Upgrading extremely old cpu to slightly less old cpu

[SpartansWouldWin]

So I recently bought my friend a Phenom II x3 710 cpu from 15 bucks to upgrade his ancient 5600+ dual core. He is using the ancient GA-M61P-S3 motherboard so i checked the cpu compatibility list on the website and it tells me the tri-core is compatible. When he installed it windows recognized it as a dual core and he had to follow some guide on how to force windows to recognize the third core. Problem is that he sees no improvement in gaming at all, I would assume a CPU that is 4 years newer would preform much better than a decade old dual core.What is he doing wrong here?

He still has ddr2 4gb, not sure what speed
a gtx 650
GA-M61P-S3 motherboard
and now the x3 710

 

[basroil]

The problem is that it's still the same outdated architecture as a decade before... There's literally no reason to spend any money on a system that old, you can usually replace the entire thing for ~$200

 

[geofelt]

The 5600+ dual core has a passmark rating of 1482 and a single thread rating of 850.
The x3 710 has a passmark rating of 2460, and a single thread rating of 907.
Since most games depend on the single master thread for performance, you should not expect much improvement.
Few games can effectively use more than 2 cores, so the third is not of much help.

By comparison, the cheapest skylake $60 dual core cpu has a passmark rating of 3883 and a single thread rating of 2173.
Yes, you would need a new motherboard and ram.
And... the included 530 integrated graphics is about as strong as the GTX650.

 

[thx1138v2]

The mobo is probably limiting the performance of the CPU. Although the mobo "supports" the CPU, that doesn't mean it supports it at its optimal settings. I noticed that the mobo blurb says, "Supports high performance Dual-Channel DDR2 800 memory ." That's an indication that it is sub-par for the CPU - note the "DDR2 800 memory" rather than DDR3 and 800 is slow in today's terms. That's not the whole story but an indication that the mobo is the problem.
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=2434#ov

Things move so fast in the industry that when it's time to upgrade it's best to upgrade the mobo, CPU, and RAM all at the same time. And that may require a new PSU, depending on the new component's power requirements. Also keep in mind that PSUs do age with time so it's a good idea to get a new PSU if it is older because everything in the box depends on clean, stable power.
http://www.popsci.com/do-computers-die-old-age

Disk drives age also.
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/best-hard-drive-q4-2014/

Putting all of that together, I usually just do a new build rather than just upgrading. IMO, if money is a limitation it's best to just save money until you can do a new build rather than throw money at upgrading an older system piecemeal.