Howe to find right prossesor for a dell???

Anupama · Sep 16, 2004, 08:37 AM

Hi! Need to get a faster p4 for my pc but its tricky. Its an dell dimension 4550, and dell wants to sell me an 2.8 for 3000 nok, About 500 us dollars. Crazy, crazy ,crazy

. But the worst thing is that they will not give me any informatin about howe to find out what prosessor i should get if i want to go somewhere else. This pc is deliverde to me without any manual for the mother board so im stuck. the prsossesor they want to sell me is P4 2,8 M (Eastman MLK P4 Northwood 2.8/533) part nr. 2U374. And i manage to squice out of them that my motherboard is d-stepping( dont hawe a clue what that means

).
Got an offer from another suplier who wants to sell me an: "Intel Celeron D 340 2.93 GHz Boxed PC533 Socket PGA478, 256KB cache" for about 120 us dollar wich they(komplett.no) think will work and I feel tempted. But howe can find out if this is right. Any sugestions? The reason for wanting a new prosseor is that i want to squice out the last juice from my pc so i can get more from out of my radeon 800. If anyone hawe any ide about what i should do to get things just a little faster than 2.4, or howe i can get the specs i need pls reply.

digitalwanderer · Sep 16, 2004, 09:28 AM

First off, what kind of motherboard do you have in your Dell? Once you find that out finding out what kind of CPU you can put in it is easy.

WisMerHill · Sep 16, 2004, 09:47 AM

download these free tools, they'll help you identify your current cpu & mobo, when that's known and it's known what your mobo will accept it's easy to find the right one.

everest home edition : http://www.lavalys.com/products/over...ng=en&pageid=1

cpu-z : http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php

CDsDontBurn · Sep 16, 2004, 10:22 AM

i wouldn't go w/the celeron D that you were offered. reason being is because the p4 you have in your system right now has 512k L2 cache, where as the celeron D only has 256k L2 cache. Both chips have a 533 FSB, so performance would be about the same still. The Celeron D sounds tempting only because it sounds faster, but once you look and compare all the specs of both chips, you'll see that there really won't be much of a difference between both. If your board supports the 800FSB, get a 2.8 ~ 3.0 800FSB p4, and if it doesn't support the 800FSB, get a 3.06 533FSB p4.

elwaxmanus · Sep 16, 2004, 10:38 AM

I Agree, forget about the Celeron. I have a 3.06 533fsb p4 and it works just fine. I have also upgraded to a ATI Radeon 9600 pro, and can even play DOOM3 at High and no glitches at all. OS upgrade to the 3.06 533FSB (it's fast enough and very payable), and upgrade your GPU (you don't have to go for the biggest ones (i.e. ATI Radeon x800 or NVIDIA 6800) a ATI 9600 (pro or XT) or NVIDIA 5800 or 5900 should suffice)