How Core 2 Changed Everything Overnight 

time flies man, back in 2017 some of my friends were still using core 2 quad on their daily machines. Now all of them upgraded to modern stuff as core 2 is no longer capable of running modern software smoothly.

tbf 775 lasted an unusually long time for Intel compared to their other sockets and consider early 775 chipsets are completely incompatible with Core 2 as well

"Retro" for windows 11: which is fast as a dead dog on the highway.

​@@mtunayucerdefine "modern stuff" -- a C2Q isn't exactly power efficient but is strong enough for web browsing and office tasks if you throw a basic dGPU at it

Still runs Windows 11 pretty well, provided you are on a C2Q with 8GB RAM. Still not as good as a AM2 Phenom with 16GB.

Ah the 8800 GTS 320 such a good value card!

I had the 8800 gts 512 the card died in 2012.

The moment when you could see how the weather in Crysis changed and the day/night cycled (9600gt sli here)

I cheaped out and got a 8600GT. It was terrible compared to what the 8800's could pull off.

​@@Vfl666I have a 8800 GT that is still in use in my second computer. It's pretty much only used for watching RU-vid nowadays.

Same here… it’s a perfectly usable platform, if you manage expectations

Even for Win 10, C2D E8400 still is fast, only need 8 GB RAM, SSD, GT 1030 GDDR5 are good enough for all retro games. For new games and faster web browsing i7-2600 or similar and newer GPU like GTX 1650 4 GB (also the fastest passively cooled card with huge heatsink existing, which I'd add a DIY fan to be even better than any OOTB fan-cooled card) or 1060 6 GB are enough for 99 % of all games and 2K gaming. I don't really see a need to waste 3 times more ressources for 4K, you won't see much of a difference either. Well, some people tried the cheap AMD RX 6400 with a cheap 8K TV showing HL2 can run at 300 FPS @ 8k with impressive details w/o using FSAA (they got a glitched menu, but game runs fine). But for most games I think 4K makes not that difference.

​@@sebastianebert4295i would say a quad is the minimum to utilize the 1030. I suppose if you use the ddr4 version I could see it working better.

@@-x21- I have the GDDR5 versions for both GT 1030 cards I have (full size and low profile). Compared to my older HD 4550 it was a massive boost on the Core2Duo. Never had C2Q and I think I never would get one now, as Core i5 is faster anyways. Now my i5-3570 is faster than the GT 1030 GDDR5, which is bottlenecking for Anno 1800, SotT and other new games. But I'm fine with it for now, playing retro games 95 % of the time. I just want energy efficient setups. My wannabe XP machine Athlon II x2 260 has an GTX 645 2 GB atm. The GT 1030 was used in a Dell 780 MT E8400 w/ 255? W 85 % PSU. I think 60-75 W GPU may be too much for the 255 W 85 % PSU on the long run or I'd take out the USB 3.0 card. I had problems with 3x USB 3.0 HDDs in that system, the 3rd HDD didn't get enough power.

@@sebastianebert4295 go 750ti for winxp gaming its good gpu for that (own it paired with i7 3770 i retro gaming on overkill machine kindof

I still have a Dell Optiplex 755 as my main computer that previously had a Core2Duo E6700 processor, now I upgraded to a Q9650 processor and Nvidia GT1030 2Gb GDDR5 and 8Gb DDR2 video card, with these features it's great for my audio and video editing requirements and games like "Sea of ​​Thieves: The Legend of Monkey Island" under Windows 10 environment.

Whoa, lucky you! Did you just pay at the warehouse, or did they have you send them the money in the mail/over the phone(/online?) like they usually expected for their customers?

I was too young as well but i remember using the family computer with Windows Vista. In 2019 i dug it out of the closet (it had long been retired) and found out it had a e2160 in it. Used it for another year until Windows 7 went eol and it couldn't run Windows 10 that well. Ended up with a sandy bridge system.

