Getting married...how to merge computers?

[Adcadet]

hey all -
as many of you know, I'm getting married in May. My fiance and I are both pretty addicted to our computers. I'm going to be starting an MD/PhD program soon, and we're eventually (hopefully by October) going to be moving into married student housing, and will have a small room we can turn into a study area. Our current computer inventory is as follows:

Me: Dual 1.2 GHz Palominos, 512MB DDR, dual 19" monitors, WinXP Pro. I also have my Dell Inspiron 8200 laptop, WinXP Home.

Her (Leah): she's running an old Dell P2-400 with 384 MB RAM (I gave her most of my old stock of PC100) and a 19" monitor, WinXP Pro.

So, do you guys think we should just condense down to my dualie and set WinXP up with two accounts, keep my two monitors, keep my Dell 8200, and donate her old computer and 19" monitor to her younger sister who's currently a sophomore in high school? Do you guys think it would be a waste to give a P2-400 to a high school student, is it OK, or should I do a little upgrading (perhaps to a P2-1000)?

Thanks!
Adcadet

 

[NRG = mc²]

Yeah, I think as you will also have a laptop, the other machine is more or less redundant. You might want to keep the 19" monitor from the P2 for her to use on the laptop when at home as it will be easier on the eyes.

A P2-400 with 384mb should be pretty responsive - the machine should be sufficient for Intenet or Office applications. You might want to make it snappier with a larger and faster hard drive. If you want to upgrade the CPU, you might want to go with a Celeron around the 700 range as these can be bought used on ebay for as much as the P2 can be sold for.

My experience with Celerons vs. P2/P3 with offdie cache has been that the P2/P3 is a waste of money for most appications - a Celeron of the same speed feels more responsive in Windows, even if it might lag in some applications - which when replacing a P2-400 with a Celeron 700 will not be an issue as the Celeron will be faster than the P2-400 in all conditions.

 

[Adcadet]

I find my Dell's 15" LCD at 1600x1200 to be MUCH easier on the eyes than my 19" CRT monitors. But it does take a lot of getting used to as the text etc on the screen is tiny. I've had the laptop for months now, and I still have problems now and then.

I believe her P2-400 is running with the 100 MHz FSB (I think they were all 100 MHz FSB by then...I forget, that was sooo long ago). Is there an easy way for me to get a Celeron working on that bus without inadvertantly OCing the daylights out of it? The newer Celerons work on a 100 MHz FSB...could I use on of those? I've heard the newer Celeron's performance is pretty bad - does anybody have experience with this?

 

[Adcadet]

oh, re: a new HD on my fiance's computer:
maybe a year ago she was running out of space (dang MP3s!), so I installed a IBM 75 GXP. I would assume there would be little benefit of putting in a newer HD. But what about one of the WD -JBs or even the newer IBM's with 8 MB cache? Worth the money, or overkill for such a computer?

 

[NRG = mc²]

I find my Dell's 15" LCD at 1600x1200 to be MUCH easier on the eyes than my 19" CRT monitors

LCDs are indeed more relaxing but I'd be reading much easier on a 19" CRT rather than a 15" LCD.

I believe her P2-400 is running with the 100 MHz FSB

Yes, all P2 350MHz and above used to run on 100 FSB.

Is there an easy way for me to get a Celeron working on that bus without inadvertantly OCing the daylights out of it?

Well, the 633 almost always does a 100 FSB giving 950MHz but its not 100% certain. Celeron at 800 and higher come with a 100 FSB by default and should be pretty cheap - your best bet either way is Ebay.

The bad Celerons are the P4-based ones. Theyre basically a first generation (Willamete) P4 with half the cache. The original P4 was never any good, so you can imagine what it was like with just 128kb cache.

If your mobo can take a Celeron 800 then go for it. But even a 700 Celeron will be noticeably faster than the P2-400.

maybe a year ago she was running out of space (dang MP3s!), so I installed a IBM 75 GXP

That should be fine... assuming it keeps working!

 

[Adcadet]

looks like all the Celeron 700s and 800s are Sccket 370...are there any Slot 1s?

 

[timwhit]

I doubt you will find any in slot 1. But you can get an adapter for about $15 or less. I used one for over 2 years and never had a problem with it.

 

[NRG = mc²]

Slot >= 433.... use a slotket adaptor...

 

[blakerwry]

hey... i just want to chime in here.. most slot 1 boards will not take anything higher than a coppermine core...

This means your most likely chance of upgrading would be a PentiumIII (E) or a Celeron.

Some slotkets don't support both PPGA and FC-PGA/FC-PGA2 processors. (Any Celeron over 566mHz is using the newer FC-PGA package) So make sure you get a newer slotket such as the Abit slotketIII, Asus socket converter, or just check the specs for whatever you buy.

