Is the (raw performance) of Core2 Duo/Quad still viable?

[SPBHM]

in some stuff I noticed that the C2Q looks super slow compared to sandy bridge, like h265 enconding, but for basic use it should be enough, one reason I would stay away is simply how old the hardware is and the high chance of failure and difficulty to replace parts, I mean if you want 8GB of DDR2 it's not as easy as DDR3, and if you want a DDR3 775 board it's not as easy or cheap, same for the good ones, like p45

still I think most of the time I would be quite fine with a q9650 or something around that.

 

[VirtualLarry]

The "raw" performance of the Core 2 duo/quad is irrelevant when a ready to run refurb i3 machine with OS can be bought from ebay for around $100.-

I don't think anyone here was really suggesting going out and getting a Core2 machine, were they? (I mean, not in this thread. I explored the possibility of building one out of ebay parts in the Motherboard section. It came out to around $68, for an ECS G41 DDR2 board / E8400 / 2x2GB DDR2-800 / heatsink.)

Are you then of the opinion that existing Core2 rigs should be scrapped, and not "passed down"?

Just wondering where you stand on existing Core2 rigs.

 

[whm1974]

I don't think anyone here was really suggesting going out and getting a Core2 machine, were they? (I mean, not in this thread. I explored the possibility of building one out of ebay parts in the Motherboard section. It came out to around $68, for an ECS G41 DDR2 board / E8400 / 2x2GB DDR2-800 / heatsink.)

Are you then of the opinion that existing Core2 rigs should be scrapped, and not "passed down"?

Just wondering where you stand on existing Core2 rigs.

I'm of that opinion myself that anything older then around five years should be scraped, especially if was low end for it's time.

 

[escrow4]

VL, if you scrapped all your boxes and old crap and bought a shiny new i7 6700K and fat Z170 mobo - or the upcoming Kaby Lake equivalent - you'd be way more happier than fiddling around with rubbish. Websites have gotten so fat and bloated:

http://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm

You want a new quad for longevity.

 

[Torn Mind]

I'm of that opinion myself that anything older then around five years should be scraped, especially if was low end for it's time.

What use is there for old solder and circuit boards? Scrapping metal means reusable material. But how can ICs and circuitboards be repurposed or at least, responsibly disposed of?

 

[whm1974]

What use is there for old solder and circuit boards? Scrapping metal means reusable material. But how can ICs and circuitboards be repurposed or at least, responsibly disposed of?

Yeah e-waste is a major problem with no easy solution. I've been wondering if recycling the material of ICs and circuit boards cost more then producing new raw material.

 

[krumme]

pretty much all cheap asrocks from that era are either dead or will die soon enough.

As for core2 itself; it's still a pretty capable architecture and still very usable. It's just that power consumption is high for its performance and media playback can be an issue with newer formats like hevc.

But if you can grab an OEM pc for something like 20-30$ and a cheap 60gb, you got yourself a very capable pc on cheap for everyday tasks.

I thought all mb from that era had solid caps snd would last?

 

[poofyhairguy]

Just wondering where you stand on existing Core2 rigs.

The most important computers in my house (my servers) use Core 2 Duos. I made them in 2010 and haven't found a reason to replace them yet (yes I know it would save some power).

 

[Red Hawk]

Core 2 Duo is still viable for everyday use, ie web browsing, watching videos, typing up Word documents. My mom and my brother both still use Core 2 PCs. Both the same model, Dell Dimension 9200s that my dad was able to bring home from his office a few years ago back in 2011 when the company upgraded to new computers. They were originally specced with Core 2 Duo E6600s 2.4 GHz, 4 GB of 667 MHz DDR2 RAM, Radeon X1300 Pros (yeesh), and standard SATA II HDDs. We've since upgraded the PC my brother uses to a 2.4 GHz Q6600, Radeon R9-270X, 8 GB of 800 MHz DDR2, and a Samsung Evo 850 SSD for the boot drive, and replaced the PSU. Basically the only components original to that PC at this point are the mobo, the case, and the DVD drive. Upgrades to the PC my mom uses have been less extensive, really just replacing the PSU and slotting in one of my older GPUs I had hanging around, a Radeon HD 5770. Both run Windows 10.

