Basic question about processor speeds

[Lorenzo]

Hi all,

I currently have Dell Dimension 3000 PC with Pentium 4 processor (2.8GHz)
256MB of RAM. It is 2-3 years old.

It is used for email, internet access, music downloads, photo storage and
editing etc. It is becoming a little slow when accessing photo files etc.

I am looking for an upgrade but when I look at the Dell site, the
replacements are showing either -

Intel® Pentium® Dual-Core E2140 Processor (1.6GHz,800MHz,1MB cache)

Intel® ViivT CoreT 2 Duo E4500 Processor (2.20GHz,800MHz,2MB cache)

The processor speed is lower than my existing one (although I understand
that the "dual" part means there are two processors in operation).

My question is - how much better speed and performance am I likely to get
from these upgraded models over my existing one?

Thanks in advance for any advice!!

 

[fjblurt]

Hi all,

I currently have Dell Dimension 3000 PC with Pentium 4 processor (2.8GHz)
256MB of RAM. It is 2-3 years old.

It is used for email, internet access, music downloads, photo storage and
editing etc. It is becoming a little slow when accessing photo files etc.

I am looking for an upgrade but when I look at the Dell site, the
replacements are showing either -

Intel® Pentium® Dual-Core E2140 Processor (1.6GHz,800MHz,1MB cache)

Intel® ViivT CoreT 2 Duo E4500 Processor (2.20GHz,800MHz,2MB cache)

The processor speed is lower than my existing one (although I understand
that the "dual" part means there are two processors in operation).

My question is - how much better speed and performance am I likely to get
from these upgraded models over my existing one?

I think the main improvement in a new machine that you'd see would be
due to more memory. 256M is not much these days and is probably
causing the bottleneck. In fact, if it were me, I'd be inclined just
to buy more memory for the existing box, make it at least a gig or so,
rather than starting over. It should be less than $100 USD.

 

[Ian D]

Hi all,

I currently have Dell Dimension 3000 PC with Pentium 4 processor (2.8GHz)
256MB of RAM. It is 2-3 years old.

It is used for email, internet access, music downloads, photo storage and
editing etc. It is becoming a little slow when accessing photo files etc.

I am looking for an upgrade but when I look at the Dell site, the
replacements are showing either -

Intel® Pentium® Dual-Core E2140 Processor (1.6GHz,800MHz,1MB cache)

Intel® ViivT CoreT 2 Duo E4500 Processor (2.20GHz,800MHz,2MB cache)

The processor speed is lower than my existing one (although I understand
that the "dual" part means there are two processors in operation).

My question is - how much better speed and performance am I likely to get
from these upgraded models over my existing one?

Thanks in advance for any advice!!

Even a single core of the E4500 is much faster than your P4. The Core 2
Duo does more instructions per CPU cycle than the P4, the plain dual
core does not, so the E4500 is the way to go. The E6xxx series has
4 MB cache and higher FSB.

 

[Noozer]

Hi all,

I currently have Dell Dimension 3000 PC with Pentium 4 processor (2.8GHz)
256MB of RAM. It is 2-3 years old.

It is used for email, internet access, music downloads, photo storage and
editing etc. It is becoming a little slow when accessing photo files etc.

I am looking for an upgrade but when I look at the Dell site, the
replacements are showing either -

Intel® Pentium® Dual-Core E2140 Processor (1.6GHz,800MHz,1MB cache)

Intel® ViivT CoreT 2 Duo E4500 Processor (2.20GHz,800MHz,2MB cache)

The processor speed is lower than my existing one (although I understand
that the "dual" part means there are two processors in operation).

My question is - how much better speed and performance am I likely to get
from these upgraded models over my existing one?

You'd get a PC that can wait faster.

Your PC may be a bit low on memory, but fine otherwise.

It's more likely slow due to the amount of stuff that's collected in the
machine over time. I'm also going to take a stab and say that you've got
some Norton/Symantec software installed.

 

[meow2222]

You'd get a PC that can wait faster.

Your PC may be a bit low on memory, but fine otherwise.

It's more likely slow due to the amount of stuff that's collected in the
machine over time. I'm also going to take a stab and say that you've got
some Norton/Symantec software installed.

Yeah, pretty much has to be a software problem, not hardware.
Even an early P3 running 98 can do that and much more without
slowing up. Computers slowing down is in most cases down to
software issues.


NT

 

[Lorenzo]

I'm also going to take a stab and say that you've got some Norton/Symantec

software installed.

I good stab, but not so. I removed Norton some time ago because it really
WAS getting slow. I changed to McAfee which does have a constant background
(On Access) scan but showed a big improvement.

