I upgraded from a 2.66 to a 3.4ghz. (first impression)

[Budmantom]

I went from a 2.66(533fsb) to a 3.4ghz(800fsb) Dell system.

Overall it was an ok upgrade, I do notice apps load faster and I can do a couple of things at the same time (HT?).

I'm not really a big gamer and I can't get 3dmark2001se to run, but I do run Nascar Racing 2003 and I tried that while I was using the virus scan and that was rather impressive, if I tried this on my old rig it would of made nr2003 unplayable.
In my old system I had 1gb of ram and in this one I only have 512mb(but a gb is on it's way) so I'm not sure that will make much of a difference.

In conclusion if you have a 2.4ghz system you might hold of on your upgrade(unless you want/need the latest and greatest), this is a point of diminishing returns. I am happy with my upgrade but I guess I(we) always expect more.


Tom

 

[Chad]

I went from a 1.6a @ 2.4 (400 FSB) with 512meg ram and 7200 IDE hard drive, to a 2.8 @ 3.26 (800 FSB) 1 gig ram and new SATA Raptor and to be honest, I am not at all impressed. Some things are a little faster but it's hard to tell. All of my games are virtually the same FPS because I guess I am limitied by the Radeon 9700 (?).

Overall, if I had it to do over again, I wouldn't. I would have stayed with my old system and saved $800.

 

[txxxx]

Originally posted by: Chad
I went from a 1.6a @ 2.4 (400 FSB) with 512meg ram and 7200 IDE hard drive, to a 2.8 @ 3.26 (800 FSB) 1 gig ram and new SATA Raptor and to be honest, I am not at all impressed. Some things are a little faster but it's hard to tell. All of my games are virtually the same FPS because I guess I am limitied by the Radeon 9700 (?).

Overall, if I had it to do over again, I wouldn't. I would have stayed with my old system and saved $800.

At least your being honest. Many people do the same and lie about the tangible increase.

 

[RussianSensation]

To run 3dmark 01 just download the 330 patch from the website.

 

[Chad]

Yeah, I guess I just think of what I could have done with that $800 and think of my 2 or 3 more frames per second that this $800 "upgrade" got me and I just want to spank myself heh. Worst upgrade I have ever done. Cost the most and gave me the least improvement.

I got sucked in by how everyone claimed such huge improvements with all the individual parts I ordered from the newegg.com reviews. Sometimes I wonder if newegg themselves don't make up half of those "reviews" to sell more products. I know those "reviews" always help me to go ahead and buy when I am on the fence. Almost every product there has rants and raves and 5 stars from everyone, does anyone ever admitt they did something they shouldn't have?

bah, guess I'm just jaded. :/

 

[Budmantom]

Chad, I doubt ypur gpu limited when I had my 2.66ghz system I went from a 9800 to a 9800pro and I saw no difference.



RussianSensation, I downloaded 3DMark®2001 Second Edition (Build 330).


Tom

 

[txxxx]

Originally posted by: Chad
Yeah, I guess I just think of what I could have done with that $800 and think of my 2 or 3 more frames per second that this $800 "upgrade" got me and I just want to spank myself heh. Worst upgrade I have ever done. Cost the most and gave me the least improvement.

I got sucked in by how everyone claimed such huge improvements with all the individual parts I ordered from the newegg.com reviews. Sometimes I wonder if newegg themselves don't make up half of those "reviews" to sell more products. I know those "reviews" always help me to go ahead and buy when I am on the fence. Almost every product there has rants and raves and 5 stars from everyone, does anyone ever admitt they did something they shouldn't have?

bah, guess I'm just jaded. :/

Nah, you got hit by a good marketing team 🙂

My own golden rule for upgrading is "until it chokes, it stays"

 

[mboy]

Glad I cam across this as I am getting itchy to upgrade my 8rda+, Xp2100 @ 2.3ghz-211 FSb) 512mb rig now to an 800FSB P4. I think I am going to wait until Alderwood and a P4 that will hit 4ghz (overclocked of course) and PCI express are affordable (1yr at least maybe 1.5) or enough 64bit stuff is out software wise for an AMD upgrade.

 

[Budmantom]

Originally posted by: mboy
Glad I cam across this as I am getting itchy to upgrade my 8rda+, Xp2100 @ 2.3ghz-211 FSb) 512mb rig now to an 800FSB P4. I think I am going to wait until Alderwood and a P4 that will hit 4ghz (overclocked of course) and PCI express are affordable (1yr at least maybe 1.5) or enough 64bit stuff is out software wise for an AMD upgrade.

