2.13Ghz Core 2 Duo E6400 a dog?

[BadMouth]

Working on an off-lease PC for a friend.
It came with windows 7 which is nice, but the thing operates at a crawl.
It was riddled with malware & a rootkit, so I assumed that was the issue.
Got rid of those and it was still borderline unuseable.

So I did a clean windows install on a different hard drive and it's slightly better, but it still crawls along too slow IMO.
Even the windows installation menus seemed slow to respond.
Didn't run any memory tests, but did swap in different memory.
Currently installing all 200 or so updates hoping it picks up speed when done with those.

I know Core2Duo's were all the rage for MAME builds a few years ago.
Anyone have any experience with this cpu? 
Is it underpowered for Windows 7?

He wants to be able to play 3D games from around 10 years ago on it.  Star Wars Knight of the Old Republic mostly.
I see 3Ghz e8500's on ebay for around $15, but the PC specs for the games only call for a 1Ghz Pentium D.
Is anyone running games like this on a Core2Duo of this speed?

I plan to drop an Nvidia 8600GT into it before trying 3D games, but if it is slow navigating windows explorer I don't expect 3D games to run.

Thanks in advance.

[yotsuya]

Working on an off-lease PC for a friend.
It came with windows 7 which is nice, but the thing operates at a crawl.
It was riddled with malware & a rootkit, so I assumed that was the issue.
Got rid of those and it was still borderline unuseable.

So I did a clean windows install on a different hard drive and it's slightly better, but it still crawls along too slow IMO.
Even the windows installation menus seemed slow to respond.
Didn't run any memory tests, but did swap in different memory.
Currently installing all 200 or so updates hoping it picks up speed when done with those.

I know Core2Duo's were all the rage for MAME builds a few years ago.
Anyone have any experience with this cpu? 
Is it underpowered for Windows 7?

He wants to be able to play 3D games from around 10 years ago on it.  Star Wars Knight of the Old Republic mostly.
I see 3Ghz e8500's on ebay for around $15, but the PC specs for the games only call for a 1Ghz Pentium D.
Is anyone running games like this on a Core2Duo of this speed?

I plan to drop an Nvidia 8600GT into it before trying 3D games, but if it is slow navigating windows explorer I don't expect 3D games to run.

Thanks in advance.

I've generally had good luck with all the Core2Duos I have.

Side note, I'm staying away from Pentium D, though. I got a good deal on a set of three, but all three of them chug on games like NBA Jam.

[Malenko]

on board video can really bog down those boxes, I bet throwing that nvidia card in there will pep it up a little.

[knave]

How much ram is in it?

I've installed win 7 on several core 2 duos and it has ran fine but for real usable performance 2gb or more ram is necessary.

on a side note: I wouldn't place much hope in the updates improving performance...

Make sure there is not a heat/cooling issue.



 

[yotsuya]

How much ram is in it?

I've installed win 7 on several core 2 duos and it has ran fine but for real usable performance 2gb or more ram is necessary.

on a side note: I wouldn't place much hope in the updates improving performance...

Make sure there is not a heat/cooling issue.

Agreed. I try to run at least 4 GB on Windows 7 machine myself.

[jennifer]

     They seem to run a little on the hot side for me, Maybe consider upgrading the cooling too.

[Malenko]

if you have 2 GB of RAM and an on board, the onboard is using up that RAM too.  get 4 GB if 32bit, try to get 8 for 64bit 

[BadMouth]

Thanks for the ideas.

It has 3GB of mismatched ram in it at the moment.  I do not know what speed.
It had 2GB of matched ram for most of the testing.

I don't really expect the updates to improve performance.  It's the not downloading updates in the background anymore.

You might be onto something with the heat issue.  It has a tunnel from a fan in the front of the case to over top of the CPU heatsink.
The fan ran full speed and sounded like a siren at first.  It still does that on startup, but drops to near silent after booting now.
It is still moving a little air (just barely enough to detect).  The chipset heatsink which is directly behind the cpu heatsink is getting pretty hot near the base IMO.
The tips of the heatsink fins aren't that bad, so I wasn't too worried (they are tall for a chipset heatsink).

