Prescott vs Northwood Pentium 4 CPU

Hey again,

Im not gonna upgrade my system till GWs2, so im stuck with a Socket 478 mobo.

About the only place to find P4 CPUs now is Ebay. I'm upgrading from a Celeron 2GHz (128kb cache lol) so a P4 will make a difference. Here's my dilemma:

Prescott or Northwood?

Prescotts are 2.8GHz and 1mb Cache
Northwoods are 2.8GHz and 512kb Cache.

From this im leaning toward a Prescott, BUT when i google this topic, i read ppl hate Prescott and <3 Northwood. Similarly, on Ebay, noone is bidding on the Prescott CPUs compared to the Northwood CPUs.

So what's Prescotts problem? Coming from a Celeron 2GHz (128kb Cache) surely i can deal with their problems right?

How much difference does double the cache make anyway?

Thanks for your advice.

First check whether your motherboard can support prescott. The prescott is probably a little faster than the northwood, but I remember people saying how hot prescotts can get.

At that speed there's little discernible difference in benchmarks between Northwood and Prescott. Prescott has a smaller die (90Nm), SSE3 and a slightly lower power consumption (which ofc only applies on the same speed) which means a lower running temperature.

The cache does not impact DX gaming, in Open GL Prescotts are a little faster then Northwood cpu's but the differnces are minimal.
Prescott is faster in video en/decoding and office applications but not by huge margins.

I'd say if your mainboard supports both go for the cheapest of the two, there's barely any difference between performance wise.

people detest prescott's because of the temperature/peformance ratio. It was horribly hot and barely faster than a northwood. The northwood was loved because it was a really good overclocking chip and the temperature allowed it wheras the prescott is pretty much maxed out on a stock heat sink.