# LGA775 Processor Shootout - Pentium vs C2Duo vs C2Quad (Stock vs OC)



## SpittinFax (Apr 1, 2022)

QUICK SUMMARY: Benchmarked various LGA775 processor configurations using a variety of gaming tests (mainly using random old games and demos). Helps show how number of cores, cache and clock speed contribute to framerate performance.

Test specimens are:

Pentium E5300 SLB9U Wolfdale-3M dual core - Stock 2.6GHz and OC 3.6GHz
Core 2 Duo E8400 SLB9J Wolfdale dual core - Stock 3.0GHz and OC 4.0GHz
Core 2 Quad Q9450 SLAWR Yorkfield quad core - Stock 2.66GHz and OC 3.2GHz

GRAPHED RESULTS:



Spoiler: Original results - Various configurations






























UPDATE: New results comparing the E5300, E8400 and Q9450 in an apples-to-apples 3.0GHz equal playing field. Isolates the effects of L2 cache quantity and number of cores.



Spoiler: 3.0GHz apples-to-apples shootout



NOTE: Different testbench this time. Not comparable to previous results.































I basically did this as a project for my own enjoyment, but I'm sure other people would find the results interesting.


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## phill (Apr 1, 2022)

Thank you for taking the time to do the hard work!!  

Have you a Q6600 at all?  That would be a great CPU to compare to considering its overclock ability   Mine would run about 3.60GHz without an issue, saw some running 4.00GHz+


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## QuietBob (Apr 1, 2022)

Interesting findings, thanks for sharing!

Many older games cannot utilize four threads fully, so a dual core with a faster clock will produce better results with these. Minecraft - at least the Java Edition I tested - is a curious beast. It will use all threads when loading the game and generating the world, but the 1% and 0.1% lows are always abysmal during actual gameplay.  It's funny how people imagine Minecraft will run on a potato because of its crude graphics. This game ain't child's play when it comes to the CPU


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## Zyll Goliat (Apr 1, 2022)

Well obvious winner should be Q9450 but it's still nice to see 2(fast)cores/E8400 in action especially in older games that work perfectly fine with just 1-2 cores......


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## Outback Bronze (Apr 1, 2022)

Love seeing old benchies like this ; )

Keep it up!


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## SpittinFax (Apr 1, 2022)

phill said:


> Thank you for taking the time to do the hard work!!
> 
> Have you a Q6600 at all?  That would be a great CPU to compare to considering its overclock ability  Mine would run about 3.60GHz without an issue, saw some running 4.00GHz+



Thanks. I do have a Q6600.....the G31 board I'm using right now doesn't like high-TDP chips though (hence only 3.2GHz OC on Q9450). Solid chip for it's age. A better board and a real tower cooler would give my OC results a better chance at making a difference, definitely would be the way to go next time around I think.



QuietBob said:


> Interesting findings, thanks for sharing!
> 
> Many older games cannot utilize four threads fully, so a dual core with a faster clock will produce better results with these. Minecraft - at least the Java Edition I tested - is a curious beast. It will use all threads when loading the game and generating the world, but the 1% and 0.1% lows are always abysmal during actual gameplay.  It's funny how people imagine Minecraft will run on a potato because of its crude graphics. This game ain't child's play when it comes to the CPU



Minecraft Java Edition is definitely CPU intensive and doesn't care about the GPU. Even on modern versions you can run a 3080 and see no big gains. That game loves single-threaded performance and clock speed. The 1% and 0.1% lows are abysmally low because I hit benchmark as soon as I see terrain when the game is still lagging. So that's one thing I learned, it's best to wait until the game is fully loaded before benchmarking.



Zyll Goliat said:


> Well obvious winner should be Q9450 but it's still nice to see 2(fast)cores/E8400 in action especially in older games that work perfectly fine with just 1-2 cores......



This is what I like about hands-on testing. Traditional thinking would have you believe that the quad core is best, but actually the main factor is how well the game responds to the CPU configuration. Responses in performance can be very different and in some cases even favor dual cores with high clock speeds.


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## kiriakost (Apr 1, 2022)

End of January 2022, I did my own big step ahead, leaving behind LGA775 Q9650 along 8GB DDR3, mostly because I did anything possible so to assist *GTX1060* this to deliver it best, but it did not work that well.
While LGA775 *Q9650* this is the most powerful chip, with greatest transistors count from the entire line,  it can simply feed or keep busy the GPU up to 30~40%. 

By moving for a quad core CPU to a more modern quad core CPU, I did fresh discoveries, INTEL added special technologies them aloud i7 4770, this to deliver double amount of data at the GPU. 
Its not plain hardware based boost (push of clocks speed), new AVX2 instruction set, this totally missing from LGA775, this work as accelerator in favor of graphics 3D intensive load at i7 4770. 
Z87X along newest memory controller = four times higher the bandwidth which I had.

Decent 3D performance at 1080P  90FPS ~120 FPS, it is happening due a combination of newer technologies, and overclocking alone, this cannot help any.


