Processor upgrade help

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gaz_l

gaz_l

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Greetings, citizens.

I've got a PC at home that I've recently done a clean build of Vista Ultimate on. It's an unexciting spec SFF unit, Biostar iDEQ 220M.

It seems to be struggling with Vista, although it ran XP Pro with no problems. I shoved a few more horsepower under the bonnet before the upgrade (512MB to 1GB RAM, Radeon 9250 to Nvidia 7600GS).

I thought I might hoof in a new processor as the next step - it currently has a Celeron 2.8GHz LGA775 fitted. So, question - can I slot a Core 2 Duo straight in? I'm thinking of an E4300, I've seen them advertised for about £70..

Cheers,

Gaz
 
Hi Gaz_I,

Not sure about the straight swap. You need to make sure your Motherboard and fan can handle a duo chip.

I would say however that Vista really needs 2gig Ram to run well. I've just bought a P4000+ (2 X 2.4 chips) dual core machine with 2 gig and runs very smoothly and very fast. (Even though I still think Vista is c**p)..!!
 
Ash is right, even though the 220M has a 775 socket it won't support Core 2 Duo (and he's right about Vista too!)
 
Theres a comparison site somewhere that I will try to find and Vista is very slow compared to Xp.... In fact I work with 30 buildings each with networks etc and we have advised all not to touch vista for at least 12 months... It aint very good Im afraid
 
You're better with dual core for Vista because Vista runs so many things in the background, you need the second core to deal with that whilst you use the first one to do whatever it was you wanted to do :D

Your motherboard, being Skt 775, should support a dual core processor but you'd need to visit their website to see if a BIOS ugrade is available to suit.

1 Gig of memory should be ok but yes 2 would be better.
 
Rob77 said:
You're better with dual core for Vista because Vista runs so many things in the background, you need the second core to deal with that whilst you use the first one to do whatever it was you wanted to do :D

Your motherboard, being Skt 775, should support a dual core processor but you'd need to visit their website to see if a BIOS ugrade is available to suit.

1 Gig of memory should be ok but yes 2 would be better.
Click to expand...

Sorry to disagree but that reply is too generic. Only specific programs will run on dual core - and there aint many. As already stated his motherboard wont cope with a dual core, and a simple bios upgrade cannot rectify the above problems.
 
I'd stay off vista with that spec for now, wait until you get a motherboard which can handle c2d, then think about getting it. I just went back to XP from Vista - my computer is so much faster and more responsive now!
 
No need to apologise Hugh, postings tend to be short and therefore (somewhat) generic. You mean Vista is a single-threaded application that will not benefit from the second core though?

Now my turn to apologise :eek: I'm more familiar with AMD and have never seen a motherboard maker who didn't issue a whole range of BIOS revisions covering all sorts but particularly newer processors. However, I looked up this one on the Biostar website and, you're right, no updates, whatsoever :eek:
 
One other thing to consider in all of this is the cost to upgrade your current machine. I thought long and hard about it before a I bought a new machine last week. I had a pentium machine running at 3.2Ghz, 1Mb Ram and a 120 HDD. The cost to upgrade is not just about the chip. Newer softwares takes up more Disk space and so a new HDD could be in order. Then you may need a better fan to keep it all cool and if your gonna do it you may want a new graphics card.

In the end I found it cheaper to keep my old machine and convert it to a web server (as I'm a web designer it seemed like a good idea) and bought a new spec machine.

Dare I say Dell have some great deals. I paid £480 including vat & delivery and got a stonking machine. I ordered it Friday night and it was built and shipped to me by Tuesday morning. ALso cam with a new 21" widescreen flapanel for that money.

Just a thought.. Regarding Vista though -Not sure yet - I think it may be best to wait another 9 months to a year until they iron out all the bugs (Sorry "features") and other manufacturers catch up with drivers etc..
 
HughJarse said:
Sorry to disagree but that reply is too generic. Only specific programs will run on dual core - and there aint many. As already stated his motherboard wont cope with a dual core, and a simple bios upgrade cannot rectify the above problems.
Click to expand...

This isn't strictly true - any (decent) operating system will spread the load for single-threaded processes across both cores, i.e. one process will run on one core and one on the other. So if you have lots of single-threaded processes as background tasks, it will still help because you will still have slightly more CPU cycles available for your foreground single-threaded application. Of course whether you notice this or not is a different matter.

Going back to the original poster's question, you can get a Pentium D processor and should run fine on that board.
 
Ahhhhahhh thats not what i mean't, now Im being too generic...
Dual core basically amounts to having two processors in one. The trick is that they both use the same gate and address the same memory. Processors like the Core Duo are also substantially more complex, incorporating interesting technologies that make it less two separate processors and more a multi-threaded processor.

