? When P4 will be too obsolete ?

[JunkBear]

I was wondering when do you think the P4 single core will be too obsolete for net surfing and then for gaming?

In my 21 years of experience rebuilding and repairing old computer I observed the fact that XP was the best for P4 back in time until the Vista went out and making P4 lags. Then came free OS like Xubuntu to save the day until Win 7 came out that helped to revive the P4 that now many people still use with Win7 without much problems.

Do you have anything that make you think that this P4 will be obsolete for everyday use and future of gaming?
When and why??

Let's start the debate or....(Mortal Kombat voice)...FIGHT!!!!

 

[Naito]

As far as I'm concerned, they were obsolete once Core 2 hit the scene (not just in a generational sense). However, for general use (word processing, web surfing) it should be fine. May struggle with certain video streaming scenarios (from what some people I know have experienced). Would only really be suitable for older games.

 

[Frick]

As far as I'm concerned, they were obsolete once Core 2 hit the scene (not just in a generational sense). However, for general use (word processing, web surfing) it should be fine. May struggle with certain video streaming scenarios (from what some people I know have experienced). Would only really be suitable for older games.

This. They are not worth it anymore. A decently clocked C2D though... Is still perfectly servicable.

 

[JunkBear]

This. They are not worth it anymore. A decently clocked C2D though... Is still perfectly servicable.

That's what I have a C2D but many customers i have still have P4 so it made me wondering that question.

 

[Ja.KooLit]

P4 is enough for net surfing, (not multiple tabs) though and old dx9 games. it does show age though but would really like to run small linux like xubuntu. i still have p4 although i dont have mobo.

 

[Jetster]

They use way to much power for the amount of processing. They aren't even capable of running a modern flash program with any efficiency. C2D made them obsolete as stated

 

[MxPhenom 216]

Is this a serious thread?

 

[JunkBear]

Is this a serious thread?

It's a serious thread until trollers come in.

 

[RCoon]

The current Pentium G3220 is dirt cheap, consumes less power, and is a dual core. It really whips the Lllama's ass, so P4 is a completely irrelevant chip. I have yet to come across anywhere, except a very underfunded and IT illiterate school, that still runs P4's. That being said, I imagine most computers in your local bank are still P4's running XP, but that's because banks are entirely retarded when it comes to that sort of thing.
Hell, I bet the AM1 5350 is better than a pentium in every way, and also cheaper for those 4 cores.

TL;DR, P4 is a worthless piece of silicon when compared to the lowest end Haswell Pentium.

 

[JunkBear]

The current Pentium G3220 is dirt cheap, consumes less power, and is a dual core. It really whips the Lllama's ass, so P4 is a completely irrelevant chip. I have yet to come across anywhere, except a very underfunded and IT illiterate school, that still runs P4's. That being said, I imagine most computers in your local bank are still P4's running XP, but that's because banks are entirely retarded when it comes to that sort of thing.
Hell, I bet the AM1 5350 is better than a pentium in every way, and also cheaper for those 4 cores.

TL;DR, P4 is a worthless piece of silicon when compared to the lowest end Haswell Pentium.

I don't know what you are talking about Bank using XP it's not related to the thread and irrevelant. But it you want to go that way then banks are obligated to upgrade their system once in aa while it<'s the law of the Authority of Financial Markets. That said I don't see neither where you read that I work in a bank.

 

[RCoon]

I don't know what you are talking about Bank using XP it's not related to the thread and irrevelant. But it you want to go that way then banks are obligated to upgrade their system once in aa while it<'s the law of the Authority of Financial Markets. That said I don't see neither where you read that I work in a bank.

I mean banks probably still use Pentium 4's (and on a sidenote, still use XP), which is relevant to this thread's title.

And while on that sidenote, they are obligated to upgrade, but none of them have all banks running XP will continue to do so for around 3 years, and paid a few hundred million $'s to get extended support.

Everything else I said was entirely related to the P4 and it being obsolete. If you're still confused, or still don't see how my post is relevant to your interests, then this thread is probably irrelevant

 

[Jstn7477]

Pentium 4s are on the verge of being obsolete, if not already obsolete, especially for HD video decoding. From personal experience, a 1.86GHz Athlon XP (I haven't tried on a P4) can only stream music smoothly from Google Play Music if the window is minimized, otherwise the web page decimates it. I think one of the only things saving P4 processors is the support of SSE2 instructions (and SSE3 on newer models). I have several at work and a modern i7 quad-core processor is probably equivalent to 12-16 3GHz models based on World Community Grid distributed computing results.

 

[JunkBear]

I mean banks probably still use Pentium 4's (and on a sidenote, still use XP), which is relevant to this thread's title.

And while on that sidenote, they are obligated to upgrade, but none of them have all banks running XP will continue to do so for around 3 years, and paid a few hundred million $'s to get extended support.

Everything else I said was entirely related to the P4 and it being obsolete. If you're still confused, or still don't see how my post is relevant to your interests, then this thread is probably irrelevant

You are in UK and I'm in Canada. So not my problem if banks are retarded there but here no bank still use the XP system anymor...not even Vista

 

[Frick]

That being said, I imagine most computers in your local bank are still P4's running XP, but that's because banks are entirely retarded when it comes to that sort of thing.