When I had the E6300, E6600, E8400, I read about C2Q and that it was only like max. 50 % faster due to slow inter-CPU communications...and also the clocks were a bit lower, most games barely used 2+ cores even, I decided to not buy one. At that time I thought about getting C2Q or maybe S771 Xeons, there already were faster i5-2400 for like 30 € only. Ofc. a Xeon would be nice to have just because, 80 W TDP instead of the 95 W C2Q and faster than avg. C2Q, not the QX9770 ofc., but even the fastest QX9770 is slower than a cheap i5-2400. So that I buried the ideas and just kept the E8400 as it is, lol. Now having i7-2600 and i5-3570, even better. But I still love the C2D E8400 and Athlon II x2 260, both very good basic dual core CPUs. My Athlon II system supports 6 core 140 W, I think even Phenom II, but as the said i5/7-2/3xxx are faster anyways, I just keep the old ones with 2 core CPUs. My aim is low TDP computing, because I can play at hot summer nights and also we pay the highest energy prices in the world since decades, it's no fun, tbh.

Thankfully I got a computer of which you speak.. except it's got like 10gb ram and a gt640 running off a pcie 2.0 x16 (but wired as x8)

This is literally me just 2~3 years ago, but using a GTX 970 and Xeon mod and oc to almost 4GHz. Only upgraded because one of the games I was playing updated and needed to use a newer instructions set.

Absolutely, I also run an E8400 w/ 8 GB RAM and SSD for many many years, even got it 2nd hand only, when i5-2400 already was out, but it was fast with Win 10. Only new games and Web Browsing gets a bit slow, but for old games it's very fast. I only upgraded because I got a very cheap 2nd GT 1030 GDDR5 bundled with i7-2600, 16 GB RAM, HDD and SSD for 90 € complete in a Dell 790 SFF. My 1st SFF PC. I wanted a 2nd GT 1030 GDDR5 only. So this one was basically for like 20 bucks or so only and my entry into low profile world. Sadly it has USB 2.0 only. Later I bought a Dell 7010 DT (also low profile) because of internal USB 3.0 with i5-3570, 16 GB RAM, HDD for 60 €, used the low profile GPU from the other one. I think NVMe SSD doesn't make such a difference to SATA 3 than SSD made to HDD. Some secs bootup time only. So no need for a newer PC here. Only newer GPU from time to time. When the AMD RX 6400 (a tad bit slower than GTX 1650 I think) would be available for like 70 € I'd buy it, but not for 150 €, lol. I mean the GTX 1650 with same speed already exist since some years and my GT 1030 GDDR5 isn't thaaat slow, a tad bit slower than the GTX 750 I think, but 30 W TDP. Just got an AC outage, very rare, but I have a laptop while writing here ;) Never used an UPS, tho somewhere I have an old one, which just needs fresh batteries and could save games, have like 30-120 mins time to shutdown or wait for AC coming up shortly after. I remember we tested it decades ago and it beeped very loud when AC was gone. I need a bike dynamo and/or solar cell attached to the UPS. My PC needs like 20-30 watts only with retro games, I even use MSI Afterburner to limit FPS to 60 or even 30 with some games to save much power and heat. TV 40 watts on top. Should be easy to even drive it by your own muscle power for at least 2 hours.

That's interesting! I had the C2D E8400 3 GHz, P35 chipset and the previous owner overclocked it per BIOS to 4.2 GHz, which was impressive. Any of the E8400 can run at 4.2 GHz because of good silicon lot, which also is impressive. I think P35/P45 chipsets were sought after for this purpose of FSB overclocking. Well, the used chipset got quite hot even at base FSB, the heatsink was quite loose to cool it good, I attached an extra 6 cm fan to it. But at the time I got it, faster i5-2400 were cheap like 30 € and I reverter the C2D to 3 GHz for longevity. If anything dies, it's the caps in PSU or mainboard caps 1st.

