[Magus2727]

I am helping my Father-in-law to keep his Dell running.

He has a Pentium 4 3.0GHz with HT and it looked like he would be able to support the 3.8GHz CPU. At first install of the new CPU the BIOS would not post due to a error "unsupported Processor". After a BIOS update from A04 to A07 from Dell the BIOS will now post but still get an error message saying its an unsupported CPU but it will boot into windows and run. It is just down-clocked to 2.87GHz.

In the BIOS it shows that the processor is the Pentium 4 3.8GHz but it shows the clock speed is just a hair above 2.8GHz. Since the 2.8GHz is slower then the 3.0GHz he originally bought I have removed the "new"cpu and he is running the 3.0GHz at the moment.

Does anyone know if there is a BIOS hack or or BIOS version that I can load to run the CPU at the 3.8GHz? or what the max speed CPU is, so if I get him to return the CPU will a 3.6GHz work?

Thanks for any help!

 

[mbudden]

Doubt you'll find yourself a BIOS hack.
But seems to me like you should have done a bit a research before actually buying chips etc.

I found this post from the Dell forums.
http://en.community.dell.com/support....aspx#19518468

It seems that it's only capable of the D945 processor.

 

[Magus2727]

I did do research and everything I found along with support on this forum said it should work.....

 

[mbudden]

I'd never trust the ding bats on this forum when it comes down to a prebuilt.

 

[Magus2727]

=-)

so is the D945 is a Pentium D... it says Dual core... thats a single core with HT right?

Whats the difference in a Pentium 4 with HT and a Pentium D?

right now he has a Pentium 4 3.0GHz... will a Pentium D 3.4GHz be a performance increase worth $45 for a new chip?

 

[mica3speedy]

he will see a little increase in performance, but not worth $45. He might as well save the $45 and save up for something else or a new laptop.

 

[mbudden]

Yeah, to be honest. I wouldn't be throwing money at it.
The performance increase that he will see is little.
I'd try a clean install of the OS. That's probably your best bet.

 

[Princess Garnet]

A Pentium D is a dual core CPU. It's two Pentium 4 cores on one chip.

A Pentium 4 with Hyper-threading is a single core Pentium 4 with Hyper-threading. It's not a dual core chip.

For $45, I guess it's not terrible, and it should perform better than the Pentium 4 in regards to having two real cores, but it's still a Netburst and essentially the worst dual core CPU there was. It's still an improvement though.

 

[Magus2727]

So the Pentium D does not have HT? so the D can only run 2 threads still or can it run 4? 2 real cores each with HT?

I have told him that he needs a new computer especially since he uses his for work (works from home) but has the money for $40 her and $50 there to keep it limping along but not the 400-500 to get a new computer.

 

[mbudden]

http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=27520

The Pentium D doesn't have HT. 2 cores, 2 threads.

 

[Magus2727]

Thanks for all the info...