T9300 C2duo vs. my old desktop performance? (=noob)

Hey guys,

I'm trying to get a laptop to do music production on. The best performance I am able to purchase is a C2duo T9300 2.5Ghz processor with 800fsb & 6MbL2. (Because centrino2 montevina computers are either not available to me in Canada or do not offer support for XP (vista is not satisfactory for music production at this time)).

I don't know much about computers, but my current old desktop has the specs:
Intel Pentium4 2.6Ghz 800 fsb,
Comparing the two, it looks like the performance on the new laptop might be no better than on my current desktop. This is very depressing.
Or is it possible that the laptop will perform better because it is Core 2 duo even though 2.5Ghz < 2.6Ghz?

I guess I don't understand too much the meaning of the Ghz on a processor.

Thanks for any help!
PEACE

 

core2duo will outperform this life and the next one the core solo processors... if what u want is to make processor intenvsive tasks then u will see difference.

(just think that with the core2Duo u have ~2X2.5 Ghz VS ur actual one 1X2.6 Ghz

 

My Pentium M 1.6 GHz outperforms my 3GHz PIV desktop by about 5 or 10%. My Core Duo is 1.5 times faster than the Pentium M, and then the 9300 is TWICE faster than that. Do the math

GHz means close to nothing nowadays, it's all in the architecture of the CPU.

 

If the music software/program you use can utilize the two cores of the CPU, it will be much, much faster than your old P4....

And the P4 maybe having a L2 cache of about 1Mb or so....!! But the 6MB L2 cache of the T9300 is pretty useful, since it can store more data from the frequently used main memory locations, as compared to the P4..!! So, when the processor needs data, it first looks into the cache. If the data it needs can be found there, it can retrieve that data with little or no delay. Only if the data isn't there does the processor need to look into the slower RAM.

 

The laptop will be far better. The raw clock speed is only meaningful when comparing two processors with the same architecture. Not only is the Core2Duo dual core, but it is much more efficient than a Pentium4 at almost every task one can think of. For example, for running ROOT (program which only uses one of the two cores), my T9300 gets 1237 ROOTmarks whereas a P4 running at 2.4 GHz only gets about 600.

If you can somehow use both cores (as I generally do when compiling), the Core2Duo should be roughly 4 times better than a similarly clocked P4.

 

Whoa...these posts aren't quite accurate. It is NOT the case that the Core 2 Duo gives you 2x2.5 GHz versus 1 x 2.6 for the Pentium IV for most tasks. Most programs can only use one of the cores, so you get 1x2.5 GHz for most programs even on the Core 2 Duo. If your program can utilize both cores (a dual or multithreaded program) then you will get 2x2.5 GHz performance, but it's best to assume that your programs cannot use both cores until you find out otherwise.

And it's also not true that GHz doesn't mean hardly anything these days. Architecture does play a large role, but a 2.5 GHz Core 2 is a lot faster than a 1.5 GHz Core 2.

However, a Core processor of the same clock speed as a Pentium 4 will be much faster, even if only one core can be used. In my experience, a Core 2 of the same clock speed (GHz) as a Pentium 4 Northwood such as yours gives about 1.85 times the performance for single-threaded programs - the exact amount varies with task. Thus a 2.5 GHz Core 2 would give the performance of about a 4.6 GHz Pentium 4 - 75% faster than your current one. And if your program can use both cores, you'll get 3.5 times the performance. Intel also has been improving their processors' media capabilities - a newer instruction set called [wiki]SSE3[\wiki] is included with the Core 2 that isn't in your Northwood Pentium - so you may get even more benefit than that. The bottom line is, you'll certainly notice an increase in speed.

 

To put things in perspective, my 3 year old laptop would decimate a pentium 4 3.2HT OC'd to 3.6GHz. I know this because it beat it in every synthetic test I could throw at it, as well as performed real world tasks faster. You will be VERY pleasantly surprised at how much fast it will be. Now compare my C2D and its like night and day between the old laptop and the newer one.

 

OK, that is a bit of a relief! That gives me a better idea.
Now I can look forward to this thing.

Good to know about the function of the larger cache too.

Thanks for all the comparisons. You guys are helpful!
PEACE

 

actually your desktop may seem faster.
It sounds strange, but the apps you are running do not require much more than a pentium 4. If your pentium 4 had a fast harddrive like a wd raptor and your new laptop has a 5400rpm drive or even a 7200rpm drive. your desktop will still start up and load basic programs faster.
If you are planning on doing say photoshop, video editing or gaming, the t9300 will blow your pentium 4 away.

In most cases, many people who think their system is slow, jump to get a faster processor and realize afterwards its still the same speed. I have seen this many times in my experience, and many a times, I have been told that my work has made the system run a thousand times better, when all I did was upgrade the harddrive, and clean up the registry.

K-TRON