Looking to upgrade - How much faster is a Intel Duo than a P4?

[stuman74]

I've had my Dell Dimension 8300 for almost 3 years now and am thinking of upgrading.

It has an Intel Pentium 4 2.8 Ghz processor in it.

I am looking at another dell and comparing the AMD and Intel chips and am likely going to get an Intel Duo code processor. I read the article HEREon anandtech.com that compared them, but I don't have a good sense as to how much faster those processors are compared to my P4 2.8.

Targeting an Intel Core 2 Duo E4500, how much better is that than my P4 2.8? What would be the estimated SYSMark 2007 result for my system (I'm not paying $400 for a benchmark to check).

Thanks!

 

[Extelleron]

Moving from a P4 2.8 to an E4500 is a huge, huge jump and you should expect alot more performance in every application you run.

First of all, you're moving from a single core to dual core processor, which alone is a big leap - even a Pentium D would be much faster. Second, Core 2 architecture has much higher IPC than Netburst, clock for clock performance is significantly higher.

If you run CPU intensive applications, it's going to be night and day. If you don't, then expect some improvements from moving to a dual-core CPU, when multi-tasking the system will be more responsive.

I don't know about SYSMark, but in 3D Mark 06, a P4 2.8GHz w/ HT scores around 800~ on the CPU test, meanwhile an E4500 scores around 1950~.

 

[stuman74]

Thank you so much for the reply. Sounds like the Duo would smoke my current P4!

I should also mention, that my current PC has WinXP MCE 2005 and the new one would have Vista Home Premium. I'm assuming that Vista would be more taxing on the processor.

My current system and the new one are equal in ram (2 GB) but the new one would be PC5300 instead of PC3200.

Most of my apps used are web browsing, iTunes, Photoshop, and Office. No real intense gaming or anything. Minimal video editing and rendering as well.

 

[LOUISSSSS]

then the 4500 should be fine. and if u want to save some money u can get the AMD equiv probably for a portion of the price.

 

[exar333]

Originally posted by: LOUISSSSS
then the 4500 should be fine. and if u want to save some money u can get the AMD equiv probably for a portion of the price.

Really? A portion of of the price? He would aready have to buy a CPU and a new MB. No way would a Phenom be the way to go...

 

[BladeVenom]

Look at Tom's Charts and figure the E4500 is about 20% faster than the E4300. I'd say the E4500 is going to be twice as good most of the time and in some cases more than four times more powerful.

 

[zach0624]

Originally posted by: ExarKun333

Originally posted by: LOUISSSSS
then the 4500 should be fine. and if u want to save some money u can get the AMD equiv probably for a portion of the price.

Really? A portion of of the price? He would aready have to buy a CPU and a new MB. No way would a Phenom be the way to go...

I think he is talking about an x2. AM2 cpus are a better deal right now if you don't overclock because the cheap ones are on par with or better than c2ds in their total upgrade price range. I say this because right now AM2 has many great boards that are under $100 which have a very full feature set like the AMD 690 and Nvidia 7050.