Is a C2D still powerful enough

[BonzaiDuck]

I remember both, the Z80, and my all time favorite 386 DX-40.
That and overclocking by changing clock crystals

I had a couple Z80 systems and a 386. I can't remember which 386. Maybe there was a DX-20 or 25 . . . It was an NEC "OEM" model -- the traditional desktop before tower cases became fashionable. I think there was an "Over-Drive" chip [or whatever it was called] -- and I got it. I don't think it was bundled with Windows 3.0. I think I'd installed 3.0 followed by 3.1 and 3.11. Nah . . . the 3.11 was for the 486.

[Catching up to the youngsters must come in baby steps: I should have a "real" smart-phone for the first time in late fall, I think. "Ooo! Ooo! Beam me up, Scotty! Beam me up!"]

 

[Burpo]

If I had a nickle for everyone of these (tool less 286's) I worked on.. I'd have a few bucks!

My first pc (after a Timex Sinclair)was an 8088 w/512kb ram and a 30mb MFM Miniscribe hard drive that I had to low level format before I could use. Then I built my first 286 with 1024kb Ram & 80 mb (first IDE) hard drive. A slew of 386 sx25's and some DLC40's and then the switch to 486 SX25's and some 486 SX33's, then finally the 486 DX66's. I remember doing 1 for a Graphics shop that wanted 64mb. That was $500 just for 4X 16mb strips of RAM! Then the first Pentium 60's and 90's.. Then these. then Pentium II, Pentium III & Pentium IV..

Man I'm OLD! :$ Bottom line? Core 2 duo still gets most things done quick enough.

 

[hoorah]

It depends on "Slow for what?" answers. I have four of these LGA775 systems running in this house. One is a C2Q in my server -- I made a really unnecessary replacement of an E6600 with a Q6600 a few months ago. The remainder are "business" workstations/desktops supporting a total of three users with Wolfdale C2Ds -- an E8400, an E8600 and an E6700 [the 2010 Wolfdale model -- not the Conroe]. All of them (except the server C2Q) are stock-clocked above 3+ Ghz. One uses an Intel Elm Crest SSD (SATA-III) on an SATA-II port.

When I think that these units all deploy technology from 2007/2008, they DO seem like candidates for the recycling pile. At most, I've squeezed ten years from a PC, but in successive use as desktop followed by file-server.

I'm guessing that these LGA775 boxes are still good for a few more years, or until a motherboard goes south . . .

You and I should get together, or, maybe not. Somehow we'd both manage to come out with more systems than when we started....

Like you, I have several Core2Duo systems 'in service' ranging from an E6300/3GB, an E6600/6GB, an E8500/8GB, an E7200/8GB, and assorted AMD systems of the same vintage. They keep getting 'gifted' to me by work, family, friends that muck up something, or the hard drive goes south, or something similar and they just dump it and get something new.

The thing about Core2Duo systems is that being DDR2 most of them have maxed out ram from my pile of disassembled PCS. So, what might have been a dual core 1GB system when originally built usually has 6 or 8GB of ram now.

I use mine for mostly HTPC duties. My E8500 Wolfdale system was my file server and was doing a great job until I got an unnecessary upgrade to an i5. The HTPC systems run fine on core2 hardware.

My mother is still actually on a dual-core Pentium D 945 system (with 4GB of RAM) on Win7 and it actually handles youtube and CPU intensive websites not terrible. I have a core2duo E7200 system ready to go for her when I have the time to transition the files and accounts. She doesn't complain about her current system so I keep putting it off.

 

[VirtualLarry]

My mother is still actually on a dual-core Pentium D 945 system (with 4GB of RAM) on Win7 and it actually handles youtube and CPU intensive websites not terrible. I have a core2duo E7200 system ready to go for her when I have the time to transition the files and accounts. She doesn't complain about her current system so I keep putting it off.

My mom was on a single-core C2D Celeron for a few years that I built her. Had 1GB DDR, and a 250GB IDE HDD. Running XP. It was basically enough for her limited needs online (DSL).

Now she has FIOS, and I built her a G1610 rig with 16GB of DDR3-1333, and an SSD. Running Win7 64-bit. She noticed the performance difference. Pure overkill for her needs now, but I wanted Mom to have a good rig for once. In the future, I can drop in an 1155 i3 or i5 if it ever gets to feeling slow.

