Q: I currently have a 2.53 GhZ Socket 478 Pentium 4 Processor, and want to upgrade to a 3.0 GhZ processor. I will be paying about 80 dollars for the new CPU, so is it worth it? How much increased performance will I notice. I also will be adding 1 GB to 1.7 GB for a total of 2.7. Also, Is it true that XP will not recognize more than 3 GB of Ram? One thing I would like to point out is that I can run Crysis even though the MINIMUM requirement is for a 2.8 Ghz processor, so since I will be going from the not supposed to run it 2.53 to a 3.0 GHz will I get better performance, I know it won't be much but will there probably be some marginal increase in performance? If anyone is curious, I have a 512 MB Graphics card. my video card is seperate, it is a Radeon X1650PRO . And since I have an HP motherboard, I have heard I am not able to overclock anything on it, I don't even see how to get into my BIOS at startup to do so, so if anyone knows how to overclock the CPU with an HP motherboard please tell me how to do so! I thinkt the motherboard's model number is 085Ch, and as I said it is a Hewlett-Packard. I don't want a faster CPU JUST for gaming, but overall performance. Also, I have the best graphics card that my motherboard I can support on a mere AGP slot, and I don't want to totally rebuild a computer and buy another motherboard until I am ready to make the final shift to vista, which will likely be a long time. The main thing I need to know is adding more RAM and a better CPU, 2.5 to 3.0 going to be worth the ~100 dollars it will cost.
A: definite it should help in speed, but you also need to check ram access speeds. check some of the overclock sites to get ideas. also check the motherboard site specs on cpu and ram. add all the ram you can as its cheap and runs better. [ 1 run a 1gig ramdisk for speed] the 3.0 should overclock to 3.3 or better making it well worth the upgrade. [test the 2.8, it should hit 3.0 easly too] here is the microsoft tech on real ram use http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb613473(VS.85).aspx and http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa366778.aspx#physical_memory_limits_windows_xp the newer gaming video cards have special clockings and ddr3 ram, check nvidia for ideas and always get the latest video drivers. i am running server as a workstation and get 8 gig ram easly. pm if you want server/station details Jim sherwood