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Do I need all that cpu power?

J

JamesL

Gawd
Joined
Nov 7, 2007
Messages
657
I don't game that much, and I don't do that much encoding and all that jazz..

I'm the guy that hops on the computer, and wastes a whole lot of time, doing everything, and nothing.. for half the day. Sometimes, I'm on the web.. and then I decide to waste some time in photoshop, then I remember I have to print something, and make up homework using maple software.. My friend calls and tells me to get on skype, and I decide I want to learn to use that 3ds-max software that my friend let me borrow... and by this time, the webcam is recording at 1fps, it takes 7 seconds to maximize photoshop, and 15 more seconds to render a brushstroke, and my friend IM's me, and the taskbar starts flashing, but I can't open it, cause my once pointy mouse has turned into an hourglass.. I had music streaming from youtube, but that froze entirely..

You get the point...
So is this all heavily affected by the cpu? Or is it bottlenecked by the hard-drive to memory transfer... or is it something else entirely?
Will a quad be beneficial over a dual core in this case?
People say to buy quad if your applications take advantage of 4 cores, but.. seriously.. I'm not trying to get a quad so i can shave 3 seconds off my 3d rendering, or dvd-encoding.. I'm just trying to minimize and maximize my windows.. have video-chat's running in the background while doing my essay & working in photoshop.

Initially, it kind of made sense to get a quad core, since I have multiple tasks going on, the processor can process the multiple tasks... but I have a feeling it doesn't work like that.

If none of that is dependent on cpu processing power, I might as well save on it, and get 2 extra gb's of ram or something.
 
Unless you're running out of RAM (which is certainly possible if you're doing that much at once -- leave task manager or the performance tab open and check during "normal" usage as you describe it) you're running out of CPU power, yes.

What're your current specs?
 
I think ram is the problem, unless your running a celeron or somthing.
 
Well, I've been using a laptop for a while. - 1.66ghz C2D & 1gb ram, integrated gpu

I have all the parts for a desktop, except the processor & motherboard.
, and I'm trying to save every penny that might end up going to waste..
In other words - if the CPU's not the bottleneck, I have a hundred of other things I'd rather spend the extra money on.
I'm also trying to get my hands on a decent 24" p/mva screen.


What I have so far - 2gb ddr2 800, 256mb HD3850, hd, case, psu, optical
 
Well with 1gb of ram you are highly bottlenecked by that, im not sure what the mobile c2d's are like.

Also a bit of advice, dont buy half a pc then try and save the money, iv done it before and i ended up changing my mind etc, also the parts get cheaper while you have paid a higher price.
 
You could sell all that stuff and the 1GB of RAM in your laptop, buy a 2GB kit instead. That is after making sure that it's your RAM maxing out and not the CPU, as 1.66Ghz isn't exactly blazing fast.
 
1.66 isnt too bad, that is the performance will probably be just under a 2ghz athlon x2?
 
mmk.
What about when loading applications?
Those splash screens drag on for quite a bit..

Also, the battery is dead on this laptop and such.. and I have no intention of upgrading the ram in here. One of the big reasons I'm building a solid desktop is so I don't have to crawl under the desk and disconnect an entire pc-workstation, everytime I want to take my laptop over to my friend's place.

also, about buying half & half.. I bought the psu, case, keyboard, and HD 2 months ago, because they don't deflate in price much, and I found good deals for all of them. I only recently got the HD3850, and I'm planning on ordering the rest of the stuff by the end of this week.
 
In that case just sort your desktop out? get a 45nm c2d and a ip35-e.
 
Then buy a $75 E2160 and an Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro or Coolermaster Hyper TX-2 HSF for your desktop and an Abit IP35-E or Gigabyte P35-DS3L, or a second-hand P35 board. Should come out just under $200.

OC the E2160 to 3.0-3.2Ghz and be happy. You don't need a quad.
 
JamesL said:
also, about buying half & half.. I bought the psu, case, keyboard, and HD 2 months ago, because they don't deflate in price much, and I found good deals for all of them. I only recently got the HD3850, and I'm planning on ordering the rest of the stuff by the end of this week.
Click to expand...

Thats fine then, i was under the impression you bought the card and ram months ago ;)
 
silent-circuit said:
Then buy a $75 E2160 and an Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro or Coolermaster Hyper TX-2 HSF for your desktop and an Abit IP35-E or Gigabyte P35-DS3L, or a second-hand P35 board. Should come out just under $200.

OC the E2160 to 3.0-3.2Ghz and be happy. You don't need a quad.
Click to expand...

The E2160 is a nasty cpu imo, its still a pentium for a start.
 
ring.of.steel said:
The E2160 is a nasty cpu imo, its still a pentium for a start.
Click to expand...

Nasty? Performance difference between it and a "full cache" E6xxx chip is 5-15% depending on the application. They're both based on Conroe. It'll hit around 3.2Ghz with good cooling. So call it 3Ghz equivalent to a "full cache" chip, and $75 seems like a really good deal to me. I've got a friend running one and he's had no complaints. Does fine with Crysis and everything else.

