E2140 @ 3.2GHz, or E7200 @ 3.8Ghz

[VirtualLarry]

What games or applications would be significantly enhanced, from upgrading a 3.2Ghz E2xxx to a 3.8Ghz E7200? Would I notice a difference? (Would that difference be worth the price of an E7200?)

If I were to build a new rig today, it would be an E7200 (most likely) or E8400 (less likely), hands down.

But to upgrade an existing rig, would it be worth it? Or should I wait, until new chips are introduced and the price slides down some to upgrade. Possibly when the E8400's price drops to $100 or so.

Edit: I should mention that I have Radeon X1950Pro and -GT video cards in these two E2140 rigs. Don't know if that changes the consensus at all.

 

[Zap]

I don't think the E8400 will ever drop to $100 new (unless with some price mistake or something). The reason is that Intel usually stops making a processor before it drops below a certain price point. For instance, E4xxx series processors never dropped below $100. Instead of making the E4300 longer and dropping the price, instead Intel does things like make the E4500 and E4600 for the same price. Same thing with the E6xxx series. They never drop below around $165. What happened to the E6300? E6420? Do we see them at $100 since they're barely bracketing 2GHz and Intel sells 3GHz chips for just under $200? Nope, they are EOL.

As for whether or not you'd notice a performance difference from upgrading chips, well, we kind of need to know what you use your computer for? What type of tasks, and what software? Generally speaking though, I'd think you may notice a little bit performance boost. You're not just getting an extra 600MHz, but you're getting 3x the cache memory. IIRC the sweet spot with cache memory on the Core processors is around 2MB-4MB, and the E7xxx series is right there at 3MB.

Perhaps wait until the E7300 chip comes out, because the E7200 is supposed to drop $15 or so. Then, sell off your old chip and get the new one.

 

[myocardia]

Larry, with gaming, it will make a difference, as long as your video card is fast enough to keep up. This article illustrates the point Zap was making. Games seem to benefit the most from cache, assuming we ignore F@H, which seems to be extremely cache-dependent, at least the last I heard.

 

[bryanW1995]

e7200 is probably worth it for a mid-life upgrade, it shouldn't cost you more than $100 or so net after selling the e2xxx and should give you ~25% real-world performance increase.

 

[ther00kie16]

It's hard to say whether or not you'll notice any performance increase. Usually, people just wait until the system seems slow to upgrade. And e4300 was $99 at ewiz a long time ago. I don't know if e4500 ever dropped below $100 but the e4300 was definitely under $100 when I was thinking of getting one.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

The only game you will see a 14% positive difference from a 3mb cache to a 6mb L2 cache is UT3, the rest, games and apps, are between about 1-5%

 

[hans007]

i would be the e7200 will be easy to get for $85-90 in say 7-8 months. just like an e4400 or e4300 is about $85 now and they are not produced anymore. but yeah it will a while. it will probably be $115 by august though, so thats only $30 more.

 

[o1die]

Actually, the e4500 was selling for $79.99 at the austin tx Fry's just 5 days ago with cheapo ecs board. I would love to see the 7200 for $99.99 in about 6 months.

 

[nerp]

I wouldn't do it, Larry. Maybe for a little extra encoding speed or something, but as long as you have a decent videocard, the jump shouldn't be that impressive. I might end up doing the same upgrade myself from an E2180 @ 3.2 to a 7200 or 7300 just for the heck of it but I know it would be a waste of money based on the results.

 

[ChaosDivine]

I can't see the E8400 dropping to $100 that fast (right now E6400s are fetching ~$75 in FS/FT).
I would say it ultimately depends on what your computing needs are. If you're not too hung up on F@H or vid encoding and your #1 priority is gaming, save up for a new graphics card instead.

 

[DSF]

I wouldn't expect to gain a whole lot from it, but as others said, it would help to have a more specific idea of what you're doing with the computer.

 

[VirtualLarry]

(Damn IE and MS natural keyboard ate my other post.)

I game lightly, been wanting to get into UT3, Bioshock, and Crysis at some point. I use DVDshrink sometimes. I run SB (DC app) in the background all the time.

 

[myocardia]

What video card do you have, Larry? That should be the deciding factor, since you may already be GPU-bound right now, depending on your card.

edit: Nevermind, I missed that you had already said. You need a faster video card, not a faster processor. If you're already maxing out your video card, even doubling your CPU speed won't give you any more FPS, and your processor is already way faster than your video card.

 

[mshan]

In comparing the two cpus OP listed (stock speed and overclocked), would there be any difference in perceptible instantaneously snappiness between the two cpus (web-surfing and htpc type uses)?

Is there a sweet spot in terms of C2D cache size, again for web-surfing, htpc, and general computer use?

 

[Sylvanas]

Upgrading an E2140 to E7200, you are not going to put it in and say 'WOW LOOK AT THAT GO" there is simply no noticeable difference unless you like the benchmark numbers. Also, note all CPU reviews are conducted at 1280x1024 usually, a common CPU bound resolution- if you play at anything higher than that all modern day CPU's will level out as the application becomes GPU bound.

 

[mshan]

I just bought an used Conroe-L Celeron 440 for a music server type system (need older chip to update BIOS of my Intel BoxDG31PR so it can accept a newer Wolfdate core cpu).

In terms of instantaneous snappiness, is the 512 KB cache going to becoming rate limiting, or for my uses, will it basically seem as fast as the e7200?

 

[cmv]

Originally posted by: mshan
I just bought an used Conroe-L Celeron 440 for a music server type system (need older chip to update BIOS of my Intel BoxDG31PR so it can accept a newer Wolfdate core cpu).

In terms of instantaneous snappiness, is the 512 KB cache going to becoming rate limiting, or for my uses, will it basically seem as fast as the e7200?

I've swapped back and forth a Celeron 430 and Intel e2180 (both BSEL modified) between my desktop and HTPC running Linux. Even with HD video (getting downscaled to a SD set but still has to decode it), there is practically no difference between the 430 and e2180 for playback. The second core is handy for other tasks (mainly, commercial marking) but I missed the e2180 on the desktop when using Lightroom on large RAW photo files.