Only in the third world dude (meaning Britain and the US). I recently found out the computers they have at the local unemployment center (whatever you call it, the place where you look for jobs anyway) are i5 2400's with 4-8GB RAM. Those are ONLY running browsers restricted to a few sites. Methinks they had to spend the budget somehow and throwing a party would look bad.

EDIT: Last year I used a P4 equipped HP machine at home for a few months actually, and it is truly too slow. It's almost fast enough for a decent experience, but that last bit is critically annoying. The Atom netbooks were slower, but they were slow all the time. A P4 can be good enough sometimes, but then you hit that wall and it's just infuriating.

 

[Naito]

Put it this way; P4 are so obsolete that not even the opportunity shops/thrift shops in my area will accept them these days. It costs them more to dispose of them through e-waste sites than they can sell them for! Not that anyone would buy one.

 

[Jetster]

JB why do you ask such questions? You say you have 21 years experience and know people that still use P4. I know no one that used a P4. Maybe for a router or file server. No not even that. They are obsolete

 

[Outback Bronze]

I've still got an old P4 here that I dik around on when I get bored. It runs windows 7 x32 and it runs it well. That will last until they cut off win 7.

A P4 will only be as useful as a type rider these days.

Until an OS comes out that will start chewing all the system memory (roughly more than 4GB) that's when I say a P4 will become obsolete as it wont even be able to run an OS anymore.

I say give the old P4 another 5-10 years.

Poor P4.....

 

[Ferrum Master]

Cannot believe the boards actually will last longer, smart office should leave money for amortization and new hardware renewal. It's a ticking timebomb, not only the board, the hard drive too...

The overall budget, reviving such hardware is way higher than assembling most cheap last gen mobo/ram/CPU combo.

So there for this really ain't a serious thread professional wise...

 

[Naito]

I've still got an old P4 here that I dik around on when I get bored. It runs windows 7 x32 and it runs it well. That will last until they cut off win 7.

You mustn't really work it that hard. I'd imagine it'd begin to bog down with a few heavy tabs in a web browser. Basic things like Youtube probably will thrash the core a little. When I last ran my NetBurst based system (with 2GB RAM) with Windows 7, it never reached an idle level of utilisation. Maybe it'd be different for you, but I'm someone that finds early Core 2s even a bit infuriating for day to day tasks.

 

[Devon68]

For gaming it's been obsolete for a long time unless you play flash games. (I know I couldn't run games that came out from 2008 and up on mine)
For multimedia it's still good (well not 1080p videos but other than that no problem).
For some light work in older software it's still good ( 3ds max 7, Word 2007, Proteus, Mathcad, Altium Designer, learning HTMP, CSS, PHP,Java, Visual Basic....etc)

I personally think they are still not obsolete. Yeah it sucks that XP doesn't have support any more but I think the old P4's could still handle simple daily tasks if the modern OS's would give support for older AGP cards (if I know correctly Win 8 doesn't support AGP cards).

 

[Outback Bronze]

You mustn't really work it that hard. I'd imagine it'd begin to bog down with a few heavy tabs in a web browser. Basic things like Youtube probably will thrash the core a little. When I last ran my NetBurst based system (with 2GB RAM) with Windows 7, it never reached an idle level of utilisation. Maybe it'd be different for you, but I'm someone that finds early Core 2s even a bit infuriating for day to day tasks.

It runs a P4 Prescott off its head @ 4.25ghz with HT. I think memory is at 550mhz. I have no problem browsing.

 

[micropage7]

i think its back to the person, if for basic things like office, basic multimedia and basic web browsing it would last pretty long
i just feel like just using xp sp3 with office 2007, winamp basic, and it would run well

 

[Mussels]

i refurbish a lot of PC's for people, P4 and single core systems are useless for any modern software. the only use i've seen for them lately is POS systems.


getting XP SP3 with all updates and antivirus lags horribly on a single core system - core 2 duo would be the minimum for a modern OS (win 7, basically)


the P4 systems can basically only handle one or two tasks at a time - the DDR1 limits them to smaller amounts of ram, too.

 

[zsolt_93]

My grandmother still uses one of those. Although it has still some decent feature set, an old business prebuilt system with SATA hdd and an additional AGP Radeon 9600. CPU is a P4HT 3.2GHz, runs XP Home SP3. Still feels sluggish, even for her needs she says it is lagging. And with XP going out most websites start to warn you of obsolete browser/os. She has always "used" XP so Win7 is out of question anyway. But this is a case when a better PC is simply not worth it. Being used 2 hours a day to read emails and view photos. A lot of small businesses still rely on XP-P4 machines when you only need to run a single program, inventory management/cash register where the DB is accessed on a server. Althogh with the recent flow of SH C2D prebuilts from the western countries they start to replace them as one of those can be gotten for ~100E.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

With that being said..... I still managed to get a L4D, GW1 & a few higher req games running smoothly on a single core, 2.7Ghz AMD64 3000+ running with a 256mb X850XTPE at 1080p with almost no problems to speak of. I did experience a little drop in FPS when getting face raped by a zombie hoard but for the better part max settings @1080p.

I think i even tried some Halo or Crysis 2 on it. Crysis 2 couldnt max out but i think i got some decent play with it on that set up.

Windows Vista 64bit
8Gigs of DDR2 1066 (OCZ Reapers)

Not much else I can really remember