@@sebastianebert4295 The C2Q also had considerably more headroom than 3Ghz...but I had made the mistake of buying a new Dell XPS 420...which on paper looked good. However, with its locked BIOS and BTX case, there was no way to get a decent OC out of that machine other than the BSEL mod, which tricked the BIOS into seeing FSB 1333MHz instead of the stock 1066 MHz. Other upgrades that mattered most: Windows Vista 32 Bit to Windows 8.1 64 Bit, which realized RAM beyond 3.6GB (I ran with 16GB DDR2); an SSD for the Boot drive; and a decent GPU (e.g. GTX 1050) at that time. Plenty of people who had built their PC's using ATX standards could OC the Q6600 up to 3.8GHz, with proper cooling. Some were able to exceed 4GHz, with advanced cooling techniques. My machine lasted 11 years as my daily driver...the exact quoted lifespan of the DELL 450W (nominally rated) PSU. I dumped mine for a self-built PC based on the ASUS P9X79 Pro + E5-1680V2 + 32GB DDR3 1600...which I could easily OC to 4.5GHz on air. This paired well with the GTX 1080Ti. All were used parts and I built it in 2019, including new PSU and Case for under $700.

The Q6600 always struck me as the odd one. Yes, the first consumer quad core, but a bit to early to be relevant for most people. For gamers a dual core was cheaper and usually higher clocked, thus faster. For non gamers, any Core 2 was a major step up and there was simply no need for a quad. And even with the secend gen of Core 2 chips there were faster and cheaper quads. By the time quad cores became pretty much mandatory, the Q6600 was already too slow. And yes, I had an E8400 as well. Ran it on 3.6 GHz for years until I replaced it. I still have it around, so I played a bit with it to see how well it goes, and 4.2 GHz as well. Nowadays I'm running a X5460 in my media system, so the platform still lives on.

I have heard the E2160/E2180, which were low end dual core chips, were very popular with BSEL mods to get it to run at around 3.2GHz if I remember correctly.

Q6600 was rather cheap and highly overclockable. I had one at 3600 Mhz 24/7. This is 50% overclocking from the stock 2400 Mhz! Without any mods, mind you, just a good motherboard and cpu cooler. (Why do you need mods to overclock something that can he done so easily just using normal mb bios?). All in all it is my favorite CPU of all time, served me years, before I moved on to i5-2500k. Also I don't remember q6600 having any "turbo frequency" though I might be wrong. If it did I turned it off right away. Back then I loved my CPU's always working at 100% of their potential.

Yes these days it's boring 😞

Absolutely. Even the i7-7700k is a bad joke. You need to delid and solder it to run at normal temps like 20 °C lower than OOTB and 500 MHz higher freq. is a joke compared to non k CPUs and all C2D and earlier CPUs. Dunno about Athlon II overclocks, at least those have low idle clocks, being more efficient than C2D even, but came out later. 100 % of all C2D E8400 3.0 GHz CPUs can run at 4.2 GHz using a higher FSB with P35/P45 chipsets at least, 1/3 overclock for free due to good silicon lot. There's a term: "Free lunch is over". 2003+ were a turning point for sure. Not much single core performance increase since then. This makes the C2D and Athlon II x2 some of the best I'd call it "old world" CPUs. The E8400 made in 2008 is one of the early ones before the curve for single core IPC goes totally flat. And staying at like 3 GHz seems to be a rule as phil said in one of his earlier videos, because games made for consoles also run at 2-3 GHz CPUs mostly. Only the GPUs make a true difference nowadays. You can play nearly any AAA game at 1080p 60+ FPS using a dated i7-2600. Maybe not Star CItizen or X-Plane 10/11/12, P3Dv3/4, FS 2020. But Cyberpunk 2077, RDR2 are no problem with 10-15 years old CPUs, not C2D in this case, but i7-2600 or similar. www.gotw.ca/images/CPU.png www.gotw.ca/publications/concurrency-ddj.htm Single core / clock speed performance got stuck and any manufacturers went for multi core and power saving tech mostly. I mean i9-13000k, Xeon Platinum have a bit higher IPC for 1 core apps/games, but not much. Those only shine for multi core apps/games. And that's why I think the original Crysis Maximum Edition is a special retro test until nowadays. I didn't like remastered versions with less quality and often even more ressource needs. Maybe Crysis 1 remastered can use 2+ cores, dunno, but the graphics are somewhat worse or not much of a difference from comparison images. Similar to Star Wars Battlefront 1+2 remastered, not really needed. Maybe Mafia 1 remastered is a game with really a different graphics (but some more bugs), but that's rare. Or Anno 1404 History Edition which purged the crash bug and gives good MP better than Hamachi at least.