Unless you need virtualization support, are so crazy [H]ardcore you feel the need for a 4.5Ghz OC (E8400), or are encoding tons of video / rendering stuff professionally or don't intend to upgrade for a long time (Q6600) the E2xxx is the best deal on the market right now.
 
silent-circuit said:
Nasty? Performance difference between it and a "full cache" E6xxx chip is 5-15% depending on the application. They're both based on Conroe. It'll hit around 3.2Ghz with good cooling. So call it 3Ghz equivalent to a "full cache" chip, and $75 seems like a really good deal to me. I've got a friend running one and he's had no complaints. Does fine with Crysis and everything else.
Click to expand...

Got a freind who swapped out a celeron with one, and it just wasnt cutting it. Might have been a compatibility issue but still it gave me a bad impression of the cpu.
 
ring.of.steel said:
Got a freind who swapped out a celeron with one, and it just wasnt cutting it. Might have been a compatibility issue but still it gave me a bad impression of the cpu.
Click to expand...

It 'felt' the same as my E6420 (which I had no complaints about) while I was using it. Sounds like some kind of issue there, yeah.
 
any modern CPU is loaded to 100% when loading something initially. Once the apps up and running, it couldn't care less weather your on an Atholon 64 or a Core 2 quad. the advantage the quad will have in desktop usage is shaving a couple secconds off start up times, and a couple other misc things (hehehe, PS CS3 extended has a panorama dealie, allowing you to compile (stitch) images together to make one single big panoramic picture (works really well, looks really cool, but it loads my little 3.6Ghz C2D to 100% for about 2 mins when I have upward of 8 images for stitching).
 
silent-circuit said:
Nasty? Performance difference between it and a "full cache" E6xxx chip is 5-15% depending on the application. They're both based on Conroe. It'll hit around 3.2Ghz with good cooling. So call it 3Ghz equivalent to a "full cache" chip, and $75 seems like a really good deal to me. I've got a friend running one and he's had no complaints. Does fine with Crysis and everything else.

Unless you need virtualization support, are so crazy [H]ardcore you feel the need for a 4.5Ghz OC (E8400), or are encoding tons of video / rendering stuff professionally or don't intend to upgrade for a long time (Q6600) the E2xxx is the best deal on the market right now.
Click to expand...

agreed. Intel naming the E2100s "Pentium" dual cores is nothing but misleading. They're allendales with half the cache disabled, giving them as much relation to the Pentium series as a Core 2 E6600. They're not pentiums, and they're fantastic bargan overclockers. I have yet to see one that wont run 1066FSB with no changing of any settings completely stable.
 
silent-circuit said:
Then buy a $75 E2160 and an Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro or Coolermaster Hyper TX-2 HSF for your desktop and an Abit IP35-E or Gigabyte P35-DS3L, or a second-hand P35 board. Should come out just under $200.

OC the E2160 to 3.0-3.2Ghz and be happy. You don't need a quad.
Click to expand...

^ You might not even need the cooler. You could get really cheap and get that dual core Celeron for $50ish and still OC to 3GHz.
 
After reading other posters opinions on the cpu in question, i belive there must have been an issue with the motherboard and that cpu. Must get him to update his bios etc.
 
mm... I was going to get a e8400, especially with it's release msrp @ $183.. but It's $50 over, and not compatible with an ip35-e.
I think I'll go ip35-e($60ar) & get a e6750($180) to a nice round 3.0.
I'm not much of a pc enthusiast, and I'll just get it to a reasonable overclock and forget about it.
 
JamesL said:
mm... I was going to get a e8400, especially with it's release msrp @ $183.. but It's $50 over, and not compatible with an ip35-e.
I think I'll go ip35-e($60ar) & get a e6750($180) to a nice round 3.0.
I'm not much of a pc enthusiast, and I'll just get it to a reasonable overclock and forget about it.
Click to expand...

You're spending $95 more on the CPU for maybe 20% more performance in a best case scenario. Why?
 
silent-circuit said:
You're spending $95 more on the CPU for maybe 20% more performance in a best case scenario. Why?
Click to expand...

Cause it's 4 in the morning and I'm not thinking straight...
I'm just catchin the bandwagon... the $80 price tag scares me for some reason.. and I was initially not going to overclock at all. But yeah, it makes sense.. anyways, I'm gonna research on the importance of L2 cache when I wake up tomorrow.. and make a decision then.. thanks peeps for your input.
 
JamesL said:
Cause it's 4 in the morning and I'm not thinking straight...
I'm just catchin the bandwagon... the $80 price tag scares me for some reason.. and I was initially not going to overclock at all. But yeah, it makes sense.. anyways, I'm gonna research on the importance of L2 cache when I wake up tomorrow.. and make a decision then.. thanks peeps for your input.
Click to expand...

L2 cache, you cannot really tell a diffrence in real world situations imo, its deffo not worth the extra $.
 
JamesL said:
Cause it's 4 in the morning and I'm not thinking straight...
I'm just catchin the bandwagon... the $80 price tag scares me for some reason.. and I was initially not going to overclock at all. But yeah, it makes sense.. anyways, I'm gonna research on the importance of L2 cache when I wake up tomorrow.. and make a decision then.. thanks peeps for your input.
Click to expand...


It shouldnt as its a great chip,especially when oc'd.I just built someone a system using that E2160,and its now humming along @ 3.2+Ghz stable.
 
Manny Calavera said:
It shouldnt as its a great chip,especially when oc'd.I just built someone a system using that E2160,and its now humming along @ 3.2+Ghz stable.
Click to expand...

Peoples opinions say it all, think what else you could do with $85 except get a bit more L2.
 
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