Not a bad idea.

 

[RussianSensation]

Originally posted by: Budmantom
Chad, I doubt ypur gpu limited when I had my 2.66ghz system I went from a 9800 to a 9800pro and I saw no difference.



RussianSensation, I downloaded 3DMark®2001 Second Edition (Build 330).


Tom

Yeah i just reformatted my computer recently and downloaded that same build, but mysteriously that build was not patched, even though the website link showed it as one. Just try it. I mean it takes 1 min to download and 30 seconds to patch. If it doesnt work, then move on.

Personally, I do not upgrade anything unless I see around 90-100% imporvement or 2x the speed.

So I went from 1.4ghz Athlon (1600+) to my 2.6@3.2ghz p4 and I still do not notice a LOT of performance increase since I do not encode or any of that but for gaming it is smoother at lower resolutions. Of course at 1600x1200 my card cries. So for videocards I upgrade every other generation. So I am probably gonna either get 9800Pro for cheaper or the new cards in a bit.

 

[Budmantom]

RussianSensation, You might have a point, the site I downloaded it from makes not mention of 330 build. When I get home I will get it from another site.


Tom

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: txxxx

Originally posted by: Chad
I went from a 1.6a @ 2.4 (400 FSB) with 512meg ram and 7200 IDE hard drive, to a 2.8 @ 3.26 (800 FSB) 1 gig ram and new SATA Raptor and to be honest, I am not at all impressed. Some things are a little faster but it's hard to tell. All of my games are virtually the same FPS because I guess I am limitied by the Radeon 9700 (?).

Overall, if I had it to do over again, I wouldn't. I would have stayed with my old system and saved $800.

At least your being honest. Many people do the same and lie about the tangible increase.

I follow my personal rule of thumb to only upgrade when you get at least 50-100% more performance increase.

I went from a Tualatin Celeron @1.5Ghz w/ 384MB PC-133 to a DC HT P4 @ 3.4ghz with 512 MB PC3500 and DID notice a difference overall - even in gaming although my Radeon 8500 stayed the same. To be able to play a video game while d/l'ing and perhaps running a virus scan all simultaneously is pretty impressive. . . . .

. . . And paying ~$500 for the UPgrade (CPU/MB/RAM/PS&Case) made it sweeter still [not to mention selling my old rig for $300]. 🙂

 

[mboy]

Originally posted by: apoppin

Originally posted by: txxxx

Originally posted by: Chad
I went from a 1.6a @ 2.4 (400 FSB) with 512meg ram and 7200 IDE hard drive, to a 2.8 @ 3.26 (800 FSB) 1 gig ram and new SATA Raptor and to be honest, I am not at all impressed. Some things are a little faster but it's hard to tell. All of my games are virtually the same FPS because I guess I am limitied by the Radeon 9700 (?).

Overall, if I had it to do over again, I wouldn't. I would have stayed with my old system and saved $800.

At least your being honest. Many people do the same and lie about the tangible increase.

I follow my personal rule of thumb to only upgrade when you get at least 50-100% more performance increase.

I went from a Tualatin Celeron @1.5Ghz w/ 384MB PC-133 to a DC HT P4 @ 3.4ghz with 512 MB PC3500 and DID notice a difference overall - even in gaming although my Radeon 8500 stayed the same. To be able to play a video game while d/l'ing and perhaps running a virus scan all simultaneously is pretty impressive. . . . .

. . . And paying ~$500 for the UPgrade (CPU/MB/RAM/PS&Case) made it sweeter still [not to mention selling my old rig for $300]. 🙂

You better have noticed a difference. You went from the worst performing, bottom of the barrel processor, to on of the top performing ones (along with the ram and chipset to go with them).

 

[Gagabiji]

Originally posted by: mboy
Glad I cam across this as I am getting itchy to upgrade my 8rda+, Xp2100 @ 2.3ghz-211 FSb) 512mb rig now to an 800FSB P4. I think I am going to wait until Alderwood and a P4 that will hit 4ghz (overclocked of course) and PCI express are affordable (1yr at least maybe 1.5) or enough 64bit stuff is out software wise for an AMD upgrade.