 

[SPBHM]

what is interesting is to compare let's say what we have now vs 2007 vs 2000 vs 1993 to see how things have changed... 2007 PC is still quite good for windows 8 and many uses... good luck trying to run vista on a 2000 PC or win 2k on a 1993 PC.

my 2007 PC, which was far from high end (A64 x2 2.4GHz with 3GB of memory) is running win 8.1 and being used every day for ms office and web browsing (including flash video with no GPU acceleration, and heavy websites)

 

[lamedude]

What Intel giveth and Microsoft no longer taketh away.

 

[VirtualLarry]

How close in performance is an Ivy Bridge Celeron 1037U 1.8Ghz to a Core2Duo E5200 2.5Ghz CPU? Are they equal in performance?

Edit: Trying to decide if it's worth building with a pair of Intel mini-ITX 775 boards, with E3300 2.5Ghz and 4GB RAM, or whether I should spend $70 x 2 on a pair of Biostar 1037U mini-ITX boards, and then get some DDR3 for them.

 

[Essence_of_War]

They should be Virtually identical perf wise.

Not counting igpu on the celeron.

 

[Kushina]

SSD and graphics cards, her slow downs are likely when doing flash intensive stuff on YouTube. Get an 8600gt or 8800gt equivalent.

 

[VirtualLarry]

SSD and graphics cards, her slow downs are likely when doing flash intensive stuff on YouTube. Get an 8600gt or 8800gt equivalent.

Not a GT620? 8800GT is old and has horrible power-consumption.

 

[SPBHM]

Not a GT620? 8800GT is old and has horrible power-consumption.

and the 620 have improved purevideo (vp5 vs vp2)

 

[fleshconsumed]

Maybe he meant a 250GB HDD?

Ha, totally missed his ssd comment. I guess I'm the dumb one here. :whiste:

EDIT: Anyway, I was running e8400 and Q9450/Q9550 up until the end of last year with SSDs. They were perfectly fine. To be honest, I probably could have kept most of them. I do not game that often anymore and the Q9450 performance was perfectly acceptable. The main reason I upgraded was because I was getting an itch and because I was starting to bump into 8GB memory limit on my primary C2Q rig, so when MC had the $200 4770K special just before BF last year I impulse buy upgraded all three of my rigs. I already had RAM so upgrading all 3 computers cost me less than a grand. Point being, a 3GHz C2D architecture is perfectly fine for web browsing/facebook/email. Get a small 128GB M500 SSD for boot, and leave mechanical hard drive for data. That should extend the useful life of the computer for another couple of years or until capacitors on the motherboard die.

 

[JBT]

My wifes rig has an e6850 and feels pretty slow on anything video related. Its snappy for everything else with 8gb of ram and a pretty decent ssd. Facebook, YouTube and all that are getting pretty fat...

It could probably use a reinstall as the OS is probably 2 to 3 years old. I plan on giving her my 2500k when I upgrade later this year.

 

[Torn Mind]

You really don't need 8GB RAM just to browse the web, run Word or type e-mails. As for CPU power - budget laptops come with 2.0-2.5GHz Pentium's and they run just fine with an SSD thrown in for typical web browsing. Tablet CPU's are even slower and they manage too. The best solution for "web bloat" is to de-bloat it with Flashblock / click-to-play settings + other addons which Meloz mentioned, which will speed up browsing far more than a CPU upgrade. An SSD will help immensely with or without a CPU upgrade, since reading/writing a web browser's cache (thousands of tiny files simultaneously) is up to 100x faster than a mechanical HDD. The difference will be like night & day even on an old CPU.

Best thing OP can do is buy an SSD, install Flashblock, etc, then test it with current C2D. If it's still slow then upgrade, but I've seen a Pentium + Adblock + Flashblock browse more smoothly than an i7 with "stock" browser, simply because it has far less "stuff" to download & not render in the first place.

4GB is already cutting it close even for "tidy" fellows who open up 50 tabs and then closes the session without keeping it for the next session. Tab hoarders need at least 8GB, and preferably 16 GB if they're using Chrome browsing without script-blockers like Flashblock or Adblock Plus

 

[BSim500]

4GB is already cutting it close even for "tidy" fellows who open up 50 tabs and then closes the session without keeping it for the next session. Tab hoarders need at least 8GB, and preferably 16 GB if they're using Chrome browsing without script-blockers like Flashblock or Adblock Plus

Does anyone actually have a screenshot of their web browser sucking up 12-14GB RAM in normal usage conditions? Even with 100 tabs in Firefox, I've rarely breached 2GB... Likewise, flash tends to crash on all browsers long before hitting even 3GB RAM usage. And most 32-bit browsers & plugins can't use more than 2-4GB anyway. If you're hitting 12GB RAM on 50 tabs - something is seriously wrong somewhere...

