Performance Increase? *update post 100* Thanks guys!

The computer I keep in my shop is rather old. (bought new in '08) Celeron 420 processor and the best cpu I can upgrade to is an E4400. As I said in my other thread this computer is in my shop, its used for just your basic internet stuff. I can get the E4400 for $70. My question is how much of a difference would it make compared to the Celeron 420? I know the cpu I have now is a single core and the E4400 is dual but Im not sure if it would be that much difference?

Quote from MikeOxlong : The computer I keep in my shop is rather old. (bought new in '08) Celeron 420 processor and the best cpu I can upgrade to is an E4400. As I said in my other thread this computer is in my shop, its used for just your basic internet stuff. I can get the E4400 for $70. My question is how much of a difference would it make compared to the Celeron 420? I know the cpu I have now is a single core and the E4400 is dual but Im not sure if it would be that much difference?

The E4400 is 2 1/2 times the power of your Celeron 420.

Quote from RockySosua : The E4400 is 2 1/2 times the power of your Celeron 420.

Thanks, I knew it was better, but I did not think it was 2 1/2 times as much power. So its worth $70?

We keep saying it here every day... the single best upgrade you can get for your money is an SSD. The e4400 looks like it's an end of life product and when stacked up against the i5 or an AMD X6 it doesn't look so hot. Honestly I would say get the SSD which should bump performance a lot, and then when you have the money look into doing a larger CPU and Mobo upgrade.

Quote from MikeOxlong : Thanks, I knew it was better, but I did not think it was 2 1/2 times as much power. So its worth $70?

Yes. that is the current price and in your case, there would be a remarkable benefit. There is a law of diminishing returns at the higher end of processors, but in this case, your present processor is so slow and weak, that it would be a constant bottleneck, whereas with the E4400, not only is it much more powerful, but it would rarely bottleneck, if ever (depending on what you're doing).
To give you an idea of that Celeron's power, it is barely more powerful than the Intel Atom single core chips used in netbooks, and those netbooks are constantly hampered by the CPU.
The E4400 is not as powerful as the new Intel iCore processors we are seeing in the latest machines, but it's no slouch either.
With a good hard drive, it could be quite zippy.
Before knowing how weak your present processor is, I was thinking of suggesting that you spend that same amount of money on a small SSD instead, which would give you a tremendous speed boost, but in your case, your money is better spent right now on the proposed E4400.
You chose well.

If you're only using it for browsing, they perhaps it might more sense to require less of your hardware rather than update your hardware to meet the needs of the current OS. IOW, if you're using Windows, why not try Linux, esp. a lightly loaded distro like say, Peppermint. I've done that w/ one of my older Intel P4 systems (circa 2004) in the guest room. Almost anything beyond XP brings it to its knees. But Linux runs perceptibly better, and it’s only used for light duties anyway. Heck, build yourself a YUMI Multiboot USB flash drive [pendrivelinux.com] and try several different distros without even touching your current HD.

don't like ebay? less than $40 there.

i just gave my E4300 to my cousin, pin mod to 266x9=2.4ghz, motherboard will add voltage to make it very hot, use a program call "RightMarkClock" to lower the voltage to 1.1x volt.

now i have his celeron 420, i am going to pin mod to 266x8=2.1ghz

Quote from brbubba : We keep saying it here every day... the single best upgrade you can get for your money is an SSD. The e4400 looks like it's an end of life product and when stacked up against the i5 or an AMD X6 it doesn't look so hot. Honestly I would say get the SSD which should bump performance a lot, and then when you have the money look into doing a larger CPU and Mobo upgrade.

This is a terrible recommendation. A new processor will yield much better results than a ssd in this case. No shit the e4400 is an EOL product, doesn't mean it wont make a hell of a difference when upgrading from a single core low cache celeron.

Quote from brbubba : We keep saying it here every day... the single best upgrade you can get for your money is an SSD. The e4400 looks like it's an end of life product and when stacked up against the i5 or an AMD X6 it doesn't look so hot. Honestly I would say get the SSD which should bump performance a lot, and then when you have the money look into doing a larger CPU and Mobo upgrade.

When against the i5 and x6. Obviously. Atoms are crap to them, but do people still use it? Yes. A new e4400 would bring life into the computer. An SSD would kill it. The SSD would increase his celeron cpu utilization*, and that doens't help the computer one bit since it's an old low clocked single core. SSD's don't help the computer render web pages, and play back videos. IMO get the e4400, it's a huge upgrade, then throw in an ssd. Please don't hate on old cpu's.

No offense.