No, no it's..."if it's not broke, fix it till it IS broke" 😀

 

[Budmantom]

RussianSensation,

Looks like you are correct, I downloaded 3dmark from another location and it worked fine.


My score went from: 2.66ghz, 9800pro, 1gb 14,4xx
to: 3.4ghz, 9800pro, 512mb 17,7xx

So I am happy with that.


Tom

 

[Regs]

You won't see drastic changes in performance in general usage applications like MS office. If you use a computer for Windows and Office, a P3 is plenty.

A P4 3.4 Ghz only measures in performance if you are a hardcore gamer who wants the max performance in gaming, faster media encoding, usage of mathematical intensive programs for 3D/2D animation, and other multimedia purposes.

Just like going from a IDE 7200 RPM drive to a Raptor. If you don't need the Raptor, you're not going to see a performance gain. Bragging rights are expensive these days right chad 😉 .

 

[Cerb]

Originally posted by: Chad
I went from a 1.6a @ 2.4 (400 FSB) with 512meg ram and 7200 IDE hard drive, to a 2.8 @ 3.26 (800 FSB) 1 gig ram and new SATA Raptor and to be honest, I am not at all impressed. Some things are a little faster but it's hard to tell. All of my games are virtually the same FPS because I guess I am limitied by the Radeon 9700 (?).

Overall, if I had it to do over again, I wouldn't. I would have stayed with my old system and saved $800.

I don't see how didn't like the Raptor 🙂. If I weren't such a penny-pincher I'd have one instead of going w/ a Spinpoint...*drool*it's great, and folding, sure...but even at stock speeds, my 1800+ is limited more by RAM and video than CPU.
I often find minor upgrades to be the most rewarding...like going from a KT333 to NF2...just that made the machine much more responisve, and made it well worth the effort. Not sure about some of the other stuff I got, though.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: mboy

Originally posted by: apoppin

Originally posted by: txxxx

Originally posted by: Chad
I went from a 1.6a @ 2.4 (400 FSB) with 512meg ram and 7200 IDE hard drive, to a 2.8 @ 3.26 (800 FSB) 1 gig ram and new SATA Raptor and to be honest, I am not at all impressed. Some things are a little faster but it's hard to tell. All of my games are virtually the same FPS because I guess I am limitied by the Radeon 9700 (?).

Overall, if I had it to do over again, I wouldn't. I would have stayed with my old system and saved $800.

At least your being honest. Many people do the same and lie about the tangible increase.

I follow my personal rule of thumb to only upgrade when you get at least 50-100% more performance increase.

I went from a Tualatin Celeron @1.5Ghz w/ 384MB PC-133 to a DC HT P4 @ 3.4ghz with 512 MB PC3500 and DID notice a difference overall - even in gaming although my Radeon 8500 stayed the same. To be able to play a video game while d/l'ing and perhaps running a virus scan all simultaneously is pretty impressive. . . . .

. . . And paying ~$500 for the UPgrade (CPU/MB/RAM/PS&Case) made it sweeter still [not to mention selling my old rig for $300]. 🙂

You better have noticed a difference. You went from the worst performing, bottom of the barrel processor, to on of the top performing ones (along with the ram and chipset to go with them).

Actually the Tualatin Celeron is n exception to the 'Celeron Rule' and an exceptional performer for it's day (especially when o/c'ed 25% or more at 1.5/1.6Ghz it is more-or-less-equivalent to the performance of the original P4@1.8+Ghz).

 

[RussianSensation]

Good stuff Budmantom.

Just wanted to tell you, look on the bright side if you didn't notice much of an upgrade improvement going from 2.66 to a 3.4 then you can happily wait until the cpu speeds double and delay your upgrades saving you money which you can now spend on other things you enjoy.

I mean personally I won't upgrade my cpu until the speed doubles, and for a videocard, every other generation so not everyone rushes to upgrade for every extra 25% boost. Eventually a cpu will reach a speed of "diminishing returns" for most users but not in actual terms as it will always be faster if you measure the speed. However, I bet that going from 10ghz to 20ghz will be much less noticeable than going from Athlon 1.0ghz to Athlon 2000+ because most of the things computer users do do not require that kind of power. I just hope dell doesn't go out of business in 10 years becuase ppl will no longer find the need to upgrade.... jokes

 

[heartsurgeon]

i'm not a gamer
i have been upgrading since the original ibm pc hit the market 4 mhz for those of you to young to remember.
now we're at 4 gh!

in my opinion, the "wow" factor in an upgrade doesn't happen until the processor speed increases by a factor of 3-5X

doubling the processor speed in my opinion is not really noticabl eat all when your doing routine office work on your machine.

