Surely a jump of 0.4 GHz won't make too much of a difference? Why not get a new motherboard with a Core i3 or some such?

What exactly is your mother doing that stresses that CPU?
I use a core 2 duo for day to day use and it handles everything online without a single wimper

I even play games as new as 2011 on it (although it struggles with those)

Are you sure it isn't running too much bloatware or ram deficient?

400MHz sounds better than 0.4GHz 😉 I'm thinking higher FSB and double the cache should help too.

The main reason behind not upgrading to an i3 is money. You have to have everything replaced: CPU, motherboard, RAM... the whole package! I can get her an E6750 for 10€ 😀

smeezekitty wrote:

What exactly is your mother doing that stresses that CPU? I use a core 2 duo for day to day use and it handles everything online […]
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What exactly is your mother doing that stresses that CPU?
I use a core 2 duo for day to day use and it handles everything online without a single wimper

I even play games as new as 2011 on it (although it struggles with those)

Are you sure it isn't running too much bloatware or ram deficient?

Her PC is running XP at the moment but she's thinking of switching to Windows 7. There's 2GB of RAM, going to upgrade to 4GB (already bought two sticks of 2GB). She uses the PC for scanning old postcards, web, e-mail, word processing, youtube and music in general... nothing special really.

Type the whole spec, although going to 4GB will help insanely.

^+1 on upgrading the ram. Also the difference might be in the amount of cache and/or fsb speed for the cpus. If she is running integrated intel graphics (which for Core2 era would be GMA of some model if i remember right) a Cheap nvidia or ati card would be an upgrade. I have noticed on websites where the integrated intel graphics on HP dc7900's would not render elements correctly whereas on ones upgraded with a simple Geforce 210 things loaded faster and rendered properly. The 210 goes for $15-30

Her PC is running XP at the moment but she's thinking of switching to Windows 7. There's 2GB of RAM, going to upgrade to 4GB (already bought two sticks of 2GB). She uses the PC for scanning old postcards, web, e-mail, word processing, youtube and music in general... nothing special really.

I run Windows Vista with 3 GB of usuable RAM
I do web browsing with firefox with 140+ tabs, occasional gaming, run VMs, dosbox, audio editing, image editing, video editing, programming, building software
and much more with a Core 2 Duo E6700. I did OC to 3GHz and update the graphics card but still. None of those things would need anything more than a fast P4!

F2bnp wrote:

Type the whole spec, although going to 4GB will help insanely.

It's HP something... already forgot the model number but the list of supported CPUs is very weird - missing lots of CPUs which should be there like there's E7300, E7400 and E8600 but nothing in between.

The specs:
Intel E4600
1x 1GB PC2-5300 RAM
2x 512MB PC2-5300 RAM
1x empty slot
most probably integrated graphics
250GB SATA 3.5" hard drive

smeezekitty wrote:

I run Windows Vista with 3 GB of usuable RAM
I do web browsing with firefox with 140+ tabs, occasional gaming, run VMs, dosbox, audio editing, image editing, video editing, programming, building software
and much more with a Core 2 Duo E6700. I did OC to 3GHz and update the graphics card but still. None of those things would need anything more than a fast P4!

How do you do 140+ tabs on 3GB of RAM? I usually have about 30 open tabs and Chrome is eating up between 1GB and 1.5GB of the available RAM (I have 8GB).

So you're basically saying a CPU upgrade won't make a difference?

Maybe not, but if you are upgrading her with 7 you might as well upgrade the cpu if it can be done cheaply right? It wont blow you're mind by any means if it is going to be used for another 6 years it might prove to be a wise investment. Or dont upgrade and put the money into a nice gpu and ram upgrade

Sounds like it has more support than stated by HP, they usually only list what is shipped in their machines leaving out other cpu models. Just go with a E8 series (the extra cache is roughly 15% more bang) as they are pretty cheap these days. Switching to Win 7 for something will make a world of a difference and will be a bit more secure.

How do you do 140+ tabs on 3GB of RAM? I usually have about 30 open tabs and Chrome is eating up between 1GB and 1.5GB of the available RAM (I have 8GB).

So you're basically saying a CPU upgrade won't make a difference?

It won't make no difference, but it wont big a big benefit since the existing CPU should be fast enough

I "only" have about 100 open right now

http://postimg.org/image/refnd79zx/
http://postimg.org/image/azjadhdqn/

nforce4max wrote:

Sounds like it has more support than stated by HP, they usually only list what is shipped in their machines leaving out other cpu models. Just go with a E8 series (the extra cache is roughly 15% more bang) as they are pretty cheap these days. Switching to Win 7 for something will make a world of a difference and will be a bit more secure.

