If you have a PC with a Pentium, Pentium II, AMD K6 or K6-2 processor, an upgrade will make your computing a lot more fun.
You'll know right away when your PC boots quickly, responds to clicks sharply and opens new applications in a snap that your money's been well spent.
However, if you have a Pentium III or older AMD Athlon CPU, you may be quite satisfied with the performance. In that case, there's no compelling reason to upgrade the processor; a upgrade of the memory, CD drive or hard drive might bring more value. Still, if you want to get deeper into video, music, or gaming, nothing beats a fast Pentium 4 or Athlon XP to get rid of the dreaded hourglass cursor.
Recent price drops announced by Intel and AMD will make upgrades compelling as the price cuts make their way to shops in a few weeks. In addition, Intel's new 845-series chipset, to be found on new mainboards soon, will give users the added boost of USB 2.0, a port that is 40 times faster than the more common USB 1.1 port.
The Light User - Gaming, Office Work, and Web
You surf the net, check your email, use Word. Sometimes, you'll fire up Winamp to play MP3s. You indulge in the occasional game. Despite what you think, a budget processor, such as Intel's Celeron or AMD's Duron, will lead to the overall smoother performance of the PC. You'll see such benefits as:
Faster boot-up. Most users wish their computers could switch on as quickly as a light bulb. While that day may be some time away, a speedier CPU will save you some thumb-twiddling. Of course, while the faster system bus -the pipeline that supplies data to the CPU-makes a huge impact on boot times, a faster processor will crunch through those startup routines at a faster clip.
Smoother multitasking. Launch one too many Internet Explorer windows while you're working on Word and playing Winamp at the same time and your PC will act as if it's wallowing in peanut butter. Having at least 128MB of memory may cure some of the ills (256MB if you're using Windows XP), but ultimately, you can't get away from the fact that a faster CPU will let open that many more download windows.
Gutsier games. Think that smoother game playback in 3D shooters depends entirely on your graphics card? Think again. A CPU upgrade may have even more impact on non-jerky gameplay than a new 3D card.
Tom's Hardware, the well-known PC hardware site, compared the benefits of a more powerful CPU on 3D gaming. Using the same graphics card - an out-of-date Riva TNT 2 Ultra - on three different PCs, speeds went from a pokey 28 frames per second (fps) to speedy 109.3 fps. The first PC was a Pentium II 233 MHz; the last was a Pentium 4 at 1.5 GHz. Of course, it must be noted that the newer PC has a faster system bus and more memory, but the contribution of the CPU to frame rate performance is still substantial.
The Movie and Music Fan
You watch DVD movies on your computer. You rip music from CDs, convert them into MP3s. Hunting down good movie trailers or other AV files on the Net is a hobby. A better CPU will gain you such benefits as:
Smoother DVD playback. Did you know that watching DVD movies consumes a lot of CPU power? This is because the processor has to decode the compressed MPEG-2 stream coming off the disk. And if you have a Dolby 5.1 sound card, the device may also offload some audio jobs to the CPU as well. The Pentium 4 has special filters to decode MPEG2 streams, while the Athlon XP has extensions to better handle video streams as well.
Faster CD rips. The waveform-crunching power of the faster CPU helps, but chips such as the Pentium 4 and Athlon XP contain specialized sub-routines that speed up audio processing.
The power to edit your MP3s. Did you know that you can trim off bits of songs you don't like, or clean up pops and crackles? With software such as Nero Burning ROM, you can edit WAV files before burning them to an audio CD. A robust CPU will help make this job a breeze.
The AV Editor
Making your computer's brow break a sweat is second nature to you. You stretch your processor to breaking point by dubbing and editing video. TV shows are being stored on hard disk through your TV tuner card. You're constantly hooking up your digicam to download holiday snaps. In fact, you're probably scanning in old negatives and prints to create a massive digital photo album while you read this.
Better VCR-like performance. In AMD's tests using BAPCO SYSmark 2001 Internet Content Creation, their Athlon XP CPU showed that today's crop of processors can crunch through frame rendering in a much shorter time that their predecessors. Among the sub-tests in SYSMark 2001 is media encoding and playback, using Adobe Premiere and Windows Media Encoder.
The Intel Pentium 4 has sub-filters designed to handle MPEG-2 streams, the same high-quality format used in DVD movies. By using software such as WinDVR and a TV tuner card, you can record, playback and edit TV broadcasts without stressing your system too much.
Faster image and video editing speed. AMD's Athlon XP processors claim to be faster in multimedia creation, due to improvements in chip architecture over the older Athlon processors. Besides, the raw megahertz boost of a chip like the Athlon XP 2100+ can't hurt either. In AMD's benchmark tests using eTesting Labs' Content Creation Winstone 2001, the Athlon XP 2100+ came out 11 per cent faster that the Intel Pentium 4 chip of equivalent speed rating. The test loads the chip with creating digital media using applications such as Adobe Photoshop 5.5, Adobe Premiere 5.1, Macromedia Director 8.0 and Macromedia Dreamweaver 3.0.
A speedy processor will be able to brighten, crop and add artistic blurs to photos that much faster. Programs such as Adobe Photoshop Elements has been optimized to take advantage of the Pentium 4's routines for even faster performance.
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