One thing that annoys my mom about her PC is that video playback on Facebook tends to repeatedly stutter and hitch (this is with Chrome). Playing video directly from YouTube is fine, though -- the issue only occurs when the video is embedded on other websites. So I'm not sure if that's an issue with the CPU speed just not cutting it, or if it's a software/driver support issue for the browser's hardware acceleration with the 5770 on Windows 10. I haven't extensively tested the issue, and I haven't bothered trying recent games on it.

I have done more extensive testing with my brother's PC. It is viable for gaming -- to an extent. My brother uses an older 1440x900 monitor, so that's what I've tested it at. The stock Q6600 certainly bottlenecks the 270X, but Mantle/Vulkan/DirectX 12 breathes some new life into it. Dragon Age Inquisition, Doom 2016, and Deus Ex Mankind Divided all get a boost when using the low-level APIs, able to be run at mostly high settings. DAI sticks close to 30 FPS, matching console performance (though DAI's Mantle renderer has frametime issues on Windows 10 that were never fixed, which can be mitigated by enforcing a 30 FPS cap with command line arguments). Doom reaches between 50-60 FPS in most situations, though one level, the Argent Tower, seems to hit the CPU especially hard, requiring shadows, a CPU intensive setting, to be lowered from medium to the lowest setting. Upon doing that, though, it's smooth sailing once again. Deus Ex Mankind Divided fluctuates between 20 and 30 FPS in the larger, NPC heavy city areas. Interestingly, lowering shadow quality doesn't seem to improve DXMD's framerate like it does with Doom. Steam's frame rate counter and MSI Afterburner's frame rate counter actually indicate that DX11 provides higher framerates than DX12, but my subjective impression from playtesting is that DX12 is much smoother and less hitchy than DX11. I have't been able to objectively test that though, as Deus Ex lacks a built-in frame time monitor like what DAI and Doom have. (worth noting is that external software frame rate counters may be inaccurate -- Dragon Age Inquisition and Doom's built in monitors and their results tend to differ from external counters). In any case, GPU usage goes up from 40% to 80% between DX11 and DX12 in DXMD, indicating that DX12 mode is much less CPU bottlenecked on the Q6600.

So that's the testing I've done. My brother also plays a lot of NBA 2K16 on the PC, and is able to play at smooth framerates on high settings. Point is, a stock Kentsfield (quad core version of Conroe) is able to approach the performance of current-gen consoles, especially when using low-level APIs. Its successor, Yorkfield, should be even better. And the answer to the question "do you junk or pass on the Core 2 system to another person" for me is yes, at least a couple years ago, as I basically passed on one of the Dimension 9200s to my brother once I had put the Q6600 in it.

When it comes to Core 2 systems, the real issue may be the longevity of the motherboards rather than the performance of the CPUs, like others have said. I hadn't even thought about that before. Neither PCs' motherboards have gone out on me yet *knocks on wood.*

 

[jimbob200521]

Our work still uses C2D machines until they die, then they replace them and stick them in a closet. At home, my server and main PC are both i7's. My laptop is a C2D and is fine for office work and various web browsing. I also have a C2Q machine running Windows 10 in the bedroom that gets used every once in awhile and it is still a very capable machine for what I want it to do.

 

[rchunter]

I still play farm sim 17 quite a bit on a Q6600, GTX 580, 4gb ddr3.. It runs perfectly fine (1080p). I mainly use it as a internet browsing/word processing computer though.

 

[nismotigerwvu]

I thought all mb from that era had solid caps snd would last?

