upgrading an E2140

[hodgenutts]

E5200 or E7400?

There is about a $40 price difference between the 2 chips. Would someone see a big gain over upgrading from an E2400 to an E5200 or would they need to pay the $40 more and upgrade to an E7400 to see a noticable difference?

 

[Comdrpopnfresh]

Is overclocking going to be done? The answer to your questions depends on the usage, budget, and if overclocking will be done. The higher bus speed, clock speed, and cache of the e7400 warrants the $20 IMO... if overclocking won't be done. If the system is for general usage, whether or not overclocking is used, the e5200 should be just fine. I'm not familiar with the e2400, and google doesn't seem to be either. Looking at the e2200, though, going to 45nm will reduce power usage and heat production, and the additional cache of either the e5200 or the e7400 would be a vast improvement. If overclocking will be done, I'd go with the e7400. I previously owned an e7200 that could reach 4ghz with minimal adjustments. Providing more information will get you a much better answer.

 

[cusideabelincoln]

Even though my suggestion would be the same (get the E7400 if you can), what is the E2400? I don't think Intel has a chip with that name. Are you talking about the E4200, and just made a transposed typo, or are you talking about the E2220, which runs at 2400 MHz?

 

[Concillian]

e7400 has more cache, which makes it about the equivalent of 200 MHz faster than the e5200 at the same clock speed. Otherwise, they are essentially the same chip.

If overclocking, you will tend to hit walls around the same speeds, possibly slightly better with the e7400, but my e5200 and my ey7200 are almost identical in terms of volatage to run a given speed and temps. For practical purposes, the cache is the primary difference.

If overclocking, it comes down to: is ~200 MHz of speed at the same clock speed worth $40 it to you.
If not overclocking it comes down to: is ~500 MHz of speed due to cache and stock clock differences worth o$40 to you.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I'd take the cheap route, the E5200.
OC it to 3.6 or possibly more, save $40. The E7400 might make it to 4Ghz, but price/Ghz favors the E5200.

 

[hodgenutts]

Sorry for the typo the current chip is an E2140

 

[soccerballtux]

Did you already upgrade? Your sig....

This is an interesting question because I've been itching to upgrade too. I'm going to try to wait though.

 

[vj8usa]

Personally, I'm waiting to upgrade until I can get a cheap 45nm quad (currently using a 3GHz E2160). I considered a 45nm dual, but decided it just wouldn't be enough of a difference to be worth it. The only game I've seen that I consider to be unplayably CPU limited is GTA4, and that will see a much greater increase from a quad than a faster dual. This will be the trend with just about all demanding games eventually.

 

[mfiner]

I have a similar question. My Dad has a Lenovo K3000 series desktop with an E2140 installed. (I think it is a G31 motherboard?) He is complaining it is running slow and I was pondering upgrading the processor. It also doesn't have a discrete video card installed, so while putting one in may help slightly. . given he doesn't play games and such. . I don't know what difference it will make. I'm trying to figure out what processor upgrade options I have. There really aren't that many 65nm chips out there and I'm concerned that if I put a 45nm it will cause problems. Any ideas or places to check out for info would be appreciated.

 

[Pneumothorax]

I have a similar question. My Dad has a Lenovo K3000 series desktop with an E2140 installed. (I think it is a G31 motherboard?) He is complaining it is running slow and I was pondering upgrading the processor. It also doesn't have a discrete video card installed, so while putting one in may help slightly. . given he doesn't play games and such. . I don't know what difference it will make. I'm trying to figure out what processor upgrade options I have. There really aren't that many 65nm chips out there and I'm concerned that if I put a 45nm it will cause problems. Any ideas or places to check out for info would be appreciated.

I'd look into upgrading his hard drive first or a just a OS reinstall as most OEM machines come with a ton of crapware. OEM motherboards like the one in the Lenovo won't have the BIOS upgrade necessary for the 45nm chip. You could take a gamble and see if the G31 board will take the 45nm chip, but many motherboards that came with a 65nm Conroe won't work properly with a 45nm wolfdale without a bios upgrade.

 

[mfiner]

I think his hard drive was upgraded by some tech guy my Dad had work on it. Yeah, an OS re-install will definitely make it faster. . if he lets me do it. The only problem is that if he is missing any software that he needs to reinstall. . I'm going to hear the complaining. . LOL. I already removed the "bloatware" awhile ago, although I'm sure there are "artifacts" of the programs in the registry still bogging things down. I'll have to see if Lenovo had an bios upgrades. . and if the bios notes reference compatibility with 45nm processors. I just don't want to make things worse.

