Hello. I have a Pentium D 935. It has been a nice machine for over a year. My question is what are your thoughts about upgrading to a true Duo Core? I have seen some nice prices on the 4500 and 6550 computers. I don't game a lot, basically use my computer for media playing, recording, surfing... I know it sounds kinda silly, but I think alot of people consider how fast their CPU is by 1. bootup time 2. How long applications take to load. In your opinion, is that worth $400 more?

While all the components come into play to make a system faster or slower, boot-up time has more to do with the crap you have loading at startup than the CPU. And gaming performance has more to do with the video card than the CPU.

The Pentium 4 was an inefficient CPU...Intel has basically admitted as much by abandoning the NetBurst Microarchitecture the P4 was based on & going back to a variation of the P3 (now called Core architecture) for the Core 2 Duo.

Anyhow, if you want better performance out of your system & you're still using the onboard video, consider installing a discrete graphics card. And if you still have all the Compcrap software installed & loading at startup, disable it or better yet, dump it completely. The less you have running in the background, the more responsive your system will be & the faster it will boot.

In addition to any Compaq progams, there are plenty of other programs that have no business loading at startup...WinAmp, iTunes, AOL/Yahoo/MSN messengers, printer software, camera software, Adobe Reader, MS Office, etc. All these programs can be started on an as-needed basis. Try running MSCONFIG:

http://netsquirrel.com/msconfig/msc...

Thanks for your opinion. I have already made it so my computer boots up pretty quick by doing all the things you have suggested. After I installed Vista, it made things faster as well. The only thing that sort of takes a little time is McAfee. But I live with that to be protected. It only takes about 70-75 secs to boot. pretty good.

I have already installed a 256 meg graphics card, 22" widescreen 5ms LCD and yes much better looking games and multimedia.

Was more looking for the opinion in the first 2 paragraphs about how "sweet" the newer Core 2 Duo systems over the Pentium D.

Granted, your Pentium D 935 @ stock 3.2GHz is -- at best -- barely able to keep up with an entry level C2D like the E4300 clocked at 1.8GHz & in fact trails behind the lower rung C2D in virtually everything you toss at them. The fact remains, the gap between the two at stock speed isn't nearly compelling enough to suggest an upgrade from the Pentium D to a lower class C2D.

If you had a non-OEM machine, you could just as easily obliterate the thin performance gap between such an entry level C2D & your Pentium D by simply overclocking your Pentium D to speeds of 4GHz or more. Unfortunately, this is not going to happen.

With the above in mind, it is pretty clear, a "sweet" E4500 upgrade C2D is not as cost-efficient IMHO. And neither is an upgrade to anything less than at least a mid-range C2D, or even a relatively inexpensive C2Q. The other issue has to do with the chipset on the Compaq motherboard. Pairing up even a higher rated C2D with a dated chipset as is with your current motherboard isn't something I'd recommend.

You are better off holding on to what you got for now, until you are ready for a robust upgrade that includes the CPU & at least a couple of other components.

Sabertooth,
Thanks again for your opinion. I actually wasn't asking if I should upgrade the compaq cpu, but buy a whole new system with a C2D E4500 or E6550 in it. Would I really notice a difference? After reading your suggestion twice, I am getting that I should wait until I find a great price on a E6700 or quad core. correct?

Based solely on your assertion that you don't game nearly as much & pretty much use your machine for surfing, as well some multimedia tasks & perhaps light office applications; it is not going to be easy to speculate when exactly you'll need a newer & much faster rig.

The good thing however is, there hasn't really been a bad time to "build" a decent PC that's pretty affordable -- at the same time -- in the last couple of years or so. So, you probably should think about building that next machine versus buying it from a VAR like Dull, Getaway or Comcrap. Remember, when you build, you have virtually, total control over the machine's components & consequently, your preferred upgrade path later down the road.

As far as what you'll get when the time comes for that upgrade, it isn't as cut & dried a decision at this time. For now, a lot of folks with quad-core rigs don't have a lot of options, in terms of applications that are optimized to take advantage of the four cores on their CPU. So it's sorta debatable if you'll get the most out of upgrading to a C2Q versus a triple core or C2D.

Unfortunately, no one can help that more cores is the way things are headed in CPU land, obviously, because the GHz speed barrier can't be circumvented.

Choosing Dual or Quad Core

I'm still waiting on the quake developers to build a single core processor that can reach anything above 4ghz and beyond that can run cool and stable at the same time, considering they continue to whine about how they dislike developing games around multi-core processors. :)

Yeah!

It would be good to have a machine that will run at 5GHz on no-frills air cooling, without as much as breaking a sweat ;-)

E6550 is pretty fast. i've installed too many games and applications on it and it still loads up fast. just need to get read of spyware/virus and defrag by a third party program.

so it's got my thumbs up!

I have done a lot more checking into my system specs and I am really considering upgrading for the following reasons:

1. The C2D E6550 (1333 FSB) is a faster and more efficient CPU than Pentium D 935 (800 FSB)

2. Newer machines have PC6400 RAM (800mhz)
The compaq has PC4200 RAM (533 mhz)

3. As Sabertooth said "The good thing however is, there hasn't really been a bad time to "build" a decent PC that's pretty affordable" I think I could do it for about $500 which is very tempting.

Just thought I would let anyone know that is interested.

Pentium D was an Intel's mistake. 8)