Intel Pentium D x2 940 vs. AMD Phenom II x3 740

[leptooners]

I'm currently using the Pentium D 940 with DDR2 memory, but I'm about to upgrade to the Phenom II 740 with DDR3. I'm just wondering how much of a difference there is between these two CPUs, and also the difference/improvement in speed of an upgrade from DDR2 to DDR3.

Thanks!

 

[sandorski]

Should be significant.

 

[nanaki333]

it's like going from a civic to a camaro

 

[LoneNinja]

You should see at least double the performance in some areas, if not more. Even the old K8 Athlon X2 processors were more powerful than your PD, and the newer Phenom II chips are superior to those.

 

[BD231]

Night and day, and for the money you can't find a better CPU if you're an over clocker. You'll hit 3.5 to 3.7 ghz easy.

 

[Rezist]

I've had my eye on this CPU for a while if you get them a mobo in a combo from newegg there really cheap.

 

[fffblackmage]

If you're just checking email with your computer, it really doesn't matter. In this case, getting more ram would probably make a bigger difference than the faster cpu/faster memory of the same capacity (assuming you don't already have 4GB of DDR2).

 

[leptooners]

Thank you for all the feedback everyone. Makes me more comfortable with my upgrade decision. I am a gamer and I will be overclocking as much as I possibly can. I bought a very good heatsink and a mobo that's designed for over-volting (after my own custom heat distribution modifications), so I think I'll be good.

blackmage, I already had 4 gigs of DDR2 ram, but from what I've been reading, it seems like even 1 gig of DDR3 ram (2x512 dual channel) would run faster than my 4 gigs of DDR2. Isn't DDR3 like 10 times faster or something?

 

[VirtualLarry]

To be honest, there is very little real-world difference in benchmarks between DDR3 and DDR2.

The most important thing is to have enough. If you had 4GB of DDR2, it would be a major step down to get anything less than 4GB of DDR3. Which costs around $50 now.

 

[betasub]

from what I've been reading, it seems like even 1 gig of DDR3 ram (2x512 dual channel) would run faster than my 4 gigs of DDR2. Isn't DDR3 like 10 times faster or something?

Woah, where did you read this?!

Larry has it correct above: despite slightly faster rated speeds, there's not much of a real-world difference for most end-users.

 

[leptooners]

See, that's why I posted this thread.