Perfect in any second hand PC (Intel Pentium 4 524 / 3.06 GHz)

Member Name: aaronphil

Product:	Intel Pentium 4 524 / 3.06 GHz
Date:	24/07/09 (50 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great speed and L2 cache

Disadvantages: Only one core and not enough cache (1 MB)

Quite an outdated processor today it still holds its own next to its bigger brothers.

With a speed of 3.0 GHz this processor does a fine job at both rendering video and dealing with physics in gaming. It is a processor that I have been using for 4 years and had no problems.
Unfortunately for this OAP (especially by today's standards) it does not have dual cores, just one which makes encoding video slow and painful, even my laptop with a lower spec is faster due to it having two cores.

If you're building a desktop from scratch and you can still get this model, I suggest steering clear and buying something with more cores running at the same speed. These processors will probably only be found in second hand machines on eBay or refurbs and if you see a PC for sale with this CPU installed it's not all doom and gloom.
It is fine for gaming so long as you have a graphics card with a decent GPU and will run XP no problem (Vista I'm not too sure about). One thing it doesn't support though is 64-bit operating systems, so if you're thinking about getting this and putting Vista 64-bit, think again.
It does contain L2 cache which is faster but that is quite an old technology so no real hip-hip-hurray's and you don't get much cache, only 1 MB in fact.

Overall though don't be disappointed if you buy a PC fitted with this CPU and if you see this processor on its own online then buy it because I can guarantee it'll never let you down, it just may take you longer to back-up your DVDs or create a big Zip file.

Summary: Not a bad processor, just don't go out and buy one for a new build

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