CPU upgrade question

[papa0tter]

Looking to upgrade an Athlon 64 3700+ to either e2140 Allendale or e8400, when they are available. I think I'm set on the DS3 board for around $90 and would like to spend as little as possible. My question is will I see a noticeable difference between the old cpu and the e2140 overclocked to hopefully 3ghz?

This will be running WinXP with older DX9 games, dont have the dough to roll with a new gfx card right now.

 

[Mithent]

Well, what graphics card do you have?

Either of the Core 2 Duo processors at 3Ghz (and the E8400 will go much higher) are significantly faster than the Athlon 64 3700+, and since they're dual-core, they should generally give a smoother computing experience (even old games will benefit to a certain degree if other tasks can use the other core). But whether you'll see a difference in games depends on what graphics card you have and what games you're running; if you're very GPU-limited then a better CPU isn't going to be able to pull up the slack

 

[papa0tter]

7800GT which was fairly new when the games I play came out, I think. Mainly City of Heroes, which I think increased minimum specs since release. Also a lil Hellgate London and some older RTS games. I still run everything at 1280X1024 with medium to low settings its just starting to feel.... aged I guess.