Upgrade path from Pentium D 915?

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FishAk

Senior member
Jun 13, 2010
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My GF has an OEM HP with a locked Asus P5LP-LE board, and a Pentium D 915 stuck to it. From what I have read, I can stick an E6700 on there, but I can't find any review sets to compare the CPUs. I can get an E6700 for about $100 over here, but I'm not sure it's worth it.

She doesn't do any gaming, but she uses ABBYY Lingvo to translate photos of books to text. I know a large part of the slowness of the system is due to the Seagate 7200.9 320Gb HDD, which I intend to upgrade just because I can hardly stand to sit in front of that machine and wait for it.

My questions are:

1. How much of an improvement can I expect from an E6700?

2. Will an E6700 actually run on the Asus P5LP-LE?

3. Is there a better choice that will work on this MB?

4. Should I just take this thing out back and put it out of it's misery?
 
cubeless

cubeless

Diamond Member
Sep 17, 2001
4,295
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assuming that the bios on the mobo is new enough to handle it, an e6700 will be a huge performance improvement for general processing...

but you might want to try a reload of win7 with an ssd drive first (like the 90gb ocz on sale at ne right now)... might solve both of your problems with one update... and it will be usable if you decide to build a new box... keep the 320gb for backup...
 
J

JWade

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
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www.heatware.com
how much ram is in the system? also, the board will support e4x00 processors. the e4400 is under $60 and is an upgrade from the P-D 915. But depending on how much ram you have, more ram may be a better option.
 
OBLAMA2009

OBLAMA2009

Diamond Member
Apr 17, 2008
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why do people even hand wring over things like this. ive bought many cpu/board combos for like $50-60 e.g. pentium 3ghz and g41. just go make a new machine, you get all sorts of other advantages, plus its brand new
 
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FishAk

Senior member
Jun 13, 2010
987
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Thanks for the responses.

I have 3Gb memory right now. I had bought another, but it was DOA, and I ended up dumping it in the trash. I think this MB only supports 4Gb.

Over here, the government steals quite a bit in import taxes, so a 60Gb SF drive is about $300. I really don't want to pay that much. I haven't even gotten an SSD for my own system yet, and will wait till I go back to the States.

I have W7x32bit on there now. I think the P-D 915 is 64 bit, so I'm not sure why I put the 32 bit OS on there. I think it is because I wasn't sure about drivers at the time.

OBLAMA2009 said:
why do people even hand wring over things like this. ive bought many cpu/board combos for like $50-60 e.g. pentium 3ghz and g41. just go make a new machine, you get all sorts of other advantages, plus its brand new
Click to expand...

If I was at home... ya, your right. But over here, tech is hard to find, and you pay through the nose. Just the E6700 is a little over $100 all by it's self. I don't know where I would find a combo.
 
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fuzzymath10

Senior member
Feb 17, 2010
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Any Core 2 Duo would be fine. Would probably run a lot cooler/quieter too. You don't have to aim for just the E6700. If you can find any Core 2 Duo that would be an improvement.

About 3 years ago we had an E4300 (1.86GHz) and a Pentium D 9xx (3.4GHz, forgot model number). The Core 2 Duo was about the same performance even running nominally about half as fast.
 
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dbcooper1

Senior member
May 22, 2008
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The e6700 should give you something close to a 2x improvement for anything cpu intensive; why don't you do that and instead of replacing the Seagate, add another one. Some of the slowness of her program might be that it's trying to use the same drive as source and destination. I assume from the way you describe it, that's an OCR program; those can be both CPU and I/O intensive so that combination should help noticably. You can get a 1TB F4 for about $100 right now.
 
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FishAk

Senior member
Jun 13, 2010
987
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Thanks a lot guys.

2x better is worth $100 to me, so I'll go ahead and upgrade. I don't see much of a price difference between the E6xxx variants- 15 percent at most- so I'll probably get the E6700. I assume the chip performance is related to the model- ie E61xx<E67xx.