 

[sharkeeper]

i'm not a gamer
i have been upgrading since the original ibm pc hit the market 4 mhz for those of you to young to remember.
now we're at 4 gh!

in my opinion, the "wow" factor in an upgrade doesn't happen until the processor speed increases by a factor of 3-5X

doubling the processor speed in my opinion is not really noticabl eat all when your doing routine office work on your machine.

OMG, there should be clapping icon! Give this person a round of :beer: 🙂

O/C from 2.6 to 3.4 seems like a lot. Think about when we had CPU <300 MHz. Going from 266MHz to 340MHz doesn't sound that impressive does it?

Now going from 300(A) to 504 was impressive! About a third of the 300A's I got could do this with a single fan cooler. How many P4 3.0G chips can o/c to 5GHz on air? I bet you couldn't count them on one hand. Not just that, those celeries were running 504 stable! The ones that weren't did 464 perfectly stable.

So we've reached the point of diminishing returns. It is possible to hit 5GHz but it takes a solution (currently) that I find totally unacceptable for everyday use. (LN2 or CCRF) Not to mention you're literally running the piss out of just about every component designed for power delivery on the mainboard.

Cheers!

 

[Lonyo]

I went from an XP1900+ @ 1.6GHz to a 2500+ @ 2.4GHz, a noticeable improvement, especially in UT2k4.
Also, when I'm dialling up to the internet, instead of the whole system freezing for a second while it gets the modem ready, there is either no change or a slightly judder in Winamp music. Before it used to loop a 1 second section a couple of times as the system froze to connect.

A worthwhile improvement for me at least (in UT2k4). I can run it with higher details and higher resolutions and at a faster speed.

 

[Auxano]

I got tired of upgrading because to no "wow" factor - for me, just not worth the $$ unless there is some real improvment .

Runing 2.8 now so when will 4.? be out? 🙂

 

[Snooper]

I just upgraded my system (custom built of course) from a 2.0 Ghz P4 (533 Mhz bus and no HT) to a 3.0 Ghz P4 (800 Mhz bus and HT support). The rest of my system was in pretty good shape: Asus P4P800 MB, 1 Gig of PC3200 Ram in dual channel configuration and a 9800 Pro video card (still no 10k rpm SATA drive(s), but I might change that this summer..).

According the the various CPU tests I have seen, I should be able to expect about an 80% increase in CPU speed (50% faster core, 33% faster bus, HT and other core improvements with Northwood). When I ran FutureMark 2003, my scores only increased by 15%, so I was a bit disappointed. But, I didn't speed the money to upgrade to run a benchmark, so I fired up Army Ops. Before, my FPS has been averaging around 36-38 fps with dips down to 22-24 fps and peaks of around 45 fps max with the settings I used. With only the CPU change, my average went up to 60-62 fps with dips down to 37-39 fps and peaks over 80 fps. Now THAT made a difference in how the game ran! It was actually a lot more of an increase than I expected. It also explained why I didn't see much of an increase last year when I upgraded from my old GeForce 2 Ultra (I had that card about 2 1/2 years) to my current 9800 Pro.

I also noticed a general quicker response to my system as a whole. Boot times decreased (that surprised me a lot) and in general when I am loading a program, the computer still responds "normally" instead of almost locking up as CPU and disk access peg at 100% each.

During the upgrade, I also bought the ThermalRight T-94 (I think it is a "T", the 94 is correct!) heatsink and a nice 92mm fan to go with it. That part of the upgrade is great! The mounting method of this heatsink is really sweet and secure (even if you do have to pull your motherboard out to install the mounting plate). WIth this heatsink, I have only see a max raise above case temperature of 9C. That is much better than the slower CPU did with it's factory heatsink.

So all in all, I have to say I am satisfied with my upgrade. Noticiable improvement in performance, especially in my games were it counts and the computer just feels quicker all the way around due to HT. Now to just get those hard drives upgraded...

 

[BDSM]

I just got a Raptor to replace an 180 GB ibm as boot drive and let me tell you I am not impressed. Ofcourse me "upgrading" to XP from w2k could have something to do with the minimal increase in overall swiftness.