Best and recent Processor to upgrade the old one?

I have a 478 Pentium 4 machine.I need to upgrade my old socket to the new and recent one because the old CPU is not working for me anymore.
Also, there are many new processors available in the market. But I dont know which is the best one in terms of cost,reliability and perfomance

Any suggestions?

I would suggest you to go for Intel

There are 2 options:

• Intel Pentium 4 3.4GHz "Prescott"
• Intel Pentium 4 3.4GHz "Northwood"

Specifications of the Intel Pentium 4 Processor (Prescott)

• Clock speeds starting at 3.4GHz, 3.2GHz, 3GHz, and 2.8GHz
• New .09 micron "Strained SI" manufacturing process
• Improved Hyperthreading Technology
• 1MB on chip, Full Speed L2 Cache
• Increased 16KB L1 Data Cache
• Streaming SIMD Extensions - SSE2 and 13 new SSE3 Instructions
• 31 stage "Hyper Pipelined" Technology for extremely high clock speeds

Specifications of the Intel Pentium 4 3.4GHz Processor (Northwood)

• Clock speeds of 3.4GHz
• .13 micron manufacturing process
• Hyperthreading Technology
• 512kB on chip, Full Speed L2 Cache
• 8KB L1 Data Cache
• Streaming SIMD Extensions - SSE2 Only
• 20 stage "Hyper Pipelined" Technology

Intel Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.4GHz 800MHz 2MB S478 CPU
Intel's Pentium 4 Extreme Edition processors delivers significant performance gains for use in gaming, multi-media, business solutions and all your processing needs.

This Gallatin core (based on the Intel Xeon MP) 478-pin CPU runs at 3.4 GHz on a 800 MHz Front Side Bus, and includes not only it's regular 512KB L2 cache, but also an additional 2MB of L3 cache!

Features/Specifications:

-Intel Pentium 4 Extreme Edition processor
-3.4 GHz clock speed
-800 MHz Front Side Bus (FSB)
-512KB L2 cache
-2 MB L3 cache
-Socket 478
-Supports Hyper-threading
-Gallatin core (based on the Intel Xeon MP) !!!
-S-Spec: SL7CH
-Brand new

A dual core processor is a CPU with two separate cores on the same die, each with its own cache. It's the equivalent of getting two microprocessors in one.

In a dual core processor each core handles incoming data strings simultaneously to improve efficiency. Just as two heads are better than one, so are two hands. Now when one is executing the other can be accessing the system bus or executing its own code. Adding to this favorable scenario, both AMD and Intel's dual-core flagships are 64-bit.

To utilize a dual core processor, the operating system must be able to recognize multi-threading and the software must have simultaneous multi-threading technology (SMT) written into its code. SMT enables parallel multi-threading wherein the cores are served multi-threaded instructions in parallel. Without SMT the software will only recognize one core. Adobe Photoshop is an example of SMT-aware software. SMT is also used with multi-processor systems common to servers.