There is not too much clutter on the machine (I have just added the basic
stuff I need). The "system idle process" in the task manager shows at
90-95% of the CPU when idle so there is nothing much churning away in the
background.

It is not slow in the "hanging around for ages" sense, it is just now as
responsive. I have got into the habit of replacing the PC every 3 years and
every time there has been a big improvement. Maybe things are not improving
at the same rate these days, so I can keep hold of it for a bit longer.

Many thanks for all the replies!

 

[kony]

Even a single core of the E4500 is much faster than your P4. The Core 2
Duo does more instructions per CPU cycle than the P4, the plain dual
core does not, so the E4500 is the way to go. The E6xxx series has
4 MB cache and higher FSB.

While it is true that a complete motherboard, CPU, and
memory upgrade would have significant performance benefit,
when one is dealing with an OEM box it is also a factor that
even the OS is no longer licensed so tack on an addt'l $100,
plus all the time to reinstall and reconfigure unless OP is
savvy enough to be able to get Windows to re-plug-n-play,
which is definitely possible but beyond what most are
willing to do as it seems most don't Google each step of a
process (which in itself is also a further time investment
and in some cases, the performance problem wasn't even the
hardware it was just a bloated Windows installation that
could use being leaned up a bit by starting over. YMMV.

 

[Sleepy]

Hi all,

I currently have Dell Dimension 3000 PC with Pentium 4 processor (2.8GHz)
256MB of RAM. It is 2-3 years old.

It is used for email, internet access, music downloads, photo storage and
editing etc. It is becoming a little slow when accessing photo files etc.

I am looking for an upgrade but when I look at the Dell site, the
replacements are showing either -

Intel® Pentium® Dual-Core E2140 Processor (1.6GHz,800MHz,1MB cache)

Intel® ViivT CoreT 2 Duo E4500 Processor (2.20GHz,800MHz,2MB cache)

The processor speed is lower than my existing one (although I understand
that the "dual" part means there are two processors in operation).

My question is - how much better speed and performance am I likely to get
from these upgraded models over my existing one?

I think the main improvement in a new machine that you'd see would be
due to more memory. 256M is not much these days and is probably
causing the bottleneck. In fact, if it were me, I'd be inclined just
to buy more memory for the existing box, make it at least a gig or so,
rather than starting over. It should be less than $100 USD.

I agree with Mr. Blurt (surely can't be his real name) that memory is your
main problem.
A 2.8ghz CPU is ample for the uses you describe but 256mb of RAM is not -
not by a long chalk.
Put in 1gb and your PC will feel like a whole new machine. Win XP uses
around 120mb just to boot up then add a photo application like Photoshop and
you already run out of RAM and are using virtual memory - access a photo and
the HDD will be constantly active and the PC will chugg along like an
asthmatic.

 

[GT]

Hi all,

I currently have Dell Dimension 3000 PC with Pentium 4 processor (2.8GHz)
256MB of RAM. It is 2-3 years old.

It is used for email, internet access, music downloads, photo storage and
editing etc. It is becoming a little slow when accessing photo files etc.

If it is becoming slow, then that suggests that you used to be happy with
its speed, so something is causing it to slow down. Everyone has suggested
more memory and I would strongle agree. The Dell Dimension 3000 used to ship
with 128MB of memory in 1 slot and 1 empty slot, so I assume that you have
upgraded this at some point by adding another 128MB in the second slot. I
would suggest removing one of you 128MB DIMMs and inserting a 1GB DIMM,
which you could pick up for around £50. You could even invest in 2GB, but
probably won't need that much extra.

Another thing that is probably slowing down over time is your hard disk. As
the drive fills up and becomes more and more fragmented, it will slow down.
With only 256MB RAM, your system will also be using the windows swap file
quite a lot, so this means more disk access, slowing everything down. More
memory would naturally speed this area of the system up immediately. Also
your windows registry (a file on the hard disk) will probably have become
bloated and fragmented, so I would suggest clearing a bit of space on your
hard disk, (maybe even consider a second or external drive) and get the
drive defragmented. You should also consider a windows optimizer tool to
clean up your registry - run this once in a while, then uninstall it again!

 

[GT]

I good stab, but not so. I removed Norton some time ago because it really
WAS getting slow. I changed to McAfee which does have a constant
background (On Access) scan but showed a big improvement.

There is not too much clutter on the machine (I have just added the basic
stuff I need). The "system idle process" in the task manager shows at
90-95% of the CPU when idle so there is nothing much churning away in the
background.

It is not slow in the "hanging around for ages" sense, it is just now as
responsive. I have got into the habit of replacing the PC every 3 years
and every time there has been a big improvement. Maybe things are not
improving at the same rate these days, so I can keep hold of it for a bit
longer.

