What do I have to gain? (CPU upgrade)

[SteamWake]

I have a machine with a fairly current mobo in it. It is a socket 775 board with an old "Prescot" 3.6 Ghz P4 single core dual thread (90nm) CPU in it.

What if I replaced that CPU with a dual core (45nm) 3.6 Ghz CPU. How much of a performance increase should I expect. Yes the motherboard supports that CPU.

Mostly interested in gaming performance and many of my games only use a single core.

CPU's of that flavor are in the 100-200 dollar range. I wonder if its worth the money.

[Herr-Berbunch]

Dual core 3.6 GHz? On Socket 775? What processor is that as I can't find one, the only multi-core I can see near 3.6 is the *Core i* series and they're not 775. Please expand as it's hurting my brain! :)

If you've got 775 I'd recommend the Core2 series over plain dual core. If you've already got 3 Gig+ of RAM, and a decent graphics card you shouldn't have a worry. If not then I'd consider saving some money and getting a whole new rig if gaming is your be-all. (I know, easier said than done!) :yep:

[SteamWake]

Yea I guess I got crossed up on my terms.

The rig has 4 gigs of ram and a HD4650 video card. Not top of the line but not too bad either.

I was looking at this CPU

Intel Core 2 Duo 3.06 Ghz

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115059

But that still doesent answer the question. What kind of performance increase would I see if any?

[Herr-Berbunch]

That's better, I've got the E7500 2.93 GHz and that takes all I've thrown at it so far, multiple AV/Malware scans running, it takes SH3 and 4 no problem, Dirt 2 looks amazing (that's Colin McRae's Dirt 2 - Rally Driving, not what my wife thought when I said I was downloading Dirt 2!!! :o), ARMA II, Red Orchestra, Sniper: GW, FSX, IL2-1946 all play great through GTS250 which is only slightly ahead of your GPU.

I still long for the GTX480 though :cry:

[Arclight]

Think you'll appreciate going from single to multicore, just runs a lot smoother. System doesn't end up waiting for stuff to complete so much.

Can't really comment on performance; if a game finds enough processing power in a single core, there's not much to be gained from going multi. But stuff like task switching or browsing a forum while the game runs in the background should see some improvement thanks to the OS being able to divide the load.


I went from an AMD Duron 2GHz to a 2.66GHz dual-core though, pretty big jump so for me it was a night and day difference. Not sure how big that gap is coming from a good P4. :hmmm:

[SteamWake]

Well evidently from what I undersand (which isnt much) that the smaller architecture 45nm vs 90nm also contributes to the performance. Why? beats me but thats what I hear. Something about electrons having less distance to travel :o

[Arclight]

Hmm not sure about that, but it is a more advanced design: essentially it does more calculating with less power. A 2GHz Core2 is faster than a 2GHz Pentium4. Energy consumption and heat are lower as well, resulting in a quieter system. Even noticed that going from 65nm dual-core to 45nm quad.