The core voltages also seem to chanege a bit (esp with the celerons over 566Mhz) So make sure that any slotket you get supports a wide array of voltages.

2.8v core processors are:

Intel Pentium II 233
Intel Pentium II 266
Intel Pentium II 300

2.0v core processors are:

Intel Pentium II 333
Intel Pentium II 350
Intel Pentium II 400
Intel Pentium II 450


Intel Pentium III 450
Intel Pentium III 500
Intel Pentium III 550
Intel Pentium III 600
Intel Pentium III 533(B)
Intel Pentium III 600(B)


Intel Celeron 266
Intel Celeron 300
Intel Celeron 300A
Intel Celeron 333
Intel Celeron 366
Intel Celeron 400
Intel Celeron 433
Intel Celeron 466
Intel Celeron 500

1.6v core processors are:

Intel Pentium III (E) - (Coppermine)
Intel Pentium III (EB) - (Coppermine)

 

[NRG = mc²]

BTW some later steppings of the 266 and higher used 2.0v as well... and the P3-600s were rated to 2.05v :mrgrn:

 

[Adcadet]

Thanks for all the info guys! But, should I be bothering to upgrade such an old computer, especiallly when I can let my fiance use my Dual Athlon 1.2GHz machine?

 

[blakerwry]

I went from a pII 400 to a PIII 650.... really there wasn't a noticeable improvement in speed during the normal things done on the computer (surfing, email, word...) There has been an improvement in folding, though... and I think full screen DIVX playback has become a little smoother..

Since you already have a 75gxp in there I wouldn't worry about it. The computer is probably plenty fast for everyday tasks that the average teenage girl is going to be doing.

 

[NRG = mc²]

Weren't you going to give that machine to your fiancee's sister?

 

[Adcadet]

Weren't you going to give that machine to your fiancee's sister?

If I can successfully move my fiance's stuff onto my main machine and setup WinXP with two users in a manner that is acceptable, we will probably give the P2-400 to my fiance's sister.

 

[NRG = mc²]

Yeah... so. It should perform fine already... if you want to upgrade the CPU just stick a Celery 800 in there and it should be pretty useable for assignments and Internet use for the next couple of years at least.

 

[Mercutio]

I'd just like to say that, for reasons involving domestic tranquility, it
s a good idea for both of you to have a desktop.

The fourth of fifth time you don't answer "What the hell are you doing to our PC?" to her satisfaction, this will be utterly apparent.

 

[Adcadet]

I'd just like to say that, for reasons involving domestic tranquility, it
s a good idea for both of you to have a desktop.

The fourth of fifth time you don't answer "What the hell are you doing to our PC?" to her satisfaction, this will be utterly apparent.

Good point, Merc. Although I am pretty happy using my laptop. In fact, right now I'm sitting at my desk writing a final exam, checking my email, talking to a friend on Trillian, and posting at SF on my laptop, while my desktop is sitting there just playing some MP3s and downloading RH8.

 

[Santilli]

I'd just like to say that, for reasons involving domestic tranquility, it
s a good idea for both of you to have a desktop.

The fourth of fifth time you don't answer "What the hell are you doing to our PC?" to her satisfaction, this will be utterly apparent.

A VERY Wise man...

I have a Dell 400 mhz P2 in the other room that is now
"The girls' computer".

As has been posted above, she likes having her own computer, and, with a Kyro 2 video card, and a Quantum LM, it's plenty fast enough, along with 384 mb of ram.

I strongly suggest you ask your other about what SHE wants, not how you see it.

Our Dell is quite fast enough, and, she like the fact that it's hers, not mine.

I will say that it's hard not to tinker with it. I have to put a sound card in it, but, the last time I did this, the card, a Phillips Accoustic Edge, froze the computer on startup, on a regular basis.

Bad software, with 2000, and, the components on the Dell.

So, everytime you think you are "helping", go spend the money on yourself, and your computer.

Both parties will be MUCH happier.

:lol:

 

[blakerwry]

true

 

[Adcadet]

I was trying to get a feel for what others think the lifespan of the P2-400 both for someone who's mid-range PC user (my fiance), a low-end PC user (my fiance's sister), how it is to share a computer with someone using multiple user accounts in WinXP, and the like. Of course I'll be (and have been) discussing this with my fiance, but I'd like to be able to answer her various questions (see above) a bit better before we seriously discuss this.

 

[blakerwry]

Me and my girlfriend have different accounts on my winXP box.

It doesn't make much difference, but she likes to choose the different themes, where as I prefer a clean look and dislike sounds everytime i click on something...

There are a few minor differences like icon size/placement and pointer movement that seperate us.

 

[e_dawg]

Ah, the dreaded female PC cutification and multimediaization syndrome. Always with the sounds, pointers, icons, wallpapers, and other eye and ear candy that causes us macho computer guys to shudder in horror

 

[blakerwry]

wow Ewen.. you joined SF on my birthday... I just noticed.

