Core 2 Duo - Will it benefit me?

Mizu_Ger

I am looking into rebuilding my PC (currently 3.2Ghz P4 & 1Gb RAM, built about 2 years ago) with a Core 2 Duo chip. I use the PC mainly for Image/Video editing (software I use is Paint Shop Pro 8, Adobe Elements, Nero, PSPVideo, iTunes etc.). I am not much of a gamer.

Are any of these software going to run better on a dual core chip or would I be just wasting my money? If there's no gain, then I won't bother, but its difficult to tell which software is optimised for dual cores.

Mizu_Ger

One other question (while I'm here!): I currently have an AGP graphics card, so I would have to upgrade to a PCI Express card. I don't need a lighning fast card so was looking at Sapphire Radeon X1300 512MB DDR2 at Komplett for €98. What I was wondering is if a 512MB card with 128-bit memory is better than a 128MB card with 128-bit memory?

8T8

Core 2 will definitely improve things for video production over a single core P4, the jump should be pretty big in performance over your previous setup.

It also kind of depends on what kind of Core 2 you get, take a look at these benchmarks. [Keep in mind the Pentium D at 3.2 Ghz in that is a dual core CPU]

Most video editing software is multi-threaded which means it will benefit from multi core CPU's.

The X1300 512MB graphics card is fine for basic usage and will be beneficial under Windows Vista if you ever end up using it. The amount of RAM on board a graphics card does not really factor in the memory controllers 128-bit bus.

Paint Shop Pro 8 - Not multi-threaded as far as I know.
Adobe Elements - Is multi-threaded but depends on what kind of version you have.
Nero - Is partially multi-threaded, in the next update it will feature some big multi-threaded improvements to their encoder.
PSPVideo - Is partially or fully multi-threaded I think they use X264 for video encoding but cant recall.
iTunes - I'm pretty sure the Windows version is multi-threaded for audio encoding.

The best DVD converter for the iPod is MeGUI which uses X264 and if fully multi-threaded, offers great performance and is free if a little tricky to get used to at first but it's doddle once you do.

K.O.Kiki

Seeing as you have an AGP P4 mobo, I'm not sure you can "just install" a C2D, though -- you'll have to check whether your mobo has a BIOS that'll supply the lower voltage required by the C2D.
Get a 256mb card for less (just make sure it's not a Turbocache/Hypermemory card!) -- the low-end models (Geforce 7300/ Radeon X1300) can't utilise the extra RAM.

Also: more system RAM will help you too.

oRlyYaRly

For the same price as the X1300, komplett have a X1600PRO 256mb.

It's not a great card but should own the X1300.

512mb on a card like that is an ingenius marketing scheme by evil corporate people.

TerrorFirmer

The X1600Pro isn't great, it would definately be worth the few extra quid to get an XT model, but the Pro is still ok if you can't afford anything better.

Also, I hate hypermemory - turbocache in Nvidia cards is much better designed, but is mostly pointless as well because the kind of crappy cards they flog with turbocache/Hypermemory can't make use of it whatsoever anyway.

I was in Maplins the last day and they had a 7300GS 512MB - so utterly pointless.