Whom is still rocking an Athlon / Phenom II (even X6), or a Core2Duo/Quad? X58 users too.

[mopardude87]

I am a saver / recycle-er, I have a "collection" here that would maybe impress a few members here... The wife however, she is not as enamored with recycling / museum-ing old computers as much as I am

Iv'e downsized quite a bit the only thing sitting here that really could be recycled is this Dell motherboard that has a dank 2gb stick of ram and a E8500. Not sure whats wrong with it but the onboard video is busted and the display only shows tones of blue. Maybe some poor soul sitting on something a bit worst then a E8500 will have a upgrade one day. Might make a retro build out of it idk. C2D for me was the most exciting upgrade i ever did besides maybe this i7 8700. I guess sitting on 4 cores for 11 solid years will make a 8700 look that much more exciting.

 

[BUTCH1]

Iv'e downsized quite a bit the only thing sitting here that really could be recycled is this Dell motherboard that has a dank 2gb stick of ram and a E8500. Not sure whats wrong with it but the onboard video is busted and the display only shows tones of blue. Maybe some poor soul sitting on something a bit worst then a E8500 will have a upgrade one day. Might make a retro build out of it idk. C2D for me was the most exciting upgrade i ever did besides maybe this i7 8700. I guess sitting on 4 cores for 11 solid years will make a 8700 look that much more exciting.

Yup, it will, I just upgraded to Ryzen 5 1600 from an Xeon E5450 and the difference was huge, just the same, I'll always have that soft spot for 775

 

[ElFenix]

i just realized the pronoun in the title should be "Who," not "Whom," as it is the subject, not the object, and that will start mildly annoying me until eventually i'm driven insane.

 

[maddie]

i just realized the pronoun in the title should be "Who," not "Whom," as it is the subject, not the object, and that will start mildly annoying me until eventually i'm driven insane.

On behalf of all before you, welcome to the asylum.

 

[mopardude87]

Yup, it will, I just upgraded to Ryzen 5 1600 from an Xeon E5450 and the difference was huge, just the same, I'll always have that soft spot for 775

Willing to bet that E8500 with modern video card will be usable for basic desktop usage and youtube. I really want to revive it but my spare is already using the 8350. Even with a dedicated card to fix the onboard issues,the 2gb ram is perhaps good enough for a light weight linux distru at best? Maybe best giving it away to someone who really needs a upgrade. Kind of a shame anything that would need a upgrade to the E8500 also would prob have compatibility issues. I guess Celeron users would have a upgrade without any issues?

 

[Valis]

I still use an E8400 C2D for my Bitcoins and stuff and an Intel P8600 Laptop with a broken screen as a Linux work station.

 

[BUTCH1]

Willing to bet that E8500 with modern video card will be usable for basic desktop usage and youtube. I really want to revive it but my spare is already using the 8350. Even with a dedicated card to fix the onboard issues,the 2gb ram is perhaps good enough for a light weight linux distru at best? Maybe best giving it away to someone who really needs a upgrade. Kind of a shame anything that would need a upgrade to the E8500 also would prob have compatibility issues. I guess Celeron users would have a upgrade without any issues?

Well, I had an E8500 then did the Mobo socket mod and went with the E5450 Xeon chip for 2.5 more years. Adding a SSD made a huge difference but the Mobo was limited to 4Gb Ram max, I could not see getting a used 775 board and buying older ram but your right, it was still working fairly well. A member here offered me a Ryzen 5 1600 for $50, an offer I could not refuse!.

 

[mopardude87]

Found a $7 beater at a second hand store. Had little i could use but officially got up my E8500 with 2x 1gb sticks in dual channel. The onboard issues disappeared so i guess there was some issues with the original ram causing the previously mentioned issues?

Making something of a crazy Xp retro BF2 gaming build and yes somehow nvidia decided the original titan, the gtx950 and my gtx960 had to have xp support right to 2016 so yeah i guess i did alright not going out of my way to find a 8800gts 512mb.

Wanted to see how xp would react to 4k monitor but oddly via displayport i get no signal but i hook up a spare 23'' 1080p and its off and running. Not sure what the deal is unless the display port on either end crapped out? Not sure if xp will even handle 4k lol or BF2. Overall i got some very strong nostalgic feelings going on.

Just downloaded the BF2 patches and a version of msi afterburner that supports xp so i guess i could see how overkill the 960 is lol. I had high hopes of 4k but meh i need to find a hdmi cable to rule out whatever the heck is causing displayport to not show.

