What Do You Think Of These Socket 478 Core Duos?

[westy159]

http://www.rlsupplies.co.uk/Products...entID=476&MID=

I was surprised they made these for the - what I thought was obsolete - socket 478 motherboards but there they are, dual core processors (although not Dual 2 Duo).
My current PC:

Dell 4600i (Mobo Socket 478)
Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz
1GB PC3200 DDR RAM
Geforce 6800XT 128MB

Its starting to struggle with todays games. Runs Oblivion on 'medium' settings at a low but playable frame rate.
I do not believe I would see much of an improvement with a new graphics card until I upgrade that aging CPU.
A new build would be reccommended, I know, but thats not really possible till the end of this year.

So would one of those processors be worth the upgrade or should I wait it out?

Cheers.

[Doono]

The core duo series was not very good (don't get it confused with the core 2 duo chips), and at the price of those chips your better off buying a new motherboard and cpu.

this chip owns the crap out of the cheapest one they have and it's cheaper....
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=472118

the only issues are
1. they haven't got it in stock
2. don't know if the motherboard dell supplied you will take it. Not sure if the socket means it will work and dell have a nasty habbit of making sure you can't change things. My friend bought a dell and they superglued the heatsink to the motherboard, it was a pity because it was a very good bit of copor heatsink which would have been usefull elsewhere.

[westy159]

Thanks for the find and advice, Doono. I will look into the compatibility issues (the people at the Dell forums are very helpful). Perhaps I wont need a full rebuild after all.

[Erik]

IIRC Core Duo is a CPU for laptops, not desktops.
This doesn't mean it won't run on a desktop of course, but you usually have to pay a lot more for laptop CPU's and their performance isn't as good as desktop models.

If you are just going to play games you don't really need a dual core (yet).
So you could consider upgrading to a Pentium 4 3400Mhz (which I think is the fastest CPU for the socket 478).
But replacing your Mobo is probably a better option.

About Oblivion:
I don't think your CPU is a limiting factor in that game at all.
My Athlon XP 3000+ can run it just fine.
You should try Oldblivion: it's a mod that greatly reduces the graphics requirements of Oblivion.
If you can run Oldblivion on high frame rates then you'll know your graphics card is the limiting factor and not your CPU.

[westy159]

About Oblivion:
I don't think your CPU is a limiting factor in that game at all.
My Athlon XP 3000+ can run it just fine.
You should try Oldblivion: it's a mod that greatly reduces the graphics requirements of Oblivion.
If you can run Oldblivion on high frame rates then you'll know your graphics card is the limiting factor and not your CPU.

Oldblivion was not necessary afterall. It appeared that the tweaking I did to my PC to get it to play Oblivion at the best performance possible was actually hindering it. Ill be more wary of tips I pick up from the net from now.

[drak10687]

Core Duo and Core 2 Duo both have a laptop and desktop version. Obviously though, the desktop version is better performance wise. However, the Yonah was originally made just as a mobile processor, but doing a quick google search shows that there are desktop motherboards which can use a Core Duo. On the desktop, the Conroe is a lot better than the Yonah, but there is not that much difference between the Yonah and the Merom, at least not much real world difference.
Core Duo Yonah (mobile and desktop)
Core Duo Merom (mobile)
Core Duo Conroe (desktop)