In message "JR Weiss"
was claimed to have wrote:

"muzician21" wrote...

I dont need to be on the cutting edge, what Core 2 chips should I look
for that would net me about 3x the speed of that 2.4gig P4?

None.

While you would see improvement from any C2D over 2.4GHz, you won't likely
see anywhere near 3X the speed on anything.

Why not? Except under very specific workloads, the P4's pipeline length
all but crippled the processor's responsiveness for day to day usage.

Hyperthreading partially addressed this, although it caused it's own set
of slowdowns.

A single Core 2 core is roughly 1.5x-2x faster then a similarly clocked
P4 CPU, one of the higher end Core 2 Duo processors should easily offer
3x-4x processing improvements over a P4.

In fairness, we're rarely CPU bound at all these days, so when it comes
to desktop performance comparing CPUs isn't always the best way to
start.

I still want to run XP - all my software works with it and I'd like to
stay with PCI slots, not PCI express so I can swap over hardware I've
already got. The more PCI slots the better - like 5 or more. Does such
an animal exist - i.e. Core 2 duo system with lots of PCI slots?

If you stay with PCI, then you will choke your I/O to graphics, HDs, and
other peripherals that use the PCI bus. There's no sense in staying with
PCI if you want performance.

Depending on what sort of devices are connected, the PCI bus'
limitations may not matter. Sound cards, fax boards, even
SCSI-connected scanners and similar won't get near the PCI bus'
bandwidth limitations. Higher performance devices will make use of a
faster bus, but for most users their video card and possibly an
additional drive controller are about all that fit into that ballpark.

(okay okay, ethernet too in theory, but in practice how many users have
hardware that can sustain over PCI's practical transfer speeds over
ethernet?)