 

[Modular]

Making something of a crazy Xp retro BF2 gaming build and yes somehow nvidia decided the original titan, the gtx950 and my gtx960 had to have xp support right to 2016 so yeah i guess i did alright not going out of my way to find a 8800gts 512mb.

Are there still servers running? That was an amazing game!

 

[SPBHM]

kind of unrelated but since C2Ds with a newer cards were mentioned, I currently have an e7300 with a HD 7850 2GB OC model and it's... interesting, I tried F1 2018 which in a current CPU at ultra low with that card should run at well over 100FPS, with the e7300 it's basically stuck at 15FPS, but hey at least it runs... still even a C2Q would probably not run this very well,


I also tried Kingdoms of Amalur (more of an Xbox 360/PS3 30fps game from 2012) and it runs at 60FPS easy with all maxed and the CPU usage is not all that high (but I played it very briefly)

 

[BUTCH1]

kind of unrelated but since C2Ds with a newer cards were mentioned, I currently have an e7300 with a HD 7850 2GB OC model and it's... interesting, I tried F1 2018 which in a current CPU at ultra low with that card should run at well over 100FPS, with the e7300 it's basically stuck at 15FPS, but hey at least it runs... still even a C2Q would probably not run this very well,


I also tried Kingdoms of Amalur (more of an Xbox 360/PS3 30fps game from 2012) and it runs at 60FPS easy with all maxed and the CPU usage is not all that high (but I played it very briefly)

Keep in mind most 775 Mobo's can support Xeon 5450 chips with a mod you can do with an exacto knife, (it involved removing a plastic tab in the CPU socket). Then I bought a 120MM AIO and jacked it up to 3.9ghz, used it like that until 2 weeks ago, the main issue was the Mobo only supporting 4Gb Ram max, the SSD I added in 2013 made it much better, (as it does in any system).

 

[mopardude87]

Are there still servers running? That was an amazing game!

Officially no but i believe Project reality has hosted servers for a while? I have mainly always played bots outside of a few select friends where i hop into team speak and we play some Strike at Karkand online.

Had quite a blast and having MSI AB with Rivatuner OSD was very sweet too. 2GB of ram with the E8500 on Xp was perfect. I remember splurging for 4gb years ago and OSD only shows usage hitting 1.2gb.

kind of unrelated but since C2Ds with a newer cards were mentioned, I currently have an e7300 with a HD 7850 2GB OC model and it's... interesting,

Yeah given i have revisited older cpus and generally have always paired Nvidia with them, my experience with fps has widely differed from those on AMD. I will see a post about a AMD user just getting 25fps in something like GTA V and with the same cpu i get closer to 40 at times and no dips under 30. I guess cpu overhead is that much better on nvidia?

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Wanted to see how xp would react to 4k monitor but oddly via displayport i get no signal but i hook up a spare 23'' 1080p and its off and running. Not sure what the deal is unless the display port on either end crapped out?

DisplayPort support on XP can be spotty. It's likely just that you've run into.

 

[mopardude87]

DisplayPort support on XP can be spotty. It's likely just that you've run into.

Yeah will try out HDMI on the 4k eventually but the 1080p monitor has vga at least. Last time I was on xp I used a 1600x1200 monitor with a dvi to vga adapter with no issues.

 

[loki1944]

Just curious. I have a friend, still on Athlon II X4 that I gave him as an upgrade CPU... like years ago. (I guess he's happy with it still? Tried to upgrade him, have given him another machine, he hasn't used it yet.)

Anyone else still using something around this vintage, as their primary or as a daily-driver box? I figure I should include some X58 platform users in this too.

I still have my pair of Core2Quad PCs, assembled, and a couple of Phenom II X6 rigs, which I used a few months ago as mining GPU hosts.

Anyone still clinging to older technology? No need to give any reason.

Yessir; I love older hardware and seeing how it holds up. I've got two Core2Quad 9650 PCs one @3.2Ghz and the other @3.8Ghz. I've also got an i7 920@3.8Ghz, i7 960@4.3Ghz, and an i7 980X@4.5Ghz. The Bloomfield/Gulftown CPUs really hold up well even in modern games, but Yorkfield hits a wall in some games, though for many, many games it is still a great CPU.

 

[Golgatha]

My father is still rocking my old X58 with i7 920 and 12GB of RAM. Does everything they need it to. I finally got him a passively cooled graphics card about a year ago, so I don't have to worry about dust killing their graphics card.

 

[potato masher]

2020 still posting to anandtech on a stickered up 771 chip on a 775 board. We also have a few x58 putting in work. Have functioning even older systems but they have all been retired to storage. There are sandy bridge systems on stand by ready to tag in when needed..

