Broadband performance on P3 and P4

Hi
Is there a major performance, speed difference in browsing/downloading with a P4 machine and a P3 one? (with a Broadband connection)
thx.

I doubt that you'd find any noticable difference - the main difference is in the download bandwidth, which is limited by the broadband, not the processor. A modern processor (P4/Athlon64) can easily do 100Mb/s "all day long" and still not use much more than 10% CPU performance, and your local broadband is likely less than 10MB/s with a processor that is much faster than 10% of a modern version.

Of course, Firefox and IE will run a tad slower on an old processor, but not enough that you'd really notice most of the time.

--
Mats

Slowness will be due to insuffitient memory if P3 will have 256M or less of RAM and browser will have a lot of pages opened, and not due to processor speed

Simply downloading or uploading data would have a very minuscule effect on CPU usage. I've uploaded videos to YouTube many times over my 4 Mbps connection and P4 processor (512 Kbps upstream speed) and the amount of CPU usage barely registers on Windows Task Manager. The browser itself uses much more of the CPU to take the download data and process it so it displays properly in the browser. A P3 processor is typically quite a bit slower (half speed?) than a P4 and with my P4 using maybe a fraction of a percent of the CPU, even that 4 Mbps would likely work well on a P1 with still plenty of room for other processes.

thx 4 the replys guys. i asked that question cos couple of my friends say that CPU speed has a impact on up/download speed. so now that's not true. thx.

Even if you have a slower processor, there are browsers which work great on the slow speeds, check out Dillo if you need a lightweight browser.

no i have a 3.06 PIV. just asked the question to find out if thoes friends are right. thx.