Doesn't the upgrade bug suck? It's hard to get rid of it until you completely upgrade to a newer system. I wouldn't throw money into a box that I couldn't take out and put into a new machine.
What do you currently have in the box that you could salvage for a new build?
Don't waste your money.

I'm in general agreement w/ others regarding the questionable efficacy of using an SSD. And SSD will always improve data access times, that's a given. But that's not the only consideration. Trust me, I've been through this already. Your overall experience w/ an SSD is going to be greatly affected by the overall capabilities of your system, including CPU, memory, SATA interface, etc. An SSD is not a miracle worker!

I'm just tired of all the OVERSELLING on SSDs. Enough already. Yes, for the right desktop/laptop w/ otherwise relatively modern hardware, it's probably a no-brainer and worth the expense. But for older, marginal systems, the cost/benefit ratio becomes a far dicier proposition. It's not going to resolve problems w/ CPU bound processes, for example. Heck, for all we know, the OP’s system could be SATA I (1.5Gbps), choke city! I installed an SSD on a two year old Acer netbook recently. Sure, it improved the experience to some degree, but Windows still takes 45 seconds to load. The low-end CPU just can't deliver the goods any better, no matter how fast the drive.

No, I’m not an SSD hater (I have and use several), just realistic about them. It's tiring listening to SSD fanboys who think it's always the answer, it will always perform miracles, it’s always a worthwhile investment. That's probably because they're primarily using them in MODERN systems w/ otherwise decent specs. But older systems become much more questionable, esp. given the relatively high cost per GB. You could easily end up spending more on the SSD than the computer is even worth.

Quote from APhamX : When against the i5 and x6. Obviously. Atoms are crap to them, but do people still use it? Yes. A new e4400 would bring life into the computer. An SSD would kill it. The SSD would increase his celeron cpu utilization*, and that doens't help the computer one bit since it's an old low clocked single core. SSD's don't help the computer render web pages, and play back videos. IMO get the e4400, it's a huge upgrade, then throw in an ssd. Please don't hate on old cpu's. No offense.

Quote from maramos : This is a terrible recommendation. A new processor will yield much better results than a ssd in this case. No shit the e4400 is an EOL product, doesn't mean it wont make a hell of a difference when upgrading from a single core low cache celeron.

Where are you getting that CPU utilization is going to increase with an SSD? The only CPU spike you are likely to get is that it needs to process data faster, but the avg processing per time should be very similar.

At $40 it might be worthwhile, but at $75+ upgrading to end of life product is simply dumb when that kind of money could buy you an X4. And if you wait for a slickdeal you could probably snag a mobo for less than $40. Sure the CPU upgrade could yield 2X processor performance, but it won't yield 2X system performance. Also when you compare the e4400 to modern day processors the performance is really abysmal. An SSD would yield 2X system performance now and the OP could start thinking about a bigger processor upgrade in a few months instead of flushing $75+ down the toilet.

Has no one mentioned a reformat? This is probably 4+ years running Vista on an original install. This would be free. Also we don't know what the rest of the specs of this machine are. It could have very little ram which would probably be a better upgrade than the processor or ssd if it had 512 or something like that. Chances are browsing the web you are not using much processing power, so I would have to agree the ssd might be the better way to go. That being said your going to make a decent investment in a machine that is probably worth very little. I would look at a new cheap laptop instead.

Both an SSD and a bigger processor would help the OP's computer, but the CPU swap would make a bigger difference from the SSD.
I see some people write "trust me" at times and if there's anything that makes me doubt what a person is saying, is when he says that, but in this case, it may be worth being trusting about what I am saying, based on the many years of doing upgrades on a daily basis for clients and when a machine has such a tiny weak processor running a modern Windows system like Vista and/or Win 7, you can bet your bottom buck that nothing will make it substantially faster, unless the CPU is upgraded.
That tiny Celeron is soooo slow and weak, that all you would gain from an SSD is a bit more speed after first booting up and after that the performance would be near identical, assuming we are comparing it to a normal healthy spinner hard drive.
In the OP's system, there is nothing wrong with his mobo, nothing wrong with his ram, nothing wrong with his hard drive, as they will all be normal standard components. The only one that is blatantly weak and bound to cause bottlenecks, is the processor.
Anyone who has owned a netbook, knows what I mean.
Open FF along with Google Earth and Microsoft Word all at the same time on a netbook, and see what happens.
I don't want to offend anyone here, but if somebody truly thinks that an SSD would be a better speed gain in the OP's computer vs the processor he chose, it is only because they lack experience with upgrading weak processor systems.