Pentium dual core e5200 wolfdale vs e6400conroe C2D

[allanon1965]

I am trying to decide whether upgrading from an E5200 to an E6400 c2d would be worth it? I do moderate gaming, combat flight sims and submarine sims on a 9800GT 512MB pcie card..system has the following specs

asrock G41M-S and supports the E6400
Modstream 500watt modular PSU
msi 9800GT 512MB
2GB Kingston Hyper-X PC8500 DDR2
500gb seagate sataII 7200rpm hard drive
the usual other parts, dvd-rw, etc...

I would be gaining 266mhz on the FSB but losing almost 400MHZ on the speed of the cpu..
makes me think there may not be any gain and possibly a loss by switching....or am I messed up in my thinking?
any comments? or direction to read more about these two cpu's ?

overclocking is not a concern as I dont do it, never really found it necessary...thanks for the replies so far, kinda lends support to what I was already thinking

 

[MyLeftNut]

Once both are overclocked, there's barely any difference between the 2 so I would say definitely not worth the effort. The e6400 can also do virtualization while I think e5200's are stripped of that feature. If you were to upgrade, a quad core would be the way to go, but seeing the motherboard you have you may not be able to overclock quads very well.

 

[toyota]

that would not even be an upgrade becuase the E6400 would be slower in almost every case. also the E5200 is 45nm and has a much higher multi so it should oc much higher than an E6400.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

IIRC, they both have 2MB of L2 cache but the E5200 is clocked at 2500MHz whereas the E6400 is at 2133MHz, so it should actually be a slight downgrade. FSB won't make much of a difference. Stick with your E5200.

 

[Ultra411]

I think wolfdale cpus are faster even if they have the same speed and cache. Going from E5200 to E6400 would be a downgrade so don't do it.

 

[OBLAMA2009]

go get the e6800. its clocked at 3.3 which will be a whopper of an upgrade from a 5200

 

[bunnyfubbles]

or he could simply bump his FSB up to 266MHz and get the same exact thing

 

[VirtualLarry]

As others have said, that would be a downgrade. You should at least try to get your E5200 to 3Ghz, they will do that on stock vcore.

 

[zagood]

e5200 for sure. I crushed my e6400 and that's what I upgraded with. No virtualization, but better in pretty much every other way.

 

[cyberkost]

With questions like this I go here: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php
True, it's a synthetic benchmark ... but:
* the list is rather comprehensive
* most people don't use their computer in ways that would be grossly different from the structure of the benchmark

E6400 -> 1270
E5200 -> 1655
(more is better)

Edit: I would still not upgrade, unless it costs only $2-3

 

[OBLAMA2009]

according to that list pentium dual cores outperforn equally clocked core 2's

 

[cusideabelincoln]

according to that list pentium dual cores outperforn equally clocked core 2's

It most likely isn't a cache-sensitive benchmark.

 

[Lonyo]

As others have said, that would be a downgrade. You should at least try to get your E5200 to 3Ghz, they will do that on stock vcore.

This.
My E5200 does 3.33GHz on stock volts.
As always, it's not guaranteed, but at stock the E5200 is faster, and overclocked it is better.
There isn't a single reason to downgrade to an E6400.

 

[Pneumothorax]

Not to thread crap, but what about a E6600? Would that be about equivalent?

 

[toyota]

Not to thread crap, but what about a E6600? Would that be about equivalent?

to an E5200? if so then yes

 

[VirtualLarry]

to an E5200? if so then yes

Not if overclocking is taken into account. At stock speeds then I agree with you.

 

[ther00kie16]

People on newegg oc'ed their e5200 to 3.3ghz easily so start with that. With some decent cooling, you should be able to hit a bit higher. But at 3.3ghz, there's little to be gained going to another dual core. If you need more processing power, which is what simulators heavily rely upon, get a quad like the q9550 if you can find it or any q8*00/q9**0 cpu.