Contemplating Core 2 Duo in old Asus P5GD1?

Hey guys,

I recently got a friend to post a question for me regarding, cheap PSU's and new components I was looking to purchase, including a x1950 pro.

I'll start off with my pc specs, then get on to the question at hand:

Power Supply: FSP 350-60MDN with 350WDC output, with 22A on 3.3V rail, 21A on 5V rail, and 25A on 12Vrail.

Motherboard (and what I know about it): Asus P5GD1 -

Intel LGA775 Pentium 4 CPU
Intel 915P chipset
PCI Express Architecture
AI NOS™
AI NET2
Dual-Channel DDR400
High Definition Audio
Serial ATA & IDE RAID

P4 540 3.2GHz HT 1MB L2 cache
2 * 512MB DDR PC3200
250GB SATA Hard drive 7200RPM
1 DVD drive
1 DVD-RW / CD-RW drive
memory card port thingy :/ xD

After upgrading to 1GB ram, and the x1950pro i enjoyed the performance gain, but I was concious of the fact that my CPU does not perform very well in games.

For instance during a Counter-Strike Source video stress test, I can achieve excellent fps on max settings, because the graphics card is doing all the work, however in game, performance is less than admirable, due to the heavy physics related gameplay that my current CPU does not seem to be able to handle very well, with fps really dropping in a firefight.

My question to you, is can I install a Core 2 Duo on my current mobo? Will the power be sufficient? ( I believe currently I draw about 250-275W from PSU) and are their any foreseeable problems or is it all fine and dandy? :D

Sorry for the long drawn out post,

Thanks for your time :)

Dave

you may be able to but it's doubtful

it would have to be the pentium core 2 duo's or E4*** Range due to the FSB restrictions.. that said I don't know if they will be supported.

Assuming that you can't upgrade the CPU, you could do a core 2 duo upgrade for as little as £110ish

E2140 1.6ghz ~£40
2GB PC5300 ~25
Suitable motherboard ~£45 (with overclocking potential)

The CPU I was considering was this:

Intel Core 2 Duo E4500 S775 2.2GHz 1mb Cache 800FSB

But I really do not know very much about motherboards or compatibility issues between them and CPU's; I only know that they are both the same socket xD

Dave

I'm fairly sure the motherboard is P4 only. If it was 945 rather than 915 it would be perfect.

that said at £75 for the upgrade you were considering you might as well go with the above upgrade. You could sell the old CPU, RAM and Mobo to foot some of the bill :)

You can easily overclock the E2140 to 2.6Ghz+ without doing very much at all. It's not as scary as you might think and help is always at hand.

it wont support them. the 915 chipset does not even support dual core processors.
that said new boards,memory and processors are cheap these days

Hey,

Ok thanks for your help once again =D

I think I'll sit on this one for a while, to get an idea of how much I can spend. I did see some motherboard bundles over at Novatech, that a friend showed me, with the core 2 duo bundles starting at £200:

# Intel Core 2 Duo E6550
# 2048Mb DDR2 667MHz
# ATX
# Core 2 Duo
# Intel P35 Chipset
(Sorry I can't post any links yet xD)

Although would any of the cheaper bundles involving Pentium D's be good? If I'm going to upgrade, it would be nice to be able to get the best out of my x1950pro on some newer games, that are heavily CPU dependent as well.

I'm not sure how to thank you guys as seen in the information under your avatars though.

Thank you once again :rockon2:

Dave

2GB of RAM can be had for as low as £24 - £30 for the speeds you will want/need (PC5300/P6400)

If you don't want to overclock then a basic board will only cost you around £50, although you might want to spend £60 on something half decent (abit IP-35E).

So for £200 you could get the above and the E6550 or slightly better E6750 and still overclock if you wanted to try that upto around 3.4GHz quite easily I think.

if you add another £30ish pounds to the £200 you would be able to get a quad core Q6600 which I can thoroughly recommend. It's a fantastic chip and offers so much power for multi-tasking as well as games.