C2Q might overload the VRMs

I just checked, the system is HP Compaq dx7400. I'm going to add a stand alone graphics as I have several lying around to increase available RAM and it should make it run a bit faster.

I'm not going to bother with quad cores since the cheapest I could find is a Q6600 for 40€. Besides, I already bought the CPU.

The OS will be 64-bit and yes, a fresh install will help tremendously as I think it hasn't been reinstalled since she bought the PC in 2008!!!

smeezekitty wrote:

C2Q might overload the VRMs

Not likely. The board supports everything from Q6600 to Q9650.

probably already said, but just make sure whatever cpu you get is actually supported by the board.

Ram will probably be your best bet for noticable performance as well as a 64bit OS if it isn't.
Also why not jump straight up to an E8400? You can get those for pretty cheap if you go to local computer repair stores. I payed 20$ for mine.

King_Corduroy wrote:

Ram will probably be your best bet for noticable performance as well as a 64bit OS if it isn't.

There's not much point to going 64-bit with only 4 GB of RAM, I would think.

Jorpho wrote:

King_Corduroy wrote:

Ram will probably be your best bet for noticable performance as well as a 64bit OS if it isn't.

There's not much point to going 64-bit with only 4 GB of RAM, I would think.

Agreed

From The 3GB-not-4GB RAM problem (Microsoft MSDN blog):

Due to an architectural decision made long ago, if you have 4GB of physical RAM installed, Windows is only able to report a port […]
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Due to an architectural decision made long ago, if you have 4GB of physical RAM installed, Windows is only able to report a portion of the physical 4GB of RAM (ranges from ~2.75GB to 3.5GB depending on the devices installed, motherboard's chipset & BIOS).

This behavior is due to "memory mapped IO reservations". Those reservations overlay the physical address space and mask out those physical addresses so that they cannot be used for working memory. This is independent of the OS running on the machine.

Significant chunks of address space below 4GB (the highest address accessible via 32-bit) get reserved for use by system hardware:

BIOS – including ACPI and legacy video support
PCI bus including bridges etc.
PCI Express support will reserve at least 256MB, up to 768MB depending on graphics card installed memory
What this means is a typical system may see between ~256MB and 1GB of address space below 4GB reserved for hardware use that the OS cannot access. Intel chipset specs are pretty good at explaining what address ranges gets reserved by default and in some cases call out that 1.5GB is always reserved and thus inaccessible to Windows.

Imo, this makes it worth switching over to a 64-bit OS.

King_Corduroy wrote:

Ram will probably be your best bet for noticable performance as well as a 64bit OS if it isn't.
Also why not jump straight up to an E8400? You can get those for pretty cheap if you go to local computer repair stores. I payed 20$ for mine.

Compared to Europe, hardware prices have always been lower in the USA. Obviously the same goes for used hardware. Used hardware prices are quite inflated in my part of the world. So much in fact, that I sometimes buy stuff from Germany and it comes out cheaper with shipping! The cheapest E8400 I can find in the local classifieds costs 25€ which translates to about $34 US. I also can't use an E8400 without somehow hacking the BIOS. I can however use an E8600... HP is funny that way.

One thing though .. 64 bit OSes use more RAM so that will largely offset it

Her Core 2 Duo is fine, it's the junk on the computer that's holding her back. Restore it to factory defaults and uninstall all the OEM bloatware stuff (Wild Tangent, Realplayer, Toolbars, etc etc) and she'll be golden. You could get her more ram so the ever so hungry browsers can keep going as well.

No reason not to go 64-bit if the hardware supports it. Even if you aren't using 9999GB of RAM.

Actually, there is a way to exceed 4GB RAM on 32bit OSes. There's a certain CPU feature that allows much more RAM to be accessed, even in 32bit enviroments. Windows by default have this disabled, but there does exist a patch that enables this. Can't remember the name, but I have tried it out on certain occasions and it seems to work just fine.

F2bnp wrote:

Actually, there is a way to exceed 4GB RAM on 32bit OSes. There's a certain CPU feature that allows much more RAM to be accessed, even in 32bit enviroments. Windows by default have this disabled, but there does exist a patch that enables this. Can't remember the name, but I have tried it out on certain occasions and it seems to work just fine.

Physical address extensions

F2bnp wrote:

Actually, there is a way to exceed 4GB RAM on 32bit OSes. There's a certain CPU feature that allows much more RAM to be accessed, even in 32bit enviroments. Windows by default have this disabled, but there does exist a patch that enables this. Can't remember the name, but I have tried it out on certain occasions and it seems to work just fine.

"Memory Remap" in some bios?

smeezekitty wrote:

Physical address extensions

Yes, that's the one.

What is the point of "hacking" all of this when you can just install a 64-bit OS? I don't get what the aversion is - it's not like the Core 2 Duo doesn't have EM64T or 64-bit Windows is somehow non-functional (it also doesn't cost anymore than 32-bit).

As far as the "hacking" goes - PAE is enabled by default in Windows since XP SP2 as part of NX/XD (required to support it) however will not address more than 4GB of memory (which includes the mapping for the video-card and other add-in boards) due to a combination of Microsoft's licencing restrictions and driver compatibility.

I normally use 64bit OS on anything with 3GB or more ram, there is no reason not to.

but if you have more ram with Xp 32bit and want to use it I recommend using the rest as a ramdisk for the pagefile,

but, 32bit OS and 2GB of ram should be smooth for basic usage, an SSD would change things more.

people are still selling a lot of new PCs with 2GB of ram, from low cost laptops to x86 high end tablets (running full windows 8.1 32bit), actually 8.1 32bit was made to work OK with 1GB of ram,

I agree that other hacks for x86 and more ram, apart from using it as ramdisk are to problematic...

One thing I like about 32 bit is it works with 16 bit applications.
Even a few old/poorly designed 32 bit apps may fail on 64 bits.

If only running modern programs that is moot though.

That is true enough, I had so many head aches trying to run certain games on Windows 7 64 bit.
Usually there are patches though for the popular ones. That was the case with the last one I tried to run, Sid Meier's Civilization II.

Guys, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this machine for someone's mother to run webmail and youtube? So is it even worth worrying about 16-bit/DOS gaming support?

RacoonRider wrote:

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

This is what I did Pentiu8m E2220 to Q6600, made a massive difference and the Q6600 is pretty cheap nowadays. For what it's worth, mine is running Win7 a treat.