The tunnel is solid, so no way to see how many dust bunnies are in there without removing it.
I'll open it up and spray out the cpu heatsink this evening.
Will also go ahead and throw the video card in it.

Might help to replace the thermal paste, but part of me wants to go ahead and drop in a 3Ghz+ processor in it while I'm there.
Another part of me wants to just use it as a boat anchor.

[BadMouth]

if you have 2 GB of RAM and an on board, the onboard is using up that RAM too.  get 4 GB if 32bit, try to get 8 for 64bit 

It's 64bit.  No way either of us is spending money on 8GB of DDR2 for this thing.
He's got 3 1GB strips available.  He could spare a gig strip from his old PC if this one would start running better.

I have 4 1GB strips not being used at the moment, but kinda want to keep them as spares for my emulation machines.

I'll throw a video card in there this evening and see what happens.

[Vigo]

on board video can really bog down those boxes, I bet throwing that nvidia card in there will pep it up a little.

I agree completely with this. On board video can demolish Mame. I had a 2.88ghz that couldn't even run frogger at full speed unless the resolution was set to minimum. Got a 3ghz machine from arrow direct a few weeks ago that game with a basic graphics card. It was cheaper than getting a graphics card alone. I ran the same win7 setup and same mame and it runs very smooth. Swapped the graphics card in the 2.88 just to see if I was right about it being the onboard video, and sure enough, it ran fine with the graphics card.

Try lowering your resolution and see if that makes a difference. My bet is that if it does, then it is probably the onboard video.

[BadMouth]

This PC won't have MAME installed, so I'm not really thinking about MAME performance.
(he owns my old x-arcade MAME setup).

I will proceed with installing the video card.  Sounds like it will free up some resources.

[JDFan]

I'm sure the Video card will help but another thing you might try is either adding another 1GB module or actually test removing one module ( with the modules in pairs it will have the memory running in dual channel mode rather than single channel mode so it may actually perform better with just the 2 modules rather than 3 (though 4 would be best option) -- If your MOBO supports dual channel mode it can really impact performance if using only single channel mode by having an odd number of modules as half of the memory bus sits idle so that 3rd module while helping have more RAM available may actually be hurting performance !

Here's a guide that explains it in pretty good detail under the Dual Channel architecture section ( http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/printpage/Everything-You-Need-to-Know-About-the-Dual-Triple-and-Quad-Channel-Memory-Architectures/133 ) - so for instance in your current setup you'd only be using 64 of the 128 bit memory bus since the odd number of modules shut off dual channel mode where removing the odd module (or pairing the third with a fourth module) would open up the entire 128 bit bus allowing twice the throughput per cycle.

[ark_ader]

I have one of those, and runs great as a server or firewall/NAS.

Gaming wise, stick tiny xp on it with 2gb ram and load it up with emulators.  Mine runs Windows 2012.

[Generic Eric]

Someone here was selling mini dells on a neat adjustable monitor stand.  Its pretty damn sluggish. 

[dkersten]

Keep in mind that as time goes on, transistors fail on silicone.  A CPU that is 4 or 5 years old will be "tired" because upwards of 10-20% of the transistors have failed and it just doesn't have the processing power it had when new.  CPUs are built to have transistors fail, but over time it can really degrade performance.  Combine this with mismatched memory, probably some heat issues, an older hard drive that, even if clean, probably also isn't running as well as it should, and a bloated OS like windows 7, and you probably have a machine that doesn't perform all that great.  On top of all this, you are probably used to seeing computers run better, so your perception plays a huge role. 

All is not lost though.  Despite poor "desktop" performance, it doesn't mean it can't run programs or even games.  Most games pretty much take over the computer so all the "bloat" going on with the OS in the background is minimized and even a fairly sluggish CPU can run games pretty well.  Load times might be slow, and the occasional hitch is expected, but overall once you are in a game it might run better than you imagine.  Of course, if you are running the integrated graphics, you should already expect really poor performance, so a halfway decent graphics card, even a "tired" one that has seen it's fair share of abuse, will go a long way toward making it an acceptable gaming rig. 

The advice here is good, maximize the memory, keep the file system clean of malware and viruses, and throw a gaming graphics card in it and you will probably be satisfied.