@@sebastianebert4295 There is about double the single thread performance between today's chips and the early Sandy/Iy COre i, a lot of that is through forcing higher clocks, but some growth is there.

@@HappyBeezerStudios yeah effective speed about +50 %, avg. score +100 % with all boosts. I mean not enough for me to say it must be a new PC after 10 years. Only for PCIe x4 vs. x3. I wait 5 more years ;) and I mean used PCs are fast enough since like 15 years or so to play most games fluid.

@@sebastianebert4295 the ones where both my core 2 and my i5 struggle are big sims. but there it is expected.

Yeah any E8400 can run at 4.2 GHz w/o any issues. Not sure if more, tho. But that's good for a locked CPU. Vista w/o Aero Peak should be quite okay-ish. And with 4 or 8 GB RAM for cheap nowadays...

Actually, the first OS that I installed in my Core 2 Duo was Windows Vista Ultimate 64bit, SP1. If you wanted 64 bit Windows you had a choice between 64bit XP Pro and Vista 64 bit. With 4 GB of RAM, a dual core CPU with 64 bit support, performance was plenty for Vista. Later, I upgraded to Windows 7 Ultimate, and then I installed Windows 10. To be honest though, the best Windows OS for the platform is 7. And it is the one that I kept the longest.

Yeah Win 7 Pro x86 is very fast, x64 is slower. But for EAX gaming XP makes sense.

@@vtheofilis I think WinXP 64bit is underrated, and really was held back by the lack of driver support due to the Vista arrival. I tend to agree on Win 7... it is probably the best OS Microsoft built.

@@erikmerchant567 Well, tbh, Windows 10 are OK. If you use a legitimate copy of the OS and your programs, and have a tidy registry ( I use Bulk Crap Uninstaller - BCU for short - for non game store - for example Steam, GOG - programs, you are fine. I used to do a complete format once a year, now, I am going for... 3 years in a single install I believe ). NT based Windows may have brpken DOS compatibility, but they are acceptable if you don't delve into warez, and keep your registry fit. Paired with an SSD and enough RAM.

Same here! Went from a Dell P4 2.4 Ghz system and then decided DIY and built myself an E6300 system. I've gone through 5 system upgrades since then but the jump to the Core 2 Duo was a huge leap!

I also went from a hot, noisy P4 to a cool, quiet Core 2 Duo. What a difference! 😄

Very good even for modern use.

got that one (e8400) too in a late XP build (I hate Vista!😅) It is almost as fast as my athlon Ii x2 255 from 2010, but the athlon II has of course the higher mem speed

Yea Quad-core was sufficient for a long time.

Q9550 with a GTX 970 until 2020 here, family's workhorse. Still thinking what I can repurpose it for.

@@sengyew83Turn it onto a media PC. Or for LAN gaming when a friend comes over.

@@HappyBeezerStudios 👍 yup considered turning it into a HTPC where 1080p performance is still rock solid. A little worried on its 4K streaming performance though, unless I can offload the load onto a newer GPU?

@@sengyew83 I guess so, depends on the codec obviously.

That is correct. I was surprised that a 775 based system is still capable of running modern photography software. I use DxO Photolab and it works fine (requires at least SSE4.1 to be working). With capable modern GPU, it also nicely accelerates AI noise reduction (& OpenCL). So I kept one LGA775 based machine (C2Q Q9550@3,4Ghz, 8GB of RAM and AMD HD7750 GPU with SSD) with Windows 10 OS.