 

[Adcadet]

Ah, the dreaded female PC cutification and multimediaization syndrome. Always with the sounds, pointers, icons, wallpapers, and other eye and ear candy that causes us macho computer guys to shudder in horror

Somebody feels my fear!

 

[e_dawg]

Just you wait... when you have kids, they'll think mom's colours, sounds, wallpapers, ad pointers are so cool that they'll want every nauseating item replicated (and intensified) on their computers/accounts. You will be the only person in the house who wants a boring, professional desktop... might as well give up now, go over to the dark side, and save yourself the trouble

 

[Adcadet]

Just you wait... when you have kids, they'll think mom's colours, sounds, wallpapers, ad pointers are so cool that they'll want every nauseating item replicated (and intensified) on their computers/accounts. You will be the only person in the house who wants a boring, professional desktop... might as well give up now, go over to the dark side, and save yourself the trouble

My Red Hat desktop (KDE) is running Keramic, so I'm already on the dark side

 

[Tea]

Whooah there! What are you doing to the poor man, NRG? 66Mhz bus Celerons are zo s s s l l l o o o w w w ... Really. On a machine with a 100MHz FSB capability, pulling the main board and the RAM both back to 66MHz will kill the thing. It won't actually be slower than the P-II, but it won't be much faster. In office apps, FSB & RAM speed is much more important than the CPU.

We have had this argument before, albeit in slightly different style, and to do with comparing K6-2 and Celeron, but the summary was clear: the 100MHz FSB killed the stone-age bus speed of the Celeron in office apps and general stuff (I don't think anyone seriously disputes that), and the vastly faster FPU of the Celeron made it the easy winner in games.

We are not talking about a games machine. For general office stuff, Andrew, go for faster RAM 21 times out of 20. In short, don't go the 66MHz Celeron route. If you can score a P-III 650 or something similar, that would be good. Even better, a Celeron 800 - the 800 and up have 100MHz FSB and are miles faster than the horrible things in the 566 to 766 range. Or, buy a Celeron in the 700ish class and overclock it. Even just overclocking a 66MHz bus Celeron to 75MHz makes a noticable difference, and almost any chip will go that far without trouble. Or maybe you'd be better off just to improve the hard drive.

(Is that it, Tea? Are you done ranting now?)

(Yeah. I'm done.)

 

[blakerwry]

tea.... didn't the later celerons run at 100mhz bus? I believe so.

 

[blakerwry]

durr.. nevermind

 

[blakerwry]

how many monkeys does it take to screw in a light bulb?

it only takes two: the hard part is getting them IN the lightbulb.



....


This guy went to the zoo one day. While he was standing in front of the gorilla's enclosure, he noticed the gorilla watching him intently. The man waved at the gorilla, the gorilla waved back. He patted his stomach and the gorilla copied him. He jumped up and down, the gorilla started jumping. He made faces, pull his hair, hopped on one foot, spun in a circle and beat on his chest. His antics were copied exactly by the gorilla in the cage.

All of a sudden, the wind gusted and he got some grit in his eye. The man rubbed his eye, trying to make it better. While doing so, he stepped closer and closer to the cage. As he pulled his eyelid down to dislodge the particle, the gorilla went crazy, banged against the bars, reached out, grabbed the nearly blinded man and beat the guy senseless. When the guy came to, the zoo keeper was anxiously bending over him, and as soon as he was able to talk, he told the keeper what had happened. The zoo keeper nodded and explained that in gorilla language, pulling down your eyelid means, "screw you!"

The explanation didn't make the gorilla's victim feel any better but he accepted it. As he left he became madder and madder. He plotted his revenge. The next day he purchased two large knives, two party hats, two party horns and a large sausage. Putting the sausage in his pants, he hurried to the zoo and over to the gorilla's cage, into which he tossed a hat, a knife, and a party horn.

Knowing that the big ape liked to mimic people, he put on a party hat. The gorilla looked at him, looked at the hat and put it on. Next he picked up his horn and blew on it. The gorilla picked up his horn and did the same. He twirled in a circle blowing the horn. The gorilla did the same. Then the man picked up his knife and waved it over his head. Again the gorilla copied it. Next the man whipped the sausage out of his pants and sliced it neatly in two. The gorilla looked at the knife in his big hair hand, looked at his own crotch ... and pulled down his eyelid.

....

 

[Adcadet]

oh Blake. I'm sure Tea's gonna be pulling her eyelid down a lot after those bad jokes.

Anyway...I talked with my fiance briefly, and she admitted that her computer is a little bit slow. Luckily, I've convinced her that the heart of any computer is the HD, and that as long as the HD (data) survive, her computer lives on. So I think I can get her to allow me to upgrade her current computer, or at least to allow me to put her old HD into my dualie.

