Slashdot Mirror
Can Legacy Dual-Core CPUs Drive Modern Graphics Cards?
MojoKid writes "A few weeks back, we discussed whether a new GPU like the GeForce GTX 660 could breathe new life into an older quad-core gaming system built in mid 2008. The answer concluded was definitely yes — but many readers asked to reconsider the question, this time using a lower-end dual-core Core 2 Duo. The Core 2 Duo CPU chip used was a first-generation C2D part based on Intel's 65nm Conroe core. It's clocked at 3GHz with 4MB of L2 cache and has a 1333MHz FSB. The CPU was paired with 3GB of DDR2-1066 memory. The long and short of it is, you can upgrade the graphics card on a six year-old dual core machine and expect to see a noticeable improvement in game performance — significant gains in fact, up to 50 percent or more."
At least not reliably.
The issue is PCI express 1.0 and 1.1 performance on 2.0 cards and later. Geforces have been known to crash using an earlier slot technology or on lower end systems. Maybe that has changed since the 9600GTX, but I switched to ATI for this reason. Even many Radeons are only tested with later hardware and instability and other bottlenecks happen as many games as Windows swaps video ram to the system ram even when there is plenty of ram available.
http://saveie6.com/
To save you a few clicks, here's the key conclusion (and much better said than the summary from /.) :
Intel Core 2 Q6600 chips aren't available new these days, but Ebay has a ton of them, regularly priced between $50-$70. (...) Is a new CPU worth the price? I'd say yes --especially if you've currently got a dual-core CPU in the 2.2 - 2.6GHz range. The combined cost of a used Q6600 and a GeForce GTX 660 should still come in below $300 while delivering far better performance than any bottom-end desktop you might assemble for that price tag.
Quem a paca cara compra, paca cara pagará.
It's no surprise that you can hook a fast GPU to a slow CPU and get good results, look at Raspberry Pi, who could imagine doing HDMI video with a single core 700 MHz processor?
I await the obviously conclusive "Can a Pentium M / Sempron be revived by a dual GTX680" article...
Exactly my thoughts. 50% increase in performance? Not really impressive when you look at the graphics card charts out there. GTX 260 has far from 1/2 the performance of a GTX 660.
According to PassMark:
GTX 660: 4038
GTX 260: 1123
So with only a 50% increase in performance, I'd say it's a waste of money. The bottom line is that modern processors, chipsets, & RAM will make a massive difference in performance for modern high end graphics cards. If you're going to upgrade your graphics card, you need to reduce the bottlenecks in the system.
Speaking from experience, I can attest to the conclusions of the article.
The machine I am using as I write this is similar to the machine descibed, though I am running 3.25GB of DDR3 (the most this motherboard can utilize for some odd reason). This computer was one of the 1st-generation "Built for Vista" machines--it's a Gateway my daughter bought intending on putting XP on it. Turns out much of the hardware had no drivers for XP, and...well, to be honest, it sucked so bad she bought ANOTHER computer (Best Buy wouldn't give her a refund).
I ended up with it eventually. I up-graded the RAM as best I could (had sticks laying around), installed Windows 7, and dropped a HD7550 in it--While it isn't a screamer, I actually use it as my gaming machine. The biggest visually noticeable performance gains were, by far, from installing Windows 7. The drivers that Windows found worked great. The video card was the next increase in performance, and it was astounding.
But here is the important thing I discovered with this arrangement--the gains are entirely dependent on the software being used. Some games use massive amounts of CPU when they could be handing off some of that load to the video card, and those games don't run so well. Other games are better in this regard and take advantage of the video card and those games I can usually run at maximum settings.
I play an emulator of Star Wars Galaxies and most times I have two instances of the game running concurrently as well as a browser on a secondary monitor. I usually have Ventrilo running at the same time. Sure, only one instance of the game is actually being rendered, but the CPU load is doubled...and this machine handles it wonderfully, with game settings maxed out. I've also run Skyrim easily on this machine, mods galore.
I am quite pleased with the arrangement
why 3gb ram and not 4gb or 8gb++? at least have dual channel ram with 2 2gb sticks.
Because the defective Merom chipset in use in the Core2Duo systems did not support greater than a 4G memory mapping space, and 1G of that was taken up as I/O space, so it was unable to remap the extra 1G of physical RAM and.or move the I/O hoe, even though it had the physical address lines to do so.
