Upgrade?

[AdamStone]

I can't resist the urge to try dual-core. They both run at 2.2 Ghz. What kind of performance boost would I be getting?

 

[stevty2889]

Well since you didn't tell us what you were running that makes it a bit tricky..if you are running stuff thats not SMP aware, it will run about the same. If you are doing CPU intesive multitasking, or run SMP aware programs, then it will make a huge differance.

 

[AdamStone]

Oops.

I'm not sure what "SMP" aware means. Mostly I'm concerned with gaming, though.

 

[stevty2889]

SMP=simultanious multiple proccessing. In other words in order for a program to take advanatage of a dual core/multi-CPU system, they have to be written for it. Current games aren't programmed to take advantage of dual cores, so a 2.2ghz single core and 2.2ghz dual core would basicly be the same thing to the game. If you run a bunch of stuff in the background however, it will make things run more smoothly. Future games should be able to take advantage of dual cores better. If you really want a boost in games, the video card is what needs to be upgraded, the CPU doesn't have any drastic effects on gaming performance at higher resolutions(1280x1024 or higher). And at lower resolutions, if you have a good video card already, then it's gonna be fast enough that it doesn't matter.

 

[RussianSensation]

What you need to do is save for a new videocard and upgrade that 17inch CRT.