Core Duo - benefits over P4?

[JoeG]

Im thinking of grabbing a new Core 2 Duo E6600 (and motherboard). Im only going to get an AGP board though as I dont have the extra money to upgrade videocards right now.

My question is this - How much of a performance increase if any at all - do you think I would see? Id be going from a 2.8 Ghz P4 to this Core Duo processor.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2341562&CatId=0

Id still be using 2Gb of ram and my X850 pro vid card, but do the CD Processors off that much of a boost to processes not using multithread applications?

Thoughts?

[knghtwhosaysni]

Re: Core Duo - benefits over P4?

Even without multithreaded applications, the Core 2 Duo will show much better performance than the P4, especially with converting movies or packing zip files. For games, I bet you will see some improvement, but most games today are GPU-limited, so you probably won't see too much difference with games.
Are you planning to upgrading your video card any time soon? And what kind of memory do you have now? And when do you plan on making this upgrade?

[BlueHound247]

Re: Core Duo - benefits over P4?

^
I got a cheap Shrubbery if ya interested?

Shh dont tell everyone,

Nudge nudge wink wink !

[JoeG]

Re: Core Duo - benefits over P4?

KWSN:

Right now Im running pc3200 1Gb sticks x2. I believe they were both midline corsair.

I AM thinking of upgrading my videocard in the future, but right now I only have about 600 dollars to work with in total. After the processor and fan, the motherboard and a new SATA harddrive to do some RAID along with the SATA I already have, I'll be running pretty close to my dollar limit.

I had thought about waiting till Vista was released and getting a DX10 videocard since most rigs will NEED to be upgraded to run vista worth a darn (I beta tested vista and am now running RC1 as a dualboot). Right now The ATI 850Pro runs pretty smoothly with everything on med/high, but the motherboard bottlenecks the SATA drives at SATA 1 speeds and its an older socket 478 so Im limited to either getting a new board (and processor) or applying a bandaid and getting a SATA controller card.

Even if I budgeted on the processor and board, I would still only be able to afford a midline PCI express card, and I really dont want to end up with having to buy a GPU that doesnt outperform my current GPU anyway. Other than gaming, the processor will directly effect my Adobe photoshopping and alot of sound editing and recording in Cool Edit Pro - along with the occaisional dvd recording.

Thanks for the input :)

P.S. So far the largest performance increase I have seen by far is switching from IDE harddrives to SATA drives. My hope is to squeeze a little more by going to all SATA, as right now I'm running a mix of SATA and IDE. Im also hoping to see a little extra by going from SATA 1 protocols to SATA 2.

[AgentJadeD.CA]

Re: Core Duo - benefits over P4?

Well I picked up this last friday. When I play I get pretty good fps increase.
Best part is you can keep everything AGP card, DDR ram and if you want you can run x64 XP or x64 Vista in the near future.
Core 2 Duo E6600 + Asrock 775Dual-VSTA

[Hugh G. Wrection]

Re: Core Duo - benefits over P4?

I still trying to live w/my AGP X850XT. I didn't there were any AGP motherboards even around anymore. What one did you get?

BF2, btw, is CPU bound, not GPU bound, so upgrading the CPU alone should give a considerable FPS boost...

[knghtwhosaysni]

Re: Core Duo - benefits over P4?

I think Asrock's VSTA board should work fine for you then, should be a decent upgrade

[Hugh G. Wrection]

Re: Core Duo - benefits over P4?

Asrock? Never heard of them. Will check them out... Can you use DDR memory in it or does it require DDR2?

[knghtwhosaysni]

Re: Core Duo - benefits over P4?

Asrock? Never heard of them. Will check them out...

It's a division of Asus... they make budget boards with weird combinations of compnents, like AGP and PCIe, both DDR and DDRII, or in this case, AGP+Conroe-compatible

[BOBSONATOR025]

Re: Core Duo - benefits over P4?

LOL! there is like a 40% increase in core 2, vs p4.

[AgentJadeD.CA]

Re: Core Duo - benefits over P4?

Asrock? Never heard of them. Will check them out... Can you use DDR memory in it or does it require DDR2?

Yeah you can use ddr or ddr2 also has a PCIE. But only works with select VGA cards. Performance increase from my old p4 2.67 to now. Is unbelievable, before Id get about 30-50fps on med @ 1280x960. Now everything maxed 50-80fps @ 1280x960.

[Hugh G. Wrection]

Re: Core Duo - benefits over P4?

I checked out the Asrock web site. This sounds like a great way to extend the life of my system w/o buying almost or already obsolete components. I thought I'd have to replace cpu, mb, memory, and graphics card in order to upgrade any one of the them. And, good lord, these Asrock mb's are really inexpensive too ($56 for Asrock 775Dual-VST at newegg).

I'm definitely partial to intel chipsets, but only the Asrock 775Dual-VSTA seems to have all the features w/the least limitations.

[scrogathon]

Re: Core Duo - benefits over P4?

lets just say core 2 duo is well worth it:) did i mention they overclock well to:)

[knghtwhosaysni]

Re: Core Duo - benefits over P4?

lets just say core 2 duo is well worth it:) did i mention they overclock well to:)

They are absolutely beasts at overclocking easily getting 1ghz more than stock, usually with barely any extra voltage. But, unfortunately, you do need a decent motherboard, and the reviews of the VSTA I have seen have, I believe, said it hits a wall a little past 300fsb.

[imported_Mrt1989]

Re: Core Duo - benefits over P4?

Conroes are noth worth to run at default speeds. And ppl who still dont know e6300 , e6400 are not Conroes they are Allendales. Conroes start e6600.
Even have Kentsfield's ect some of the e6700. Best OC board to Allendales are Asus P5B , best for Conroes Asus P5B Delux