 

[andy2000]

.... Then I built my first 286 with 1024mb Ram & 80 mb (first IDE) hard drive. ...

That must have been a killer 286 system with 1GB of RAM!

 

[Burpo]

LOL, ok ok, slight typo there, 1024kb of ram

 

[crashtech]

Does anyone actually have a screenshot of their web browser sucking up 12-14GB RAM in normal usage conditions? Even with 100 tabs in Firefox, I've rarely breached 2GB... Likewise, flash tends to crash on all browsers long before hitting even 3GB RAM usage. And most 32-bit browsers & plugins can't use more than 2-4GB anyway. If you're hitting 12GB RAM on 50 tabs - something is seriously wrong somewhere...

I don't think a browser alone will normally do it, but I use up all 4GB here on my work machine with 2 browsers and 11 tabs total, Quickbooks, estimating software, and a few background tasks like online backup. This is on Win7 Pro

 

[zCypher]

To those saying C2D is "slow" for web browsing, what kind of other system components in use, and what websites are slow? I don't remember my E5200 having any difficulty with web browsing at all. Even on a really slow E350, browsing was fine except if you tried to play HD video. The C2D never seemed to have any trouble at all with flash, youtube, netflix etc. I'd think adding an SSD to the system would make a massive improvement.

I will agree that websites are indeed getting heavier content wise, but to the point where the CPU is the bottleneck, really? A C2D? That's crazy!

 

[hoorah]

To those saying C2D is "slow" for web browsing, what kind of other system components in use, and what websites are slow? I don't remember my E5200 having any difficulty with web browsing at all. Even on a really slow E350, browsing was fine except if you tried to play HD video.

Core 2 Duo could be anything from an E21xx 1.6ghz (not familiar with all the revisions) to an E8700 3.3+ ghz.

For reference, I have a laptop with a K325 chip that gets a passmark of somewhere around 600-700. It used to be able to play HD flash video (using video accel) but nowadays for whatever reason it stutters with 720P. I guess flash is getting more complex.

A Core2Duo E6600 has a passmark of around 1550, or 2x as fast, and hits some high-ish CPU numbers while running 1080P flash, and this is with a GPU that can accelerate flash decode.

My E8500 chip has a passmark of around 2500, and can play 1080P pretty well even without the GPU decode.

So I can see an early C2D in the 2100 range having trouble, where an E8xxx chip probably not.

My sandy bridge i3 2120 has a passmark of around 4k for reference.

 

[lamedude]

Does anyone actually have a screenshot of their web browser sucking up 12-14GB RAM in normal usage conditions? Even with 100 tabs in Firefox, I've rarely breached 2GB... Likewise, flash tends to crash on all browsers long before hitting even 3GB RAM usage. And most 32-bit browsers & plugins can't use more than 2-4GB anyway. If you're hitting 12GB RAM on 50 tabs - something is seriously wrong somewhere...

Switch to a secure browser that sandboxes each tab. It isn't difficult to get IE/Chrome to suck down the GBs.

 

[escrow4]

To those saying C2D is "slow" for web browsing, what kind of other system components in use, and what websites are slow? I don't remember my E5200 having any difficulty with web browsing at all. Even on a really slow E350, browsing was fine except if you tried to play HD video. The C2D never seemed to have any trouble at all with flash, youtube, netflix etc. I'd think adding an SSD to the system would make a massive improvement.

I will agree that websites are indeed getting heavier content wise, but to the point where the CPU is the bottleneck, really? A C2D? That's crazy!

Indeed, a dual core Core 2 is ancient tech and should be replaced. It will be holding you back. A quad I suppose would cut it but a shiny new i5 would murder it whilst sucking way less power. Core 2 duals are like P4's, use them if you absolutely must, but you'd be far better off with a shiny new i3 or i5.

 

[gmaster456]

Core 2 is still plenty for the modern web. Especially with an appropriate amount of RAM and an SSD

 

[BadThad]

I've upgraded a few C2D systems with SSD and Win7. They are PLENTY fast for basic computing tasks....and that's with only 2GB RAM. All I've heard from the users is how awesome these systems are.

 

[escrow4]

I've upgraded a few C2D systems with SSD and Win7. They are PLENTY fast for basic computing tasks....and that's with only 2GB RAM. All I've heard from the users is how awesome these systems are.

That's because they have no comparison with a modern box.