What's allowable cpu temp for P4 2.8?

My pc has been running slow lately, especially when I need to look at a directory, etc. I just ran Everest and the CPU temp runs 70-80C - is this too hot? I thought I was having a heat problem and replaced the thermal grease, but I'm wondering if it's still too hot?

 

yes it is. when i had my stock cooler on my 3.0ghz P4 it ran at about 40-50C. At that temp it is most likely slowing down the proc to try and cool it down a bit, hence your problems. Check into getting an aftermarket cooler if you've tried fixing your current one and it hasnt helped. Make sure everything is dust-free; go grab a can of compressed air and clean it all out, specifically the CPU heatsink

 

Everest doesn't always report accurate temps. PCWizard, HMonitor, CSFire, and SpeedFan are apps that have temp reporting tools. I had Everest and was getting sky high temp. reports. I installed PCWizard (the others didn't support my sensor) Now I am getting normal temp. reports again, although they are reported backwards. I don't know if that is a flaw of the app or from a Dell tech having a bad day. My CPU is nearly always 45-48°C, load or no load.

 

As Musksnipe mentioned above, those temp reporting apps are not always accurate and sometimes they report the system temp as the CPU or vice versa, or they'll report a number that comes from who-knows-where. I had an MSI motherboard running an AthlonXP 2200+ and all of the above tools said it was running at 73C. I checked the BIOS Hardware Monitor and it was actually only 46C. I have no idea where the 73C came from..... just a personal observation that you'll (hopefully ) find helpful....

hd2k

 

OK, thanks for all the advice, guys - here's what I did: I opened the case and blew out the cpu cooler - it was a little dusty (I've cleaned it before) and the cpu temp went down to about 66c, then back up to 75c when I was doing something that was cpu-intensive, then back to 63c at idle. Right now, SpeedFan is showing CPU at 67c, ambient at 40c, hard drives at 44c,49c and 53c. From what I'm hearing, this is too hot - does the P4 actually slow down when the temp gets too high? I wonder at what temp this starts to occur. I have a couple of big case fans, but I've never replaced the cpu fan - it's the Intel fan that came with the processor.

Any advice on what I should do? Do you think that the cpu has been damaged by all this heat, and I should just replace it? Or is there a better way to get the thing cooled?

Thanks so much for the help-
steve