 

[mikeymikec]

I sold a Ph2-960T to a customer recently. It would have been nice if the additional core unlock had worked, but alas the cpu or board couldn't handle it (well, it managed Prime95 for half an hour but then hung when I restarted Windows).

The customer had a Ph2-550 and to make matters worse, some Garmin software was causing WMI to saturate a core non-stop and the shop he'd taken it to for the SSD upgrade had botched it (IDE mode as well as 32-bit transfer mode disabled!), so he basically went from one core to 4 and a SATA speed increase

I switched it to AHCI mode as well.

 

[mikeymikec]

My dad's 2007 laptop has a C2D and an AMD GPU in. It just about manages 1080p decoding for web video content, provided Windows doesn't go and throw an update check into the spokes.

 

[Eug]

I upgraded from an Athlon II X3 435 to a Phenom II X6 1055T last year on my primary Windows 10 machine at home. I'm very pleased. This will last me years. This was a cheap upgrade since all I needed to do was update the BIOS and drop in the new (old) CPU. I had upgraded to 8 GB and SSD years ago, and that's all I need on this machine.

Note though this is used mainly just for business applications (including Office and VPN), mail, and surfing, with rare Netflix 1080p. The Athlon II 435 could do those tasks, but was a bit laggy at times, whereas I have no such complaints with the Phenom II 1055T. Also note though my other desktop sitting right beside it is a 5K 27" Mac with an i5 7600, so I do have a bit more power available to me if need be. I actually had an i7-7700K iMac first, but it was too loud under load, so I returned it and got the i5.

My main laptop is a MacBook Core m3-7Y32. I'm extremely pleased with that too. Silence is golden.

As you can see, not all of us need so much computing power.

Fast forward to May 2020 and I’m still on the same setup. I expect my Phenom II X6 1055T to last me at least another few years. Whereas the Athlon II X3 435 was a bit annoying at times, none of those annoyances exist with the Phenom II X6. I find it rather telling that many desktops in 2020 are being sold with performance benchmarks in the same ballpark as these chips.

BTW, in addition to the machines above, we’re using:

Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz: 2008 aluminum MacBook in kitchen (macOS 10.13 High Sierra)
Core 2 Duo 2.26 GHz: 2009 aluminum MacBook Pro in guest room (macOS 10.13 High Sierra)

I also have a Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz 2008 white MacBook with SSD and 4 GB RAM that I couldn’t install High Sierra on, so I converted it to Chrome OS. It works fine for that in terms of performance, but I have some WiFi flakiness which prevents it from being a true portable machine. It might be a compatibility issue with my multi-Airport Extreme setup, since WiFi works perfectly under OS X.

For the three Core 2 Duo machines, they are too slow for surfing if ads are allowed, but with AdBlock in Chrome, performance is fine. I’ve discovered that this particular browser and ad blocker combination has very good site compatibility.

OTOH, I have a Windows 10 laptop with Pentium SU4100 and 4 GB RAM, but even with SSD, that thing is basically unusable. Way, way too slow.

EDIT:

Geekbench 5 multi-core scores:

360: Pentium SU4100
530: Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz P7350
600: Core 2 Duo 2.26 GHH P8400
660: Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz T8300
1050: Athlon II X3 435
1650: Core m–7Y32
2000: Phenom II X6 1055T
3800: Core i5-7600

BTW, my wife’s iPad 7 10.2” gets about 1430, and my iPad Pro 10.5” gets about 2300. The iPad 7 is very decent for surfing, and my iPad Pro 10.5” is excellent IMO.

Thus in 2020, I think for entry level 1400+ is adequate, and 2000+ is good for a business user. So, for a mainstream business desktop, a Core i3-7100, which scores up to around 2400, would likely usually be sufficient, as long as it’s outfitted with 8-16 GB RAM and SSD. The Core i3-7100 also supports hardware h.265 decode and Netflix 4K streaming DRM (as long as the motherboard supports HDMI 2.0).

 

[Insert_Nickname]

OTOH, I have a Windows 10 laptop with Pentium SU4100 and 4 GB RAM, but even with SSD, that thing is basically unusable. Way, way too slow.

Judging from my own half-similar Celeron N3350 in power saver mode (@ 1.1GHz), I don't think it's the CPU performance itself that's the issue, but the IGP. C2D-era IGPs are pretty useless under 10, have horrible driver support and just not enough performance to run the newer Windows DWM compositor properly. Not to mention not being DX11 compatible, which is more-or-less required for a good 10 experience IMHO.