Thank you for the kind words.

that must have felt like coming from a high end Core 2 Quad to a 13th gen i7 😂

@@Lilbroda Yeah, I remember the first time opened a very populated folder and the WinXP flashlight didn't show up 🤯

That's a huuuge difference. Even from my old P4 3200 or AMD XP 2800+, if skipping C2D, going straight forward to i5-2xxx. But in the last 10 years there's nearly no speed difference with mainstream CPUs, which is good for us retro gamers ofc. Only need a new GPU or limit FPS like I did in Anno 1800, while using 30 FPS is enough for me in this game, even a C2D E8400 can play this game.

Nice OC! I believe I had mine running at 3 GHz but not sure.

Awesome 👍

🙂😄

What an upgrade 😄 You would have been amazed by the performance.

Yes I went from a 2500+ Barton to an E4300!

In my case it was Celeron D 2.4GHz > Pentium Dual Core E2160@3GHz. Performance increase was very pleasant :)

Very nice!

CPUs which impressed me the most were: Any 486 from SX to Am5x86 for quantum leaps with every version. Comanche here we come. We did it, let's get home! Pentium III for efficiency. Pentium III-M/S even better. Apple/IBM/Motorola aka AIM PowerPC G4 for efficiency, maybe even better than P III, but sadly no x86, no Windows (my Sonnett G4 800 MHz upgrade CPU even has 1 MB L3 cache, last one was 1800 MHz G4 I think). AMD XP (the "better than P4 one"). Core2Duo S775 and Xeon S771 (easily moddable for S775) for efficiency. C2D ULV laptop even better. Core i5/7 2xxx for efficiency. i5/7-xxxM/U even better. AMD APUs. CPUs which were unefficient: Pentium 4, at least S478 Prescott 3200 MHz. AMD FX. AIM PowerPC G5 (that's why Apple switched to Intel Core Duo/2 Duo in 2005).

@@sebastianebert4295 All the inefficient ones are basically the architectures that traded IPC for clock speed. Don't forget POWER6 for that GHz race lineup

@@HappyBeezerStudios what about Apple PowerPC G5? Was it that bad? Or was PowerPC just in a crysis to make them use Intel Core instead? I mean 1.8-2.7 GHz is less than with Pentium 4 and G4 had like 700-1800 MHz (a bit more efficient than Pentium III, some with 1 MB L3 cache). I know it can't compete with x86_64 CPUs, having endless OS, apps and games. Apple also is very restrictive and different all the time. It's just interesting. I got some cheap G4, a mate once bought a G5 dual I think. Now I wonder which oldest OS I can install to see Lemmings, Prince of Persia and Comanche 1 CD in a higher resolution than on DOS. Mac OS 6-8 would be good I think. Officially 9.x minimum, but I read 8.2 also should run. Have to check winworldpc or different to gather CDs, burn or maybe use DriveDroid, if the G4 can boot from emulated USB-CD/DVD. It can boot off normal USB, but it's complicated to choose the start files from the Open Firmware, similar to EFI.

Yeah E6300, E6600, E8400 were used in millions of office PCs. Very reliable CPUs. C2D S775, Xeon S771 are some of the best platforms, after Pentium III and PowerPC G4 ofc. Athlon II x2-x6 + Phenom II Socket AM2 also are good, but came out later. i5-2400/i7-2600/i5-3570 are very reliable, also quite good and seen in millions of office PCs. That's my nowadays sweetspot. I don't buy new PCs, only new GPUs and SSD.

Haha yes!

Awesome! Do you play the BF2 demo or full version with patches?

@@philscomputerlab full version patched to 1.5.runs well even on a radeon x1600, the least powerful GPU we have for an XP build.

Very easily, I had a E2200 that would run stable at 2.8 and on a better board than I had it would run at 3.0. It was insane how well it overclocked.

Using all the good CPUs :D

Very nice machines you built there!

Hmm I don't have a CTT TV to test this actually. VGA seems much better IMO?

@@philscomputerlab ok no problem, i think it can be hhoked to a scart television aswell