Intel dual core pentium d 940 good?

[bytard]

Hi im going to uppgrade my pentium 4 to an dual core pentium d 940, how much will this affect my gaming?

My pc is a optiplex gx620 mid tower which is rebuilded.

Thanks!

 

[CDdude55]

Maybe a little in certain games, but it's still an old chip. It would be better to just save up for something better that will actually contribute to a significant increase in performance in gaming. Or just do an entire rebuild if you have the money.

 

[bytard]

Maybe a little in certain games, but it's still an old chip. It would be better to just save up for something better that will actually contribute to a significant increase in performance in gaming. Or just do an entire rebuild if you have the money.

thanks, i have like no money to rebuild a whole new computer so the pentium D should be fine right?

 

[87ninefiveone]

Unfortunately....not much at all. I did a similar upgrade a couple of years back from a P4 650 (3.4GHz, 90nm) with Hyperthreading to a P4D 945 (Dual Core 3.4Ghz, 65nm). I saw almost no difference in either gaming or general performance. Luckily I paid something like $30 for the upgrade so it wasn't a big deal.

 

[bytard]

Unfortunately....not much at all. I did a similar upgrade a couple of years back from a P4 650 (3.4GHz, 90nm) with Hyperthreading to a P4D 945 (Dual Core 3.4Ghz, 65nm). I saw almost no difference in either gaming or general performance. Luckily I paid something like $30 for the upgrade so it wasn't a big deal.

well see if the performance will change when i get it

 

[bytard]

but the pentium d has a dual core?

 

[4745454b]

So what? The amount of data that a P4 can process per clock cycle is HORRIBLY low. Even a dual core atom can outperform a P4. (must be a dual core atom because they are not out of order CPUs.) Doesn't really matter how many cores the P4 has, it just can't run through data that fast.

 

[Headspin_69]

I think it will be a worthy upgrade so long as you are not paying much for the chip.

 

[loneninja]

It's still below the minimum to run a lot of new games smoothly

 

[Gigz6413]

You would be better off with just getting an A4. That really says something... A4s are inexpensive and weak.

 

[jaguarskx]

It's an upgrade, but not by much.

Generally speaking going from a Pentium D to a 2nd generation Core 2 Duo, the C2D CPU would have about 25% more processing power. Going from a 2nd gen C2D to a current Core i3 CPU would mean another 20% increase in performance, again at the same clockspeed.

Therefore, roughly speaking a Pentium D 940 3.2GHz CPU is about the equivalent to a Core i3 clocked at 1.8GHz. The slowest desktop Core i3 CPU is the i3-2100 and it's clocked at 3.1GHz.

 

[CaedenV]

The P4 is a fake duel core (hyperthreading), while the PD is a real duel core, so for most programs there will be literally no difference at all. But for games which do not take advantage of hyperthreading, but do take advantage of multiple cores, it will give you an approximate doubling of processing power. But with the other bottlenecks involved in your computer (ram, bus speeds, gpu, etc) there would be other issues preventing you from getting much out of your games. My guess would be roughly a 5-10% increase in performance, which is going to be barely noticeable. So for $20 it may be worth it, but to be honest I would not pay more than that for something that will do next to nothing.

A similar, though larger scale, example of this is my attempt to go from a C2D to a C2Q thinking I would get an approximate doubling in performance out of Adobe Premiere. In reality there was next to no difference when it came to editing the footage. The bottlenecks in the ram amount, ram speed, GPU, and system bus were just far too much for the platform to handle. In the end I decided to upgrade the platform, and have been very happy, but I completely understand that when the money is not there then it is not there.

Your largest change in the upgrade would be the use of less power moving from 90 to 65mn. Other than that it would be a bust.

 

[27222712]

The P4 is a fake duel core (hyperthreading), while the PD is a real duel core, so for most programs there will be literally no difference at all. But for games which do not take advantage of hyperthreading, but do take advantage of multiple cores, it will give you an approximate doubling of processing power. But with the other bottlenecks involved in your computer (ram, bus speeds, gpu, etc) there would be other issues preventing you from getting much out of your games. My guess would be roughly a 5-10% increase in performance, which is going to be barely noticeable. So for $20 it may be worth it, but to be honest I would not pay more than that for something that will do next to nothing.

A similar, though larger scale, example of this is my attempt to go from a C2D to a C2Q thinking I would get an approximate doubling in performance out of Adobe Premiere. In reality there was next to no difference when it came to editing the footage. The bottlenecks in the ram amount, ram speed, GPU, and system bus were just far too much for the platform to handle. In the end I decided to upgrade the platform, and have been very happy, but I completely understand that when the money is not there then it is not there.

Your largest change in the upgrade would be the use of less power moving from 90 to 65mn. Other than that it would be a bust.

Assuming I had an appropriate graphics card and everything else, would the pentium D dual core 3.4 GHz handle PS2, GameCube, and Xbox emulation at decent speeds? I was originally thinking so, but you seem knowledgable, so I'd like to see what you say.