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How do you rate your Conroe upgrade?

My C2D upgrade was an improvement in every respect over my old system.

3.2Ghz P4 "Northwood" (Yeah I totally skipped the Prescott generation)
2gb Ram
Nvidia 6800
2xSamsung 160SATA in Raid0

New system
2.67Ghz E6700, normally running at stock, but does 3.2Ghz without any problems. Why stock you ask.. Well, im 100% gpu limited in games, so until I upgrade the graphics card, I figure I'll go easy on the processor :P
Nvidia 7900GTO (8800's were not released at time of upgrade. Intend to wait to see what the power requirements on 8900/8950 are before I upgrade)
2Gb Ram
2x Seagate 320Gb, 7200.10 (Not raided).

Never was impressed by the raid0 performance, it shaved a few seconds of windows boot time, but had no impact on gaming, and I dont use this rig for video editing. I have my swapfile located on the one drive, and my games on the other, so less thrashing when windows wants to use swap.

Anyway, well worth the money. Amazing performance at stock, with plenty of overhead for overclocking when I feel its 'needed'.
 
I went from this

AMD 3000+ @ stock
512mb ram
Radeon 9700

To this...

E6300 @ 3.15Ghz
2Gb ram
Radeon X1950pro

So yea huge difference in every possible way, I upgraded as my dads laptop was faster in windows and i wanted to have a go on Rainbow Six Vegas, lol
 
Previous Rig

2500+ XP Barton @ 2200mhz
ABIT AN7
1GB Geil PC3200
9800XT

New Rig

E6300 @ 2800mhz (Heating is on high)
Gigabyte DS3
1GB Geil PC6400
7900GS 550/1450


Results

What can i say - ofcourse i notice a difference :)
 
3000 winchester @ 1.8ghz
1gb ram
6800 128mb

to:

4300 @ 2.95ghz
2gb
1950pro 256mb

massive difference in games, encoding and of course benchmarking
 
went from socket a athlon3200/ fx 5200 to my current rig as per sig so er... yeh its a tad faster:D

stinka
 
old spec :

Asus k8 vse socket 754 mobo
athlon 64 3400+
bfg 6800 GT OC (ran at Ultra)
1 gb memory

new spec (finally)

QX6700 (just left it @ stock) (new cooler tho)
Bad axe 2
2 gb memory
BFG 8800 GTX OC

same raptors in raid .... new case (stacker 680 - which is major disappointment)

running 1920 x 1200 on a dell 2407
-------------------------------

games :
Fear - maxed out - looks nice
Far Cry - maxed out - looks nice
Supreme Commander - aint really got into it... but heard even my system might struggle later!

Windows - seems a lot more responsive - and good yes

Encoding (do a lot of tv series etc to a Creative Zen etc)

dvd encode 10 mins or so.... really nice !

Worth it ? erm.. no .... but then I can download something ... run a virus check / play game and no slow down... so like everything else once you get used to it .. seems `ok` --- probably cry if I had to go back to old system.
value for money - hell no... but I had a moment of madness ;)
 
From:
Athlon 64 3800+ (stock) & 2 x 1GB PC3200

To:
E6300 (2.8GHz - Limited by budget RAM) & 2 x 1GB OcUK Value PC6400

Difference:
Noticed a good speed boost in XP, not so much in games, but encoding DivX is a zillion times quicker! Well, maybe not a zillion times, but it's certainly a phenomenal improvement over my previous setup.
 
From:
XP3500+ AMD64 1GB RAM

To:
E4300 (9x266) 2GB RAM

Rest hardware recycled.

Feels slightly more responsive in everything but specially playing WoW switching to Windows to look up something is so much faster thanks to the Dual Core.

In all honestly it would probably have been as responsive goign to a dual core athlon but since you can't beat the C2D on price/performance these days... :)

Overall im very pleased with my upgrade and might bump it up to 9x333 sometimes :)
 
mcwildcard said:
From:
Athlon 64 3800+ (stock) & 2 x 1GB PC3200

To:
E6300 (2.8GHz - Limited by budget RAM) & 2 x 1GB OcUK Value PC6400

.
Click to expand...
The RAM doesnt hold back your CPU. My Geil 2x1gig is running at stock at the mo (400fsb) and my E6300 is at 3.3ghz, use unlinked mode.
 
pegasus1 said:
The RAM doesnt hold back your CPU. My Geil 2x1gig is running at stock at the mo (400fsb) and my E6300 is at 3.3ghz, use unlinked mode.
Click to expand...
What mobo are you on?
I don't think that's an option on the DS3.
 
I went from

Amd64 4000 @ 3ghz
dfi nf4 sli-dr
2gb mushkin redline
X1900XTX

to my pc in my sig, Encoding and gaming have seen the biggest jumps for me, windows does seem a lot smoother especially with lots of windows and processes running, just enables me to do more and think less about whats going to slow things down. Alt tabbing was quick from games on the old pc but now its instantaneous. Upgrade cost £150 in the end after i sold the old parts and rebuilt them for a friend, well worth it :)
 
Last edited:
I've been upgrading fairly regularly (once a year at least on average) since the 486 days. I can honestly say that c2d was the biggest single jump in performance that I can remember. It helped that I went up from a single core (opty 146) at the same time, but still a 3.5Ghz+ conroe is a mighty beast to behold, and completely blows away AMDs current offerings.

I hope AMD come back to release a serious competitor to c2d, hopefully before Penryn, but at the moment intel have it locked.
 
Went from Opteron 146 @ 2.8ghz to a C2D currently at 3.3ghz but hopefully more soon.

Everything in windows is considerably faster, although I have added a raid setup and more ram too so can't compare it accurately. CSS is running a lot more smoothly considering my limited graphics card (X850XT) so I'm happy overall. Worth the money and futureproof for a while yet!
 
To continue the theme echoed already in this thread:

Was on a 939 Venice @ 2.7GHZ
1GB of cheap ram
Nforce 3 AGP motherboard
X800XT

Now on:

E4300 @ 3.3GHZ
2GB of Geil Ram
P5N-E SLI
8800 GTS

General windows use:

Feels quite a bit nicer, especially if I am doing a lot of stuff at the same time, as it no longer seems to have any lags.

Work:

Photoshop/any programs like it are far quicker, feels a lot more responsive, and I am able to open Photoshop and browse the net, listen to music, and everything else without any slowdown. Filters apply quicker, and dont cause music for example to start "skipping". This is especially true when doing a lot of brush work.

Rendering: Read above really.

Gaming:

I can't even compare the 2, they are in totally different leagues. Image quality is better in all games. Some games still played well enough on my old system (HL2 comes to mind). But newer games like Q4 and Supreme Commander I wouldn't have even wish to attempt on my old system.

Overall, one of the best upgrades I feel I have made.
 
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