I would be tempted to hold off. While the dual core processors are faster
than their predecessors, the speed improvement is not all that noticable.
The improvement you get from new machine is more than just the CPU. The hard
disk will be significantly large, faster and quieter. You will get much more
RAM, which makes everything smoother and less reliant on swapfiles. You
would get faster memory which generally speeds everything up. However, I
don't think you would see a massive speed increase over what you have now.
Just stick more memory in to what you have and clean the hard disk (defrag +
optimize registry).

 

[CBFalconer]

.... snip ...

There is not too much clutter on the machine (I have just added
the basic stuff I need). The "system idle process" in the task
manager shows at 90-95% of the CPU when idle so there is nothing
much churning away in the background.

It is not slow in the "hanging around for ages" sense, it is just
now as responsive. I have got into the habit of replacing the PC
every 3 years and every time there has been a big improvement.
Maybe things are not improving at the same rate these days, so I
can keep hold of it for a bit longer.

I don't know what you are using it for, but consider replacing
Windows with, say, Ubuntu. The OS cost will go down immediately,
the reliability and speed will increase, and you will never again
need to buy from Microsoft.

It can still use more memory.

 

[Mike Walsh]

As others have said, 256 MB memory is barely adequate for WinXP. You need at least 512 MB to do any image editing.
A Core 2 Duo is about 50% faster than a Pentium 4 at the same clock speed so you would not see a great speed improvement because of the processor unless you are using multithreaded software that will use both cores at the same time e.g. Photoshop. The biggest speed improvement from a new system would be because of more memory and a faster hard drive.

 

[kony]

Hi all,

I currently have Dell Dimension 3000 PC with Pentium 4 processor (2.8GHz)
256MB of RAM. It is 2-3 years old.

It is used for email, internet access, music downloads, photo storage and
editing etc. It is becoming a little slow when accessing photo files etc.

I am looking for an upgrade but when I look at the Dell site, the
replacements are showing either -

Intel® Pentium® Dual-Core E2140 Processor (1.6GHz,800MHz,1MB cache)

Intel® ViivT CoreT 2 Duo E4500 Processor (2.20GHz,800MHz,2MB cache)

The processor speed is lower than my existing one (although I understand
that the "dual" part means there are two processors in operation).

My question is - how much better speed and performance am I likely to get
from these upgraded models over my existing one?

Thanks in advance for any advice!!

Slowness could be malware or viri, scan the system. If
you've ran out of hard drive space or nearly so, delete some
unneeded files or add a 2nd hard drive. "IF" the new hard
drive is significantly faster, consider using it as the
primary OS drive, but it may not be much faster because 2-3
years ago is not so long. Once you have sufficient free
space on the drive you'll use, defrag it.

Definitely add some memory, a pair of 512MB modules would be
a good start. Windows Task Manager will show how much
memory you're using, check this "peak" figure after you
experience a period of sluggishness in use.

Of the tasks you listed, editing the photo files is the only
thing slightly demanding and then only if working with very
large files. In that case the memory will make the
difference more than processor, but at some point the
processor will matter... but most likely you would find the
memory far more significant.

Since you have not listed the other specs for the systems
which use the two processors, it is impossible to say how
much difference either CPU would make. A rough ballpark
figure would be a 30% improvement on single-threaded apps if
those were compute-bound, if comparing those systems to
yours once you had upgraded the memory.

 

[Lorenzo]

The Dell Dimension 3000 used to ship with 128MB of memory in 1 slot and 1

empty slot, so I assume that you have upgraded this at some point by
adding another 128MB in the second slot. I would suggest removing one of
you 128MB DIMMs and inserting a 1GB DIMM, which you could pick up for
around £50. You could even invest in 2GB, but probably won't need that
much extra.

Thanks for this (and for the other helpful replies).

There was a "double memory" offer on when I bought (glad about that!). The
spec shows,-

"256 MB NonECC 333MHz DDR Memory (1x256)"

I read this as meaning there is 256MB in one slot, leaving the other free
for upgrade.

This page here gives some more info -

http://www.orcalogic.co.uk/asp/prodtype.asp?prodtype=9451&ft=M&st=1

The Dimension appears to operate on 333 or 400MHz memory.

This makes me think that I have to remove the existing memory (which runs at
333MHz) and replace with 1 x 1GB DDR400 Module, otherwise the whole lot will
run at 333.

The site also suggests installing in pair might be better (2 x 512MB
DDR400).

My plan would probably be to go with the two x 512 from this site, unless
you think differently!

Many thanks again for all the advice.

 

[Paul]

Thanks for this (and for the other helpful replies).