You could get by on 7 since you could always fall back to the older GDI+ compositor. Which pretty much anything can run. Windows 8+ removes that fallback, and so relies on the DWM compositor at all times. Which older GPUs simply lack the horsepower to run.

Have you tried a lightweight Linux distribution, just to see how it runs?

 

[BUTCH1]

Fast forward to May 2020 and I’m still on the same setup. I expect my Phenom II X6 1055T to last me at least another few years. Whereas the Athlon II X3 435 was a bit annoying at times, none of those annoyances exist with the Phenom II X6. I find it rather telling that many desktops in 2020 are being sold with performance benchmarks in the same ballpark as these chips.

BTW, in addition to the machines above, we’re using:

Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz: 2008 aluminum MacBook in kitchen (macOS 10.13 High Sierra)
Core 2 Duo 2.26 GHz: 2009 aluminum MacBook Pro in guest room (macOS 10.13 High Sierra)

I also have a Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz 2008 white MacBook with SSD and 4 GB RAM that I couldn’t install High Sierra on, so I converted it to Chrome OS. It works fine for that in terms of performance, but I have some WiFi flakiness which prevents it from being a true portable machine. It might be a compatibility issue with my multi-Airport Extreme setup, since WiFi works perfectly under OS X.

For the three Core 2 Duo machines, they are too slow for surfing if ads are allowed, but with AdBlock in Chrome, performance is fine. I’ve discovered that this particular browser and ad blocker combination has very good site compatibility.

OTOH, I have a Windows 10 laptop with Pentium SU4100 and 4 GB RAM, but even with SSD, that thing is basically unusable. Way, way too slow.

EDIT:

Geekbench 5 multi-core scores:

360: Pentium SU4100
530: Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz P7350
600: Core 2 Duo 2.26 GHH P8400
660: Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz T8300
1050: Athlon II X3 435
1650: Core m–7Y32
2000: Phenom II X6 1055T
3800: Core i5-7600

BTW, my wife’s iPad 7 10.2” gets about 1430, and my iPad Pro 10.5” gets about 2300. The iPad 7 is very decent for surfing, and my iPad Pro 10.5” is excellent IMO.

Thus in 2020, I think for entry level 1400+ is adequate, and 2000+ is good for a business user. So, for a mainstream business desktop, a Core i3-7100, which scores up to around 2400, would likely usually be sufficient, as long as it’s outfitted with 8-16 GB RAM and SSD. The Core i3-7100 also supports hardware h.265 decode and Netflix 4K streaming DRM (as long as the motherboard supports HDMI 2.0).

Really, from a raw performance standpoint I was still OK with my Xeon E5450 @3.7, the main reason I went to an AMD Ryzen 1600 setup was that Gigabyte board only allowed 4 gig of RAM max, it's just not enough anymore. Sure, there were used boards around, but they started getting kinda pricey. I could not justify a MOBO purchase without the ability to get into newer CPU's and more features, I got lucky, a member sold me a Ryzen 1600 for $50.

 

[heymrdj]

Judging from my own half-similar Celeron N3350 in power saver mode (@ 1.1GHz), I don't think it's the CPU performance itself that's the issue, but the IGP. C2D-era IGPs are pretty useless under 10, have horrible driver support and just not enough performance to run the newer Windows DWM compositor properly. Not to mention not being DX11 compatible, which is more-or-less required for a good 10 experience IMHO.

You could get by on 7 since you could always fall back to the older GDI+ compositor. Which pretty much anything can run. Windows 8+ removes that fallback, and so relies on the DWM compositor at all times. Which older GPUs simply lack the horsepower to run.

Have you tried a lightweight Linux distribution, just to see how it runs?

This is definitely the point of the issue. My Surface Go can browse the web better and faster than my old Lenovo T520 with an i7-2680QM with Windows 10. The crappy driver support in Windows 10 for the iGPU just makes for a slideshow in heavy video web pages.

 

[DrMrLordX]

@heymrdj

I think the latest mitigations for that Intel iGPU security flaw caused iGPU performance on anything Haswell and older to tank. Hard.

More Details On Intel's CVE-2019-14615 Graphics Vulnerability, a.k.a. iGPU Leak - Phoronix

www.phoronix.com

It definitely hurts Haswell and Ivy Bridge. I'm guessing it's bad for Sandy Bridge too, but I can't find direct references.

 

[Shmee]

I don't use integrated graphics much, I prefer a nice beefy GPU, like a 290 minimum. My sister is rocking the GA-X58-UD5 with a X5660 oced and a reference powercolor 290. Looking to upgrade her soon.