Antique CPU question

mattyfez · 18 Dec 2017 at 23:28

Yeh I'm under no illusions that the SSD will put a bit of wind up it's bum, even if it has to page, it will page a lot quicker.

On the question of ram, this system will be running miss matched sticks so won't be running duel channel, unless I get lucky.

Not sure how bad that is, I figured quantity is better than quality in this scenario, haha

opethdisciple · 19 Dec 2017 at 10:24

Needs more ram. Try to bump it up to 4Gb.

Armageus · 19 Dec 2017 at 10:33

mattyfez said:
On the question of ram, this system will be running miss matched sticks so won't be running duel channel, unless I get lucky.

Not sure how bad that is, I figured quantity is better than quality in this scenario, haha

In the "real world" (i.e. outside of Synthetic benchmarks and very recent games) dual channel makes very little difference - the difference from 2Gb to 4Gb or more will be massive (as will reduce swap file usage).

facboy · 19 Dec 2017 at 12:10

kitfit1 said:
Sometimes i despair at the stupidity of some answers on this forum. This is an old mobo, old Tech and operated by on old aged pensioner. Of course she will see her computer boot faster and respond faster with an SSD over an old Mechanical HD. Read the OP's first post, it's only used for lite desktop use.......................there will be no "bottlenecks" with the cpu or the ram it's the OP's Grandmother...........................she's not playing the latest games would be a good guess.

no, she prolly has an Xbox One X and PS4 Pro for that!

that would be cool, not just getting destroyed by 12yo nieces and nephews, but also by your grandma as well.

darael · 19 Dec 2017 at 23:46

What motherboard is it? I'd be tempted to flog the bits you have already and buy matching RAM sticks and a faster quad core CPU. Fine, there's some advertising and posting to do - but I'm sure the rewards will be worth it at the end of the day. Or just buy the RAM and CPU anyway and sell the old parts later.

Something to watch out for is the existing RAM - it might only be DDR2-400, but the Q8400's 1333MHz FSB will demand DDR2-667.

If nothing else, the SSD will make the machine much more usable. Reinstall it with 64-bit Windows in preparation for 4GB or more and you'll already have a very nippy machine. When you install the quad core CPU and extra RAM, it should sail along nicely. :cool:

chaparral · 20 Dec 2017 at 00:55

Armageus said:
But do you actually need a 5ghz chip just to browse? No...

Unless it someone like me that always seems to have about 100 or more internet tabs open at the same time and keeps running out of memory (16gb) and CPU power

Am looking to upgrade to a 6 core cpu and 32gb to help with this.

Armageus · 20 Dec 2017 at 07:11

darael said:
Something to watch out for is the existing RAM - it might only be DDR2-400, but the Q8400's 1333MHz FSB will demand DDR2-667.

Most boards have memory dividers that will take care of that (although not optimum)

chaparral said:
Unless it someone like me that always seems to have about 100 or more internet tabs open at the same time and keeps running out of memory (16gb) and CPU power

Unless you are doing something that needs real time updates to all 100 tabs (e.g. trading) then worth looking at add-ons that "pause" tabs.

mattyfez · 20 Dec 2017 at 09:12

darael said:
Something to watch out for is the existing RAM - it might only be DDR2-400, but the Q8400's 1333MHz FSB will demand DDR2-667.

Didn't think of that, the new second hand ram is ddr2 800, I'm reasonably sure the existing stick is to as I built the machine originally but I can't really remember, board is a fairly run of the mill msi board, no idea what model but has some basic OC options, but no fancy heat pipes or heatsink or anything like that.

mattyfez · 20 Dec 2017 at 09:24

My local second hand electronics shop lists a Ddr2 400 4gb stick in stock for £8 on the website.

I'm not doing the upgrade till Friday (she doesn't live locally) so I wonder if it's worth picking that up just in case.

darael · 20 Dec 2017 at 17:59

I'd only consider DDR2-667 if you're still going ahead with the quad core upgrade.

mattyfez · 20 Dec 2017 at 20:07

The stuff I bought is ddr2 6400, 800mhz, sorry for the confusion, I called it 400mhz as it's double data rate.

That should work right? I hope so as I can't remember if what's currently in the system so I bought another 2gb stick today, so she'll end up with either 4gb or 6gb total.

Armageus · 20 Dec 2017 at 20:16

mattyfez said:
The stuff I bought is ddr2 6400, 800mhz, sorry for the confusion, I called it 400mhz as it's double data rate.

That should work right? I hope so as I can't remember if what's currently in the system so I bought another 2gb stick today, so she'll end up with either 4gb or 6gb total.

Will be absolutely fine (even if the existing stuff is 667mhz) as it should automatically adjust to the slowest. (The existing is unlikely to be ddr2 3200 400mhz, as that was early skt 775 - p4 era)

mattyfez · 20 Dec 2017 at 20:20

Armageus said:
Will be absolutely fine (even if the existing stuff is 667mhz) as it should automatically adjust to the slowest. (The existing is unlikely to be ddr2 3200 400mhz, as that was early skt 775 - p4 era)

Cheers, I've a feeling her current 2gb stick is one of my cast offs, which will be a fancy (for the era) ocz ddr2 800mhz, but i can't remember.

Quartz · 20 Dec 2017 at 20:36

mattyfez said:
E5500? Pentium Dual core Wolf Dale

I'm amused that this is considered an antique.

mattyfez · 20 Dec 2017 at 20:51

Quartz said:
I'm amused that this is considered an antique.

Yeh that was kind of a tongue in cheek title, to arouse the the forum into reading the thread, as talking about socket 775 stuff is hardly interesting to most people. :cool:

mattyfez · 20 Dec 2017 at 20:55

I only upgraded from socket 775 about 12 months ago myself, and that was mainly as I needed a dx11 capable gpu, I had a Gtx285 which was fine but it was limited to dx10 games but there was no point buying that alone so I upgraded to a skylake i5.

andy_mk3 · 20 Dec 2017 at 20:59

I think s775 was a massive leap forward.

My old Q6600 system still lives on in my Gran's PC, it's been on 24/7 for nigh on 10 years now! It used to be od'd but back to stock now. But with 4gb ram and a really old SSD, 3.5" OCZ Vertex2 I think? It's actually as quick as any modern PC for internet browsing and Word etc. I think it's still got some years left in it yet.

mattyfez · 20 Dec 2017 at 21:05

andy_mk3 said:
I think s775 was a massive leap forward.

My old Q6600 system still lives on in my Gran's PC, it's been on 24/7 for nigh on 10 years now! It used to be od'd but back to stock now. But with 4gb ram and a really old SSD, 3.5" OCZ Vertex2 I think? It's actually as quick as any modern PC for internet browsing and Word etc. I think it's still got some years left in it yet.

That's my thinking, I was rocking an overclocked 6600go and aside from the fact I had a mechanical HDD, it's a perfectly good system..

So hopefully this upgrade with the quad, more ram and ssd, it should fly for general Interneting.

Quartz · 20 Dec 2017 at 22:28

mattyfez said:
Yeh that was kind of a tongue in cheek title, to arouse the the forum into reading the thread, as talking about socket 775 stuff is hardly interesting to most people.

Yes, but you're making me feel OLD!

mattyfez · 20 Dec 2017 at 22:53

Tell me about it, lol, my first real pc aside from the spectrum, was a 386 lol!