There was a "double memory" offer on when I bought (glad about that!). The
spec shows,-

"256 MB NonECC 333MHz DDR Memory (1x256)"

I read this as meaning there is 256MB in one slot, leaving the other free
for upgrade.

This page here gives some more info -

http://www.orcalogic.co.uk/asp/prodtype.asp?prodtype=9451&ft=M&st=1

The Dimension appears to operate on 333 or 400MHz memory.

This makes me think that I have to remove the existing memory (which runs at
333MHz) and replace with 1 x 1GB DDR400 Module, otherwise the whole lot will
run at 333.

The site also suggests installing in pair might be better (2 x 512MB
DDR400).

My plan would probably be to go with the two x 512 from this site, unless
you think differently!

Many thanks again for all the advice.

According to this, your motherboard supports dual channel. So 2x512MB
would be a good config.

http://www.crucial.com/store/listparts.aspx?model=Dimension 3000

This is a table extracted from an 865/875 motherboard manual. There
is a relationship between the FSB speed of the processor, and the
max memory speed. For FSB800, you could profit from the use of DDR400
memory. For FSB533, the memory will run at DDR333 (you could install
a DDR400 stick, but the motherboard will run it at DDR333 instead).
Faster memory, can be run at slower speeds (what the table shows,
is the allowed memory speeds, but the table is not showing that in
fact DDR400 could be used with any of those processor).

"Table 2 Memory frequency/CPU FSB synchronization
CPU FSB DDR DIMM Type Memory Frequency
800 MHz PC3200/PC2700*/PC2100 400/333*/266 MHz
533 MHz PC2700/PC2100 333/266 MHz
400 MHz PC2100 266 MHz

* When using 800MHz CPU FSB, PC2700 DDR DIMMs may run
only at 320MHz (not 333MHz) due to chipset limitation."

You can use CPUZ, to check what FSB your processor has.
http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php

The Dell site has some partial information that agrees with the above.
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/dim3000/en/SM/specs.htm

So 2x512MB PC3200 DDR400 memory should be fine.

Dual channel does actually help the graphics performance of the 865.
I've had one 865G system here for a short time, and I can actually
tell whether it is running in single or dual channel, just by
watching how snappy the desktop graphics redraw is. Because that
system was bought for someone else, it was purchased pre-built,
and the people who put it together, managed to botch the dual
channel feature twice. They got it right on the third try.
The funniest part of that adventure was, they'd never even
heard of memtest86+, or knew how to test memory

Paul

 

[GT]

Thanks for this (and for the other helpful replies).

There was a "double memory" offer on when I bought (glad about that!).
The spec shows,-

"256 MB NonECC 333MHz DDR Memory (1x256)"

I read this as meaning there is 256MB in one slot, leaving the other free
for upgrade.

This page here gives some more info -

http://www.orcalogic.co.uk/asp/prodtype.asp?prodtype=9451&ft=M&st=1

The Dimension appears to operate on 333 or 400MHz memory.

This makes me think that I have to remove the existing memory (which runs
at 333MHz) and replace with 1 x 1GB DDR400 Module, otherwise the whole lot
will run at 333.

The site also suggests installing in pair might be better (2 x 512MB
DDR400).

My plan would probably be to go with the two x 512 from this site, unless
you think differently!

With 2x512, you will have to buy (obviously) 2 512MB DIMMS and throw away /
ebay your existing RAM. You would have a total of 1GB. But if you buy just a
single 1GB DIMM, you can put it in the spare slot, along with your existing
256MB and get 1.25GB RAM. The 2x512 would be slightly faster (nothing you
would notice - maybe a few %), but the 1.25GB gives you more RAM and no
waste/hassle!

 

[Lorenzo]

With 2x512, you will have to buy (obviously) 2 512MB DIMMS and throw away
/
ebay your existing RAM. You would have a total of 1GB. But if you buy just
a single 1GB DIMM, you can put it in the spare slot, along with your
existing 256MB and get 1.25GB RAM. The 2x512 would be slightly faster
(nothing you would notice - maybe a few %), but the 1.25GB gives you more
RAM and no waste/hassle!

Thanks! Job now done. Will monitor the difference it makes. Google Earth
certainly seems to load up a lot faster and move around more freely.

You should have warned me to use a dust mask!!!! I didn't realise how much
gets in to the back.

After booting up, it asked me if I wanted to enter "setup". I said "No" and
just continued with the boot. The RAM is showing at its full value on the
Control Panel > System tab so I take it there is nothing more to do.

Many thanks again for all the advice. Collectively this group has saved me
an unnecessary upgraded PC. Maybe next year (or a new laptop!)

L.