A question of CPU's

[SPKmes]

I have a 4-5 year old PC. My system runs with a P4 dual core 3 Ghz, 128mb ATi radeon 9600Gt card (AGP), 1.5Gb ram and I use a sound card.

Now other than having what I think is a reasonable CPU, my system isn't that uber and yet I am running High res with shadows turned off and everything else turned on incl. skins. My card is set to application control. I have been online for a total of 10 mins and my frames started at about 28. By the end of the 10 mins I was starting to get up to 40 on instances but averaging 30-35. Now to some this may seem unplayable but honestly I don't really notice that much between 30 and 75 which is what I was playing with prior to update(there is a little yes but not huge). I never got into any majorly heavy action but as I am testing things out and tweaking I was in an area that had about 20 guys 10 each side and staying low to the ground while in the fight and had a couple of small stutters but nothing too bad.

Now I'm not to sure on what others who are having issues are running with but I thought I'd put this up as a read for some.

Does the CPU have the ability to make a difference as most of the low end PC people are saying it is near unplayable and if so although it may be difficult to find one for the older model of PC  would a cpu upgrade be a good choice? As opposed to a graphics card.

I have been getting my parts second hand from computer recyclers they have plenty of old school parts and cheap( however you need to know what you are looking for)Most I have found are pretty knowledgeable also.And honestly...why pay full price for something that you will eventually update soon anyway.

So as I have said this is just to see if this can make an impact and if it does, perhaps people can look for a CPU that has a little more oompf than what they presently have. If not then you have just wasted a bit of your life on some useless information....sorry...

[gyrene81]

I have a 4-5 year old PC. My system runs with a P4 quad core 3 Ghz, (sorry unsure of speed), 128mb ATi radeon 9600Gt card (AGP)

Are you sure that's a quad core processor and not just a P4 3GHz? 4 yrs ago quad core 3Ghz (<---that's the processor speed) wasn't sold...or was your old motherboard able to handle the quad core processor upgrade?

[SPKmes]

i'm pretty sure it is (was shocked myself) I will double check when I get home. no upgrades. if it is not then this post still stands as a thought for others to look at their cpus. .... so what is the mzh part of it? if Ghz is speed. 

I go by feel in regards to PC's.

[gyrene81]

i'm pretty sure it is (was shocked myself) I will double check when I get home. no upgrades. if it is not then this post still stands as a thought for others to look at their cpus. .... so what is the mzh part of it? if Ghz is speed. 

I go by feel in regards to PC's.

MHz is Megahertz (million cycles per second)  GHz is Gigahertz (billion cycles per second)...both are "speed ratings" for processors, memory, other electronic gadgets.

[SPKmes]

Ok looked again and you are correct in your questioning... It is a 3ghz dual core P4.

[gyrene81]

Cool...did you get that information from the dxdiag page or from your device manager? The reason I ask is because dxdiag on my old P4 2.4GHz says (2 cpus) when in reality it's a single core.

I don't personally see a lot of CPU usage once the game is up and running, task manager shows around 50% steady on my P4 2.4GHz...less on my dual core.

Your video card could probably use updating but you're going to have a hard time finding a good AGP graphics card.

Might be able to find a good replacement here:

Newegg AGP Cards

[Anodizer]

Ok looked again and you are correct in your questioning... It is a 3ghz dual core P4.

There is no Pentium 4 dual core..  The next step after Pentium 4 was Pentium D..  Maybe you're thinking the Pentium 4 Hyperthread which is not dual core..
If you have 2 separate Pentium 4 processors, that's a different story..  Then you have Dual Processor....Not dual core...  But I think it's probably safe to say
you don't have a Dual Processor Pentium 4 Machine unless you have one of the cheaper Dual Xeon machines which were much more common..

[SPKmes]

ok so reading this it is not a dual core. I have the (2 cpu) P4 as you have say there Gyrene..... My question in reality has been answered... I thank you guys....

[Tigger29]

SPK, keep in mind that 'modern day' processors run circles around your 3Ghz P4 processor.

My old 1.86Ghz Core2Duo would run circles around your 3.0Ghz P4 (I just upgraded again to a 2.8Ghz C2D).  Why?  Because even though it is technically 'slower', it can do more AT ONCE... I like to explain it like this... your processor is like a two lane rural road with a speed limit of 70mph.  Mine is like a seven lane free with a speed limit of 55mph.  Yes it's technically slower, but it can handle a HECK OF A LOT more traffic at once.

Aces High is designed to take advantage of all of those lanes, whereas some older programs may only be designed to use one.. it just depends on the programming of it all.  Obviously there is a LOT more to it than that but to put it in very basic terms, I think it's a fair comparison.

Another problem is that the motherboard and other hardware have to be able to take advantage of those extra 'lanes' as well, and a modern processor isn't likely to physically fit in the socket of your computer motherboard (and even if it did it'd likely be running slowly anyhow)... so that makes it more of a rebuild than an upgrade.

I hope this helps!