The chipset was manufactured between Nov 2006 and Oct 2007, but was used far longer than that by many manufacturers, since Apple was soaking up almost the entire supply of the corrected chipset, which was manufactured between Nov 2007 and Oct 2009.
Intel screwed up, and then taped out anyway in order to meet market deadlines.
It typically wasn't a big deal for most people, since the 2G SIMMs were very unstable at that point, and even desktop systems rarely had more than 3 SIMM slots. This changed in 2009 when Hynix finally fixed their 2G SIMMs, but the company nearly bit the dust anyway, as by then it had defaulted on several loans and one debt-equity swap.
Most people only discovered the screwup in the Merom chipset that happened to be in their machine when they started trying to use 2 2G SIMMs in their Core2Duo machines with the old Merom, and were only seeing 3G of RAM show up to the OS.
It doesn't work like this though. Even if you take the 50% performance increase on face value (not taking into account higher AA/ASF/Shaders) that would mean a game running at 15fps would increase to 23fps. Not exactly much of an increase. Even if you were getting 30fps on the GTX 260, that's an increase of 15fps (which is what the tests essentially saw), hardly worth $300.
Meanwhile, if you spent the money on CPU/MBD/RAM & a mid range graphics card (say a GTX 480 at around $150), you'd see actual performance increases of around 3.5x that of sticking a GTX 660 on a crap motherboard with a crap processor.
Sure, if you had every intention of upgrading the rest of the components, the graphics card is going to be the easiest to swap out, but you're still going to need to upgrade the CPU/MBD/RAM.
The article hides the fact that the increase of a GTX 260 vs GTX 660 card in a modern system would be a ~400% increase in performance. Not sure what they're trying to prove, but to me it proves they know nothing about hardware, gaming or value for money.
I would say it all comes down to what games you are playing. if you are playing games like TF2 and Batman:AC? Well no problem then, slapping a new GPU will give it a good kick in the pants. if you are trying to play some huge RTS with a ton of units? Then the CPU is gonna be the bottleneck.
That said its often cheap to upgrade your CPU, especially if you have an AMD as they have so many backwards compatible chips and hung onto the AM socket for so long. A good place to look at getting a new CPU would be StarMicro which I've used a LOT in the shop with never any issues, they go from the socket 478 on the Intel side to socket 754 on the AMD side with just a ton of chips to choose from. If you want a gaming machine they have plenty of high clocked Athlon and Phenoms at good prices and if you want a chip to make a killer HTPC out of this low power Phenom X4 makes a pretty kicking HTPC chip and its only $68 bucks.
So its really not that hard to keep a system that is a few years old gaming well, my youngest is gaming great on a 3.3GHz Athlon X3 and that chip was only $65 on sale, and my oldest got a Phenom II X6 for only $100 as part of a kit. While these aren't gonna beat any i7 like my 1035T they are still great for gaming and have no trouble playing all the new games we have run on them.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
For that brute, I would go with two of these GTX680's in SLI mode!
Note: Lap protector recommended and asbestos undershorts, also don't replace the OEM laptop battery packs with Boeing 787 battery packs.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
I'm also an AMD fan but I wouldn't say the A10 is a good buy, not when you can get an Athlon triple WITH 8GB of RAM AND a nice case to put it in for just $135. This would give you a boost from dual to triple, much more RAM than the C2D system is gonna hold, and will play just about any game with a middle of the road card.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I just introduced an Intel fan to the wonders of AMD. He just knew that he'd always been told "Use Intel". I told him about my home machine. An air cooled AMD FX-8320 @4.01Ghz w/ 16GB RAM an a AMD 7770 w/ 1GB GDDR5. Every game I play, I crank all the settings all the way up, and the frame rate and quality is great.
I gave him some spare parts for his kids. Phenom II x6 1110T, motherboard, and a stack of RAM that he got 8GB to work together with, and a couple ATI 55xx video cards. He got the standard used parts disclaimer, "It all worked when I took it out, no guarantees that they do now." Not bad for a total of $0.
We spent some time comparing the Intel and AMD current pricing, and he didn't see any reason to use Intel any more.
Someone will reply, saying some benchmark says a comparable Intel is faster. Someone else will show a different benchmark says AMD is faster. For the price, I don't care, they just work, work well, and with the savings I don't mind upgrading again in 6 months. With the numbers we found that day, he can upgrade about 4 times and still come out under the Intel pricing.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.