Going from my AMD setup to Intel?>

[angry hampster]

I'm looking to offload my AMD stuff and possibly buy Intel. Would I notice a huge difference in performance with a P35 board and an E6420 overclocked to ~3.5GHz? The rest of the hardware will be the same.


also: blah blah blah E8400... I'm trying to break even or maybe spend $25-50 in the end if I actually do this. Assuming I can sell my AMD setup for $175...what's the best I can do? I've seen plenty of 6420s on ebay (OEM) for $125, and IP35-E boards regularly go for $60-70. I'll be using my Zerotherm Nirvana CPU cooler no matter what i do.

 

[harpoon84]

If you can manage to break even or spend just a little more, then I'd say it's definitely worth the upgrade. A 3.5GHz C2D is roughly equivalent to a 4.5GHz X2, a good ~50% faster than your current CPU, at least in CPU intensive tasks.

 

[angry hampster]

Cool, that's what I wanted to hear. I figure the extra 3mb of L2 cache would really help in photoshop. I'm a professional photographer as well as a retard gamer

 

[LOUISSSSS]

i dont think it will be THAT much.. a 4800+ is pretty fast for XP usage.... in general usage you probably won't notice much difference. in gaming, probably a bit. in HEAVY CPU TASKS that load the cpu @ 100% for long periods of time (30 mins+) then you'll see some increase.

i upgraded from a 4800+ to a Q6600 + P35 and saw a decent jump in all around performance and gaming. and HUGE differences in cpu intensive tasks

 

[Mondoman]

Also at least upgrade your RAM to 3GB or 4GB!

 

[harpoon84]

Originally posted by: angry hampster
Cool, that's what I wanted to hear. I figure the extra 3mb of L2 cache would really help in photoshop. I'm a professional photographer as well as a retard gamer

It's not just the cache, Core 2 is a faster CPU in general, and it has superior SSE performance making it better for multimedia encoding/editing, and Photoshop as well.

If you are a 'retard gamer' then higher framerates probably won't help much though, LOL!

Originally posted by: LOUISSSSS
i dont think it will be THAT much.. a 4800+ is pretty fast for XP usage.... in general usage you probably won't notice much difference. in gaming, probably a bit. in HEAVY CPU TASKS that load the cpu @ 100% for long periods of time (30 mins+) then you'll see some increase.

i upgraded from a 4800+ to a Q6600 + P35 and saw a decent jump in all around performance and gaming. and HUGE differences in cpu intensive tasks

Notice I said a ~50% jump in 'CPU intensive tasks'. I think that is a reasonable assumption taking into considering the IPC and clockspeed advantages a C2D would hold over an X2. In fact, it could very well be over 50% faster in Photoshop, as it runs particularly well on Core 2 based CPUs.

 

[heyheybooboo]

Your best 'bang' would be upgrading from 2gb to 4gb - even if you are using XP32 - and enabling the 3 gig boot switch.

The IP35e would be a 'downgrade' from your mobo.

And to suggest that a 'used' cpu 'possibly' purchased on ebay for 'X' dollars 'may' clock to 3.5GHz and perform '50% faster' in Photoshop may be 'wishful thinking'.

I'm not disputing the e6420 at 3.5GHz would be faster than your X2 @ 3GHz in 'general'. It will not be 50% faster in Photoshop. Your ram and disk I/O is still of the utmost importance.

 

[Arkaign]

Strong warning : not all 6420s will reach 3.5Ghz. ~3.2Ghz is much more likely near the limit for 24x7 stable with that proc.

Advice : your system is not slow as is, wait until 9450 hits, and then snag a used Q6600 for cheap, here on the forums. You can buy from a trusted forum member, and get a proc that will likely hit ~3.2Ghz with ease. A Q6600 @ 3.2Ghz will stomp through encoding, and any game on the market. It will also prepare you for treats such as Alan Wake.

 

[big4x4]

If you get a good chip, 3.5 can be had. My e6400 runs @ 3.5 with low volts, but since it is getting hotter here it produces a lot more heat than 3.4 for some reason. I put it back to 3.4. And just FYI, I have ran orthos for a week @ 3.5 with not a single error ( I ran prime for 3 days but then I stopped it so I could use my comp again!)

 

[nerp]

I went from an opteron 180 @ 2.7 to an E2180 @ 3.2 and the difference is _quite_ noticable. Not in day to day usage, but when I'm encoding, playing games or doing any resource-intensive task, the difference is quite remarkable. At stock, the E2180 @ 2ghz seems a bit slower than the Opteron. But at 3.2ghz it's a totally different story, by far.