regularly dropping below 25fps…

#18

My P4 3.00 running @3.61 with 2Gb RAM and 7950GT can run source on max settings @1680x1050. 'cept for TF2 which only manages 30fps at medium. No go on the latest games though… :frowning: 'cept for Fallout NW, Borderlands and some others.

Dunno if any of that helps though…

#19

All really useful stuff, thanks everyone. I’ll let you know how performance turns out when I get the card in…

#20

With regard to power supply 305w might just cut it. ATI/AMD advise a minimum of 400w for the 4670 however that’s based on max output not average.

You may start seeing artifacts/weird behaviour or the PC may fail to boot at all if there isn’t enough power but cross fingers you should be okay :slight_smile: .

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