Nope. I had amassed a small army of socket 775 machines for use in my research lab and for friends/family with basic computing needs and now I'm down to 2 that still have functioning motherboards. It's a shame to have as many Core2Quads and higher model Core2Duos that I do just sitting in a box since it isn't cost effective to find motherboards to plunk them in.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Yeah e-waste is a major problem with no easy solution. I've been wondering if recycling the material of ICs and circuit boards cost more then producing new raw material.

See this thread, it could be considered a companion thread to the current one:

http://www.portvapes.co.uk/?id=Latest-exam-1Z0-876-Dumps&exid=threads/embodied-energy-in-computers.2491861/

 

[VirtualLarry]

VL, if you scrapped all your boxes and old crap and bought a shiny new i7 6700K and fat Z170 mobo - or the upcoming Kaby Lake equivalent - you'd be way more happier than fiddling around with rubbish. Websites have gotten so fat and bloated:

http://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm

You want a new quad for longevity.

Instead of focusing on me, what do you feel about Core2 rigs in general? Should they be scrapped and recycled? Handed down? Continued to run?

And as far as I go, my main rig has a Skylake G4400 OCed, which is good enough for my web browsing needs right now, no need for a quad.

Edit: I read that article, it's pretty good, but IMHO, the conclusions of the article, are that we need a slimmer, faster, WWW, rather than "we need quad-core CPUs".

 

[Sonikku]

When I got my 1060 I put my 7770 into my C2D E6750 system with the intent of overclocking it and keeping it at my mothers to play WoW with. I have no way of knowing whether or not it's enough processing power though as it's only running two gb of ddr2 ram. If I could up that to 8 it might make it all work, but I'm wary of paying the price gouged cost of used ddr2 ram if the cpu isn't up to the task anymore. Even my i5 2500 seems to choke in WoW on ultra.

 

[MajinCry]

Still using my 2011 Phenom II x4 965 BE @ stock 3.4ghz. Only problem with it is AMD's awful draw call performance. If I had an i7 920 (performance equivalent), even without hyperthreading I'd be a happy camper.

Aren't the Core 2 Quads just slow in parallel workloads, due to the die interconnect, with Nehalem being the "fix"? Should be just fine for MMOs, Skyrim, Dark Souls 3 and other not-so-parallel games. Crysis 3 and Battlefield 4 might choke the living daylights out of the thing, though.

 

[daxzy]

I still have Core 2's in service in the family. If they broke down, they would probably be replaced by Atom or Core-i/m series.

 

[monkeydelmagico]

I don't think anyone here was really suggesting going out and getting a Core2 machine, were they? (I mean, not in this thread. I explored the possibility of building one out of ebay parts in the Motherboard section. It came out to around $68, for an ECS G41 DDR2 board / E8400 / 2x2GB DDR2-800 / heatsink.)

Are you then of the opinion that existing Core2 rigs should be scrapped, and not "passed down"?

Just wondering where you stand on existing Core2 rigs.

Yeah I did confuse this thread with the one in the mobo section.....

If it works use it. But if it's busted I wouldn't spend more than half an hour or maybe $20.- to get it working again.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

We had a similar conversation when people started ditching old Pentium 4 PCs for first-gen Atom netbooks/nettops that benchmarked slower.

The CPU performance may be similar, but the older "big-core" CPUs are hamstrung by their age, as well as the age of the supporting interfaces. If an Atom CPU (current or next-gen) has 50-75% (current or expected) the synthetic benchmark performance of a C2D, but has double the memory bandwidth, a higher memory ceiling, supports SATA3 and m.2 interfaces, USB3 support, etc., and does it in a more compact box that is also quieter and uses less power, it will be a better "all-around" computer for most people, when compared to a refurb'd or new-build-from-old-parts C2D system. (Or, in the case of VirtualLarry, lovingly-crafted-from-only-the-finest-artisinal-quality-vintage-parts C2D system.)