 

[cusideabelincoln]

Might consider a RAM upgrade if he's running with 2GB or less. Also a dedicated video card will have its own RAM so it won't steal from the system like integrated will. A low end dedicated video card could help performance, especially with things that can be offloaded like HD and flash videos. So if he has 2GB (or less) RAM and using integrated video, I can see how his system can get sluggish if he's running Vista.

 

[jihe]

I have a similar question. My Dad has a Lenovo K3000 series desktop with an E2140 installed. (I think it is a G31 motherboard?) He is complaining it is running slow and I was pondering upgrading the processor. It also doesn't have a discrete video card installed, so while putting one in may help slightly. . given he doesn't play games and such. . I don't know what difference it will make. I'm trying to figure out what processor upgrade options I have. There really aren't that many 65nm chips out there and I'm concerned that if I put a 45nm it will cause problems. Any ideas or places to check out for info would be appreciated.

If the 2140 is not overclocked then it is rather slow at 1.6Gz. Have you try bsel modding it?

 

[fuzzymath10]

I started off my 775 system with an E2140 and it handled most 1080P (other than H.264 blu-ray) fine, even with the crappy GMA 3100 that the G31 has. Having 2+GB memory is important, and an SSD will probably mitigate many perceptions of slowness, unless he actually does cpu-intensive stuff.

Have run E7300 and Q8200 in G31 motherboards...no problems here (home-made though).

 

[TurtleCrusher]

Fuzzy, nice undervolt. Is that as low as you could get stable on the G31 board? You could get almost all the way down to .9 with stock clocks. Just start locking down other values if you can.

What board is it?

 

[fuzzymath10]

It's a G41 board (Gigabyte G41M-ES2H). I would like to have it running at 2.8 like yours but haven't had any luck (no fsb 1600 support).

At 0.975v, I get occasional blue screens. At 0.9875v they disappear. Is there anything else I could check? I've left everything else alone.

 

[Pneumothorax]

I started off my 775 system with an E2140 and it handled most 1080P (other than H.264 blu-ray) fine, even with the crappy GMA 3100 that the G31 has. Having 2+GB memory is important, and an SSD will probably mitigate many perceptions of slowness, unless he actually does cpu-intensive stuff.

Have run E7300 and Q8200 in G31 motherboards...no problems here (home-made though).

That's the thing though, most 3rd party mobo's mean for public sale have incentive to update their bioses to support newer cpu's. OTOH OEM/System builder's don't give a rats to update their bios to support a cpu that was never sold with the system. I dunno if LEnovo is any different, but I have several G31 based HP chassis that will only work with Conroe based cpu's even with the latest bios updates from hp.com

 

[PingSpike]

Personally, I'm waiting to upgrade until I can get a cheap 45nm quad (currently using a 3GHz E2160). I considered a 45nm dual, but decided it just wouldn't be enough of a difference to be worth it. The only game I've seen that I consider to be unplayably CPU limited is GTA4, and that will see a much greater increase from a quad than a faster dual. This will be the trend with just about all demanding games eventually.

I'm in the same boat. I have a 2160 @ 2.93ghz and sort of have the upgrade itch...even though I don't really have any performance complaints. However, I think the overclock is failing. But I'm kind of stuck. The 775 quads seem expensive still and the socket is dead. A better dual almost doesn't even seem worth the hassle of swapping chips, much less the extra cost. Intels new stuff requires a new motherboard and ram...and I think I'd just assume go AMD if I have to swap the motherboard.

I'm not sure I'm going to bother overclocking my next setup. The current one was kind of a dud, and a PITA. Intel motherboards are a ripoff and since they come out with a new socket every week you don't get a lot of useful life out of them.

I might just buy that e6800 chip that's suppose to be $80 and 3.3ghz, swap the chip and buy a SSD for now. I think a SSD would actually give me a noticeable day to day performance increase beyond any other upgrades at this point.

 

[peonyu]

I started off 2 years ago with a E2180 cpu [largely the same as a E2140], its performance was decent and I had no real complaints with it outside of games. But I game a decent ammount, and even overclocked to 3.2ghz it falls short in that area for cpu intensive games such as Supreme commander. So if you game at all, I would spend the extra 20$ for a E7400. The cache does make a large difference. And if you overclock, a E7400 will overclock higher and since it also has more cache...It will smoke the 2140 easily.

So if you dont game, a E2140 will be perfectly fine. Single core Athlon 64s are still good for non game use tbh [just running windows or browsing the web].


Misread the price difference as $20...I would still grab a E7400 for $40 more.