Core i5/i7- how do they compare to Core 2s?

Oh and the E5200, depending on the motherboard AND Power supply, can be OCed pretty well.

 

The P4 chugs a lot- my uncle used my old P4 2.6ghz and its pretty painful to use, and that was a fresh installation of XP. Plus the PC itself was getting shitty, with strange lines over the screen (had a new graphics card put in after the previous ones fan died thus it started overheating).. its loud as hell etc etc.

Got a Core2 Quad 2.5ghz, 6gb RAM. All the prebuilt Windows 7 machines come with 64bit, so I reasoned may as well get one with 4+ gig of ram to get some benefit from going 64bit. Core i5s and i7s were an extra £200 or so, but had lower spec graphics cards or smaller hard drives.

 

P4 2.6GHz 128MB RAM?

Let's see Windows XP retail release date: October 25, 2001
Intel P4 2.6GHz release date: August 25, 2002
P4 2.6 HT May 21, 2003

When XP first came out the fastest CPU around was a P4 2.0 which was state of the art back then.
So I can't imagin a fresh install would be running slow on a CPU that was released a year after the OS, besides off course it being way under spec'ed on memory lane ;-)

 

I ran windows xp for years on a 300mhz cyrix with like 256mb ram and it did fine for web browsing, email and homework for as long as i had it.

 

You realise that the netburst technology used by the Pentium 4 was complete crap? Why do you think AMD 64 were so popular. :banghead:

 

What you have will do fine.

Is it DDR2 or DDR3?


I ask because if that RAM does fail and is out of warranty... DDR3 will be cheaper, whereas DDR2 will be more expensive...

 

Okay, it runs okay with JUST xp on it, but what doesnt? With Firefox and plugins, Windows Live Messenger, and a modern antivirus on, it chugs.

If it was running progams from the year 2002 then it would be as fast as it wa sin 2002 - but its not - its running programs from 2009. 512mb ram. Its adequate yes but it doesnt compare to my own laptop.

 

Oh, and Madhatter, I'm not sure.. but I've never had RAM fail in any machine in this house, so it wasn't really a consideration..