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## SpittinFax (Apr 1, 2022)

Interesting the things you learn from benchmarking. I tried a better technique using the Q9450 where I let the map terrain load before hitting go on the benchmark. This is a comparison of my earlier runs with poor readings (due to running the benchmark too early) and my newer runs. Same processor configs, same game, but a different approach to collecting benchmark data. On potato PC's like this even the smallest changes can make a big difference in the results.





From what I've seen in the past I don't think the dual cores would have achieved better 1% and 0.1% lows than this, but the overclocked ones would most likely reach higher averages.


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## Wirko (Apr 1, 2022)

One benchmark, Next Car Game, scales unexpectedly well with clock speed on both dual-core CPUs ... are you sure it's just the clock speed that is different?


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## FreedomEclipse (Apr 1, 2022)

Zyll Goliat said:


> Well obvious winner should be Q9450 but it's still nice to see 2(fast)cores/E8400 in action especially in older games that work perfectly fine with just 1-2 cores......



This is the same case for some more modern games too. Some games just love CPUs with fast single core speeds. A good example would be CS/CS:GO


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## 80-watt Hamster (Apr 1, 2022)

Wirko said:


> One benchmark, Next Car Game, scales unexpectedly well with clock speed on both dual-core CPUs ... are you sure it's just the clock speed that is different?



That one stood out to me, too.  Not necessarily because of frequency scaling on the dual-cores (which isn't surprising), but due to the HUGE jump from 3.6 to 4.0.  

2.6 -> 3.0 -> 3.6 go about how one might expect, but then that last 400 MHz gives a way out-of-proportion boost.


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## Kissamies (Apr 1, 2022)

I should do similar benching. I have LGA 775 chips from Pentium 4 to C2Q 9500, unfortunately I don't have an Yorkfield with full L2 cache.


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## 80-watt Hamster (Apr 1, 2022)

MaenadFIN said:


> I should do similar benching. I have LGA 775 chips from Pentium 4 to C2Q 9500, unfortunately I don't have an Yorkfield with full L2 cache.



EUR30 for a Q9550, just sayin'...


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## Kissamies (Apr 1, 2022)

80-watt Hamster said:


> EUR30 for a Q9550, just sayin'...


I'm not that interested in LGA775 anymore, I could buy a 1366 Xeon with higher multiplier (than X5650 has) with that money.


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## phill (Apr 1, 2022)

SpittinFax said:


> Interesting the things you learn from benchmarking. I tried a better technique using the Q9450 where I let the map terrain load before hitting go on the benchmark. This is a comparison of my earlier runs with poor readings (due to running the benchmark too early) and my newer runs. Same processor configs, same game, but a different approach to collecting benchmark data. On potato PC's like this even the smallest changes can make a big difference in the results.
> 
> View attachment 242010
> 
> From what I've seen in the past I don't think the dual cores would have achieved better 1% and 0.1% lows than this, but the overclocked ones would most likely reach higher averages.


Being a bit stupid at this point, what are the differences between old and new??


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## FreedomEclipse (Apr 1, 2022)

phill said:


> Being a bit stupid at this point, what are the differences between old and new??



clock cycles per mhz?


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## freeagent (Apr 1, 2022)

I did something similar eons ago. I ran my E8600 E.S. at 4800MHz to match the raw horsepower of a stock Q6600. I was impressed at the time. It might have been 4700MHz.. it was an all core load, voltage and clock I was able to handle in the summer. I was using an Ultra 120 Extreme with a couple of thicc Panaflo's.


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## SpittinFax (Apr 1, 2022)

Wirko said:


> One benchmark, Next Car Game, scales unexpectedly well with clock speed on both dual-core CPUs ... are you sure it's just the clock speed that is different?





80-watt Hamster said:


> That one stood out to me, too.  Not necessarily because of frequency scaling on the dual-cores (which isn't surprising), but due to the HUGE jump from 3.6 to 4.0.
> 
> 2.6 -> 3.0 -> 3.6 go about how one might expect, but then that last 400 MHz gives a way out-of-proportion boost.
> 
> View attachment 242021



I saw that and actually it's pretty accurate. My guess is that it's the bigger L2 cache on the E8400 (2MB Pentium E5300 and 6MB Core 2 Duo E8400) that really responds well to the game conditions.

That particular benchmark has a lot of AI opponents, crashes, particles and movable objects that give the CPU a lot of information to crunch. It loves clock speed and cache.


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## Kissamies (Apr 1, 2022)

The difference of L2 is surprisingly huge after all when the CPU is the bottleneck. Though I remember when E21x0 Pentiums were the budget kings back in the day.


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## SpittinFax (Apr 1, 2022)

phill said:


> Being a bit stupid at this point, what are the differences between old and new??



"Old" is the data I collected from the first round of benchmarks, "new" is a revisit using a different benchmarking technique in the same game. All that changed with the "new" benchmarks was that I allowed the game more time to fully load before benchmarking. It avoids the lags during loading and collects data that's more representative of actual gameplay.