Basically, programs are a series of instructions that run single file through your processor, in what's called a thread. But if a processor has multiple cores, that means it can process multiple threads simultaneously.
There's a catch to this, too, though. Most applications, at least on a consumer level, aren't written to run in multiple threads. So while a dual core processor can smooth your vista experience out by running two different programs simultaneously instead of bogging up a single core by having to make those programs take turns going through, it doesn't offer much to speed up existing programs.
That said, more and more programs are being programmed/patched to take advantage of multi-threading. Quake IV, for example, sees a notable performance increase on dual core processors. And many professional grade programs, particularly multimedia programs, enjoy performance benefits from having multiple cores. Video rendering, for example, can be substantially sped up on a dual core processor.
Dual core processors and parallelism (running threads simultaneously instead of sequentially) are the big thing for chip manufacturers right now since they've basically hit a wall with clock speeds and heat envelopes, and they're virtually all that's on the map for mainstream processors from either vendor in the future.
 
comports said:
Dare I say Dell have some great deals. I paid £480 including vat & delivery and got a stonking machine. I ordered it Friday night and it was built and shipped to me by Tuesday morning. ALso cam with a new 21" widescreen flapanel for that money.
Click to expand...

What graphics card did you get for your £450?

Bet it isnt man enough for Vista Glass to run well...

Its a shame that Microsoft have forced the big vendors in to supplying PC's with vista and not XP. Vista in its current form sucks big time.

XP on the other hand has matured into a fine OS.
 
Hi Sp!ke,

Its not bad. It's a 256Mb NVIDIA GeForce 7600..!!

It has brilliant graphics and plays DVD's at superb quality.
 
Thanks for all the replies, the input is much appreciated.

I built the Vista box purely to find out what it was all about.. I am the principal IT bod at work, we don't have an IT department per se but we do have about 50 PC's and someone has to keep the wheels spinning.. that would be me. One of the many hats I wear.

It's disappointing to find Vista to be so resource hungry. The company coughed up for the licence (a retail box copy.. shockingly expensive) but I paid for the extra memory and graphics card. That's a ton that I won't see again.

It seems that my new configuration is still woefully underpowered, and that certainly rings alarm bells when I have to consider rolling out Vista at work. We have a department who are running heavy duty (CAD/CAM/DCC) applications flat out all day, and even though they're all running fast machines with 2GB+ of RAM, they're still not quick enough even under XP..

Cheers,

Gaz
 
HI gaz_I

If you guys are running some heavy CAD stuff then you would be far better off running them on Macs..!!

I think now you can get XP for Mac so they wont miss out on all the other fun.

Hope that helps
 
gaz_l said:
I built the Vista box purely to find out what it was all about.. I am the principal IT bod at work, we don't have an IT department per se but we do have about 50 PC's and someone has to keep the wheels spinning.. that would be me.
Click to expand...

Gaz, this sounds exactly like what the Microsoft Technet and Action Pack subscriptions were set up for. Rather than "experiment" with Vista so you can see what it will be like ahead of your users you might want to get the company to invest in one of these programmes for you. It would cost them less than the price of a retail Vista Ultimate licence with the same result + you would have access to all of Microsoft's latest offerings including Vista Business & Office 2007. The only restriction is the full version of the software is licenced to the cpompany to use soley on a test basis.
 
I have a bunch of machines at home (7 at the last count :eek:) , but my everyday driver is a Mac mini - I bought one when they first came out and it's a great piece of kit. Macs aren't an option in the office, though, even though they can run Windows nowadays.

masqueraid, thanks for the tip. That sounds like just the ticket - I have no personal need for a Vista licence but need to test it nonetheless before I can put together a case for or against. I'll have to look into that...

Cheers,

Gaz
 
Action Pack Subscription (£199 + VAT p.a.) Mainly aimed at resellers so they get a working knowledge of their product. Copies of all the current products are supplied although operating systems are supplied on an upgrade basis only.

Technet Direct Plus (£283 + VAT p.a.) Aimed at system admins/developers and includes all current and beta releases. This is the download subscription but you can also get the software delivered on media.
 
Of course you could have just run Vista in a virtual machine if you weren't bothered about Aero ;) I have a number of VMs at work with various different Operating Systems and patch levels - when you're trying to get strange networking things to behave and work for a University where you have no control over end user desktops, it's good to check what you're going to break!

At home I have a Mac Pro which dual-boots MacOS X and Win XP. I tried Vista Business under MSDNAA for a bit but didn't like it stealing 600MB on boot for "performance increases". It's strange how MacOS still is visually far superior to Windows and runs even on the old G3s and G4s.

We have found quite a bit of software at work that just doesn't behave under Vista, and it's not just the strange applications that some of our academics want to run. Even things like MS SQL Server Express seem to break in interesting ways.
 
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