Well I am unsure If it was posted in this thread but ill post it againFor those wondering between the CPU and RAM upgrade is made a huge difference. Games do load fast, play smoother with less system hick-ups. This made an even larger difference on the non tradition games I used with Niko's set up. IE MAME and the PlayStation 1. With the added oomph I may look into being able to run at higher resolutions and maybe with some of the shader/filters on.
I still need to flash my new video card before I can use it. This should give me even more of a boost as I will be going from 256mb to 512mb with a higher core clock speed. Now days this does not sound like much of a difference but in an older system like this .. its HUGE.
due to IPC improvements form intels P4 line to the LGA775 Core2 Line
you got the top end cpu I suggested and thats great, that one should be about as good at single threaded workloads as a 4.4-4.5gfz p4, and thats before you take into account the well, 2nd core you gain with this chip
If you are unable to get this one, there is a 2.73 ghz model of core 2 , then you have the core 2 quad, however keep note the core 2 quad, is on the edge of better / worse then the stock p4 its hard to say really.
So for people who are going to ask what dose this really effect?
and that's a relatively easy one, it dosent change anything in the Typex line of games. all of these games use vsync in windows, and are capped to 60 fps
the only case where this type of cpu upgrade, is going to negatively impact gaming performance, is edge case games where maybe during game-play they had frame dips, and on this much beefy cpu/gpu combo those framedips will be removed.
Outside of that emulators, my Gui, everything should have vastly more performance, with this type of mod. as your effectively more then doubling the compute power of the cpu
in terms of your video card upgrade, that isnt going to benefit emulators as much as you may think. Emulators like mame, barely touch the gpu
and I dont know every emu you plan on running, but chances are alot of the older ones dont have much gpu acceleration
that being said, Id personally slap a 9800 GTX in it, the only issue with will fiddling with drivers to find one that works
But i could see a 9800 GTX + 2gb of system ram, running some GCN/Wii games.