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## Kissamies (Apr 1, 2022)

SpittinFax said:


> "Old" is the data I collected from the first round of benchmarks, "new" is a revisit using a different benchmarking technique in the same game. All that changed with the "new" benchmarks was that I allowed the game more time to fully load before benchmarking. It avoids the lags during loading and collects data that's more representative of actual gameplay.


Come with us here  https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/tpus-nostalgic-hardware-club.108251/


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## SpittinFax (Apr 2, 2022)

MaenadFIN said:


> Come with us here  https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/tpus-nostalgic-hardware-club.108251/



Thanks, good to know. It's great that a lot of people still enjoy old hardware.

I told myself I wouldn't, but I'm already thinking about doing a revised set of benchmarks with a better board, better graphics card and better cooling. This is how these projects start to snowball.....


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## Kissamies (Apr 2, 2022)

SpittinFax said:


> Thanks, good to know. It's great that a lot of people still enjoy old hardware.
> 
> I told myself I wouldn't, but I'm already thinking about doing a revised set of benchmarks with a better board, better graphics card and better cooling. This is how these projects start to snowball.....


I have a P5Q Pro which a got cheap, a hella solid board even for some serious OC. Actually I need better DDR2 before anything else


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## SpittinFax (Apr 2, 2022)

MaenadFIN said:


> I have a P5Q Pro which a got cheap, a hella solid board even for some serious OC. Actually I need better DDR2 before anything else



I hear they're very good, never owned an Asus LGA775 board myself. The ones I have are all Gigabyte but they've been excellent boards as far as reliability goes. Haven't had one die on me yet. I thought Gigabyte and their marketing in 2008 about "Ultra Durable" solid state components was nonsense at the time but now I realize that maybe it wasn't.

I've got a new testbench setup running with a Hyper T4, Gigabyte P35 DS3P and a Radeon R9 270X. Anyone got ideas for benchmarks or CPUs that would be interesting? I've got a Q6600 and E6600 available. I might be able to clock everything evenly at 3.0GHz and see how they all perform at that level.


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## Kissamies (Apr 2, 2022)

SpittinFax said:


> I hear they're very good, never owned an Asus LGA775 board myself. The ones I have are all Gigabyte but they've been excellent boards as far as reliability goes. Haven't had one die on me yet. I thought Gigabyte and their marketing in 2008 about "Ultra Durable" solid state components was nonsense at the time but now I realize that maybe it wasn't.
> 
> I've got a new testbench setup running with a Hyper T4, Gigabyte P35 DS3P and a Radeon R9 270X. *Anyone got ideas for benchmarks or CPUs that would be interesting?* I've got a Q6600 and E6600 available. I might be able to clock everything evenly at 3.0GHz and see how they all perform at that level.


I could compete against you, I have a Radeon 7850 1GB, your card is a 7870 rebrand. Is my list okay for you? I have a custom loop cooling for CPU lying around so I'll benefit from that.

Doom3 benchmark
3dmark03
3dmark06
Cinebench anything single core
SuperPi

Suggest more benchmarks and the OS, WinXP or 7?  And I can compete against with you with E8500 and Xeon X3230 (aka Q6700).


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## SpittinFax (Apr 2, 2022)

MaenadFIN said:


> I could compete against you, I have a Radeon 7850 1GB, your card is a 7870 rebrand. Is my list okay for you? I have a custom loop cooling for CPU lying around so I'll benefit from that.
> 
> Doom3 benchmark
> 3dmark03
> ...



If it's an overclocking competition then guaranteed you'd win. I do overclock but usually +1GHz (which is easy to achieve) is where I stop. IIRC the highest I've done to date is an E8400 4.2GHz at 1.3V, I've tried going higher but anything above that refuses to work regardless of voltages.


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## Kissamies (Apr 2, 2022)

SpittinFax said:


> If it's an overclocking competition then guaranteed you'd win. I do overclock but usually +1GHz (which is easy to achieve) is where I stop. IIRC the highest I've done to date is an E8400 4.2GHz at 1.3V, I've tried going higher but anything above that refuses to work regardless of voltages.


Yeah I guess as I have a high-end motherboard and custom loop parts... but just for the fun, let's try some day?


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## SpittinFax (Apr 2, 2022)

Finally, it looks like I'm getting more reliable benchmark results this time around.

New round of testing this time on a better testbench, and with a different methodology. This time I did clock-for-clock 3.0GHz benchmarks on the three chips (E5300, E8400 and Q9450) to remove clock speed as a factor. So here you mainly see the effects of cache quantity and number of cores. Those are the main factors this time around.

It goes without saying, but these results can't be compared to the original results I posted. Different testbench, different resolution. Now benching at 1080p rather than 720p.

Now the Q9450 is getting the best results of the trio.



Spoiler: Apples-to-apples 3.0GHz benchmark results


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## anfazi54 (Jul 8, 2022)

What a good benchmark, i like to see old processor got benchmarked and oc ed


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