Oh it definitely works with other CPUs but the annoying bugger claims a "Non supported CPU" at each boot-up and wants you to press F1 to continue, if you use a CPU that's not on the list. That's why I wanted to play it safe and just get one of the "supported" CPUs. E8xxx aren't that cheap either... for the price of a used E8600, I can almost get a Pentium G2030 😀

What chipset? 3-series (P35/Q35/etc.) chipsets run just about any Core2Duo CPU out there. A 945/965 will generally only run 65nm Conroe chips.

I never understood the resale value of Wolfdale 45nm C2Ds. They were never, ever, cheap. I guess its because that generation wasn't on the market for very long.

4GB ram, 64/128GB SSD for system and apps, some low-end VGA like Radeon 5450 - integrated VGA usually stresses the memory system bandwidth as it is using main memory.

But it is funny... I use Lenovo X61s notebook (C2D L7500 @ 1.2GHz, 4GB ram, 1TB HDD, integrated X3100 - nothing special overall) and it serves me quite well as my everyday machine.

Get rid of Chrome... I stopped using it years ago when I saw what a resource hog it was(is). But the latest Firefox is also getting there... 🙁

As for CPU upgrade. This is PassMark comparison:
http://tinyurl.com/o9nhoju

E6750 and E7400 aren't much apart while E7400 is a bit faster. Overall improvement over E4600 is around 25% which would be noticeable. But the actual Wow factor would be the SSD drive as everything gets loaded much quicker.

Yeah, I found some E6750 and E7400 reviews on the net and there's not much difference between them. The biggest difference seems to be in apps that support SSE4.

Anyway, I'm gonna settle for a E6750 because I can get it dirt cheap. Will also be upgrading RAM to 4GB DDR2 800MHz (already bought).

I did suggest buying an SSD but mom was reluctant so that'll have to wait.

Just for the reference about CPU "power". My L7500 at 1.2GHz has just 690 PassMarks (E4600=1397, E6750=1723, E7400=1761).

I guess there could be something other that is holding the system back - usually the slowest part - HDD or memory. You can also check the memory throughput (with Aida64). Some "cheap" boards have really low memory bandwidth (especially with integrated VGA).

I think the requirements for Windows Vista/7 end up dramatically over-stated. They will run just fine on 2GB of RAM and a Core 2 Duo (I have two such machines, neither has a problem). Note that you will likely see increased memory usage under Vista and later, and that will also increase as available memory increases (up to a point) due to SuperFetch (and this is proper behavior). I probably wouldn't even bother with an SSD (as I've said before, I think they're a fad more than anything else (they aren't the "magic bullet" that most modern tech rags try to hawk them as)); you may consider ReadyBoost as it's fairly cheap, but as long as the hard-drive isn't a total dog it shouldn't be necessary (it can help with starting up big applications like Photoshop and game level loads, but just like an SSD will have no influence on anything that's computationally bound, or network/IO bound).

What IGP does the system have? I'd say if it's an Intel Gen4 or later it isn't worth bothering about (it will be AOK for everything but gaming (and it will actually handle some gaming too)). If it's a Gen3 (like GMA 950) you may consider upgrading that with a stand-alone card (there's plenty of decent options depending on what the system is capable of).

As far as the upgrades you've already committed to: the 6750 is a fine choice, and should be a nice improvement for multimedia-heavy tasks and such (I have a 6550 that's always been a champ, 6750 should be slightly faster), and the upgrade to 4GB of memory isn't a bad move either (especially if the system is sharing that memory for an IGP (some IGPs can dynamically allocate a reasonably large amount of memory, and Aero Glass will require more graphics memory than the XP desktop). If the system can run with 5GB (I'm assuming you bought 2x2GB and already have 2x512MB) that would be worth keeping assuming you're going with 64-bit OS (no reason to not do this), again especially if you have an IGP sharing some of the memory. I'd encourage, whatever you do, that you run the memory in dual-channel as the bandwidth gains will be helpful all around, and again, especially for the IGP.

I would recommend a fresh windows 8.1 or 7 install before anything else, an SSD if you can... e4600 to e6750 is not a huge upgrade and I don't see it changing much for basic usage http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/64?vs=60

also some older boards might not support FSB333

e7400 is better
the 45nm core2s are slightly revised over the 65nm ones, so at same clock and fsb the 3mb one is slightly(1-2%) faster than the 4mb one, and it also generates less heat.
however if your board is an older model(965/975), then better stay with the old 65nm core2s. they may support the 45nm ones but the compatibility may be less than ideal.

Perhaps you could also check out Q6xxx and Q9xxx CPUs, some are available cheap these days. Massive cache, 4 cores - what could be better?