I believe the Seagate 320Gb drive has 2 platters, so the aerial density is only 80Gb per side. Samsung's 1Tb F3 has 250Gb per side, so that should be a decent improvement as well. I can get one for $75, which isn't too much above Newegg. F4s are not available here.

Since the density is so small, don't think I would see an advantage by keeping the 320Gb drive in the box. She has a Verbatim 1Tb external drive for backups, and I will probably swap the 320Gb drive with whatever's in the enclosure, so she can connect to it via SATA. Perhaps when I see what disk that is, it would make sense to put her OS and backups on the F3, and her data/pagefile on that disk.
 
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FishAk

Senior member
Jun 13, 2010
987
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Thanks for the heads up, ther00kie16. After comparing the photos of the Leucite, Limestone, and Leonite, I've determined I have the P5LP-LE Leucite, which doesn't appear to support anything better than the 580 Prescott.


I think the next best thing is to be[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]grud[/FONT]gingl[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]y do as OBLAMA suggests, and throw out the MB. In this case, I think I should switch to AMD.[/FONT]


[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]The cheapest AM3 board I can get w[/FONT]ith 4 sockets to support the 3 sticks of RAM I already have, is the[FONT=Times New Roman, serif] [/FONT][FONT=Times New Roman, serif]MSI 785GM-E51, which, surprisingly is only $75, and a little cheaper than Newegg. I can also get either the Athlon II X2 245 for $65, or the Athlon II X4 635 for $105. Since she doesn't play games, I'm not sure the extra performance is worth the extra $40. It doesn't look like a huge gain in performance, and I don't know if she would appreciate the difference.[/FONT]


[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Honestly, I was rather surprised that the prices are in line with the States on these parts. It looks like they are trying to get rid of them before the next gen comes out. [/FONT]


[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]I haven&#8217;t played with AMD before, so does this sound like an OK plan? I guess it's a version of Option 4, so Martimus should be OK with it.[/FONT]
 
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xd_1771

Member
Sep 19, 2010
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Do keep in mind AM3 = DDR3 and AM2+ = DDR2 if you consider going AMD.
I'm assuming you have DDR2 at the moment in which case you can keep your current RAM by using an AM2+ mothereboard with an AM3 processor (they're somewhat backwards-compatible). The only catch is you may need a BIOS update for the AM3 processor to run in it.
 
VirtualLarry

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
56,570
10,205
126
If the choice is between an X2 and an X4, the X4 is usually a better buy as far as price/performance goes. Four cores will be more useful in the future. Dual-cores have a limited lifespan these days. However, if your budget is really tight, then perhaps it would be wiser to drop down to a dual-core, if it means that possibly you could increase your storage for example.
 
Arkaign

Arkaign

Lifer
Oct 27, 2006
20,736
1,379
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Hey just a heads up, some of those OEM boards can bring a surprising amount of $ on ebay and the like. I guess some people/companies have PCs go down and they just want to get the same exact system running again asap without dealing with changing/reloading software or drivers.

Look for the HP/Compaq spare # on the board (should be something like 576234-001 or similar, different numbers of course), and then search Ebay for closed auctions. I wouldnt be surprised at all if you didnt recoup a decent amount for it, as silly as it sounds. I recently resold a Gateway Socket 939 board and it got bid almost to $100, though it was kind of an odd form factor that standard mATX/etc wouldnt match so I guess people with that case design had to use that particular board range.

Best of luck, sounds like a good plan. The original board, even if it had been the variant which support C2D, would have been a tricky bet anyway. I was going to comment that some people get confused about the model numbers. For example, the old C2D E6600 is a 65nm 1066bus Conroe chip with 4MB of L2, and those work on i945 chipset boards with proper bios support. AFAIK no 945 chipset supports ANY kind of 45nm CPUs, which is what the currently in retail distribution E6600/etc are, although theyre sold as Pentium Dual Core. Theyre actually C2Ds of course, but rebranded with less L2.

