thoughts on a PC upgrade

[Caliga]

 

[DontSayBanana]

I'd go for the OS or the video card, myself.  With as much RAM as you have, you're not going to get much of an upgrade for less than $200.

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

Video card all the way.
GTX 260, or anything else above that when comes boxing day.

You don't think the CPU is too much of a bottleneck?  If you trust that Windows Experience Index thingy, it's the lowest rated system component I have (5.0).

The only CPU bottleneck a quad-core upgrade would address in this case is CPU loading.  Since every consumer Windows app I've seen so far is single-threaded you should only see a benefit if you try to run more than one CPU-monopolizing process at a time.  If you were, say running two EVE clients at once going from dual to quad would make a moderate difference.  If you only run one thing at a time you probably won't see a difference.

The reason for that is, other than the core count, clock frequency, and L2 cache size, there really isn't any difference between the processors in the Core microarchitecture.  They have the same memory controllers, the same SSE and other computational units, the same L1 cache, etc.  That's how Intel rolls with their microarchitectures; moving around within it gives marginal gains for most applications.

[DontSayBanana]

Intel tried to stay on top by adding quickly to SSE, but they seem to have temporarily plateau'd at SSE3, which I don't mind, because that makes it so I can run my GameCube emulation on my fairly wimpy laptop.

[katmai]

Cal: Stalker

I get to stalk him, too.  And Brazen

derspicy is afraid I'm gonna nab his sunglasses.

[Caliga]

I get to stalk him, too.  And Brazen

Actually, I never friended her on Latitude, come to think of it. 

[DontSayBanana]

I get to stalk him, too.  And Brazen

Actually, I never friended her on Latitude, come to think of it. 

Or me.

You: fail at joining the Languish Stalker Club.

[Caliga]

Well I had no idea you had an account dude. 

I just sent a request to your AOL account, which is the only email addy I have for ya.

[derspiess]

I get to stalk him, too.  And Brazen

Actually, I never friended her on Latitude, come to think of it. 

Or me.

You: fail at joining the Languish Stalker Club.

Who else is in there?  I only have Brazen & Cal in my Latitude.

[katmai]

[Caliga]

It amuses me how folks are getting indigant about not being Latituded when we didn't even know they had the proper hardware/interest in the first place.

[katmai]

It amuses me how folks are getting indigant about not being Latituded when we didn't even know they had the proper hardware/interest in the first place.

how dumb can you be cal?
Seems you need to go read the original latitude thread again.

[Barrister]

I doubt more RAM is going to help once you already have 4 GB.

Yeah, just threw it out there as an option but not one I am seriously considering.

I disagree. 

[Caliga]

how dumb can you be cal?
Seems you need to go read the original latitude thread again.

Unlike you I let sleeping threads lie.

[DontSayBanana]

Who else is in there?  I only have Brazen & Cal in my Latitude.

Besides them, me.  Brazen's got my gmail address and Cal should have it sitting in his inbox now.