e4500 how long?

[kentsfield]

How long do you guys think an e4500 at 3.0 ghz will last (performance wise) for moderate gaming and everyday use (mail, surfing, convertxtodvd, photoshop and maybe vista after a while)?

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

It will last until you upgrade again

 

[kentsfield]

Im not planning that for about 2 years. Just a gfx card after a while (hd3850 probably). I have 7900gs 550/1600mhz and 2x2gb@ 800mhz ram.

 

[GundamF91]

For emails and surfing, that much processor power will last you forever, even my old Athlon XP worked just fine. As for Photoshop and DVD conversion, that's asking for quite abit more power. As long as you're not needing DVD converted to Xvid in a hurry, it should be more than enough to do the work. You're only looking at about 20-30% encoding speed difference compared to top tier Core2Duo processors, not that a big deal in actual application. Quad core will do even better for DVD conversion by the way.

As for gaming, that's heavily dependent on your Gfx card on the higher resolution (who games at 800x600 anymore?) With your nVidia 7900GS and 4GB ram, I think you're good to go for at least a couple of years. My spec is comparable to yours, and I'm very happy with the result for my use. Your 7900 is one of the top DirectX9 card for a while and I would wait at least until nVidia 9xxx comes out before getting a new card. I play Oblivion, SupCommander at high res and it works out just fine. Even with Crysis I had to tune down the res but these ex-top DX9 cards are still doing a good job on gaming.

Also, E4500 can be pushed to 3.3Ghz without much trouble if your board is capable. That'll only get you maybe 5 fps more in games, so it's not really worth much. I got my E4500 up to 3.5Ghz but it was running pretty hot. It should be good to go for couple of years until DDR3 prices drop and Nehalem comes out.

 

[kentsfield]

I had q6600 (B3) for 6 months and i sold it and got this. Cause it was overkill for my work on this computer. I hardly ever used two cores, except playing UT3. I don`t notice any difference in performance so far. Im gpu limited now with my 7900gs so i dont get any fps difference between stock and 3.0ghz in cod 4 and crysis at 1024 x 768. So im running stock for now. But i`ve tested it on my p35 ds3 and it passes prime 95 (small ftts) overnight at 266x11 (2930mhz) at stock volts (1.325V) and 3150mhz (350x9) at 1.40V/BIOS. I still have zalman 9700led wich i used with q6600. So the temps are really low: idle (room temperature/ 21C now) load 43C. Even with 1.40-45 V i don`t go over 55-57C (core temp 0.96.1/speedfan 4.34beta).

As for the dvd conversion and photoshop im only converting one or two movies a week so im not in a hurry. I use photoshop for making a wallpaper every once in a while.

Hope i`ll have enough processing power when i move to vista x64 and it won`t be much difference compared to xp as far as processing power.

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: kentsfield
Hope i`ll have enough processing power when i move to vista x64 and it won`t be much difference compared to xp as far as processing power.

There's really not any difference between Vista and XP, at least as far as your processor is concerned. You'll just want to have 4GB of RAM for Vista, which you already have.

 

[DSF]

If you're planning on upgrading in two years, the E4500 will do you fine. For the tasks you mentioned, it will probably last well beyond that.

 

[watek]

If I can pick up one of those E6XXX at fry's for super cheap, i'm letting go my e4500 .

 

[jdkick]

You should be fine with the E4500 for a quite a while. Encoding/transcoding is CPU intensive, but it doesn't sound like that type of work is your livlihood. As for the gaming, you'd see more of an improvement by upgrading your video card. I have a 7900 GS and it can handle the games I play, but not at native resolution (20" WSXGA+ LCD). I will probably look for a new video card in a few months time...

 

[kentsfield]

I will probably look for a new video card in a few months time...

Same here. 79gs has served me well, but its to weak for my native 1280x1024.