C2D E6600 - 2.4ghz, 1066bus, 4MB L2, 65nm, supported on i945
PD E6600 - 3.06ghz, 1066 bus, 2MB L2, 45nm, not supported on i945

I wonder how many people have made that mistake? It would certainly be an easy one to make given the naming overlap.
 
bryanW1995

bryanW1995

Lifer
May 22, 2007
11,144
32
91
get the athlon II x4 635. I built an x4 620 rig for my cousin 9 mos ago as an upgrade to his e6600 rig and he loves it. It sounds like she doesn't upgrade much, and the x4 rig should last much longer. I made the mistake of buying an fx 55 right after dual cores became popular, I got rid of it within 6 mos.

you'll be shocked and awed going from a pentium d to an x4 635, and more importantly, so will your gf. ;) in fact, the rig I built cost $262 for a ddr 3 rig with a 790gx, 3x1gb ddr3, and the 620 iirc, with the old mobo/e6600/ram worth ~ $100, so my cousin wasn't out of pocket much money either.
 
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FishAk

Senior member
Jun 13, 2010
987
0
0
OK, you guys have convinced me that I should go ahead and spring for the 4 core chip. With her usage pattern, this machine should be adequate for several years.


I have 3 1Gb sticks of DDR2 533. A future upgrade will be to remove one of those, and put in 2 x 2Gb for a total of 6Gb. An SSD down the road will breath some life in this thing as well.


So I'm looking at the Athlon X4 635 with an Asus M4A785-M.


For an additional $6 I can get the A-II X4 640, but a comparison I saw looked like the 635 was better overall. I don't know what to think here. I don't want to pay more and get less.


This box has a 400W Sven PSU. What is the low hanging OC I can expect from this setup with the stock cooler- if any? I plan to swap the Noctua NH-U12P for an H-50 in my rig to make some room, and the Nactua might fit in hers. Will I run into trouble with that no-name PC2-4200 if I try to OC? The stock RAM is CL4, but I don't know the voltage. I can get these Patriot 800Mz Cl5 1.8V 2Gb sticks for $40 each.
 
D

dbcooper1

Senior member
May 22, 2008
594
0
76
Just remember - you're going to have to make the switch to a 64bit O/S to make use of more than 3.xx GB RAM.
 
T

TemjinGold

Diamond Member
Dec 16, 2006
3,050
65
91
If you are getting more ram now anyway, you should probably go DDR3 now. DDR2 actually costs more these days (so that 2x2 kit you were planning on adding would be outrageously expensive in the future) and the 1 gb sticks you are using ARE really slow (if you add more ram to them, all the ram will run at the speed of the slowest, not to mention some mobos don't like it when you mix ram that isn't identical.) If you absolutely can't afford it that's one thing but if you can get a nice 2x2 kit of DDR3, an AM3 board has quite a few advantages over an AM2+.
 
bryanW1995

bryanW1995

Lifer
May 22, 2007
11,144
32
91
3gb will almost certainly be sufficient for the life of that rig with her usage pattern. leave it as is, the only reasonable future upgrade for her would be adding an ssd. by the way, it looks like in ~ 6 mos g3 ssd's will be here, anand predicts $$/gb will be cut in half and speeds will be even faster.
 
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FishAk

Senior member
Jun 13, 2010
987
0
0
I know that a lot of the slowness is due to the HDD, so I'm already going to get an F3 for $70. I was hoping to just replace the processor for another $100 for a total of $170, but that's not an option.


If I stick with the slow 3Gb RAM, I can get MB/CPU/HDD for $255.


If I go for 4Gb 1600 DDR3, than MB/CPU/RAM/HDD comes to $340.


I'm not an expert in RAM (I didn't realize DDR2 and DDR3 had different sockets :eek:), but with a 40Gb Intel M25-V going for $125 here, I'm guessing the $90 difference would see more of a boost with an SSD.


I just might buy that SSD for my rig, and in 6 months or so, when we see a good price drop, or I go to the States, I can put it in her rig.


Does anyone know if I would see any real world diff[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]erence between the [/FONT][FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Athlon II X4 635 (2.9GHz), and the 640 (3.0Ghz)? They&#8217;re like 6 bucks apart. (that&#8217;s something like 12 good beers over here)[/FONT]
 
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