is a core 2 quad system still usable in 2020?

Finally retired the old Core2Quad with a bit of a tear in the eye. At least it will go to some kid though, so its still useful.

 

I'm about to replace the wifes Q9400. She has been doing a bit of video editing using Filmora and not quite up to the job.

 

F for core2quad

i will agree with the "its still useful" part though because if you get an old optiplex blah blah blah we've all heard it before but give it an ssd and a gpu and those 4 cores are better than two even if the two have a higher clockspeed.

 

My error beeping c2q setup just got replaced, but it's far from over. I have some kids in mind who just learned about L4D2 and Plants vs Zombies who need some mouse skills

Ain't no rest for the wicked, right?

Side note though, as a former nerd out of the loop for about 10 years, it's surprising how similar things have stayed. Sure, there's more cores and threads and what not, but realistically there doesn't seem to have been any huge generational leaps.

Although I might be easily amused, because damn does it seem like there's some good hardware at cheap prices! No wonder so many are upgrading these old boxes with more RAM and an SSD or 2. Almost crazy not to. Or that's my excuse anyway

 

Not wrong there. The former world chess champion Garry Kasparov mentioned this in one of his lectures to business associates... in the past 15-20 years he didn't think that innovation was really happening in the computing world. He went on to say something like, "and mankind has forgotten how the pyramids were built".

Just as well things are more documented these days.

 

the innovation is still there, just not so obvious to the lay person because it's not easily summed up in a single number like GHz.

IPC improvements and instruction sets gains are where the performance comes from these days, the limits of clock cycles are here to stay unless some very different way of making chips comes to the fore.

 

Do you have a link to his words at all? Just curious the detail of what he talked about.

 

Kasparov is outspoken on a lot of topics in the media since his chess retirement in 2005, but I believe the pyramids comment was made in the late 90s. And he was referring to hardware advances with regards to computing. I did a quick search but could not find the exact passages. These articles refer to some of his earlier comments:

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Essay:Kasparov's_Mathematics_of_the_Past

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/soc.genealogy.medieval/qGZvPj9iDvM[1-25]

 

I dunno, there's a couple of biggies a Core2 generation CPU won't have - Onchip memory controller was a big boost forwards; as was PCIe (which you have). However, sticking the PCIe controller in the chip itself instead of the northbridge was another big step forwards in graphics performance - With both memory and some IO directly attached to the CPU, the front side bus (and it's many subsequent evolutions) were freed up for everything else.
After those; it's really been extra instruction sets and hardware support; plus the relentless tick-tock tick-tock of IPC improvements which mean that even matching Mhz and core count, a modern chip will utterly run rings upon rings around a Yorkfield generation CPU.

 

Boss reply, thank you! I didn't know there has been that much offloading onto the CPU, that's definitely notable. Kinda surprised that there was such an amount of free resources (computational, surface area, power, etc), but makes a lot of sense.

As always, the best way to learn anything is to post an opinion on the internet and get schooled!

 

The die shrink was probably a factor in that.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_shrink

(note: above image is not necessarily all "CPU" process sizes - it's just an indicative gradient)

 

Don't get me wrong, I love my Q9550 & it's Xeon brethren. It's just that they sit there sucking the thick end of 150w to do less than my NUC can while sipping 10w.
Usable still? Yes.
Useful still? Only if you have time and money to burn and lots of patience.

 

I have been at my parents house using the old Lenovo C2Q the past few weeks,

Q8400 @ 2.66Ghz
4GB Ram with 512mb dedicated to video
old 120gb intel SSD with W10 home,

I am impressed this is still usable for general web browsing, watching you tube etc, it has been perfectly fine,

 

In early 2020 when covid lockdowns came round, I dusted off my old PC which was originally a Core 2 Duo E8400, replaced the CPU with a quad core Xeon E5450 for $19, and it flies along now. It's now my missus' machine, great for casual gaming.

 

Wanna upgrade the ram? If it's ddr3 I've got 3 2gb sticks laying around that no one seems to want.

 

I thought I had gotten rid of all of my Core2 stuff, but then a lonely Q6600 appeared in a junk pile

 

thanks for the offer but this PC will be decommissioned from service in a couple months.

I am surprised it worked still very well with just 4gb,

 

Still using my C2Q, web browsing and youtube is fine at 1080p.

Q6600 , P35-DS3P
4Gb Ram
2x ati 5850 cross fire
SSD

 

IBM W520 laptop daily driver and work machine

32GB memory
SSD
Quadro 1000M 2GB

Xubuntu 20.04 LTS

 

you're far too modern to be in here.