I just got my new computer working, and while I'm very satisfied with the performance increase, I'm a little confused about some of the results of my comparisons.
My previous cpu was an Athlon 64 3400+ with a Radeon x1900gt and 1gig of ram. Honestly, it was fine. It took everything I threw at it except Crysis and playstation 2 emulation (ever since my ps2 died I really wanted to be able to play on an emulator). I upgraded to an Intel Core 2 Duo E8400. Currently I have 1 gig of ram but I'm waiting another stick to arrive. I continued to use the x1900gt while I waited for my Nvidia 9600gt to come.
So, at the moment the only thing different about my new system was the cpu. Same GPU, same 1 gig of ram, same hard drive (with a fresh windows install of course), so I wanted to play around while I waited for more parts to come. Crysis that ran barely playable on low on my old system ran smooth and problem free on medium settings, and playstation 2 emulation was full speed and playable. The system reported the cpu to stay steady at around 30 degrees (I guess it's true that intels run cooler than amds), so I was satisfied.
On to basic use. I was curious when the computer would start stalling and slowing down from my abuse of multi-tasking. Everything was running nicely until I decided to burn a dvd. The dvd burning was fine, mind you, but just restoring a minimized Firefox window during a dvd burn caused everything to pause for about 10 seconds. I assumed maybe the slowdown was also contributed to by 1 gig of ram and my anti-virus and windows updates running then too. I didn't really care, but I don't recall my old system ever getting like that unless it's been running straight for a few days.
Also, there seemed to be almost no difference in 3dmark06 performance between the two systems (the cpu test with all the tanks still ran at a piddly 1-2fps). Hopefully I can break 10000 with my 9600gt I just got.
There were emmense differences in some areas where the E8400 outperformed my 3400+ three times over, but there were some areas where there seemed to be no difference at all. I'm not disappointed at all. I'm glad to have this system, but just a little surprised. I got more then I hoped for in the areas I wanted to improve, but got less then I expected other areas (though they were areas I wasn't concerned about so I didn't care).
Now that I'm finished I wonder why I wrote this. It's long and nobody's going to want to read it, but at least it killed some time at work (When I writing in English nobody asked questions because nobody can read it
)
Huge performance boost... I think
Linear Mode
