Is a processor swap worth it?

[spauls]

All,

I have the GUI client running on my wife’s Sempron 64 2800. My old 64 2800+ Newcastle is sitting in a box… do you think I would get a PPD jump from a swap? I know the Newcastle had much better benchmarks, but I had it clocked much higher than I would if I were to put it on my wife’s machine. (her current box has poor air flow and a junk PSU).

Thanks,
spauls

[DriveEuro]

GPU client uses something liek 70-80% of the CPU just for polling. There will be little gain though. I doubt your Sempron is holding back the GPU client.

On average how much of the CPU is being utilized by the GPU client?

[spauls]

I'm not using the GPU client... I'm using the GUI clinet (Windows Single CPU graphical user interface client)

[DriveEuro]

Good lord I have to read more closely.

Yes, a processor swap will help you then. The increase in L2 cache alone will help.

[MrObvious]

Too bad it's not 939 otherwise I'd say get a 3600+ X2.

I don't know if it's worth it to swap it out much. Just a mild OC should be sufficient.

[spauls]

The point is that I have the second processor just sitting there. My wife is plenty happy with her semmpy as it is, everything she does is in a browser so she doesn't need more. So the only reason for the change would be if I would get a PPD jump from the newcastle over the sempron.

[spyda05]

if you have the other processor just sitting around, i would throw it in. your not out anything so why not?

[digitaldd]

I'm in a similar boat, have a A64 3200+ Venice and seeing some good deals on socket 939 cpus, looking for either dual 2ghz cores or a single core over 2.4ghz. I figure if I can get something around $100 it'll be worth it.

[lilrabbit129]

I'll second that, the 3800+ X2s are looking very tempting. Last I checked they were around 120 or so.

That would of course produce a new problem. I'd have a 3000+ thats just sitting around, begging for a motherboard to fold once more...

[frozndevl]

Or you could sell it and therefore your x2 would cost less.

[spauls]

After looking at the average PPD of the two chips there is very little diffrence between the two, so I'm going to skip on the swap for now... Thanks for the input.

cheers,
spauls