My Intel D865GLC motherboard was in severe need of an upgrade but I did not want to spend a lot of money either.   My choice was the 3200 Mhz Socket 478 Pentium 4 with 512Kb of cache.   I also bought a 3.4 Ghz 1Mb Pentium 4 processor on Ebay for the Intel D865GLC motherboard as well but since its revision number was to old the processor's 1Mb of cache kept it from working.

I needed a faster processor in the computer because among the three computers operating in my decorative, sealed, wooden hall cabinet, the D865GLC motherboard was the slowest.  SETI and other BOINC distributed computing projects have increased the processing power required for their workunits and this computer was taking over 10 hours to complete tasks. 

A socket 478 motherboard can only get a maximum of 200Mhz actual front side bus speed so the goal of any processor upgrade is to either increase the clock speed or increase the on-chip cache size to reduce the number of memory calls during intense processing operations.  Intel only released socket 478 processors with clock speeds up to 3.4Ghz.  The higher frequency processors were also produced in limited amounts so competition on Ebay and Craigslist for these products is fierce.  If you want to snag one of these computing gems, be prepared to bid high and watch out for sellers who have low reputation scores. 

Installation
Once the 512Kb of cache, 3.2Ghz processor came in from the Ebay seller, I quickly opened the door to my box fan computer cabinet to replace the old processor on the Intel D865GLC motherboard.  To do this you will need a single paper towel, a tube of Artic Silver 5 compound and a plastic glove.  Before you attempt the installation, make sure your motherboard is compatible and that it has all the required BIOS updates installed.  A common failure of this process is a lack of BIOS update which will often cause the motherboard to become unresponsive upon boot. 

Put the plastic glove on and lift the handles on the heat sink retainer.  Pry the hooks out of the retaining base and carefully lift the heatsink off.  Sometimes, if the original builder did not use enough heat sink compound the processor will come with the heatsink.  This is ok because you are not concerned with the processor and the ZIF socket should be fine.  If not already removed lift the handle on the Socket 478 and remove the old processor.  Use the paper towel to completely clean off any old compound from the bottom of the heat sink.  Apply enough Artic Silver 5 to the bottom of the heatsink so that you just barely cannot see the metal underneath.  Use the plastic on your glove to spread the compound around like butter.  Place the new processor in the ZIF socket, close and replace heat sink on top.  Make sure you that engage the handles of the heatsink retainer.

Operation
Compared to the Pentium 4 2.8Ghz 512Kb processor, the 400 Mhz that I gained from this upgrade did not yield any noticeable temperature increase.  Windows XP Professional SP2 did work a little faster loading web pages.  The big difference came with shaving an additional 20 minutes off 5 hour SETI workunit times.

Performance Testing
To give you an idea of the performance of this processor, I used two different benchmarks:  Super Pi and the BOINC Manager benchmark.  Each of these benchmarks stresses unique aspects of the processor and are heavily dependent on the supporting hardware around the processor like the memory, hard drive and motherboard chipset.  The Pentium 4 3200 Mhz hyper threading processor was installed in an Intel D865GLC motherboard with 1,024 Mbs of memory operating in dual channel mode.  The motherboard chipset is very important because some chipsets in the Pentium 4 series support dual channel memory and can even pull fewer watts of power to increase the reliability of the system as a whole.

Super Pi V1.1 is an application that extrapolates the specified digits of PI into a text file.  Since the task is both processor and file system intensive it can give you an idea of how fast your cpu is.  Processors with large on-die cache sizes and high bus speeds tend to do better in this benchmark.  The problem is the calculation is single threaded in this version so you only see the performance of one processor. 

Here are the results of three runs at 1,000,000 digits of PI:
#1; 1 mins 17 seconds
#2; 1 mins 19 seconds
#3; 1 mins 17 seconds

The Boinc Manager benchmark is designed to stress every available thread on your computer to see how many computations per second it can perform.  With the results, the Boinc Manager automatically assigns distributed computing projects to your processors.  The benchmark has been improved by scholars at academic institutions over the period of several years and is now a very reliable metric of modern computing performance.

Here the results of three runs:
#1; 1496 floating point MIPS (Whetstone) per cpu, 3363 integer MIPS (Dhrystone) per cpu
#2; 1498 floating point MIPS (Whetstone) per cpu, 3369 integer MIPS (Dhrystone) per cpu
#3; 1497 floating point MIPS (Whetstone) per cpu, 3365 integer MIPS (Dhrystone) per cpu

MCS Benchmark 2008
The MCS CPU Benchmark 2008 will test the entire system to give you an overall score based on CPU and file system performance.

Here are the results of three runs:
#1; 1724
#2; 1723
#3; 1724

The benchmark results are little humbling when compared to Socket 775 processors but you must remember this little processor is held back by its slow front side bus and relatively low cache size.  Well, to be honest the processor just has to little cache!  A Socket 478 Celeron 1.8Ghz processor can turn out a best of 2 minutes 20 seconds in SuperPi 1,000,000 and a rather dismal 943 Whetstone, 1252 Dhrystone on the BOINC manager benchmark. 

However if you look at a baseline Socket 775, Celeron 356 processor SuperPi to 1,000,000 digits can completed in 42 seconds.  I really enjoy comparing the Pentium 4 3200Mhz to the Celeron 356 3333Mhz processor because they both have the same cache size and similar clock speed.   Yet if you look closely at the specifications on both these processors you will see that the Pentium 4 is sporting a 800Mhz front side bus!  The only conclusion I can quickly come to is that the Northbridge on the Socket 775 platform is more efficient.  You should keep this in mind when purchasing a new computer.  Chipsets make a big difference in processor performance and must be examined thoroughly before making a costly mistake like buying older technology because it is cheaper.  If you really want performance at a low cost, buy a state of the art motherboard and stick an older processor in it!

Recommended Hardware Configuration
In the year 2009, your options for building a computer around this computer chip are limited if you wish to get a full warranty.  With that disclosed, you should jump onto Ebay and purchase an Intel D865GLC micro ATX motherboard and two sticks of 400Mhz DDR Dual Channel RAM.  The Intel D865GLC also supports SATA natively so you can pick up a SSD (Solid State Disk) to both increase speed and reduce power consumption in your new computer.   The Intel D865GLC has the benefit of Intel product support and stability.  You should not underestimate the importance of dual channel memory in this product either. 

Specifications
Processor Core: Northwood
Die size:  .13 micron
CPU Cores: 2 (includes hyper threading core)
Hyper threading: Yes
Frequency (Mhz):  3200
Bus Speed (Mhz):  800
Clock Multiplier (Mhz): 18
Dimensions:  1.38” x 1.38”
Socket 478 (mPGA478b)
Data width: 32 bit
Level 1 cache size:  12 k execution trace cache, 8 kb data cache
Level 2 cache size:  512 Kb on-die cache
Instruction sets:  MMX, SSE, SSE2
You can find this processor under the following Intel part number: RK80532PG088512, BX80532PG3200D, SL6WE, SL6WG, SL792, Q341ES, QWN2

Summary
Now, in the year 2009, I have decided to upgrade the processor only because the 3.2Ghz Pentium 4 processor is so cheap on Ebay.  I remain impressed with the performance of the Pentium 4 3.2Ghz 512Kb cache processor for the past few months and remain happy with my Ebay purchase.   If you need a solid performing, central processing unit to upgrade your Socket 478 compatible motherboard, you just cannot go wrong with this processor.

Recommended: Yes