Yet another post regarding older vs newer CPUs

[SPBHM]

Just the fact that I can now comfortably play Company of Heroes 2 vs not being able to play it at all, is a pretty big deal IMHO. On my overclocked e6300 I could only push into the teens and twenties regardless of resolution. Now I am well over 30's and 40's and that's only because I am GPU limited I think.

yes for some games going from a not so fast "C2D" to a fast "C2Q" can easily make the difference of playing a game from not playing it properly, given the investment, I think it's very easy to recommend, if you already have the rest of the system,
looking at your specs I would be more worried with games not playing well with 4GB, and the 6950 not getting driver updates than the CPU, but obviously this varies from game to game quite a bit, some will be more CPU limited, others GPU

So just how old are you guys willing to go? I ran into a problem back when Flash was still alive before HTML5 took over and my dad's old system couldn't play current(at the time) versions of Flash so He couldn't watch movies or play Facebook games on Linux. I end up building him a new system back in 2014 due to this. The old CPU he didn't have the instruction(s) Flash needed.

Don't remember the CPU but I think was at or before Socket 775. Probably before 775.

I think for decent performance on everyday usage you shouldn't really be looking bellow a fast C2D; but, I have used a few P4s recently, and they run current software, just slowly, even the Northwood from 2002 still supports SSE2 and runs pretty much anything (x86) on Windows 7, maybe you father was using Athlon XP? those lack SSE2 and have far worse compatibility with current software.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Pentium 4? UGH. 🙁

I wouldn't go any slower than a 3.0Ghz Core2 CPU these days. I mean, you can pick up complete PCs with that spec for $40-50 these days.

 

[rvborgh]

i still like my old 2013 vintage SuperMicro H8QGi-F setup running four 2011 vintage 12 core Opterons (ES - i have a lot of the cores overclocked to 3.6). i find it amusing that ThreadRipper is only just starting to catch up with the multithreaded performance (almost but not quite) when i am running all of these at 3.0 GHz. i like the old K10 for some nostalgic reason.

Will likely upgrade to ThreadRipper in the next year or so though.

 

[SPBHM]

Pentium 4? UGH. 🙁

I wouldn't go any slower than a 3.0Ghz Core2 CPU these days. I mean, you can pick up complete PCs with that spec for $40-50 these days.

well yes, it's slow but compatible, as I said I agree with you on that fast C2D as the minimum;
but the P4 is actually kind of not as bad as it should be in 2017, I was recently playing with a Cedar Mill 3GHz (with some Via chipset, which is far from optimal, with single channel ram), with HT and 2MB l2 and it surprised me a bit, it doesn't really run to hot or use to much power (65W TDP is probably pessimistic), and when I got it I first replaced it with a Celeron 430 I had, which back in 2007 would be my recommendation over a P4 no doubt (1.8GHz "core 2" single core vs 3GHz netburst single core), but I think HT and the large l2 made the P4 not only feel better, but convincingly outperform it on web browsing and trying to play twitch/youtube videos (with the help of a 4670 video decode), with the P4 it was running smoothly without the CPU usage hitting 100%, for whatever the 4670 can handle (like 1080P50, 720P60 and so on), with GPU acceleration off, it can handle 480P youtube, maybe; replacing it for the 430 and CPU usage hit 100% even with the 4670 decoding and it starts to stutter/drop frames badly...
also I even tried a couple of games from 2011 on the P4, Skyrim all low seems to run around 10-15FPS on the starting area, "SWTOR", again all low on basic content it seemed to be stable around 20FPS or more (in raids you would probably get 1FPS),
now I think that one of those overclocked to 4.5GHz (which is possible), or even better 2 of those (Pentium D) would feel kind of OK for web browsing, MS word... but realistically, it's a waste of time when fast Core 2 based CPUs are so cheap.

 

[whm1974]

I think for decent performance on everyday usage you shouldn't really be looking bellow a fast C2D; but, I have used a few P4s recently, and they run current software, just slowly, even the Northwood from 2002 still supports SSE2 and runs pretty much anything (x86) on Windows 7, maybe you father was using Athlon XP? those lack SSE2 and have far worse compatibility with current software.

it was a HP Celeron 2.5 Ghz now that I remember. Anyway my dad is much happier with the system I built for him.

 

[kwalkingcraze]

Pentium 4? UGH. 🙁

I wouldn't go any slower than a 3.0Ghz Core2 CPU these days. I mean, you can pick up complete PCs with that spec for $40-50 these days.

Make that one Pentium III 450MHz, the absolute bare minimum requirement for Windows XP to check your e-mails.

 

[whm1974]

Make that one Pentium III 450MHz, the absolute bare minimum requirement for Windows XP to check your e-mails.

Why in Hell would you still be using WinXP or a computer that old? Get Win7 or higher or use Linux on something modern.

 

[kwalkingcraze]

Why in Hell would you still be using WinXP or a computer that old? Get Win7 or higher or use Linux on something modern.

No, it's just an example. Anything slower than 450MHz, forget it. Some is Pentium II 266MHz, almost 50% slower, and you can't browse anywhere.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Pretty sure Win7 requires at least a 1Ghz CPU. Don't know why we're discussing WinXP, it has long been EOL.

 

[whm1974]

No, it's just an example. Anything slower than 450MHz, forget it. Some is Pentium II 266MHz, almost 50% slower, and you can't browse anywhere.

I think you would have a hard time browsing anywhere on the Web with hardware that old.

 

[whm1974]

Pretty sure Win7 requires at least a 1Ghz CPU. Don't know why we're discussing WinXP, it has long been EOL.

Yeah no kidding. BTW isn't Win7 EOL?

 

[Iron Woode]

Depends.

If they are using a full-ATX 775 board with an Intel chipset (P35 or P45), then they probably have an ICH9R or ICH10R southbridge, which does support AHCI natively.

If they have a micro-ATX board with a G-series Intel chipset (G31, G35, G41, G45), then they may be sporting an Intel ICH7 southbridge, which does not support AHCI natively (but does support a real IDE port).

And of course, if they had an NVidia chipset and southbridge, those did not support AHCI either, although some of them supported RAID mode, which might have supported NCQ (the biggest benefit of using AHCI mode), given the proper chipset and driver.

my socket 775 board is a 630I mATX and using AHCI. I even put Win XP on it for fun. So far it's working great with an E8400 and 4gb ram.