Windows 7: Old CPU help please

Hi there have a question regarding a couple of old computers ive found and was wondering which CPU will perform better and if there was any idea on how much buy.



One is a P4 3.0 GHZ
and the other is a Pentium D 945 3.4 GHZ (First generation or dual core i believe)

Logic would tell me that the Pentium D will out perform the P4 and hopefully quiet substancialy but never no thats why im asking.

Thanks

Hi there
in theory the DUAL should outperform the single provided the software can actually use dual core.

With Windows XP I really don't know but Windows 7 X-86 could in theory if all the conditions were right give you around 40% better improvement.

Of course there are a load of other factors such as slow IDE disks which will immediately eliminate any gain at all from a faster CPU -- also the amount of "Cache" the cpu has etc etc.

Your workload also counts -- running I/O bound Office type applications (email, word etc) won't give you any benefit with a faster CPU but faster disks would pay handsomely.

It's very difficult to actually say what performance you would gain in practice as there's far more than just the CPU involved.

Also on that type of older computer system you would probably have an incredibly slow graphics subsystem as well - further complicating the process.

The best use for these computers is really to load them up with same flavour of Linux and use them as file / print servers.

All this assumes that you can put a decent amount of RAM in the system in the first place. If you only have 512Kb then apart from "paging" issues slow disks will REALLY crucify you no matter how fast the CPU.

Cheers
jimbo.

Pentium D 945 3.4 GHZ is a more capable processor.

Performance depends on what you ask it to do.

Thanks for your reply Jimbo. Would want to put Win 7 64 bit on but the same problem lies with the other computer with the lack of drivers for the onboard audio. The onbourd audio is C-Media CMI9880L which doesn't even have Vista support drivers that i can find. Have the same problem with other motherboard not having drivers to support Realtek ALC880.

Think ill go back 2 xp and wait till i get some money for a new system

Thanks