However, most people - even (especially?) low income folks - are better served by laptops anyway. (You move a lot, you don't always have internet access at home, etc.)

In the case of "passing along" a C2D system, well, if they're free, it's hard to turn one down, yes. But if you're paying actual cash money for a new-to-you box, IMO it's a different story.

 

[whm1974]

We had a similar conversation when people started ditching old Pentium 4 PCs for first-gen Atom netbooks/nettops that benchmarked slower.

The CPU performance may be similar, but the older "big-core" CPUs are hamstrung by their age, as well as the age of the supporting interfaces. If an Atom CPU (current or next-gen) has 50-75% (current or expected) the synthetic benchmark performance of a C2D, but has double the memory bandwidth, a higher memory ceiling, supports SATA3 and m.2 interfaces, USB3 support, etc., and does it in a more compact box that is also quieter and uses less power, it will be a better "all-around" computer for most people, when compared to a refurb'd or new-build-from-old-parts C2D system. (Or, in the case of VirtualLarry, lovingly-crafted-from-only-the-finest-artisinal-quality-vintage-parts C2D system.)

Not to mention that most new systems(even low end) tend to have more memory then most of the Core 2 era machines could even support.

 

[Ajay]

I'm running a file server with a Q6600 - over kill, but it has served me well for years. My wife's system has a 45nm Quad (forget which one). To me it's slow, but she fine with it and relies more heavily on her mobile devices - so it's fine for now. Adding an SSD made her system much more responsive. With our increasing reliance on mobile devices will will move to using a single system between us the next time I do new build.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Actually for fun earlier this year I kinda made a Core2 gaming machine for a friend out of junk I had laying around.

I took a Q9550 and OCed it to its max (3.8ghz). I added in 8GB of ram (4 slot mobo), gave it a Sata 2 SSD, and my 1GB 7850.

Overall it does an ok job gaming, as it can play most 2011-2013 games with lower settings. The real limit is on some games it has problems getting to 60fps, but if you play 30 fps console-style it works fine.

Actually overall it plays Rocket League better than my G3258 rig ever did.

 

[evident]

my dell d630 w/ a t7500 3gb ram and cheap ssd is barely usable for web surfing in the living room and kitchen. any flash or cpu intensive website brings makes the experience crappy. battery life is still rock solid on that laptop though

 

[VirtualLarry]

There's a solution to that: Don't install Flash Player.

Edit: More seriously, I'm sorry that Core2's not cutting it for you for web browsing. I do find that having Flash Player installed, though, when sites play videos for ads and stuff, it REALLY bogs things down. I've found that since I've not installed it, ads aren't nearly as draining on the system resources, when they are rendered by Waterfox's HTML5 media support.

YMMV, if you can get along without it. But if it's just the Flash ads dragging your experience down, try un-installing it.

I'm "suffering" through browsing with a Celeron J1900, a quad-core Bay Trail Atom, at around 2.4Ghz turbo ("burst") speed. It's not horrible, but it's noticeably slower than a "big-core", and for whatever reason, this forum software is SO bloated, that I have to wait, pause, wait for my text to appear when I'm typing. Which makes fixing typos a PITA. I don't remember this being a problem since getting modems faster than 2400baud.

 

[MrTeal]

Nope. I had amassed a small army of socket 775 machines for use in my research lab and for friends/family with basic computing needs and now I'm down to 2 that still have functioning motherboards. It's a shame to have as many Core2Quads and higher model Core2Duos that I do just sitting in a box since it isn't cost effective to find motherboards to plunk them in.

Heh, we have a couple old boxes here that are still running Win 95 and barring power outages have been on pretty much 24/7 for the better part of 15-20 years. Failures will continue to happen obviously, but a lot of old computers will continue to happily chug along for decades if you let them. When we moved labs this last year we ended up sending some old AT-style, 5 1/4 floppy towers that were hiding on a shelf to the recycle heap that still powered on.