 

[Adcadet]

well, I'm not too keen on OCing my fiances computer, so the Celery 700 is out. The Celeron 800 is currently listed on Pricewatch for $50, and the faster ones actually get cheaper. At what point are the Celerons P4-based? Is it 1GHz?

Will the board (440BX I'm pretty sure) support a Coppermine P3? Those seem to be about double the price of the Celerons.

Regardless of whether I go Celeron or P3, it looks like I'll need a Slotkitt.

 

[NRG = mc²]

well, I'm not too keen on OCing my fiances computer, so the Celery 700 is out. The Celeron 800 is currently listed on Pricewatch for $50, and the faster ones actually get cheaper. At what point are the Celerons P4-based? Is it 1GHz?

Will the board (440BX I'm pretty sure) support a Coppermine P3? Those seem to be about double the price of the Celerons.

Regardless of whether I go Celeron or P3, it looks like I'll need a Slotkitt

P4 based are at above 1.4GHz IIRC. Between 1.1 and 1.4 they are Tualatin based which won't work in your board. Some of the 1.0GHz units are Tualatin based also.

Go with a 900 or so... to be certain. If the board will support a Coppermine P3 it will support a Coppermine Celeron. I wouldn't go with the P3 since its not going to be worth paying so much money for what is still an outdated system.

Tea, Once I swapped a P2-350 for a Celeron 333 PPGA and it was faster in Windows. I couldn't believe it so I swapped it back and it was indeed faster... Of course, at higher multipliers the difference could diminish, but at 333 vs 350 it was certainly there.

 

[e_dawg]

A lot of those 66 MHz Celerons can be overclocked a tremendous amount EASILY -- i.e., it's not something you should worry about for fear of decreasing stability, etc. I bought a Celeron 600 a while back and had it running fine at 750 @ 83 FSB with the retail HSF. I scaled it back to 675 @ 75 FSB because I put it into my father's computer and didn't want any problems. But chances are, if you buy a 600-700 MHz Celeron, you can run it at 75 MHz FSB with zero worries.

And, like Tannin mentioned, overclocking the FSB will make your system significantly faster than buying a higher rated CPU and running it at 66 MHz FSB because the pitiful FSB and memory performance is the main bottleneck on these systems.

Similarly, you should avoid 66 MHz Celerons above 700 MHz because they cannot be overclocked to 75 or 83 MHz very reliably. So, either go with a low rated 66 MHz Celeron (600-650 MHz) and run it at 75/83 MHz or go with a 100 MHz Celeron between 800-900 MHz.

 

[NRG = mc²]

Heres my Celeron overclocking history:

My first Celeron, a 333, I got it up to 83MHz with the stock cooler which equates to 415 or so.

The next one was a 400 that I got running at 540 (90MHz) with aftermarket cooler

Then I got a 700 that I ran at 875, and finally, a Celeron 800 (100FSB native) and ran it at 133, giving 1060MHz or thereabouts! It might have gone higher if I was not using a 440BX board that ran the PCI and AGP way out of spec at that bus speed.

I only actually increased the voltage on the C400 - all the rest I took as far as they would go on stock volts.

They are nice clockers, and were much better performance/$$ than the P3 when overclocked. I wouldn't be worried about clocking them mildly at 75MHz as all the Celerons I've come across will do that happily day in and day out.

 

[Tea]

266 & 300: zero cache, bad
300a & up, 128k cache, good
~500 to 766, crippled by slow bus-zpeed, bad
800 to 1400, 100MHz FSB, good
1700 up, based on old P4, bad.

 

[Tea]

A 333 Celery faster in Windows than a 350 P-II, NRG? Yes, I believe you, I've seen the same myself, or certainly seen them run near-enough to equal. Big cache good, fast cache gooder. It seems to only be the faster multipliers that get severely affected, which puzzles me a little, you'd think it would be the other way about.

 

[NRG = mc²]

Yep. The Tualatin based CPUs are very nice indeed though...

$50 gets you a 1.2GHz that will easily clock to 1.5GHz and give performance of a P3-1.5GHz if such a thing existed. And while putting out half the heat of an equivalent performing thunderbird.

 

[NRG = mc²]

It seems to only be the faster multipliers that get severely affected, which puzzles me a little, you'd think it would be the other way about.

Well, its sensible if you think about it. If you increase the multiplier without doing the same to the FSB, the performance difference from one speed to another diminishes as the core speed goes up. The processor spends more and more time waiting on the slow FSB as the core speed increases and FSB remains constant. So at some point, when the P2/P3 with 100MHz FSB performance is still rising, the Celeron's drops off and the P2/P3 overtakes.

 

[Tea]

Put that way, it does make more sense. And yes, Celerons in the 1000+ class are excellent little things, especially in notebooks where the low power and the high power (depending on if we are talking Watts or computations) are an excellent combination.