I commented on my system’s performance in my first post about EQ2’s “Play The Fae”. Using my single core 32-bit AMD XP 2.1 Ghz processor produced incredibly low frame rates, topping out at around 10 or so frames per second in Kelethin on the “Balanced” setting.

Jumping up to the Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 has been a great experience. Even installing it was fun as I had never dealt with a processor that has no pins. I was also impressed with the look of the stock CPU cooler.

The performance increase in EQ2 was significant. I was able to switch from “Balanced” to “High Quality”, and even tinkered a bit with the “Very High Quality” option. I feel that V/HQ would have been playable with faster RAM, but as it is, the system memory is one of the legacy components that I’m currently tied to. Loading objects (NPCs, tables, what have you) frequently caused the system to stop and think for a moment.

The “High Quality” setting, however, was much more playable. I was able to move around the tree city with no significant hiccups, and although some locations did produce a noticable drop in FPS none of it reached the terrible performance that was experienced on the single core processor.

That gave me a very good example of the improvement experienced in game play. Something else that I do a lot of at my computer is watch movies.

Playback of high definition files has also significantly improved, which was something that I was fairly curious about. My graphics card, an NVidia 6800 GT, handles some of the decoding of those files. So I was able to watch them on the old processor but it was always an iffy experience. Any little thing could cause the video to stutter.

With this Core 2 Duo, however, I don’t need to bother with the hardware decoding. The processor usage tops out at about 25%, but typically stays between 18% and 20%.

Of course, when using my 6800 GT to decode the file the burdon on the processor is reduced. Depending on the file, for example an HD WMV file, the processor load may remain close to a mere 5% to 10%. Nice! H264, on the other hand, continues to butt heads with the 20% mark, even with hardware decoding.

I installed XP Pro x64 for a number of hours last night and toyed with that, and just wow! The O/S takes advantage of both cores, and that resulted in the smoothest PC experience that I’ve had for a long time.

Much to my incredible disappointed, however, Netgear is refusing to make 64bit drivers! How utterly insane. Not only are they refusing to make the drivers, but their responses to their customers inquiring about 64bit drivers have been rude. After what I read of their responses last night, and knowing that they have no plans to support Windows x64, it was very easy to see that I would have no more use of their products.

If it were physically possible to use a cable then I would have been happy to go that route, but that’s simply not possible for me without drilling holes in the walls. That’s not something that I’m prepared to do.

What a shame. All other components in my PC had x64 drivers.

All in all, it’s been a very good upgrade. The 32bit version of Windows does not take advantage of both cores and so the typical experience is… well, it’s typical. However, this Core 2 Duo is able to tackle difficult tasks exceptionally well. It was well worth the cost of the upgrade, and I look forward to eventually moving to a better motherboard and higher quality system memory.

~Steph