Long time, no post! Oh well, I now have a good reason to post about something a bit interesting.

I upgraded my CPU from an Intel Pentium D935 3,2 ghz(2007) to an Intel Pentium E6500 2,93ghz(2009). I also bought an Arcting Cooling Accelero Pro for my Gigabyte Ati Radeon HD4850 video card. The results are astonishing.

Let me first talk about the initial configuration:

Intel Pentium D935 3,2 ghz
Gigabyte GA-965P-S3 rev 3.3
4x Kingston Hyper-X 1GB DDR2-800mhz
Gigabyte ATI Radeon HD4850(512 MB)
Sirtec 560W

I believe I have a pretty decent rig for these days, even though it’s still on the good ol’ LGA775 socket. Everything ran smoothly, with the exception of CPU-intensive applications. Such as 3D renderings or mapping for half-life. Well, there were even games that had a significant drop in performance because of the CPU. GTA4 is a good example.

Since the budget is not a bright part when it comes to upgrading, I had to think well my next upgrade. I originally intended to save money for an i7 860 platform. I came to the conclusion this is not a viable option for me at this time, so instead I researched for a modern LGA775 CPU that is compatible with my motherboard. I found the E6500 intel processor, released in 2009. I had to upgrade my BIOS to the latest version, and that was the part that gave me emotions. A simple power fluctuation and I could kiss my mobo goodbye!

Anyway, everything was alright. I was impressed by the size of the stock cooler the E6500 has. I mean, it’s a lot smaller and light-weight than the other one. I was also impressed by how well the new GPU cooler cools it. A drop of 30 degrees celsius is something! So anyway, I’ll cut the story here and show you the results:

• the pc now consumes 83w in idle, as opposed to 120w. It turns out the old CPU was rather inefficient.

• the new CPU has an awesome increase of performance, consumes a lot less and it’s less hot( same temperatures with the other, but remember that its stock cooler isn’t as massive as the D935’s, and it doesn’t have a copper bottom(the old one had))

• SuperPI 1M calculation now takes 19,5 seconds, as opposed to 41 seconds for the old CPU

• overall system performance is increased: from a score of 5688 3Dmark06 now reports 10708 !!

• since I installed the new cooler on the video card, it sits below 40C (~38C). With the original cooler it sat at 79C, which is damn hot for idle! in Full Load it doesn’t exceeds a bit 60C( max 65C). Well, with the old cooler it was ~90C in Full Load. I have to specify that now the cooler is very quiet.

Here’s a general look to my system and the benchmarks. Everything runs at default settings( no OverClocking).

Pictures showing the installation of the Accelero Pro cooler on the Gigabyte Ati Radeon HD4850 card: