what kind of performance gain might I see from upgrading from a P4 3.0ghz to a 3.8ghz

I called my reseller about upgrading from the P4 630 to the 3.8ghz 670 model and he didn't seem to think that I would notice any performance gain.

What kind of performance gains could I expect with such an upgrade? If I could just get an extra 10-15 frames per second on demanding games like FEAR then that I think that it would be worth it (if and when intel enacts those price cuts they promised us back in mid july)

I trust my reseller, but I just have alot of trouble comprehending that the pricey 670 isn't going to see any gain over a 630. Why else would the 670 be so much more expensive???

 

I don't think you'd notice the difference either. The 3.8 GHz processor will be faster, but it's not going to get you 10-15 FPS improvement in games. The speed that games like FEAR run at is dependant on the GPU, not the CPU.

 

don't buy the 670. what video card do you have? also, if you're buying a new computer you should NOT be buying a p4. C2D or AM2 offer better performance at a lower price, so a p4 makes no sense.

 

It is true that the P4 platform is not very good compared to what else is available today. You may want to consider another processor platform to go with.

 

If it's for the laptop in your sig. Then I think you should max out the memory if it supports 2GB, and getting a 7200RPM HDD. You'll notice better performance than buying the processor IMO.

 

The CPU won't help gaming. It'll help more with rendering, video converting, other CPU intensive tasks, but all games (especially recent ones) are essentially GPU limited. You'd have to get a couple of 7900GTX's in SLI to start running into CPU limitations.

 

The computer that I wanted to upgrade is a z81sp (listed below in my sig). It's got a 6800go in it and yet when I play fear, the game stutters (not alot, but sometimes it will randomly stutter during a firefight and really mess me up). I ran the performance test in the settings menu and the framerates are all over the place. Does anyone think that more RAM might improve the framerate???

 

Are you sure its not overheating? Have you cleaned your internals recently on your laptop?

I know a p4 throttles itself back drastically when it reaches between 70-80c so it maybe that.

Also p4 produces so much heat it maybe causing your graphics to overheat. Try to monitor the temp of both cpu and gpu.

 

FEAR is not a well-coded game, the framerates are all over on my PC too.

If your hard drive light is blinking or active while you are playing the game, that is an indication you are out of RAM, and using the Page File, which is very slow and explains the stuttering. Getting 2GB of RAM would fix that. I noticed the difference right away when I upgraded my desktop's RAM from 1GB to 2GB.

The CPU is not the problem with your framerates as posted. What are your video settings - resolution, etc.?

 

Chaz is totally right. I play a game named America's Army. I gave my brother 512 MB of my 1.5 GB so I downgraded to 1 GB. After that I felt stuttering and lower fps. But after taking back the 512 MB, it was totally over. So upgrading to 2 GB could really give you a performance boost.

Charlie